Inspiration and Baptismal Date!

Hola amigos!

This week has been filled with sweat and tracting and miracles. Its hot and humid here in the mouth of Virginia. My companion is helping me stay hydrated by making sure that I drink at least 5 water bottles a day... its a work in progress haha!

We were on our bikes this week and we saw a hispanic man that was not in the area book so we stopped and talked with him and shared Alma 36 with him. He was very attentive and was  so respectful. He had apparently moved in just 3 days earlier! He has a wife and a baby and said we were more than welcome to come back. The spirit was so strong while we were talking with him. It was an amazing contact.

We were on exchanges this week and I went with Hermana Bowcutt. :) She is so awesome and we went and visited this less active in our area. He has had issues with the culture of the church and some things but he still loves the doctrine. He said if anyone ever bashes on Joseph Smith he will defend them and he will defend the Book of Mormon. He says that Joseph Smith is just like Moses, Abraham and Noah. So we are hoping to work more closely with him and get him back to church. He was super funny and saves all the cards that missionaries give him and hang them up in his house!

We also had an amazing experience with one of our investigators Roxany. She has been taught everything but just is a little nervous to get baptized. We had a lesson with her and her mom on Sunday and we had been preparing all week for it. I was praying the night before and right after my prayer I told Hermana Clark that we should invite her to be baptized on August 4th. I had only met Roxany a few other times but I knew that we should do this. Roxany attended girls camp a couple of weeks ago and had a great time with the leaders. So we invited two of the leaders to our lesson. It was hard with the language thing because Roxany understands englsih but only speaks spanish and the leaders don't speak spanish but it all worked out. We taught the plan of salvation and asked Roxany and her mom which kingdom they want to end up in. The said the celestial kingdom and they knew that they have to be baptized in order to go there. Maria (the mom can't get baptized right now but its going to come soon!) We asked Roxany if she would prepare to be baptized on the 4th and she said yes! It was incredible and I am so so excited for her! I am so grateful to be able to help her make this covenant. I have known her for lke 2 weeks and already love her so much!

We had zone conference this week and President Smith talked about the war in heaven and how we have been missionaries for so long and will continue to be missionaries for eternity. I know that is true and I know taht we are so blessed to have the knowledge of the Savior and His priesthood. I love the gospel with all my heart!

I love you all!

New area....Fredericksburg!

Hola amigos!!

The fourth of July sounds like so much fun. We could hear all the fireworks but couldn't see anything because of all the trees! I hope you have a great time at camp this week. I love that place. I am grateful for our stake property and the miracles I have seen in my life from that place. The Spirit resides there and we are so luck to have it. I pray that the girls will have a spiritual experience  because I know you will create and environment for them to feel the Spirit and love of God.

This week has been insane! I left Staunton and am now in Fredericksburg! I am still a STL so I will be going on lots of exchanges because we have other sets of sisters in the zone... making a total of 8 exchanges for the transfer! So that will be exciting. :)

On Monday we went and saw a less active and ate some pizza and said a really sad goodbye haha! But on tuesday we went to waynesboro and found some new investigators for the elders to teach so that is exciting! We also got lunch with a member and ate tacos with our ward mission leader, Ivan. It was sad to say goodbye to Staunton but it went well. ON Wednesday morning we were going to visit an investigator that we hadn't taught for a while to say goodbye. We ended up having a really good conversation and ended up teaching her the restoration because she had so many questions about everything. It was awesome. She told us about her experience with missionaries in Puerto Rico (this is the same lady I wrote about a few months back that we knocked on her door right after she had been praying for us) and then she told us in the car that she just bought, there were Mormon pamphlets stuffed in the owners manual! We all agreed it was a sign and then she agreed to meet  with the elders! It was awesome!

Our two our drive to transfers was very interesting... haha... I sat with a suit case on my lap and the AC stopped working so we had the windows open the whole time.. My hair was not super awesome after  that! haha!

My new companion is Hermana Clark! She is so awesome! She is 12 weeks ahead of me on the mission and has been an STL for a while so she knows the ropes. WE have been busy with doing stuff with the other sisters in the zone and then we had a meeting in Richmond on Friday. We are teaching several people here and I have met quite a few of them and they are so awesome. I am so excited to be working here! I am excited to work with the sisters here and get to know them better! It is really going to be a great six weeks.

We have a car in this area, a chevy malibu 2017 and its super nice but we also are able to use bikes! So we went out with the bikes and boy am I out of shape but I am so glad we will be able to use them sometimes!

Church here was great. The members are so awesome and two of our investigators came.  A  9 year old and a 12 year old came to church. Their mom didn't want to come so they came by themselves and sat through sacrament meeting! There is a lady here whose name is Santa Costa and she is from Italy. She wanted me to ask dad if he knows her haha because I told her that he served there... So dad, do ya know her? lol I am attaching a picture. She doesn't really speak spanish but we had a conversation with her speaking italian and me speaking spanish so that was exciting!

We have started to put an emphasis on the Book of Mormon and really using the power it contains more in this work. It has really helped me reflect on the truthfulness of the book and how it truly is another testament of Jesus Christ. Through the Book of Mormon, I know that He lives and that because he overcame death, we will too. I love my Savior.

El Parque Coming Through Big Time

Hola amigos!

This week we were able to teach more. We had a few surprise lessons with investigators by just showing up at their house haha. I don't love showing up uninvited but if that is how we get them to listen to the gospel. I am all for it haha. We walked in and one of our investigators from Puerto Rico was watching a Yankees game so I got to talk about baseball for once!

We had a really crazy funny experience this week. We went to go knock a door in a town called Verona. I am pretty sure the population is like 45 there but we knew this house was Hispanic so we went. So we knock and this man opens the door and he is just wearing his garment top. Yes he was wearing garments. We were so shocked because if soeone is endowed, we would have record of them haha but we didn't have their records. Well they were actually just visiting from Honduras but they are super active members in Honduras. It was super crazy that we happened to find them though. The people they are visiting are not members though so hopefully something will happen there!

We struggled finding people this week. Not just teaching but we had problems even just finding Hispanics. So we decided to go to Waynesboro (where there are more Hispanics) and on Saturday we were able to contact so many people. Earlier we had gone to this park and talked to this lady and gotten her address so we decided to go back to the park and we talked to like 5 different Hispanics in 20 minutes. It was awesome. Street contacting is kind of awkward but its super effective. People just give us their address and phone numbers too which I think is slightly odd but I don't mind. Its even the correct address. So that's awesome.

I know this is the Lord's work. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that the Book of Mormon is the most true book on the earth!

Hola from Virginia

Hola Amigos!

This week we had interviews with President and it was great. He talked to me about Matthew 14 when the apostles are sent to travel the Galilee during the night and the only traveled about 4 miles the entire night. Then Christ comes at the 4th watch which would be between 3 and 6 in the morning.  He let the struggle all night and then went and saved them. Why did he let them struggle all night? Why does the Savior let us go until we almost break? The answer is we don't know. The point is we worship a 4th watch God and that is just the way it is. I know that He lets us struggle for a reason and I know He will always come and help us even if it is not until the 4th watch.

Back in March we were trying to contact all the members that live in our area and we went to this house and met Jorge. Jorge is the ex husband to the member. We gave him a Book of Mormon but never really went back because he didn't seem that interested. A few weeks later I added him on Facebook not knowing it was him. We started talking and he told me that I had come to his house and given him a Book of Mormon. So I asked him if he had a chance to read it. He said that his ex wife took the book but he wanted to read it. So we went back and gave him a new  one. We tried to set up an appointment but we could never get the 3rd female thing to work out. So I just talked to him on Facebook every now and then.  Well he recently messaged me saying that he had a question and then we were able to set up an appointment and teach him and his kids! I love Facebook and am so grateful we have it to use as a tool to do the Lord's work.

We had dinner with members on Sunday and we had cafe rio so that was a blessing!!!

We had Stake conference this week and a 70 visited the stake I am serving in. Elder Sinclair shared so many great things. A few things were that we need to be quick to help and slow to judge. The atonement of Jesus Christ makes things better than what they were before. We need to change our perspective so we can change others. Our purpose is to invite others to partake of the healing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

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

Revelation is Real

Hola amigos!!!

I love being a missionary. Its awesome. We have done a lot of finding lately and not as much teaching but its still been pretty great :)

Its been really rainy here lately. One day we were out trying to find and it started pouring. Within 5 minutes there were giant puddles in the street. So we went to go contact one of our investigators and we prayed right before we got out of the car and I heard a voice say "what are you two doing out here?" I asked Hermana Barton if she heard it and she said no but she said she felt like we should go somewhere else. She felt impressed to go to the laundromat which is weird because we have not seen a Hispanic there ever. So we drove to the other side of town and went inside and there was a Hispanic lady and her two kids. It was insane. We started talking to them and then we brought out the Book of Mormon and this other lady came up to us and pretty much kicked us out but the Hispanic lady told us we could come by her house and then gave us her phone number! :) It was so awesome.

We went on exchanges this week and we were out and about trying to contact someone and we drove by a less actives house and he was outside with one of our investigators. We stopped and ended up  reading in the Book of Mormon with them. They happened to be drinking some beer and they were really uncomfortable that we had stopped by. Its kind of crazy how uncomfortable people are drinking in front of us. Even people who don't know that we don't drink.

We were able to talk to some pretty cool people this week and we are excited to keep working with them!!

I love you all!!!

Same Area New Companion

Hola amigos! :)

This week has been a crazy one! On Tuesday Hermana Ashcraft and I found a new investigator, Alfonso and he is super cool! He has  a family and we had already talked to his daughter and he has a lot of friends that are members! We have another appointment with him on Wednesday and I am super excited!

On Wednesday we drove to Richmond to transfer meeting! My new companion is Hermana Barton. She is from Sandy (mom, she went to Brighton!) and we came to the mission at the same time, she just went to the Mexico MTC. We are having so much fun and every day is a blast! She thinks Staunton is a super weird place, which it is but it is super funny!

On Friday we had another meeting in Richmond. So we had to drive 2 hours back and it was really great. We talked a lot about consecrating ourselves to our missions and I feel like it really relates to how we need to be doing that all the time with the gospel. We can always be thinking about the gospel and how that will really keep us on the right path. I was also able to see Hermana Whetten and Hermana Coleman and it was so much fun especially since Hermana Barton has been companions with both of them :)

Then we came back and had a lesson with Ervin. He for some reason has an issue with understanding faith and what it means to act on faith. So we are working on that with him... but he says he loves the Book of Mormon and believes in it so there is that... haha

On Saturday we were trying to contact these people, Marleni and Otoniel, but they weren't home and we met Marleni's sister and gave her a Book of Mormon. Then a little later Marleni and Otoniel came home so we started talking to Marleni and she invited us and and we read the Book of Mormon with her and it went really well. She was so willing to have us back and she had already read the Book of Mormon before we got there. We are so excited to keep working with them, we have a super good feeling about it :)

Last night we also found another family who seems pretty interested in the gospel! We are so excited for the next 6 weeks. Its going to be a blast!

I love and miss you guys but I honestly forgot that it was the day you were going to Upton yesterday haha and I was glad because a couple of months ago I would have been really distracted but I wasn't!

This week is going to be awesome. We are having a 70 coming to the mission and at zone conference he wants to meet with the leaders of the mission so we get to be in on a meeting with him and like 8 other missionaries and that's it so we are super excited.

I LOVE YOU!!

Well, I Touched Pumba Today

Hola amigos!

On Monday we met Ervin and his brother Gustavo in the park to teach them and we taught the restoration to them and it was awesome. Ervin loved it. Gustavo really likes us but he is not super open to the gospel right now. Later that week we were driving through a neighborhood looking for some Cubans because someone told us that they had moved into the neighborhood and we see Gustavo sitting outside his house. (Keep in mind, we did not know where he lived because we always met them in the park) So we talked to him for a little bit and then he told us the Cubans are his wife and her family lol! Gustavo told us we should work for the FBI because we are really good at finding all the Hispanics hahah! Later that week we met with Ervin and he was telling us about how he wanted to be clean so we talked about baptism and asked if that is something he wanted. He said he needs more time but he said he would pray about it. We are going to meet with him tonight :)

We had exchanges this week and Sister Bate and I had a lesson in the park with Eloy (a guy from Facebook who wanted to know where his dad is, because his dad passed away 2 years ago). He had read Alma 40, the introduction, the testimonies of the witnesses and the testimony of Joseph Smith. SO AWESOME. Sister Bate doesn't speak Spanish and Eloy doesn't speak English so it was just me and the Spirit on this lesson but it worked out so well. He wanted to know who Joseph Smith was so we talked about the restoration and then he asked "How do I know if Joseph Smith really was a prophet?" I was stoked. So we talked about prayer and the Spirit. Then he asked what are the things we "can't do" in our church. So i briefly explained the word of wisdom and he doesn't drink or smoke! So that was exciting. He committed to read every single day and pray to know if it is true and he said he would get baptized if he knows its true!! So awesome :))

We tried a house the elders said they say a Hispanic at and we talked to Julieta. She remembers meeting with missionaries when she was little in Waynesboro :) She was really excited to take a Book of Mormon and asked for a second one in Spanish so her husband can read it :)

On Saturday there was a baptism in our branch and wow the Spirit was so strong. It was incredible. When Maria got up and shared her testimony about the prophet Joseph Smith it was amazing. You can just tell that she knows without a doubt in her mind that this is the church of Jesus Christ.

I loved the phone call so much. I get nervous before them because I know that I won't want to hang up. I love and miss you guys so much but grandpa Larrabee is right. I am having too much fun :) I love this work with all of my heart. I LOVE YOU GUYS.