"Let your soul delight in fatness" Week 32

How is my favorite missionary?  I am really good :) I had to visit the
mission doctor again today but I don't have to see him again unless
something happens with my meds so I'm pretty happy about that! Seriously
having it at a full dosage has been so much better. I really never knew
that I could feel as good as I do. I thought what I was living was normal
and that it was the only way I could ever feel, but ever since I got on the
med stuff I know that I have missed out on what I could have been feeling.

I'm so happy for you mommy! I'm so glad that you are finally done with
school! That is so awesome! You have worked so hard and all your hard work
has paid off! You are so amazing mommy! (I finished my MBA last week and started a new job.)

I'm so glad your new job is going so well. I thought about you a lot this
week wondering how your new job was going and if you were liking it or not. I'm so glad to hear things are going well!



Have you met you mission baby sister yet? (Her trainer is training again.) No, I said hi to her over the phone because carbajal called, but we have zone meeting on friday so I will
meet her then. I'm really excited!

Did my letter come last week? No not yet but I'm sure it will be there
tonight. Haha when ever you ask if i got a letter I always say no and then
we go home and it's in our mail box. The mail is pretty tricky haha. I
can't wait to get it though!


Nothing really exciting happened this week. Oh with my subject title we
both just wanted our chocolate and sweets gone and so we decided to follow
the last sentence in 2 nefi 9:51 "let thy soul delight in fatness." and so
we melted all of our chocolate...it was a lot! and then we made 2 bags of
popcorn and ate it. We tried to finish it in one night but it was too much.
it was milk chocolate, dark chocolate and peanut butter cups all over the
popcorn. It was so good but it took us two days to eat it. We also splurged
on saturday and sunday and had peanut butter cup smores. But starting this
week we are going to be better. We are going to buy better food, do better
exercising and just be healthier haha. It will be fun.

The weekends are always the hardest. No one was home saturday or sunday. It
made visiting people really hard. The weekends can either be really good or
really bad. And when it's cold it's even worse. haha I'm so ready for it to
be warm and to not have cold or rain anymore!

Some good news! By tomorrow we will have a baptism date for two of our
investigators! The two that I talked about that we got from Louetta. The
dad met with the bishop and he gave us the go ahead for him to baptize
them! So this week or next week they will be baptized! I talked to Carbajal
this morning and she told me that one of our old investigators is getting
baptized this weekend! So if the two here don't get baptized at the same
time I will get to go to that one too! Ahhh this investigator has been
investigating for years and she had a couple dates when I taught her and
she is finally getting baptized!


Sorry I didn't have many pictures this week. I'll take more this coming
week!  today we are just going to finish going to a few stores and then we
are hanging out with our district. Going to do something fun probably haha
:) We are having a week of fasting as a district for all of our
investigators. So each day a different companionship will be fasting. It's
going to be so good!


I have gained a strong testimony on personal study. I love my 1 hour that I get every morning to study. I've never wasted my time during personal study
but there are some mornings that I don't use my time wisely. But each day I
find new ways to study and find better things to do. This morning I had a
really good study. I felt so good this morning and I kept finding so many
things that I didn't think I could keep up with it. I love reading my
scriptures more than anything in the world! I don't have a lot of time to
study for myself but on the rare occasions when I study for myself I find time when I wake up or before I go to sleep or when I have a couple spare minutes  I love reading  them and
marking up my scriptures. My favorite is when my scriptures become marked.I  have loved marking my Spanish scriptures and putting new things in them.  I love doing things in Spanish. I love reading and praying in Spanish and studying in Spanish. Once in a while I do my personal study in Spanish.
Sometimes it gives things a new meaning. If I don't understand something
I'll look it up in English but for the most part I'll do it in Spanish on those
days.


Anyways I hope you have a great week! I missed talking to you today but I'm
just so happy for all the good things that are happening back at home! It
gives me comfort and peace to know that you are all being blessed. I love
you all so much!! I'll hopefully send the videos back next week :) I just
have to make one other one for you guys and then I'll send it back.


"trust in the lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own
understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy
paths"

We were contacting and we were talking to someone at this door and he told us just a minute and he walked away and left the door open. We were waiting for a couple minutes and we weren't sure if he was going to come back haha he did a few minutes later

I'm in one of the sweaters I got from hermano morales and she's in something she bought haha we tried to be old people...

We made Smores!

We decided to have a "lets get fat week" and so we melted all the chocolate we had in our house and we made popcorn and we ate it over two days. man it was soooo much!

Hermano morales was worried of us being cold so he gave us each two of his sweaters to keep us warm. he's so cute!

This is one house! Sometimes we work in the hood the other things the woods! haha (The Woods is short for the Woodlands--a very very upscale area)

7 Months! -Week 31

I am soooooo good! I am so happy. Seriously this past transfer has been the best! I never thought I could be this happy but here I am! I seriously am the happiest I have ever been probably in a long time! Things are sooo good! This week was really good, sometimes my favorite nights are the nights where after we plan I get into my pjs, wash my face and just lay in bed and relax. We do so much every day and all the time when I come home I'm so tired, it's a good tired though. It just means that we are working really hard. :D

I hit my 7 months today! WOOOOOOOOWWWWW it's so crazy!! Sometimes I feel like I've been away from home for a long time but others it doesn't seem that long ago, like when I think about what I was doing last year at this time it feels like it was just yesterday that it was happening. Life is so crazy. 

Tell me about your week!  How did it go?  It was pretty good, man I left last transfers planner at my apartment...hope I can remember things that happened. Well we went to go tracting by one of our other investigators house, Bryan and Marcos (the ones who were leaving but something happened and now they aren't) and they had family outside they weren't home but their family was drinking and having a party with loud music outside. Some of them recognized us and one of them came through the back of the house and crossed a field to come talk with us, he was really nice but it was really funny. And then Bryan's uncle came and started talking to us and you could tell that he was getting drunk. We left pretty fast. But we died laughing afterwards. 

We had 6 investigators at church yesterday!! Church was just really crazy we both took a 20 minute nap after church.  bryan came to church  and his uncle came too, he said he is member but he is really less active and I have a story about him but I'll share that later haha but we went to their house early and brought them pancakes. They thought that we were selling them and they were going to buy them from us but we told them that it was a gift from us and they really appreciated it. then we were almost late to church because we waited for the member to come and pick them up and we got to church right before it started and we were trying to find people to sit with them.  His uncle  came to church and was super embarrassing he was talking during all the prayers, even the sacrament prayers, and then they were wanting to leave after sacrament because they were hungry but we didn't want to ask a member to take the home and so we had to talk to them to get them to stay for all three hours and they did, and then the teacher kind of picked on one of them and it was super awkward and then after church everyone was wanting to talk to us or ask us something and we were needed in every direction and yeah I love church but it's really just crazy. It ended  once we were home and done planning that night I got into my zebra onesie and ate cadbury eggs. haha. We also had another investigator and her two kids come and then the family that is supposed to be going to the louetta ward but loves our ward and wants to come to it instead came today too. we are still waiting to hear if they will be able to baptized into our ward.   We are crossing our fingers. They have said that if they can't move into our ward they are going to move to a place that is in our ward boundaries so they can come to our ward. 

We went tracting a lot this week and we met a lot of nice people and got a return appointment with 2 people for later this week. There was one person that I wish I would have asked if we could back but I didn't...oh man. But when we knocked on one house we stood on the porch for about 30 minutes or more and got a life story from this guy. It was really crazy. He just kept sharing story after story after story haha. 

Anything crazy happening with transfers tomorrow? Both the elders in Louetta are being transferred, and both the hermanas in woodlands south (my old area) are both being transferred. I don't know if president is doing the changes he talked about doing this transfer or if it's going to be in later transfers or just a gradual process. 

Do you guys do much service (other than teaching) on your mission? we teach English classes...but not really much else. We try but no one ever lets us do anything for them and we don't' have a lot of time to find other places to give service. 

What was the funniest moment this week? when we met David (the drunk guy) that was really funny and crazy. 

Tell me about the people you’re teaching and working with!  

So we have Elizabeth who we took to the temple with us. She is really great. The only problem we have with her is that it's really hard to get her to come to church. Her husband is only home on the weekend, he goes on work trips every week until Friday and so Saturday and Sunday are the times she and their son is with them and she doesn't want to lose any time. We are hoping we can find something that will allow the spirit to touch her heart. 

Irma-she has cancer and she has a cousin (or some family relative) in the English ward who comes with us each time. She works and so we haven't been able to come to church either. We've taught the first two lessons the restoration and the plan of salvation and we have done family history. She is so good just hard to get to come to church. 

Rosa- Rosa has a daughter and a son. They came to church this Sunday and they are so good. They are the ones i have the most hope for, at least the mom and the daughter. She is the one that fed us chicken gizzards or how ever you spell it :P nasty. But she is so sweet and we tried to see them on Wednesday but only the daughter was home and she asked if we could come in and teach her but we couldn't come inside so we just came back the next day and found all three of them at home. It was really awesome. we were going to try to extend a bap invitation the other day but we ended up teaching about church instead and so we just invited them to church. 

We have the Belasco family. They have been investigating for a while and they came to church a few times before i got here, but they've been going back to their old church still. We are going to try to take them to the temple tour the next time we have one. They are really so good. we just need to find something to push them. 

We have Bryan and Marcos who we can never get in a word because they talk more than some of the women we meet. Bryan came to church on Sunday and that was really good. We hope he had a good time and will want to come back. 

We then have the Rodrigues family. The Louetta hermanas taught them all the lessons but they don't like that ward and they have family in our ward and so they love it so much. They are just waiting for the ok to be baptized into our ward. The husband is a member and they are also waiting to make sure that he can baptize him. But they are so sweet. It's a mother and a daughter. 

Those are really all of our investigators who we have hope for right now. We have some others but we've hardly been able to meet with them. I love this work so much! I am happier than I have ever been! Mission life is the best! I am so grateful that I am here serving a mission! It's tiring and sometimes frustrating but overall it's so rewarding and so special! 

 

These members took us out to eat, they also call us their daughters.

The girls in the house almost never listen to us...haha only these guys, sometimes the daughter sits in but she didn't want to get in any of the pictures

Remember how we said that we had investigators leaving? well things changed and they are here to stay! Gave us a honduras flag and key chain for valentines day :)​

We had been asked some questions by our investigators and we didn't know the answer so we chatted with people on mormon.org haha it was a blast!

we bought pupusas and tacos :) muy rico!!

hermano morales is the sweetest man on the planet!!

Birthday Party! After dinner we made cupcakes for her

birthday party with some members :)

OAKCREST!!!!  (The name of the ward she is serving in is the Oakcrest ward.

I ate squid/octopus!  I ate the whole thing. It was actually good...haha!​

After dinner they drove us past the temple so we could see it :)

Yesterday killed the both of us, it got really stressful and so it ended with me getting into my zebra onesie and eating my cadbury eggs

Week 30

How did your week go?  This week was pretty good, the weekend was really busy because we had meetings and stake conference and baptism but it was good. :) Last Monday we had two FHE lessons and they were pretty good, we got fed at both of them. Luckily at the second one we got to serve ourselves and there were other people there so we hardly had to eat! It was really nice since we were so full from the first house. 

On Tuesday we wanted something sweet so we went to walmart and got brownies and cookies and then ate some in the car haha it was so good! then we took one of our investigators to the dentist so we could help translate but they ended up finding someone that could translate for the dentist so we helped her fill out the paper which was all in English and then just sat there till her son was done. We also helped the young women president paint things for new beginnings and that was a lot of fun. We got to try matte. It was NASTY!!!! But apparently it is really good for you. Luckily she is white and she used to hate it so we didn't have to drink it haha. It's an Argentinian drink. 

On Wednesday we ate with the less active who gave us the 3 oranges last time. We didn't think she was feeding us, we had just gotten done eating at a members house and we were supposed to just be having a lesson but nope she had a huge bowl of soup ready for us and then after i was done with my soup she gave me an orange, I was dying. and I finished the first orange and she put a second one on my plate! I couldn't do it so I asked her if I could take it home and she said yes. I was so grateful I didn't have to eat it. 

On Thursday we taught English class. I mainly taught it because Rupp was trying to figure something out with a couple people and it was really fun teaching English class. We had an investigator, a less active and a member there and it was so much fun. I really felt a new love because i was helping these people in another way. It was really great.  

On Friday we had zone conference. It was really good. I got to play the piano for Carbajal :) We got our black boxes in our car. They can see everything basically. It keeps us from going about 7 over the speed limit and it can detect a lot of other things. It's really not as bad as everyone was making it out to be. It's just annoying sometimes haha. It's just there to keep us safe. We had the elders baptism that night and it was so good. He didn't tell his wife he was getting baptized until they were at the church. I got to see some people from the woodlands and it was great! It was a pretty fun night :)  

On Saturday we had Claudia's baptism and it was so great. At first I had decided we weren't going to go because I felt it wasn't productive and it was a lot of miles. But I decided I wanted to go and I am so grateful that we did. I didn't think that I really had any connection with her but when she saw me she jumped out of her seat and hugged me. Throughout that whole baptism I realized how much she meant to me and how much I loved her. I am so grateful that we went. All of our appointments fell through and so we heart attacked some people in our area. We heart attacked a member who calls us their daughters, a less active we are working with and then we also did the house of the old man whose wife just died. We then had stake conference and we got to sing with young single adults and so that was fun.  Every time we got told to stand up, because we were sitting in the regular benches everyone else took that as they needed to stand up to, which ended in everyone in the church laughing. It was really funny. I understood so much more than I did my first stake conference in this mission. Rupp had been craving pizza so we went and got pizza on our way home and there was a member who was also getting pizza and they gave us one of the pies they had. It was so nice :) so our valentines dinner was pizza and pie.  

Sunday I decided to make valentine pancakes. I used the cookie cutters to make the shapes. we had stake conference and after it they had sandwiches for us to eat. They were so good. We then had Leo's baptism. And that was a blast.  I played the piano at his baptism.  The kids were all so happy to see me. A few days before the baptism we were at target and I found pokemon cards and I remembered that he loved them so I bought him a back and then some snickers and when I gave them to him after his baptism he just stared at them for a minute and then said 'THANK YOU!!! THESE ARE MY FAVORITE! He gave me three big hugs :) Claudia was at the baptism of Leo and I was talking to her and she was saying how sad she was that they moved me and she asked me if I was going to be able to come the next Sunday when she gets the holy ghost and I had to tell her no but I would be there in spirit. I love Claudia so much! 

Then yesterday we just kind of hung out with the elders at the church. We went back to our apartment to change and we were so tired so we took a nap and set the alarm but it was only on vibrate and we were both out and so we woke up when someone texted us and we were a little late to our dinner appointment but luckily they are really nice haha. 

I'm glad that you liked the valentines day cards :)

yay!! I am so happy that you got a job! That is so exciting!!!

Yay! I'm not the only one who thinks jalapenos are spicy! Ahh everything is still so hot to me! it kills me, I don't know how I handled THREE Habanero peppers. I have no idea. 

How has everything been this week? Pretty good just visiting people and trying to work as hard as we can.   Are any investigators progressing?  nope :( we might have some soon but it depends on if they can get transferred over to our ward or not. We hope they can!

How is your faith doing? it's growing  each day. Every day is another learning experience. Some days it's better than others but we just have to keep our eyes on the vision. And then nothing can weaken your faith. 

Did you have any experiences on how it grew this week? Kind of. On Saturday for some reason as the day went on it started getting really rough for me and I just felt like crap. I talked to the STLS a little bit before stake conference started and then I talked to my comp and I was just feeling really crappy. I was complaining in my head and was hating everything wondering why as soon as I start to feel better I get shoved down again and I was done. I didn't want to deal with it anymore. The conference started and I started thinking, I was saying how going home is the last thing that I want to do and that I know that I am here and I need to finish my mission with a good attitude. And so I started thinking of all the things I want to do while on my mission and then I started thinking more and more and trying to tell myself all the things I want to do and I realized that I want to be a way so that one day I can train and I realized that I really would love to train sometime while on my mission. And as I started making that my goal I realized all the things I need to fix before I can even think about wanting to train and I felt so much better. I had tried doing things like that before but I had never really made a goal but my faith grew because now I have a goal to be working towards and I know I need to be better if I ever want to think about training. 

Also at Zone Conference, the missionary department was here and installed 'black boxes' in the cars to make sure they're driving safely and obeying traffic rules. This is how she explained it, "They have a gps on the inside of them and it's hooked up to a program that is updating the speeds of the streets and when we start going to fast it will give us a red light and then tell us to slow down. It says check your speed. We also have to have a card to log onto our car. We have to slide it before we start driving so that they know who is driving, it also can tell if we have our seat belts on, if we catch air while driving across pot holes or rail road tracks and all this other stuff. It's pretty crazy. And every thing goes to President. We all start off as a green missionary, and if we continually make the red light go off we get to a yellow light which if we go two transfers with being a yellow missionary you have to take a driving class. Then, if you get a transfer as a red missionary you lose your driving privileges for a couple transfers or for the rest of your mission.

During Zone Conference we found out our mission has about 270 missionaries and they are going to bump it down to 200! Those who are just Asl missionaries, just spanish missionaries or any sort of specialized missionary may no longer be that, spanish missionaries may also start teaching in english as well. Also president is not going to have 6 missionaries in a ward anymore. So like the woodlands one of the areas is going to be taken out. And hermana Carbajal was pretty sure she was going to be white washed and so she asked President if she needs to prepare her area to be white washed and he told her that he thinks he wants her to train. So my guess is that president will take coronado and woodard out and then the elders will move to where they live and take over the south and there will just be two areas. I just can't wait to see what is going to happen this transfer. 

 

Heart Attack!

Leo's baptism

Sweet Sisters had a sweet tooth!

Her bishop and his family from the Woodlands ward

Another Baptism--Shalyn helped teach her the first three lessons

More Heart Attacks

Showing love

Pizza and a pie--Valentine's Dinner

Valentine cookies!

More cookies!

 

Two surprises!

 













Yesterday I received two unexpected gifts from strangers.  This video was sent to me of Shalyn accompanying Hermana Carbajal (her trainer) at a Zone conference last week.  How I miss hearing her play the piano!!!  The lady who sent me this video said this, " And of course we really love your daughter. She is one of the finest young missionaries we have ever worked with."



The second are these pictures a sweet lady took of Shalyn and her companion at their Stake Conference on Sunday.

soup, tortillas, avacado, oranges, kiwi, mexican candy, and a cucumber Week 29

Hey Y'all

This week has been pretty good! Still just trying to help all the people we are teaching. We went on exchanges this week and so that was pretty great! I got to go to the woodlands and see a ton of people! We went to the church for English class and I saw a lot of people. Everyone asked me if i was back to stay or if I was just visiting. I saw Blanca and at first she thought I was hermana hill but when I turned and she saw it was me she ran up to me and hugged me it was the best thing ever! I love Blanca so much! I love my old ward! When the Young Women found out I was here they asked me to play a song for them on the piano so they could practice besides just listening to it on a phone haha I felt very loved! It was so great to see people! Carbajal dyed my hair and it was so funny. Man I wish I would have recorded hermana carbajals face when she saw my hair. I had had it in a towel letting it dry and then I walked out and dried my hair, she was on the phone with the zone leaders and I dried my hair went and looked in the bathroom to see the color and I saw it was really red and so I started laughing and went to show her and she almost dropped the phone, I was wearing my maroon mmhs p.e. shorts and she goes "your hair matches your shorts!" It took her a minute but neither of us could believe how red it was! But we both really like it. We were up really late talking that night and then we talked most of the morning too. She made me breakfast :) I made the orange juice and she made me eggs, sausage, toast, and hash browns. It was during comp study and so I read out of preach my gospel in Spanish while we made breakfast and when I finished one of the sections I started asking her questions which she was not expecting haha and then we just talked about faith while we ate and it was all in Spanish! It was so great! I miss the woodlands so much but I love it here in oakcrest too! I found out that one of my investigators is getting baptized this Saturday so we are probably going to go to that and then on Sunday one of the 8 year old boys in the ward is getting baptized and they really want me to come so we will go to that too! And then the elders are probably having a baptism this Friday and on Saturday there might be another baptism for our ward. The investigators are in the louetta area but they hate that ward and they have family in our ward and so they want to be baptized into our ward. So this weekend we have a ton of baptisms!!! 

Did you ever get the package I sent you?  yup I got the package on Monday. When I went it they were like sorry we didn't have a number to call you. The first time I got a package they put a slip in the mail box so I don't know why they didn't' do that again this time. So if you ever send me something let me know ahead of time so that I can go and check just in case they don't give me a slip to let me know :) 

What about the letter (not the one in the package—I mailed a letter separately too). yup i got it Tuesday!

How was your week? It was so good! I have vowed to never eat another orange again!!! We went to a less actives house on Saturday and we were not expecting her to feed us...but she did. That's where the subject title comes into play. She gave us a huge bowl of soup and then we also had tortillas and avocado with it. Probably ate about 1/4 of an avocado and then she cut up an orange and I wasn't even down with my first 4 pieces and she put another 4 pieces on my plate and then I wasn't even done with those when she put 4 more pieces on my plate, I ATE 3 ORANGES!!! and then we also had half a kiwi, a piece of some Mexican candy and 1/4 of a cucumber. Oh my gosh I don't know if any normal person eats that much! We were dying the rest of the day and we almost had to eat tamales because we had planned on helping a less active make tamales but we had something come up and so we rescheduled. It was a blessing in disguise. haha We felt so sick that night and for most of the next day.

Is anything special going on for Valentine’s Day this week? We have a ton of baptisms this weekend! and we have stake conference so that will be fun! and we have zone conference this weekend too! And I'll be playing the piano for carbajal so she can sing at it. 

Are your members good about feeding you? kinda...we have some days that people don't sign up for but sometimes people surprise feed us, or we just wait till we are home, or we have little snacks in the car. But once again I'm almost never hungry and so I like waiting till we are home and then we make pasta or something. 

What was the highlight of the week? ummm...it was all really good! 

Low light of the week? we found out that two of our investigators are moving, that was really sad. We are going to miss them. 

Last week you told me how you had grown on your mission…how have you grown spiritually?  What insights have you had?  Just coming to really find out who i am and what I can do. Trusting in God, coming to know the scriptures more. It's also really humbling. There are so many families who struggle but all they talk about are the blessings that they have seen from staying faithful. We have some families who really have nothing, there are bugs that crawl over the floor and you can just tell that they struggle in different ways. We have a family, the parents speak Spanish but most their kids don't, the mom speaks English and so they go to the English ward, which has caused the dad to go inactive because he doesn't understand English, but their little girl was baptized the other day and it was also her birthday earlier this week and we bought her some small kid make up stuff that she told us she liked and when we gave it to her, her reaction was priceless. Her mouth just dropped to the ground and she held the present just really close and gave us a really big hug. It made us feel really good :) But seriously a mission makes you realize so many things about yourself and who you really are and what you can do. Being obedient is so important and being accepting is really important too. There are so many different situations and sometimes all you can do is show them how much you love them. 

We had temple tours that started yesterday. We can bring investigators and they watch a video about the temples and then they go on a tour and walk around the temple and president or who ever is guiding the tour just talks a little about what can be done and why the temples are so important. It was really hard with our investigator because she had her little boy who just wanted to run around, so when ever we could Rupp or I would chase after her little boy and try to keep him entertained while she listened. It didn't always work so well. But she got a little bit out of it. 

After district meeting on Friday we were going to finish weekly planning because we weren't able to on Thursday but we decided to were hungry so we went out to our car where we found all our elders riding the skateboard and long-board, we decided to do it in our skirt...that day I decided to wear a pencil skirt and I had on flats that are just a little to big for me. I went on the long board and then I went to pedal a little more and my foot came out from under me and I ended up on my butt on the ground. It hurt but I was able to get right back up and got back on for a little longer haha 

We teach the English class every Thursday and it really is so great. We only had 1 person come but while we were teaching I was just thinking and it is so amazing, these people come and we get to help them learn English and the classes are always fun and it's just a really good experience to help these people learn English. 

Can't wait for this weekend!!! ahhhhhhh!!!!!

Us and our lips :) (I mailed them candy lips)

I made her start a puzzle with me and we did the border haha

It's always so nice to be back in the woodlands!

I got to see HUGO!!!!!!! AHHHHHH! He came to English class!!! And then we taught him a lesson after! AHHHH!!

Mi and my mission momma-notice the new hair color

skate boarding in a skirt!

​Pancake breakfast in the morning :)​

Companions!!

Having fun!

This cute little girl was baptized the other day, her family goes to an English ward but the husband doesn't speak English they are trying to change to the Spanish ward

Houston Temple

Our investigator Elizabeth and her son Ramon

We can bring investigators and they watch a video about the temples and then they go on a tour and walk around the temple and president or who ever is guiding the tour just talks a little about what can be done and why the temples are so important.

Week 28

In the morning I get up at 620 and will read or write in my journal until my comp gets out of bed about 5 or 10 minutes later. Then we go running/walking and then when we come back we start getting ready and have breakfast and do personal study, comp study, once in a while we have time for language study and then we usually leave around 11 and we just start visiting people and contacting. Sometimes we go to the library and we will do an hour or so of family history/mormon message time and we can watch church videos and we just spend all day out of our apartment unless we have to go back to get something but for the more part we don't come back to our apartment until after 9.

When you first got to Houston you told me something like you’re supposed to contact like 30 people a day, is that right? Do you usually get that many? So they changed it about my second transfer. They lowered it to 15. It's been really hard to get 15 because sometimes we are out all day and seeing people but we don't see people that we can invite to learn more or invite to English class. The contacting is also called invitations to learn and so if we don't invite them we don't count them.  

How do you go about contacting and finding people?  Right now we are going through a lot of former from our area book and re contacting people that used to be investigators but for some reason or another stopped taking the lessons. Sometimes we just go knocking on houses and hope a Hispanic answers...White people are scary haha (I haven't met a lot of rude people but of the ones I have they are all white! The Hispanics will at least talk with us for a few minutes but the white people basically tell us to get off their porch and not to come back haha not all of the white people are scary.) It's just funny I get so ready to talk in Spanish and then a white person answers and I can't talk haha. 

How’s the Oakcrest ward?  Are you feeling more comfortable and accepted by the members? It's pretty good I know it will keep getting better with time and that I will become friends with these members like I did in the woodlands. They are all super nice and loving and I love them all I just can't wait till I actually feel close to some of them like the way I did in the woodlands. 

How’s the Spanish coming? It's pretty good... I mean we got told this week (twice!!!) That our Spanish sucked but we got told that our accent is good, haha it was really funny. I think my Spanish is good I feel it gets better every week at least a little bit. 

On Friday Tate kept asking me for a banana milkshake.  I thought that was super cute---where did he come up with that?  So I took him to the store and we bought the ingredients to make milkshakes.  He agreed that a strawberry/banana one sounded better.  The whole time at Costco he was singing ‘follow the prophet, follow the prophet, follow the prophet, don’t go astray.”  Over and over.  It was really cute.  One of the sample guys even started singing with him.  

That is so cute!!!! Taters is the sweetest in the world!! I can imagine his cute voice asking for a milkshake and singing the song in Costco. 

So six months into your mission, in what ways have you grown or changed?  I have grown and changed in so many ways. I can see how different I am from when I first came out. Sometimes I feel like a different person. I mean who would have ever thought I could go knock on someone's door or go up to a stranger in the store and have a conversation with them haha I mean come on this is me we are talking about! I've just grown so much and I've learned so much too. I've done a lot of things that I never thought in a million years I would do. I've been facing my fears and trying to take a stand in my life. 

What is your favorite part of missionary work?   Meeting new people :) it's always so much fun to go and try to meet new people every day. Just talk to everyone. I still don't really like starting the conversation but when we can get into a house and just talk with them and get to know them that's when it's really great. Just sharing simple messages and knowing that I'm doing something good is really great. 

What is the most challenging part?  trying to accept that everyone has their free agency!!! I just want someone to progress so that they can see what we are giving them! I mean yeah I want people to get baptized but really I just want someone to really see what we are giving them and how it can bless their lives. When people tell us they aren't reading and they don't come to church, I just think "man this sucks" but I have to remember that everything will happen in God's timing and that's what I'm trying to rely on because he knows what these people need, I don't. You can't force people to do things they don't want to do. You just have to love them and be there for them. 

Yesterday in our gospel priciples class we learned about the creation and it was really good I learned so much that I didn't think that I could learn about the creation. We learned that it's a process and how we can relate it into our lives. Everything in the creation happened in order. God didn't just randomly do something one day, it was a process and then it turned into what we have today. We can apply that to our lives by thinking there is a reason for everything that happens. Nothing is just random or thrown at us for no reason. Everything ahs a reason and it is all guiding us to become who we can be.

So you remember the old man I talked about last week? with the wife who is in a coma? his wife died on Tuesday...it was so sad we went and visited him on wednesday and we were there for almost two hours and it was the saddest thing but it was also the sweetest. The funeral was on friday and we really felt that we should be there but we had zone meeting...but we decided to go to the funeral because he asked us to come and we felt that we should be there for him. We helped out with the lunch in and he was so happy that we had come. on sunday lots of people thanked us for helping out an for coming. 

We hopefully will start teaching 2 part member families this week who all have kids too. They were all former investigators and we don't know why the missionaries stopped visiting them. But we met them this week and have return appointments! 

Hermana Provost and Mccomber called us last night and told us that we are getting 2 free baptisms. There is a family who live on the border of our area and there's and they have been teaching them all the lessons and these investigators hate the louetta ward and they've come to our ward a few times and they love it and so they are going to be coming to our ward. So that will be fun to have new people in our ward! 

So, remember how I told you that Hermana Carbajal called me and said that Hugo had gone to church last week? 

She had a really good talk with him and he is almost done with the book of Mormon!!!! AHHHH!!!! and he's having a hard time, she talked to him about fasting to open edilmas heart so that she will marry him and allow him to do this. he asked if he could be baptized if his wife isn't and she told him yes.  and so they talked about that and then they found an elder and he gave hugo a blessing and it told him how he is going to be blessed and he is going to help edilma and it was just really good, she told me he was crying and she was crying. he wants to be baptized so bad!! We are just hoping edilma will open her heart and stuff because hugo is sooooo ready!

A less active took us to a Chinese restaurant this week and i tried oyster :P NASTY!!!! haha but i tried it. And then she kept telling us to go back and get more and more dessert and wouldn't let us say no! (it was a buffet) so i had 2 things of ice cream and a thing of pudding and then thankfully she didn't tell me to go get more haha!

This week was really good! I'm excited for another week! I love it here in oakcrest so much!!!

It was 91 the other day!!! But it felt great!!! It wasn't tooo hot!

The sky was really pretty one night :)

Me! :)

Mi companera y yo :D

Shalyn has loved Tigger for her entire life, actually her nickname is Tigger.  "

I found two boxes of tiggers in our closet haha someone got them at a garage sale one time

​I made a video with all the tiggers! It was so much fun!"

I found this shirt at Kholes and it made me laugh really hard​