5-5-2014: Feliz Cinco de mayo!

Buenos dias familia,

 

Exciting week this week! 

First of all, I went to Hurst this week for a "sleepover" slash exchange.  Here's the thing:on Thursday we had the Spanish Conference with the Spanish Training Leaders and President Ames with all the Spanish Missionaries in the mission (73!) It was way cool.  Recieved lots of revelation for how hasten the Spanish work here and we're super excited.  Then afterwards instead of driving an hour and a half back up to Gainesville (because we also had a meeting friday morning), we just planned for the next week in Hurst and then did splits  with the Hermanas in Hurst to visit some of their people.  It was SO cool to be back, but it was also super weird, because I felt like I didn't "fit" there, for 2 reasons

1.) I didn't know all of the people that they were teaching

2.) I have grown SO much since I've started my mission, I am not the same person I was when I came out (in a good way).  It was a really cool experience to be able to see how much I've grown and also to see that the work goes on because it's the LORD'S work. 

 

So then Friday morning we had the Mission Leadership Council and it was inspired, as always.  We planned Zone Conference (which we'll be having this week) and we discussed what we can do to help lift the mission. 

 

Other highlights from the week:

-We went biking for a little bit on Saturday morning to visit some people and I FINALLY got chased by a chiuaua while riding my bike.  Status as a "real" missionary finally achieved :)

-We passed by a restaurant (called the Woolf Den) and it's sign caught my attention:

 "The Woolf Den: Family Restaurant, Tanning, and Internet Access" What a weird combination....that's Gainesville for you! :)

The weather is warming up: it was 94 yesterday!  I'm pretty proud of myself and adapting to the whole heat business, because I didn't even think it was too bad. :)  I'm becoming a Texan!

 

I'm sorry to hear that Nat hasn't been feeling so great! :(  I'll keep him in my prayers as he recovers.  But he sounds like a champ, trooping through all sorts of activities even though he's sick.  Glad that the Mission Prep class could go well, I can't say enough times how awesome that is going to be. 

 

I'm doing well on Supplies, but thank you for checking.  Soo.....MOTHER'S DAY CALL!  So, I was hoping to plan when to call around when y'all have church but I can't really remember.... Our church ends at 1 Texas Time, so if y'all have church at 1 California time, then I'll call you before your church ( 10ish your time) or in the evening around 5ish your time?  Not really sure, but if I call and it's not a good time when you pick up, I'll just try another time. :) 

 

Love you tons, Can't wait to talk to you on Mother's Day! :)

 

Con amor,

Hermana Sangre

4-28-2014: HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

Greetings from Zion, aka the Denton Stake aka the Gainesville ward. :)

 

This week was awesome.  We had this really cool meeting on Friday in Hurst, it was a training meeting for all the Sister Training Leaders and District Leaders.  We basically discussed how to improve our exchanges and it was awesome.  President is so inspired and we are working even harder to hasten the work of salvation.  AND one of the members that gave us a ride from Denton down to Hurst (from a different ward) said that they were sealed as a family in the Salt Lake City temple in 1968 by a Brother Blood, sound familiar?  AND there's an Elder Espinoza in our zone from Southern California whose Grandma's maiden name is Blood soooooo turns out we're related to everybody! Probably super distantly but still :)

 

Something really cool that we found out at the meeting on Friday was that President Ames has assigned two Elders to be "Spanish Training Leaders" and they are basically two elders that have a proselyting area (it's in the Hurst stake!) and are assigned to go on exchanges with ALL the spanish elders in the whole mission!  craziness.  President had to call Salt Lake to get permission and he is the only mission president to have done something like this.  It's really cool and we're going to recieve training from them this Thursday at a Spanish conference.  We're stoked. 

 

I also went out to Decatur for a day for an exchange, it was way fun!  It is such a blessing to be able to go on these exchanges, we learn and grow so much from them and it's amazing. 

 

Also, random thought, but one of our recent converts has worked in the horses/racetrack business for basically her whole life until now and she says that she knows personally the people that the new movie "50 to 1" is based off of!  So if it looks like a good movie (i know approximately zero information about it) then know that I know someone who knows those people!  (how many degrees of separation? I guess somewhere around 3...? who knows...)

 

Dad, to answer some questions:  Yeah, Gainesville isn't too big so it took a whole 3 days to get to know the 2 main roads...haha It's really helpful because both Hermana Ram and I have driving privilages so we switch off driving, which makes it even easier to get to know the area.  The people here are very courteous, we haven't been yelled at as far as I can remember, but they're very polite, southern, and honest.  There are also a ton of hispanics in the area so we have lots of opportunities to teach there.  We do lots of "tracting" but not really, because we're not just knocking on random doors.  We have been really fortunate to have very thorough records from past missionaries and so we look through their potential investigators and we try to go see them.  We also have great members that share the gospel with their friends and even bring them to church!  We've met some people that way.  I'm looking forward to a town parade or something like that where we can just go and contact people, that will be fun! :)

 

Man, it sounds like y'all were nice and busy this week!  I'm glad that the AHS jazz concert went well and that Nat could go with Julie V to Mormon prom!  She is such a sweetheart, tell her I miss her too :)  And that's cool that you could talk to an Elder from Uruguay/FT.worth/other places at Mormon Helping Hands, it sounds like there was a great turnout there.  And when does that mission prep class start? There's going to be a great turnout it looks like!

Wellp, looks like this week is going to be nice and busy, we'll be in Hurst for 2 days for some meetings and I'll let you know how those go. 

 

Love you so much! Have an amazing week this week

con amor,

Hermana Sangre

 

P.S. There's an Elder from my MTC zone that just sent me an email and says he's in the San Francisco stake!  If you see an Elder Ah Hoy at any stake things, tell him hello. 

4-21-2014: Happy (late) Easter!!!

Happy Late Easter!!

 

I got the Easter package, it was perfect!  All the chocolate and goodies and cookies survived :)  Including the more substantial "food" (aka conference talks ;) Thank you so much!

 

What a week this week.  We met this really cool girl at the local Mexican Store, we'll call her J.  She works at the cash register and we ended up talking to her for about an hour about her religious beliefs and we have an appointment to go to her house and visit with her and her husband!  She's in her early 20's and isn't really sure what she believes in but we've decided that she's pretty open.  She's really cool and already acts like we're best friends so it's awesome :) 

We also went on an exchange this week with some sisters in Denton--I stayed up here this time in Gainesville and Hermana Ram left to go see their area.  (Yes, I'm still in Gainesville and it's still awesome!)  But that day we got to see soooo many miracles!  We talked to all sorts of people that just happened to be home at the exact time that we showed up and  some of them were people that we hadn't been able to see for a long time...it was crazy.  Miracles surround us daily. 

 

And Easter was so fun!  Easter morning we woke up and got ready and did our personal study as usual, but then the Cannons, the members we live with, knocked on our door!  We answered it and their 4 cute little girls handed us this letter and a plastic bag--we started reading the letter and it basically said whoever collected the most eggs wins!  They were so cute and set up this awesome easter egg hunt for us and it was awesome.  We felt super loved :)

 

We got to spend Easter with a few families and it was so fun.  After we had visited with the families in our ward we drove 45 minutes out to Nocona to contact a media referral (when people go onto Mormon.org they can refer their friends to the missionaries and we get a text telling us who and where.)  He was really nice!  But it turns out that he hadn't asked for missionaries, so he nicely accepted some pamphlets and let us leave him with a prayer.  I'm glad people in Texas are so southernly and nice.

 

And to answer your question, our ward is really awesome.  The members are so sweet and are really excited to have sisters in their ward.  They are so willing to do missionary work and it's just been a blast being here. 

 

Sounds like y'all enjoyed your Easter and I'm glad to hear everyone is doing well!  So...who's this Kristin girl you speak of...? ;)  Haha Hope y'all have a great week this week! Love you so much!

 

con amor,

Hermana Sangre

P.S. go look up "Because of Him" on mormon.org!! Best. Video. Ever.  I've been showing it to everyone and their dog.  I love it.

4-14-2014: Another transfer week...already?!?!

Hello lovely family! 

 

Glad y'all got the picture from us doing service at the Donut Shop with E!  She's awesome, she wanted to send y'all a picture of us cleaning up.  :) 

 

Our little buddy R got baptized!!!!  The baptism was on Saturday and both his Mom and Dad came, and they also both came to church the next day to see him get confirmed!  It was a great baptismal service, a ton of people came out to support him and lots of people participated.  He was so excited and it was just a great experience all around.

 

In addition to R getting confirmed on Sunday, Bishop asked us to speak on the Work of Salvation!  It went well and it looked like people weren't bored out of their minds, so i guess that's a good sign...? ;)  I focused on Elder Ballard's talk from October 2013 general conference with what it means to have the gospel of Jesus Christ and Hermana Ram focused on preparing ourselves spiritually through prayer and scripture study to share the gospel with patience.  It was fun. 

We also had a great experience thrift shopping last monday!  We needed to replace some skirts and we were worried about being able to have long, professional looking skirts that also didn't cost an arm and a leg.  So we started the day with a prayer, as usual, and made sure to mention our desires to be obedient and find some good skirts as we went shopping.  At first, I was a little nervous about going to a thrift store, it's usually like trying to find a needle in a haystack when we try to find cute clothes there.  But we walked into this thrift store owned by the local methodist church and I kid you not, we made a bee-line for the skirts section and we both found EXACTLY the number of skirts we needed: with the perfect styles, lengths, and everything.  AND they were only a dollar each.  Can you say miracle??  That literally never happens.  We were expecting to try there first but have to go on later to this more expensive store to try and find something...but the Lord saw our desires to be obedient and provided a way to do that.  It was AWESOME.  This may seem like a really small thing, but for us it was pretty huge and really made the difference.

We got transfer calls this morning aaaaand............Hermana Ram and I are staying together in Gainesville for another transfer!!!! Yaaaaay! :) We're both really excited.  The only change is that instead of being the only spanish in our Zone of missionaries, we're switching to the other zone in our stake so that we can be in a spanish district.  It will be easier to coordinate the spanish work in the Denton stake this way and we'll be able to practice our spanish more :)  We're still sister training leaders and as far as we know none of the sisters that we serve have changed (still waiting on a few replies to our text).  This transfer is gonna be awesome, i know it! 

 

 I love y'all so much! Have a great week this week.

Con amor,

Hermana Sangre

4-7-2014: Conference Weekend!!!

Hello Lovely Family!

 

What a week this week.  I LOVED General Conference, of course! It's better than Christmas it feels like.  We got to recieve tons of revelation and it's always a great experience to hear from the Prophet and the Apostles.  This week something I'll be doing is looking through my notes of conference and make a list of "Action Items" or things that I will do to change based on conference.  I'm excited. Thankfully, we haven't had any experiences like those poor sisters that Elder Holland mentioned with people trying to hit us or even yell at us.  People in Texas are very respectful and while they may not agree with us, they are usually very kind about it.  We've been spoiled, to say the least.

 

We also just had our "Mission Leadership Council" for the month of April on Friday and it was a very inspired meeting.  We talked a lot about how we can plan more effectively and how we can become better teachers so that we can help people understand the importance of the message we share.  It is such a privilage to be a part of this council and every meeting we have is a testament of how President Ames is called of God to lead this mission.  It's awesome. 

 

This upcoming week my buddy R will be getting baptized!  He's a champ.  We're super stoked for him and we'll take pictures at the baptism I'm sure. 

 

This past week we also went on an exchange with the sisters that serve in the Decatur ward, which is SUPER country by the way.  I mean ranches and dirt roads and cows and everything.  It was fun and we learned a lot. 

I'm glad y'all were able to check out Pacific University and see what it had to offer and enjoy a little weekend vacation, but I'm secretly more happy that Nat decided to go true blue ;)  I know that he'll have a great experience at BYU and I'm sure he'll have a blast over in Helaman Halls!  Does he know his roomate already or did he decide to go random?

 

 Glad to hear y'all are doing well and I love you so much!

con amor,

Hermana Sangre

3-31-2014: Spring Break?!?

Hello!

Oh man, y'all are in Oregon and Washington for the next few days??
That sounds like a blast!

This week was awesome, of course!  We went on an exchange with the
Sisters in the Denton 4th ward so I went down to Denton for a night
and got to be there and that was way awesome.  It was the sister's
first exchange so we wanted it to be a good experience and I think it
turned out ok!

We also went to the Women's broadcast on Saturday!  It was AWESOME.
Got to recieve lots of revelation and feel the spirit a ton.  We had a
sort-of-investigator (I'll explain more in a little) come with her
daughter and a less-active come and so that was awesome.  K
couldn't make it because she ended up getting stuck at a family event
all day in Denton.

So our sort-of-investigator.  Her name is E and she is
awesome.  She works at a Donut shop that's owned by a member who's son
is on a mission (aka free donuts and sandwiches and salads every
saturday).  So she knows the missionaries really well and she's
friends with like half the ward and comes to church every once in a
while and comes to activities--she just hasn't been taught yet!
People joke about her getting baptized all the time, so even she
thinks it will happen one day.  She just wants to decide when she's
ready.  So we're working on that.  But she's way awesome and so funny
and promised us she'd come to church if we spoke in Sacrament meeting
so we texted Bishop and got a slot the sunday after conference :)

Glad y'all are doing well.  Have fun in the rain and seeing Pacific
University!

Love you tons!
con amor,
Hermana Sangre

AAAAAND Happy Birthday to Caleb this week!!!  He's gonna be oooooold.
Just kidding. Not that old. But kinda...haha And Michele's is coming
up, too, right? Happy early birthday to her too! :)  Maybe I'll send
them a card, do you happen to have their address? Thanks!

love
Hermana Sangre

3-24-2014: What a Week!!!

Hellooooooo family!

First of all, thank you so much for the package of articles and the Conference Ensign!  It all arrived safely and I've been taking full advantage of my new study materials ;) 

This week was great!  I taught my first English Class with Sister Ram last Tuesday and it was SO FUN!  I didn't realize how fun it would be until we were doing it.  There are some really cool families in that class who vary in their understanding and levels and amount of time they've been in the United States (they vary from 2 months to 16 years!)  and it's a fun service opportunity that we're taking advantage of.   

We taught R this week!  He's a funny kid.  We're really working hard with his Grandma to teach him, but he's not getting a ton of support from his less active brothers and non-member dad.  We're hoping that once his Mom fully transitions into her new job and can come to church with him that he'll really be able to understand the position he's in to be a role model to his family.  He's super cool though. 

We also have an investigator named K who came to church with her boyfriend and two teenage sons!  She wants to get baptized in May and she's super cool.  We found her one day because we were trying to find a referral from another investigator and we stopped her to ask for directions--she didn't know where the address was so we set up another time to teach her instead! :)  She has lots of faith and is a really cool lady. 

I went on another exchange this week, too!  I went down to the Denton YSA ward---what a trip.  But it was way fun and the sisters down there are working with a ton of cool people!  We have 2 sets of sisters in the Denton area which is about a 40 minute drive from Gainesville and then we have a set of sisters in Justin and a set in Decator, and those drives are closer to an hour.  But our ward of Gainesville covers about half of the Denton Stake, up to the Oklahoma border (in fact, Thackerville, OK is in our ward) and if you're looking on a map, some other towns in our boundaries are Nocona, Valley View, Montague, and Muenster.  Craaaaaazy big!  Lots of people that are searching for the truth and know not where to find it! :)

And a new thing in our mission is that we made a new "key indicator" or something that we track--Member Presentations.  That's where we go into an active member's home and help them with their missionary work.  It's pretty cool and we're excited to focus more on that here in Gainesville! Because this ward is AWESOME.  I love the people here.

Sounds like y'all had a busy but great week!  Glad to hear that things are going well in callings and I just learned this morning from Elder Hales that meetings/conferences are an essential part of the Lord's church ;)  Yay meetings! And that thing with the synagogue sounds cool, that's an awesome opportunity. 

I love you all so much and it's great to hear that y'all are doing well. 

Listen to your mother. Do what is right. Let the consequence follow.  Be true to your school etc etc. ;)

con amor,

Hermana Sangre

P.S. sorry i haven't sent a pic with hna ram yet...she says I have to pay to take a picture with her and I'm too poor... ;) just kidding.  We're just so stinking busy all the time! But i promise, this week we'll take a picture!

sorry dad, just got your email!

i know, we have tons of shopping centers and downtown scenery and such over here...oh wait.  :) We actually go running every morning, there's a middle school right next to our "house" and we go on the track over there.  Neither of us LOVE to run super a lot, but we both do it because that's what President Ames says is a good way to wake up in the morning :) We're learning to love it!

love you tons

love,

Hermana Sangre