July 1, 2013

Hello family!

How is it going up there! Ha, sounds like you guys are hoppin’ around! Lol, I can honestly relate with that. When I lived down in Orem I was always hoppin’ around from Orem to SLC to Logan, and to many other places. I like it. I am jealous of you guys, sounds like fun. I can imagine I will be doing the same thing NEXT summer when I return. (Can you believe it?!?! next summer I will home aaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!) But that’s great. I am pretty sure the mission field is exploding now since it is summer. Scotty G keeps me updated on many farewells and returns. It is pretty exciting huh? Looks like there are plenty of lasses that I knew that are going out to serve as well, cool.

Ha, I have put a lot of thought into the 4th of July. I wanted to have a fun activity, but Bishop doesn’t want to and my Ward Mission Leader just got married and will be at the Temple in Recife all week, so we shall see! I remember a year ago I was in the CTM, eating tons of ice cream and that night we watched a soccer game on the 4th.

Well as for me and my week. The mission is flying by already. Like I said this last week, I really feel like God has invested a lot in me. My capacity is great, but now I just need to learn how to really apply it. I have the strength to do many things but now I just need to work with all my might.

So this last week was good. We focused a lot on 3 people. 1) This lady we have been working with for a while. We have got her to quit drinking and now she just needs to stop smoking so she can get baptized this week. Please pray for Elisa. And we are hoping the rest of her kids will be baptized as well. A family! Woo!  2) This lady that is really searching for the true church. It was interesting though, because she was perfect to be taught the restoration. But the first day we got there, her sister died that day, so this whole week we just taught about the miracle of Christ, the resurrection and the plan of salvation. 3) We found a less-active family, with a couple girls baptized and the mom and the brothers not. It was amazing how I was asked to say a prayer, and when I finished the Mom was crying. Wow, the spirit was strong and we testified about families and the achurcha. It is amazing how these two girls Amanda and Sara have been lit up this last week returning to the church. Sunday, yesterday she bore her testimony of the spiritual impressions she had in church, which brought her to tears. There was one day this week where each one of these families in their prayers thanked God for the "presence of these 2 angels"

Besides that Bishop passed a day with us and it was very cool. He is suuuuper trunky of the mission so he is loving it when he has opportunities to preach the gospel. He showed us something that I have been wanting to know how to do for a long time. Teach short and sweet lessons, and how to teach many new people in one day, and how to keep the attention during a lesson. It was awesome to have this demonstrated to me finally. Now I just need to learn how to really apply it. He is awesome, but annoying at the same time. He likes to nag at us all the time about lil’ things.

But yeah, it was a good week, my numbers weren’t the best, but as you can see it had some good quality. This is the last week of many of my friends, E. Reynolds, E. Hodson, E. Queiroz, E. McLaws, E. Ribeiro, and many more.  The area is going very well though, we have got to really learn how to work with the members like in the broadcast, and how to really meet and help many new people to bust out even more fruits.

Love you guys. I hope each one of you has put a letter in the mail to me and I hope the summer continues on well. I miss and love you guys too. It is especially during the summer when I remember all the family vacation fun we always had together. But like I said in the beginning. NEXT SUMMER, I’ll be there!