July 21, 2014

Hello family!

This week was so good! Hermana Martinez and I went on exchanges for a day so I was with Sister Dowd. I'll be with her once a week for the next three weeks or so (just like I was with Hermana Magnusson). Sister Dowd is also my roommate (she took Sister Tauteoli's place) I'll attach a picture of us.

We got to make some cookies for our investigators and the members in our ward who are less active and the ones who are active and help us a lot. We saw a lot of success from that! One of our new investigators called us to see when we could come and teach her family, a less active family asked to set up an appointment for us to come over and a member called us to see if she could come to any appointments or help us teach any of our investigators. Not sure what we put in those cookies but we might make them again soon for some more people!

We also got to do some service at a senior center. They had some paid entertainment booked but they cancelled so we did it for free! We sang hymns- some in Spanish, some in English and a missionary sang in Samoan. Then another one of the missionaries did a violin solo- it was really cool and the lovely little ladies at the senior center loved it!

Some fun things coming up- we're having a visit from Elder Evans, who is the Executive Director of the Missionary Department for the Church. So he is basically in charge of missionary work. And he's coming to speak to us! So that is exciting. That will be on August 28th. So in order to prepare for that we're having our zone conference this Friday where we'll meet with some of our district leaders and zone leaders (who are just normal missionaries but have more leadership responsibility) and our mission president. We usually do it every 3 months or so but we're doing it a little earlier in anticipation for our visit from Elder Evans.

A little side note: remember how I showed you the tan line on my foot when we skyped on Mother's day? Well it's gotten more and more defined as the summer has gone on and my roommates or other sister missionaries, when they see my feet they always comment on it. Always. Without fail. I think it's embarrassing but they're all really impressed and jealous of it. I guess that just goes to show how little entertainment we have as missionaries.

And remember how I used to tell you how I'm self conscious about my Spanish? Well that hasn't really changed much. But last night the other sisters who are serving in our ward (they're both native speakers) were telling me that it's good! One of them said that when they heard me speaking Spanish at church she noticed that its improving. The other one told me that she called a member on the phone the other day and the member thought she was me! And She's from Mexico! That made me feel a lot better about my abilities :) I just am so grateful because I want to be able to communicate with the people I'm serving! I want to get to know them and their concerns and I want to be able to say the things that will help them. But it is something that I will have to continue to work on throughout my life. I am really grateful for this opportunity to learn the language though! When people ask how we learned so fast and we tell them that we had 6 weeks of training and then we just study an hour a day and talk to people, they're really impressed at how much we know! It is all the Spirit and I am definitely getting divine help so that I can talk to and teach the people here in California! What a blessing.

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week.

Pictures:

1. Me and Sister Dowd

2. The lovely Hermana Martinez

3. Making cookies!