2-17-2014: Happy Day after President's day!!

Greetings from Arlington, Texas!

We're on an exchange right now with our Sister Training Leaders, so for the day I'm in Mansfield/Arlington (Arlington 5th ward to be exact) but tonight I'll go back to Hurst and get back to normal Spanish missionary life :)  

Yeah, we celebrated our President's day pretty hard with some laundry and apartment cleaning and grocery shopping and basketball playing for a zone activity--I'm actually not terrible at Basketball!  AKA once every 10 shots I make it....the next female version of Lebron James right here, people. Watch out.

Question: do y'all know an Elder Trevor Hill? He's serving in San Francisco/Oakland and he knows my friend Sister Syler.

aaaaaanyways.  This week was great, we're still working with la familia S and we committed them to live the Word of Wisdom!  Obsispo Delgado is convinced that Hermano S will be the next bishop--that's what we think too :)  This family is so stinking prepared for the gospel!  La Hermana likes to take things slow because she knows that Baptism is a pretty big commitment and she wants to make sure that they really understand what they're doing.  But yeah, they're awesome.  

We also set a wedding date and baptismal date for N!  We got the feeling that he was feeling a little lost--as in E and Us were making all the decisions and he was just along for the ride, so we took a different approach to the situation and asked him when HE wanted to do these things and WHY.  So he basically set his own Baptismal date!  It's gonna be end of April, which seems like forever away, but we feel really good about it because it's something that he chose for himself and for his family.  

AND B should be getting baptized this Saturday!  She's getting some major surgery tonight, but she seemed pretty set on getting baptized no matter what, so we're really excited for her and praying really hard that the surgery goes well and that she's ok.  

But man, I stinking LOVE this area!  I feel like I am a part of this ward, it's ridiculous, at the end of this transfer I will have been here for 7 and a half months! Dad, we might as well send my records here, ya know? :) haha  But It's such a great ward here and there is a ton of work to be done.  I imagine that I'll be transferred these upcoming transfers, just since I've been here for so long, but I wouldn't mind being here another 6 weeks either!  That's how much I love these people.

Mom-I didn't know the El Camino Ward had so many missionaries!  That's awesome!  We work a lot with our ward council and ward missionary, here in Hurst.  We try to have daily contact with our Ward Mission Leader to let him know about the lessons we teach and how our progressing investigators are doing.  Then we go into Ward Council every 2nd and 4th sunday of every month to let the ward know about how our less-active members and progressing investigators are doing and how we can fellowship them and make them feel comfortable.  We also try to take our members out on exchanges as much as possible--Tell Nat to go out with the missionaries as much as possible, then His members will go out with him a ton on his mission and that's GOLD.  (P.S. I am completely supportive of any family efforts to learn spanish!!! Me and Jake will need some people to talk with so that we can keep it up!)   :)

Also: me and Hermana Gwynn are going to the temple next week on Friday, which means we have to change our Preparation Day to the 28th of February, so we probably won't be emailing until then.  We're not really sure how that will work, though, so emailSunday night/monday morning anyways just in case, but don't be surprised if i don't respond until Friday. :)

Glad to hear that everyone is doing well!  (Happy Valentine's Day, and Happy Birthday to Nat on Saturday! Make sure to pick out some dope looking ties, ok? ok.)  Sounds like y'all are keeping busy between track/school/work/booster-law-stuff/running and everything in between.  (by the way, we run every morning, Dad! And I will happily give moral support for any marathon you or Jake decide to run in the future...haha)  Oh, and Elder Toolson, I'm pretty sure I've heard of him but I have yet to serve around him.  He sounds like a hard working elder, doing Lone Peak proud, I'm sure.   AND Hermana Gwynn actually knows the Clement's daughter that is my age! She was in the ward that the Mission Home is in, I'm pretty sure. That's fun that you could see Elisa this week!

The works going great and I love every second of it!  Thanks for everything and I love you all soooooooo so much!

con amor,

Hermana Sangre :)

2-3-2014: What a week!

Hola!!

 

Oh man. What a week!  On friday we felt the hope of springtime with a beautiful 75 degrees all day only for all of our dreams to be dashed by suuuuuuuuuuuper cold weather Saturday that should continue for the rest of the week.  Thankfully, no snow yet, just a little bit of freezing rain but it already melted.  MAN, Texas! Make up your mind! (speaking of Cold, it actually would be nice to have those hats and scarves from my winter box just in case it doesnt warm up anytime soon....I can't remember honestly what box it was in my closet though...I thought it was just a cardboard box ?  Who knows.  But i'm not picky, so just send me a couple of whatever you find. Thank you!)

 

This week we had like 3 days of double dinners--SOOOO much food!  I almost wanted to burst, my stomache was so full!  But I guess that's better than starving, right? We'll see when I'm done gaining the average sister missionary 30 pounds....haha 

 

This Sunday was crahazay (the cool way to say Crazy) because we started with a slight bummer but then ended on a spiritual high--all because of the same family!  So Saturday night we called the familia S to see if they'd be coming to church on Sunday and she gave us the most firm "Yes" i've ever heard in my life.  Then she texts us Sunday morning to tell us their truck doesn't work!

 

I swear, Satan is working really hard...Good thing Good wins in the end! 

 

So we find a ride for them and we're driving in our car showing this family the way to the S's house when we call Hna S to say we're on our way and she says she's not ready and won't be able to go...ugh. 

So they didn't get to come to church yesterday, but we decided to visit them that night and show them the Restoration movie.  When we visited them, turns out one of our texts didn't get to her and there was some sort of miscommunication (that made us feel TONS better!) and the spirit was SO strong when we watched the Restoration.  Afterwards, Hna S told us that they were going to commit themselves to reading from the Book of Mormon every night  as a family (at 7pm, she even made an appointment for herself!) and pray to know if it was true, and then come to church this Sunday.  We didn't even have to say anything!  Man, this work is REAL and true.

 

They are so cool.  We love 'em.

 

Have I also talked about how much we love E and N?  They're basically rock stars.  E has been worried about if they get married then it will mess up their papers and stuff, but she said something really cool: "But being married is a Law of God, and if He says that I need to be married in order to live with someone and have my family, then I'm going to do it because I want to do this right.  If he wants us to get our papers done, then he'll help us do that afterwards."  Isn't she so cool!?!?!  What 20 year old says that?? Someone with TONS of faith, that's who.  She has been through so much in her life and she never wavers in her faith.  So we'll talk with her tonight and see when they want to go ahead and do the wedding/baptism for N. :) 

 

They rock.

 

Oh, and did you know that when you're a missionary, you're immune to awkward social situations??? Like when you call your less active and they invite you over to the restaurant they're at and let you order food even though they've already finished eating and are basically ready to go.  This nametag must make us invincible or something... (BTW the Denny's baja skillet is super good....)

:)

That's so cool that story about fasting for rain!  I love fasting.  And Prayer.  And rain (when I'm not a missionary....).  And send my love to Sister Gurney!  Sounds like the McBride-Strait concert was fun, of course I have a new appreciation for country music as a re-born Texan :)  I looooove Jazz Festivals.  Sounds like the Aragon one went well, and that's so fun to run into everyone at the theaters!  I actually heard about that movie from Haley in one of her letters, it sounds really cool!  I want to see it when I get home, so let me know what you think! (But don't worry, Mom, we are extra safe and extra careful and we have an extra nice area, I promise!)

 

But really.  You should look up pictures of Saginaw.  That is dang nice.  Did you know that if Glenn Beck and the Jonas Brothers spoke spanish, they'd come to our ward?  Yeah, that's the kind of area our ward covers.... ;)

 

Sounds like everything's going great!  I love you all so much and I hope this week is SPECTACULAR.

 

Con amor,

Hermana Sangre

1-27-2014: Remember that time...

Remember that time when I was in my Book of Mormon class in BYU and all the people with mission calls got to stand up to say where they're going and the girl right before me said "Texas Fort Worth Spanish Speaking"....?

 

Yeah. That's my companion.

 

CRAZY right???  Hermana Gwynn and I were talking about the classes we took at BYU and we discovered first that we were in the same Book of Mormon class and then I remembered that THAT happened!  Insanity.  Whodathunkit.

 

So that was one of the many highlights from my Birthweek!  :) 

 

Thank you SOOOOO much by the way for the AWESOME Birthday package! :)  It was perfect and came exactly on time.   I also got the Downeast package and I'm just waiting on the LDS Distribution one.  You're the best! 

 

This week was a GREAT week!  I got to celebrate my birthday on Friday with the Bonillas (hermano cooked DELICIOUS food, like always) and they sang happy birthday to me and everything!  Then on Saturday morning I got to celebrate again with a super awesome Spanish Conference!  So President Ames got together all the Spanish Ward leaders in the Metroplex (Hurst, Arlington, Fort Worth, Denton) and their Stake presidents and some of the missionaries (really just all of the Hurst ward missionaries because our building is where they have all the mission meetings) and we talked specifically about how we can further the work of salvation among the Spanish-speaking community.  It was a GREAT start.  We talked a lot about the barriers that could be specific to Hispanics and what we can do to overcome it.  There's still a ton of work to do to understand fully the potential this part of the work has, but Saturday was AWESOME to have everyone there working together. 

The Spanish ward missionaries with our favorite couple, Debanhi and Mario!  They're pretty cool.

We've been seeing Eand N frequently to make sure that N is doing what he needs to in order to prepare for Baptism, and we have grown to really love them a LOT.  They're still working on Paper things, but hopefully they'll be able to get married on the 15th of february if they have everything done by the 14th!  Another option they've been considering seriously is having N move out for a month or 2 so that he can get baptized while they figure out the paperwork stuff.  Before, we weren't completely sure if he really understood the importance of what he was doing, but we're so grateful for E who has SO much faith and is really helping N to understand the importance of this step.  So hopefully things will work out to where he'll be baptized in February! Man, we just love 'em.

 

We haven't been able to see a doctor yet for Hermana Gwynn's ankle, but she's been a trooper.  She is still convinced that she's capable of running in the morning, boot and all, so that has only slowed her down a little bit!  (Her running has turned more into speed-walking, but she refuses to let anything get in the way between her and her Personal Exercise!) :)

 

And I'll work on that Abuelita's recipe!  I've been actually really good about writing down how these people make all their good food.  I've also learned how to make Bunuelos and some really legit cheesecake.  FOOD. :)

 

Sounds like y'all were nice and busy this week!  With Dad coming home from his European excursion and the Folsom Festival (man, I loved going to that in High School back in the olden days when I was still in my teens....*sigh*) :)  and the SCRIPTURE BOWL!  (I wish I was better at doing scripture mastery in seminary now that I'm a missionary...) and Nat finishing up the eagle scout project paperwork!  I'm also slightly baffled and extremely impressed that Dad, maybe for the first time ever, stayed awake for an entire movie at the Stanford!  Is there some sort of celebration that will be formed to mark this momentous occasion??? :)

Me and Adrian Lopez!  He has a nametag that says "Futuro Misionero" so we basically match. no big deal

Hermana Gwynn bought me a cake, so sweet!  We made good use of the 20 candles that i got in the birthday package :) Thanks!

 

Hey, keep being awesome, ok? ok. :)

 

I love you all soooooooooooooooooo so much! Les quiero!

 

Con amor,

Hermana Sangre