Week With Lots of Walking

Hola friends!

I am glad you guys think of me. I think of you all a ton.

I am glad you watched the video. I shared it hoping you would watch it and see me! I definitely do not believe the bible is all we need. The Book of Mormon provides such a clarification of our life here. If you go back and read Elder Nelson's talk from conference, it has the lists he made since reading the Book of Mormon last conference and it is super cool!

This transfer was a 7 week transfer so transfers are this Wednesday. They do transfer calls on Saturday to tell everyone who is leaving but if they don't call you then your companionship is not impacted. We were waiting for a call because Hermana Coleman has already been in this area fro 3 transfers but we never got one so we are staying together! 

I am enjoying my time as a missionary. I love our branch. They are so awesome. We have dinner fed to us like 3-6 times a week. It really just varies. But I will never go hungry when being fed by members. They give us so much food. Its insane. We also get fed lunch every Tuesday at this place called La Cabana. He is a less active that likes to feed missionaries and we get street tacos. Its awesome.

This week we realized that we were running out of miles we could drive. So we had to plan out our days with ways that we could just walk and find people. So there were several days where we just walked like all day. It was kind of nice to get out and walk. :)

Because we were walking so much, we ran into a less active that lives in our area and we are going to go teach him this week. It was super weird. He saw us and he was like "hola!" so we decided to talk to him and his was like "aren't you guys mormons?" and we said yes and he then he told us he was a member and it was super funny because that never ever happens here.

Then we found this really awesome girl. She is 19 and was super open to listening to us. When she lived in Venezuela she went to a bunch of different churches because she doesn't know which one is right and so the message of the restoration was super cool for her because she knows exactly how Joseph Smith felt when he was looking for a church to join. I said the first vision to her and instead of asking "did that really happen?" She took the pamphlet from my hand and said "wow that is awesome, I want to go to your church!" she asked for the pamphlet and the book of Mormon and wants to learn more.

On Friday we had our trunk or treat and it was super fun! someone that we teach english to actually came and it was super awesome. People here go  all out for halloween.

We have found so many people to teach this week that we have appointments every night already! except tuesday because we are not allowed to leave our house after 6 pm because Halloween here is sketchy. Fun fact about virginia: there are no street lights so when the sun goes down it is super dark and slightly sketchy and slightly scary to drive but its all good!

I am memorizing the Living Christ. As a mission we are doing a 100 days of strengthening conversion. Because we are going to the temple as a mission in like 93 days!! I am so excited!! :)

I love you all!! I hope you have a great week!

Street Tacos

Us and a member who fed us and two girls that came finding with us on Thursday

us and a member who dressed up for the party

6 Weeks in Virginia

Hello amigos! :)

This week went by so fast. I am not sure why because not a ton happened! We had a lesson with two of our investigators....they live together.  Angel and Gisella. Angel loves the missionaries. Apparently some missionaries got him out of some pretty hard times but he never has had a desire to learn of the gospel. But his wife loves the gospel so much. We were reading a chapter in the Book of Mormon with them and he never reads with the missionaries but for some reason he decided to read with us.  Then we talked about repentance and forgiveness and that really hit him hard.  He has some forgiveness issues but he is starting to show some real progress.  Then we asked him to pray (he has never prayed with the missionaries before) and he prayed.  It was one of the most sincere prayers I have ever heard. It was incredible. The Spirit was so strong. It was amazing.

Two of our investigators are getting baptized next Friday!! I am so excited! They are so cool and have been investigating the church for so long. They have wanted to be baptized for a very long time and it now the right time. Something cool about a couple of our investigators is that they will try and share the gospel with other people.  If anyone ever asks them about religion they start to talk about our church.  It is so cool that they want to share what they are learning and feeling.

So we have a list of all the members of our branch.  We divided them up to the the three sets of missionaries that serve in the Spanish branch and we are going to go and see all the less actives.  We have only come in contact with one but it was a cool experience and we are going to start teaching her daughter.  (Well, the Elders are going to because it is actually in their area.  But cool all the same.

Technology is so awesome. This is one way that we are using technology in our mission. We have some recent converts that got baptized last  year that have stopped coming to church.  We tried to contact them but never could.  Then we got a call from a member who had a previous missionary call them.  This missionary was the one that baptized these two teenagers.  She said that she really felt like they needed to be visited.  We got permission to message this return missionary over Facebook and asked her to contact them for us. She did and we were able to have a lesson with them and she Skyped in.  It was awesome.  The recent converts were not really comfortable with us because they didn't' know us but now we have a good relationship with them and they want to meet with us more! It is so cool to have this tool available for this purpose.  I am so thankful to have the use of technology on my mission.

I love you all!

just messing around taking pics

Weird pinky pic with the sister training leaders

Look, mom, I use the stuff you send me

Wild life in Virginia

Another Week In Virginia

Hola amigos! :)

This week has gone by so fast. We found some new people to teach which is super awesome because the whole mission is struggling with that right now. We found this lady, her name is Lorena and she is so awesome. She immediately invited us into her house and told us how much she loves the bible. We were talking about why we are here and all that stuff so we shared some scriptures with her from the Book of Mormon which she accepted as the word of God so that was awesome! She is super family oriented and so we are excited to keep meeting withe her. :)

We had a lesson with a lady named Nancy. I can't remember if I told y'all about her or not. But she is Christian, doesn't drink, or smoke and is super open to the Book of Mormon. Anyways, we had a lesson with her and she hadn't started the Book of Mormon yet but she had read the entire restoration pamphlet. So we read the introduction with her and the testimony of the witnesses and she was so interested ans said she wanted to keep reading that afternoon!

We went on exchanges with the sister training leaders this week and it was so much fun! I love them. We went tracting and I had to speak in spanish to some people without Hermana Coleman which is terrfying. But I did it and they understood me! But we didn't find anyone. Combined, both companionships knocked on around 55-60 doors and we did not find any hispanic people to teach. But its okay because the next day we found two more people!! We found a guy, Carlos who opened up to us and cried a little bit about how he is missing God and is looking for a way back to him. So that was a really cool experience!

We drive a chevy cruz but I don't drive because I am not the designated driver..
We leave our house around 1 or 1:30  and we have to be back by 9 if we don't have a lesson but if  we are in a lesson or meeting by 9:30.

We got a new branch coordinator and he is so awesome. I am so excited to work with him. He has so many goals and we are going to really work with less actives because we have so many. I did not realize how mission oriented wards and branches are suppose to be. that is the goal of this church and I guess I just thought of myself so much at home that I didn't realize how much missionary work we are supposed to be doing all the time. :)

We went to the capital today for zone pday:):) it was super awesome!!

7 Investigators at Church But We Were No Where to be Found...

Hola friends!

Mom, I got your letter and  your package. Thank you so much for everything. I appreciate the breakfast drinks. the food. the popcorn. Everything. I love the jacket. Thanks for the stamps. I love your letters and how cute they are. Thank you so much. I am going to write more letters.
I am so sorry about all the deaths. That is terrible but I am glad you got to reconnect with your friend. I have met her once. She is the one with Mr. Bodily in her ward. :) I am so thankful for the knowledge we have about the plan of salvation. I love the pictures of Beckett. He is the cutest baby in the entire world. I love him. And his picture he drew  me was is so precious.

This email may be kind of long so if you don't read it all, I understand. Except you mom, but I know you will read it all :) 7 of our investigators came to church.... but we weren't there... I'll explain more later... (skip to Sunday if you only want to ready about that)

On Wednesday we had interviews with President Smith. He is such a cool dude. I cried to him about missing home and we talked about how much of a blessing it is that I miss home. Because that means that I have a family and a bunch of friends that love and care about me. So that is how I am trying to think right now and it is really working. He says the only way I am going to get over the home sickness is to love the people and get to work. And he is 100% right. We also talked about how I had a lack of faith of finding people. Sometimes it is really hard for me to think that there really are people who want to hear our message, but people really are being prepared. I promise... and now comes the classic missionary story....

So President Smith told both Hermana Coleman and I that we needed more faith in finding. So we decided that we were going to go find someone that day. So we prayed about where we should go and we were led to a neighborhood. Which is super not normal because Hispanics are normally in townhouses, apartments or trailer parks. So we knocked on a few houses, talked to a super creepy old guy and decided we were in the wrong circle so we walked to a different part of the neighborhood and found a lady outside her house. We started talking to her but she wasn't interested but we asked her where Hispanics are in this neighborhood and she pointed us back in the direction of our car. We went over there and talked to this guy whose wife is a less active and he said some Hispanics live across the street. Right where our car was parked. So we knocked and talked to this guy, Nelson. He is super cool and didn't seem interested at first but eventually promised us that he would read the introduction to the Book of Mormon and pray about it. It was super cool and I know we found him because we decided to have faith and just trust in God and his timing.

On Friday we had this meeting called "Return and Report". I assume you saw the pictures on Facebook... All the missionaries that came in at the same time as me and their trainers all gathered in downtown Richmond. This area is not a sister area and I am really thankful I won't ever have to serve there. It is a super cool place but definitely pretty sketchy. But we all go down there and try to street contact for like 2 hours. We went out with different companions and I went out with Hermana Davis and it was super cool. We gave out 3 Book of Mormons and a few restoration pamphlets. A super drunk guy stopped us and told us he wants to become a preacher but he is an alcoholic and he asked us if we think it would be okay if he still preached the good word while being an alcoholic. Somehow we changed the subject and gave him a restoration pamphlet and left but I just thought it was super cool that he trusted us enough to ask for our opinion. He recognized us as servants of God and that is a promise that we are promised in preach my gospel and I really saw it. It was really cool.

On Saturday we had some lessons that were super cool. We went and had a lesson with our investigators Humberto and Andrea who have been investigating since like July or August. its hard to communicate with them because they don't have a phone or a car.... but we finally taught them and we taught them for an hour and a half.... About like everything. The Spirit was so strong so we invited them to be baptized and they are hesitant but we think they are going to accept a baptismal date soon. I explained to them why we are here on missions and we are here because we know this is true. We know the Book of Mormon is true and we know we will one day live with our families for eternity in true happiness and that we want this for them. (yes I did that in Spanish....) After this we had a lesson with another investigator, Javier. He has come to church 15 times. But won't accept a baptismal date. He says he wants his kids to grow up in this church. He wants to bless his little girl but he won't get baptized. Its really frustrating but we are trying to be patient and figure out what it is that he needs so he understands how important baptism is.

STOP HERE IF YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT SUNDAY. Alright here is where it gets good. Sunday. We were studying when we got a call from our investigator Brenda. She told us that her sister had been in an accident and she needed us to translate at the hospital because she doesn't know anyone else that speaks English well enough to translate. So we got permission to go out of our area to downtown Richmond to the VCU hospital. We were expecting that she needed stitches or something and we get there and she had gotten out of a 10 hour surgery. She had broken several bones and had some bleeding in her brain. At this point she could not communicate with us because she had some tubes in her mouth and can't move very well. So we are talking with our investigator, Brenda, who doesn't know what happened because her sister can't tell her. so we had to call the police officer who told us it was a single vehicle accident and the car rolled several times off the road. She had to be flown in a helicopter to the hospital. It was super intense. We translated this phone call for Brenda. (I just had  the Spanish dictionary open and looked up words for Hermana Coleman) We had to call the towing company, the fire department and file an insurance claim and then translate all of this back to Brenda. and by we, I mean Hermana Coleman because my Spanish is not good enough yet. I can understand a lot but I can't think fast enough about what the said and then what to say back and how to say it correctly... So this is all happening during church and we get a text from the Elders that said we had 7 investigators at church. So that is super awesome but we felt bad that we couldn't be there with them. We eventually made it back and talked with our investigators and attended an English ward's sacrament so we could take the sacrament and it was much needed. We were so tired. That was probably the most emotionally extinguishing thing I have done on my mission. So we decided that we can't keep doing this so we found a member who is willing to translate for Brenda. Hermana Ainsa. She is awesome. We went to her house to explain what was happening and she made sure everything was okay with Brenda and stuff but then she looked at us and asked if we were okay. We were okay but so tired. We are just some 19 year old girls that don't speak Spanish fluently and don't know anything about insurance. She just acted like our mom for a second and made sure we were okay with everything. I am so so thankful for her.

How I met Coach Gillette's sister. We were waiting for the English ward to start and she came up and was trying to see Hermana Coleman's tag and she asked me if she was Hermana Anderson. Probably because she is taller and looks like she plays basketball HAHAHA! But I told her she was looking for me and we talked for a little bit about Virginia and Coach Gillette. it was super cool! I also found Gwen Brockbank's sister in law... I don't know which boy she is married to. If I see her again I will ask :)

Facebook: at first it was communicating with our investigators and our members but I found a Hispanic Richmond Virginia group. So I changed my privacy settings so not just anyone can look at my friends. (trying to protect yall) and started messaging people "Hi! I am a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We have a message about Jesus Christ and we believe we can live with our families forever, even after this life. Do you want to learn more? and I have sent this message to around 60 people and only 2 have responded lol! but I am trying.

Our mission has also been chosen for a new pilot program. Only 5 missions in the world have been chosen for this so its pretty cool. If people google "questions of the soul" (where are we going, where do we come from, what is our purpose) mormon.org will show up and they can request to have someone come teach them. We haven't had any referrals from this yet but apparently in one day there were 30 referrals in the mission. So that is super cool and I am so excited for it!!

My Spanish is coming. I understand a lot and can teach some things. I can share my testimony. I share my testimony in all of our lessons and I can promise blessings. All the members are surprised that I can pray so well for only being out for less than a month. So there is that.

I love you all and thank you all for all you do!

Us documenting the hospital parking lot. 

Ice cream and juice night :)

my awkward missionary pic with Elder Bird at Return and Report 

 pretty sky in Virginia :)

2 Months.... Say What??

Hola amigos!

Mom, I got your snail mail and it made my day! I loved it so much. I have re read it a couple of times already. I also got grandma Larrabee's letter and wrote her back today! I am so thankful you guys took the time to write me. I know you were inspired to do so. I did a lot better this week with the homesickness. I still felt it a lot. Especially this morning for some reason but I do think I am settling into missionary life more and more. I know it will take some more time but it is happening.

We have had branch council once and branch coordination once since I have been here. They are super helpful meetings and I can't wait to have more. Right now we do not have a ward mission leader so that is tough but once we get one, we will meet with them every week. We just got new Presidents in Young Womens and Young Mens and primary. They are all younger people who are so ready to help the missionaries out with the work. And we are coming up with a program to have each member suggest names through Facebook that we can teach or share a message with. Missionaries are so involved in the branch here because the branch is so small. Members are so willing to come out with us though and be involved in missionary work. We have three sets of Spanish missionaries all in our branch.

This week was kind of tough when it comes to rejections and stuff. We got rejected a ton. We have some recent converts that are ignoring us and we had to drop an investigator that Hermana Coleman has  been teaching for 12 weeks. That was really hard on her. But it was what we needed to do.

On Friday, we went on exchanges with the sister training leaders. I went with Sister Perry for the day and we went and had lunch with lady for lunch. Her name is Peggy and she is like 71, single and at one point in time had 8 cats. She is so awesome. Sister Perry asked her about her conversion story and she told us about it and she talked about how the missionaries came and knocked on her door and told her about the first vision and right then she knew it was true. She knew it but was not sure if she wanted to be baptized because she wasn't sure if she wanted to change her lifestyle. Around 10 months later she chose to be baptized and has been a faithful member of the church for 35 years. It was so cool for me to hear this because I had been lacking in faith about finding people to teach. Then later that night we went to visit a recent convert, his name is Lloyd and he is one of the coolest people I have ever met. He was baptized less than a year ago and has an incredible testimony of Jospeh Smith. He was sharing his testimony about how he knows Joseph Smith is a prophet could not have done all of this without the help of God. It was so cool to hear his testimony. He is working to go through the temple soon and I am so happy for him. Hearing their conversion stories gave me some extra motivation to go knock on some doors and tell people about the gospel.

Then we had conference. We watched the morning sessions on both days in spanish so I can't wait until they come out on gospel library so I can actually understand what was said! I got some things and I know the Spirit helped me understand what I needed to hear in those two sessions.  It is so sad about Elder Hales but I know he is going to do some serious work on the other side. The other two sessions were so awesome. I loved Elder Andersen's and Elder Nelson's talks. They were incredible. Also, Elder Callister's talk about Joseph Smith was the ultimate talk that I want every person who denies Joseph Smith as a prophet to read. 6 of our investigators said they were going to come to the church to watch conference with us and only one came. One. So that was super discouraging but we are going to talk to them this week and ask them what is up. One of them watched a couple of the sessions at home though so that is awesome!! :)

Since I was feeling motivated to knock on doors, we went on sunday to this apartment complex and knocked on like 6 doors before dinner and every single one of them said "not interested". Just like that. Some opened the door and didn't even let us speak. One didn't even open the door, just yelled through and then locked the door. so that was kind of sad but I know we will find someone who is ready.

I want you all to know that I know this is the true church. I know God is aware of us and wants us to return to him. He has given us the Book of Mormon to do so. I know Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. I know that Joseph Smith was called by God to restore the true gospel to this earth. He was persecuted until death because he knew the truth. This gospel is amazing and we are so blessed to have it on the earth today.

our awkward pics with the sister training leaders :)

Twins!

Us with the sister training leaders at the Amancer eating papayas!

Zone pday where I got to play real basketball and we played oompa.... Ultimate Frisbee basketball with a football. Its super intense