Week 64

Hey  Mommy

This week was really good. We have a baptismal date! But now we just
have to woo with her to actually make it happen. She is fifteen and
when we talk to her she seems to really like what we share with her.
We need to get people in her family involved so that she has a support
system. And so she can get permission. It's set for the 14 of
November. We've had some really good lessons with her. So far she's
been taught the first two lessons and has told us that she loves it.
It's always super humbling to be a missionary, we got to go into her
house and her bed is a mattress in the middle of the living room
floor. And she has some decorations on the wall to make it hers. Being
a missionary just makes me even more grateful for all that I have.

Sometimes the hardest thing a missionary faces is when you think
you've taught something so clearly such as why we should keep the
 Sabbath day holy and the things that are best to do on Sunday, but
then the person still doesn't get it. We were teaching a part member
family, the husband is not a member and we were talking about things
he can do to keep the sabbath day holy. It was a pretty good lesson,
but then at the end when we invited him to come to church he told us
that he had to go out and do other things. Sometimes you wonder if you
went wrong somewhere or if they didn't understand it or if they did
and they are just choosing not to care.

I love the English class that we teach. It's so much fun. All the
people that come just want to learn English, it's also super cool
because I'm used to it just being Hispanics, but in the English class
we teach at a school there is a lady who is from Iran and speaks
Persian. During class we were doing this activity where we had a ton
of words written up on the board and we would say it in Spanish for
the Hispanics and then they would turn around and have to find the
word in English and circle it. Well we really couldn't do that for the
lady who speaks Persian so we had to get on google translate and type
the word in their. The writing was just characters and it was so cool
to see that they are actually words. She really appreciated that we
did that for her. She said some of the words in her native language
and everyone was just in surprise. It was so cool! Being a missionary
gives you the coolest experiences!

We ended up having interviews last week, they were supposed to be this
week but something got mixed up and so we had them on Thursday. They
went really well. It's always nice to get advice from president and
listen to his council. We might be getting elders in the area soon.
President hasn't said anything to us but he's talked to the elders
already haha I wonder when he will let us know what's going on.

I got too to a Vietnamese restaurant on Friday. The food was pretty
good. They had probably the best lemonade I have ever had. It was a
cool experience to try food from another country.

So on Saturday something funny happened. So to say gender in Spanish
one word for it is sexo but it also means something else. We were
talking with a little girl and this guy and the girl had a dog and the
guy said something about where it didn't matter if it was a boy or a
girl that it was the same. Hna then said "si es important! Los perros
tienen sexo!" (Yes it is important, the dogs have gender/sex.) And the
girl turned to hna and said "como tienen perritos?" (Like how they
have puppies) after we walked away we just started laughing. It's just
in the context where you can really tell what the word is but haha it
was so funny.

So on Sunday we got some more callings, we have the relief society
president, young women and men president, primary president, Sunday
school president and we got a ward mission leader! Almost all the
people who have callings in presidencies right now have never had a
calling before so they are completely new to these things.  Like our
ward mission leader has never had a calling and is almost blind, it's
going to be really interesting to work with all these new people. But
it just shows that this is the lords work and he knows what these
people can do for this ward. I'm just so happy that I get to help
participate as a missionary in building up this ward and getting it
started.

We found a really cool family. The first time we saw the dad was he
was outside cooking, he invited us to come back Sunday. So we went
back and at first they were all super cold and super shut off. We both
were scared to even go in because we didn't know if they really wanted
us to come in. But they invited us in and by the end of the lesson
they had completely changed. I could see it in their eyes. We got to
know them and ended up talking about lehi's dream. We introduced the
Book of Mormon and the lady was like "I need to go buy that book,
where can I find one?" We pulled one out of our bag and gave it to her
and told her she doesn't have to pay for it. We have a return
appointment and we are excited to see what will happen with this
family. The only thing is that they are only engaged, they have a
couple kids together but they have the exact date in 2017 when they
want to get married. When we asked why they are waiting till then,
it's because someone in their family is in jail and they want him to
be apart of the ceremony. So....that will be something fun to work
with. There is always some little stumbling block that investigators
have to get over. It's to test their faith like all trials.

On Thursday my companion cut my hair! I did part of it by myself but I
wanted it shorted but couldn't do it the way I wanted to, so she
helped me out and did it. It looks super cute we both think :)

I can't believe it's already the forth week of this transfer, it's
just going by super fast. It's really crazy, we've passed conference
and now we have Halloween, thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve
and then I'll be home. Sometimes I wish I could extend my mission haha
I just love it so much! I don't want it to end!

I love you all so much!! Xoxoxoxoxo

It's great to see she still loved photography

How Hermanas do General Conference

We were being silly and she fell off her chair

YMCA Fence

Hermanas Sumsion and Medeiros

New hair cut

Comps

Purdy Flowers

Week 63-Jersey Shore

"Once again on jersey shore...."
So this week has been really good, kind of busy but good. I loved
general conference it was super good! We ended up having one
investigator Come to the Sunday morning session. The member he came
with had to leave a little early but we have a return appointment and
so we will be able to talk to him then about it. I was super happy to
be able to watch conference in the comfort of my idioma English.
Saturday morning they didn't realize they set it up in Spanish so we
watched elder utchdorfs talk in Spanish. It was a little rough to
understand. I will have to re watch it or read it. We thought they
would show it at our building but at 1050 when we got there the only
people at the church building were just parking there so they could go
to a festival at the iglesia catolica across the street. So we rushed
to another church building and got there right as he began speaking.
There were so many good talks! I am super excited for the new apostles
they all had really good testimonies. I did miss hearing from our
loved apostles elder packer, perry and Scott. Hearing from president
Thomas s monson was such a comfort, I love hearing from him and was so
happy that he spoke.

Anyways to the beginning of the week on Tuesday I went on an exchange
with hermana Rivas who is on her third transfer, we taught two English
classes and had some pretty good lessons. We went and got papusas. In
the restaurant there was a movie on super loud and it was blaring a
ton of swear words, we asked if they could change the movie but they
just turned it down. We tried to eat fast. But it was alps funny
because on the table their salt shakers are beer bottles. Really????
Anyways the exchange was super good.

We exchanged back on Wednesday at English class and after we taught
English class we went and met up with the other hermanas and went on
an exchange with them. This time I stayed in the area and had hermana
gayler my seester! Come with me. We had to drive back to our apartment
and when we got there we realized well j realized that I hadn't gotten
the phone for, hermana sumsion and so we used the office phone of our
apartments to call them and anyways being on an exchange without a
phone is really rough. But anyways we had a good time. We met this
little boy outside of an apartment complex and he followed us around
the rest of the night. I don't remember what his name is but he says
everyone calls him slim shady. He is eight years old. We knocked on so
many doors and even members doors but no one was home! We did our best
though.

We switched back Thursday and that was fun, trying to meet at the same
spot without a phone, luckily we had found a phone to use to confirm
the time and place. It was nice to  be back with my companion after so
long. Haha we had a good day Thursday, got to meet some more members
of the ward because we still don't have a ward list or anything!

Friday we had zone meeting and we had to start later than most because
half of us teach English in the morning. So we started at like 12, and
ended around 430. It was really good though. We learned different ways
to extend baptismal date invitations. When it came to layer in the day
we still needed our contacts so we went into a store to get them. I
swear I always get the most awkward situations because I tried to
contact this lady in the store that didn't speak Spanish OR English!
Hna had a fun time laughing, aye aye aye. We got to make papusas that
night with a member and her in laws who aren't members. It was pretty
good, it was funny because one of the elders was there with a member
because they were handing them off to us, anyways the nine year old
wanted to say the prayer to start dinner and he wanted us to hold
hands, well it just so happened that the elder was in between me and
sumsion haha after everyone had grabbed hands and we were holding the
other persons hand we realized we had to hold his hand, it was super
funny.

Saturday was conference and we mainly just did that all day. We got
sugared out because we bought sugar to eat during it.

Then Sunday we tried to get some part member families to come but they
ended up all being busy, that was a bummer but oh well.

Your questions for the week

1. Tell me about your new area now that you’ve had another week to
settle in. It's really good. We have a really big area. I really hope
president puts another set of missionaries in this ward in the coming
transfers. It's just so big and a ton of miles to constantly go across
it. I really like it though. I just don't like the roads. I miss the
roads in Bryan, country life. And now I'm basically in city life.
Freeways everywhere and it actually makes driving stressful. I think I
forgot to say this last week but my first week in this area I
accidentally got on to a toll road. That was awesome....still don't
know if we have to pay or what.

2. Is the ward supportive and helpful with missionary work?  I think
so...I mean last Sunday we sent a list around in the priesthood and
relief society so members could put their name and numbers and times
they would be able to go out with us and we got a lot of people on it.

3. Do the members feed you?  Yeah, we have been fed almost ever day
this week. They are all super awesome. We have some really great
members in the ward.

4. Have you bonded with anyone yet?  I mean maybe? Some of the members
that we've seen more than once which hasn't been that many. It will
all come in time. But I found out today (Sunday) that we have a family
who is related to Blanca Arredondo from woodlands :)


Anyways this week has been really good. I'm really excited to work in
this area. One thing from conference that I loved was when we were
told "works without faith is dead" we are always told that faith
without works is dead but I never really thought about it the other
way around. It's so true as missionaries. We can work as hard as we
want but if we don't have faith nothing is going to come of it.

"Stay tuned for next weeks letter from jersey shore"
Hermana medeiros

(Shalyn is serving in Jersey Village--hence the Jersey Shore references)

Her mission Seester

Hermanas Sumsion, Haslam, Childs, Gayler and Medeiros

I'm assuming this is her Zone

Probably her Zone

Hermana sumsion drew this pictures of Shalyn

Hermanas Medeiros and Gayler

I think this was her going away party in Bryan

Lesly--the sweet girl shalyn helped teach in her last area

Pupusa

Week 62

Man oh man where do i even begin with this week? So last Monday we really didn't do much after we emailed. I started packing. We had an FHE with a family and there were a couple people there. The night was super good. So by the time we were home we still hadn't heard of how the baptism was going to work out. So we called the Zl's who told us to call the Ap's who said they would call President. President called me a little while later and after talking for a couple minutes he told me that it would be best if i didn't go to the baptism. That was really hard. He had good reasoning. I was going to be super far away and there was a lot of work to be done in my new area. I'm so sad i missed it but i'm so grateful for my companion Hermana Mcnabb who just let me cry for a while. She was by my side until i calmed down. I finished packing that night and then we stayed up talking till like 1:30. We then had to get up at 5:30...that was fun. After we got everything into the car we texted lesly and stopped by her house at 6:30, i told her that i couldn't come and i said goodbye to her and got a picture with her. I'm never going to forget Lesly. She was so amazing and so sweet and so prepared. I'm so grateful that i got to meet her and to work with her. She got confirmed yesterday at church. I told Mcnabb that she has to get permission from president to allow me to go with lesly when they go to do baptisms for the dead. Hopefully she'll be able to talk president into it but if not, there is a reason. 

Anyways the rest of tuesday was crazy we had to drive to the oakcrest building to meet up with other hermanas to switch. Fitzgerald who took my spot in Oakcrest is now taking my spot in Bryan and they were already there so she and Mcnabb left and i stayed with Hermana George for about an hour at the church until another set of hermanas came to drop off hermana Perry who was going to be going to Oakcrest. So then i waited with hermana Larsen until another set of sisters came. Then after another hour i finally got my ride to the mission office where i met up with Hermana Sumsion. We got to play tetris to fit both of our stuff into one car...that was enjoyable. We drove to where our new apartment was going to be, signed some papers but then got told it would be a couple days before we would be able to move in. So we called the mission office who then we had one of the older elders meet us at an old apartment where missionaries used to live and we got signed in to live there for a couple days. There was so much food in the apartment and luckily they had only not been there for a little while and so we claimed all the food that we wanted. Tender mercy because it's the end of the month and we have like no money. 

We started trying to get information on the people in the area, found out that we didn't have a bishop or anyone who had been called to any calling. We talked to both sets of missionaries who were from the other wards to get some names of people. We went tracting and found this one lady who talked with us for over an hour. We literally couldn't get her to stop talking. Then we went to a party that Louetta was having to say goodbye to the members of their ward who were leaving. We got to meet some people and it was awesome. 

Wednesday we started teaching an english class at a school. That was pretty fun we had a ton of people there. We met a couple other members. Oh and we are so luckily because who ever had this car before left a GPS in it and so we got their GPS and it works fantastically! We would be so lost without it. We went tracting and found 2 new investigators which was pretty cool. Still had no idea who the bishop was going to be. They told us maybe thursday night. We went to another goodbye party with H10 and had the best Chocoflan ever. I love it. It was fun getting to meet so many people.

So Thursday we got the key to our new apartment so we finally got to take all of our stuff out of the car. Because we had only taken one suit case up to the other apartment. We also took any small things that we could fit. We took all the food as well. But we couldn't fit any of the furniture into our car so we called Elder Nelson at the mission office because he told us we would be able to use the van but then when we called he told us he couldn't do it that day. So thursday night we slept on the floor. We met some more members and had some more lessons. We gave up at trying to figure out who the bishop was. We decided to just wait till sunday. 

Friday we had to teach english class again and it was super cool because we had a lady there who is from Iran. We then had district meeting super far away. And after district meeting we got some elders to help us move all the furniture from the first apartment and we brought it into our new apartment. So we finally had our apartment set up. 

Saturday we did a lot, started working on making a map for our area. We have all the pages printed but now we just need to put them all together. I loved the womens conference! It was so good. We didn't know that elder Scott had passed away until just a little before the conference. Tender Mercy was that i am now back in the same stake i used to be and so a ton of members from oakcrest were there and there were a couple from the woodlands. I got pictures with all of them...but they are on my ipad and my ipad is being a pain with pictures right now so hopefully i will be able to send them out later. I was so happy to have womens conference. To hear all the talks and the songs and to watch the videos was really awesome. I got to see a ton of my missionary friends. when we went to watch it in english. As much as i love spanish i don't think i could watch womens conference or general conference in spanish. 

Sunday we had church. We finally have a bishop and counselors. Church went pretty good. We had a lot of people from the stake there who came to teach the classes. We magically had 1 investigator at church because there was a part member family that came. We tried to ask for a ward list or for anything with everyone's address on it and they told us we would have to wait maybe two weeks. :P but we went to a members house for dinner and we were able to look on her ipad and get a ton of addresses. This area is so new that we can't even open it on LDS tools or on our Area book planner app that we have on our ipad. So that was super awesome to be able to get a ton of information. We got 5 lessons yesterday. All together this week we somehow got 17 lessons. We don't know how that happened. God is blessing this area. I am so excited for this next week to hopefully not be as crazy. 

This morning we ran to krogers which was like right around the corner and we bought our groceries. Now we are emailing and we are going to exercise a little more since we didn't get to do a lot this morning. Tomorrow Sumsion has MLC so i'll be going with the other STL's companion for the whole day. and then on Wednesday we are going on an exchange with some hermanas and i'll probably be staying in the area. That will be fun. We have a lot of good plans coming up for this week. I'm so excited to get to know everyone and to find all these people. This is probably going to be my last area and i'm probably going to be killing off Hermana Sumsion because she goes home in December so that she can start school. So anyways this week has been super crazy but we've gotten a lot done. so it's been really good. 

 

Me and my new companion--in our new apartment

Having fun!

Saying goodbye to my next door neighbor Brittany

Somebody likes Cacti

Saying goodbye to the Morgans

Saying Goodbye to Lesly

I'm now in Jersey Village

 

 

Week 61--Transfers

So I was just looking through my blog and just a few posts ago I was saying "oh my gosh it's august!!!" Well now I'm going to say "Holy Crap it's almost October!!" Time is seriously going by so fast. I remember looking at my planner and saying "oh this transfer is never going to end" and now it's ended. I'm leaving my new found home of Bryan and going where the Lord would have me go...we will see. Hopefully I'll know either tonight or tomorrow but you will all know by next week. I'll send you all my address (hint hint hint) I hope this week has been great for you all! I finally got smart and decided to start taking pictures just in case I were to get transferred and so I don't have to spend all day today taking pictures with everyone. I basically already got a picture with everyone that I want. It's super nice. This week was pretty chill, we had quite a few lessons, lesly had her interview and almost everything is ready for tomorrow. We just have to figure out how it's going to work with transfers because technically I'm supposed to leave tomorrow but...I have the baptism and I fit all the requirements so I should be able to go. Anyways, I forgot my planner at the apartment and I can't remember what happened this week. We kicked butt on Saturday and got a ton of lessons, we don't know how we got so many or why other days aren't like that. We had a really good week. I definitely have a lot to do today and to get ready fro tomorrow. I have absolutely no idea where I am going. Last night was awful. We both were dying while waiting for the call. 1030 came around and we were starting to just figure that we weren't getting a call till the morning but at 1035 they called and told me that I was getting transferred. So I didn't have anytime to pack last night. 

this morning was fun we got to go on a hike with the elders and you'll have to see from the pictures but it was really pretty! It was so cool!

 

anyways well today has been wacko and it's 330 so we need to leave so we can get some other stuff done before our lessons at 6. I love y'all!! I'll have more next week i promise!!!!!!

 

I am going to miss these kids

I'm going to miss her!

I hate goodbyes

More goodbyes

Saying goodbye to my bishop

Saying goodbye to members

I love these guys!

Best District Ever

Look at the hat I found today

My Favorite shoes

Selfie on the railroad tracks

 

Week 60-Roller Coaster

Well to be honest this week has kind of been an emotional roller coaster ride but i'm so grateful for the priesthood. both my companion and i were able to receive a blessing and it was so comforting. 

This week other than the craziness has been really good. We had an awesome lesson with Lesly on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday Friday and Saturday haha we saw her almost every day this week  so that we can get her all the lessons taught by tomorrow. She is so amazing. She came to church yesterday and she went to mutual on Wednesday. Everyone loves her and she is really opening up to a lot of people. We have her interview tomorrow and we are so excited for her! Now we just have to get the program set up and get everything ready for it!

We also had some really great FHE lessons this week. On Monday we had one with about 5 different families in the ward and it went sooo good! But haha we had tacos and they were so good! But i decided to be a big girl and put salsa on it. But apparently they made a type of tacos that didn't need anymore salsa on it and i bit into it and thought i was going to die. That would have been a great picture, a white girl in a crowd of Hispanics dying because something was so spicy. Haha they all teased me but at the end they even said it was really spicy. Our lesson was super fun we had them break into groups and we gave each of them a question and they had to look up scriptures in the book of Mormon to get the answer. Everyone loved it! We are doing these FHE's every Monday night now and we are super excited! 

Another FHE we had was with one of my favorite in active families in the whole ward. She has been wanting us to show her how to make cookies and so we went with a lesson plan on cookies. We did an activity where we brought a ton of random ingredients and asked the kids what we had to put in to make cookies. (without using a recipe) and if we didn't have what they said we substituted it for something else. We had vinegar, almond extract, backing powder, salt, brown sugar, agave nectar, cinnamon, flour, maple brown sugar oatmeal...haha you can imagine how that turned out. And then after doing that we made the cookies the right way. Then while they were baking we called the rest of the family in and we asked what they thought and what they learned. We talked about how there is a recipe to have a happy family and we have to follow the recipe and we can't just do what ever we think is good. So we made them a recipe for a happy family and then also put the recipe for the cookies on it. Everyone loved it. We then got to spend a lot of time with the hermana and i love her so much, she opened up to us a lot about some stuff in her life. we talked forever but it was so good. 

We had a member come out with us on Tuesday and she ended up buying us lunch too. We went to burger king because she had coupons for there an we were just going to get one of them that was a 2 person meal. but haha she decided to get us 2 different things, so we both had a medium size drink, a hamburger, 2 things of fries and a chicken sandwich. I made it through the sandwich, and 1 1/2 things of fries and then luckily she let us take the rest home haha. 

We went on an exchange on Wednesday. I went to huntsville with sister Broadus. It was super awesome. We did some tracting on campus and for them when they are on campus they don't approach it from a gospel view but they just talk about the club that they have for the institute. I turned into the most awkward contacter ever. Here is one of the lines that I said "The club helps fill the spiritual needs that everyone needs" oh my gosh i just about died after we walked away. We got to teach someone that i contacted into the last time i was in huntsville it was super cool! I had a guy at a restaurant hit on me...awkward but anyways haha. 

I think those are the biggest things that happened this week. I can't believe that this is the last week of this transfer! It's so crazy to me! i feel like just yesterday it was the beginning of this year right before i left woodlands. Time seriously goes by so fast. 

Being on the mission has been the best thing ever. i'm so grateful that i decided to serve a mission. It has changed my life forever. I've learned so much and i hope i can continue to learn through out these next couple months. I'm so excited to see what is going to happen through these next couple transfers and i'm excited to see what's going to happen in the future. 

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!!

Our District

Pretty flower

Our cookie dough

I think this packet was meant for me!

Blue Bell is back!

Our awesome FHE group from last Monday

We had a visitor in our bathroom this morning--Yuck!!!

Week 59-I'm gonna smack you

Hey ya'll I swear I'm going to smack someone if they tell me how many more weeks I have left! Ugh!! It can't be September already! How is that possible!! Time seriously goes by so fast. Every night when we are driving into our apartment complex I'm amazed that it's already another night. I really can't even believe that it's Monday again. Time is going by so fast! 

It's so weird I have been reading my journal from a year ago and to see where I was a year ago is so weird. I had forgotten about a lot of things. But I have definitely come a long way and I am so grateful for having he chance to serve a mission. Last night I finished my forth journal and so I am starting my fifth one, it might be my last or I might  two more. I love reading what I did a year ago. Seriously don't blink because time goes by so fast.

This week has been sooooo good! We are so excited because we have a baptismal date!! She is a 15 year old almost 16 and the story with how we found her was a couple weeks ago we got a text from someone, neither of us had ever met her but she was an inactive she was inviting us over for dinner later in the week, so we went over and found out that she had a daughter who was never baptized. So we started teaching her and she's been coming to church and this week we got a baptismal date with her!! She is getting baptized on the 22nd of this month it's her birthday! What 16 year old girl would want to get baptized on their 16th birthday? It just shows how special she is at she wants this special day to be on her birthday. 

So this week I learned how to make pupusas!! My first one was a disaster and having an el salvadoranian see a pupusa like that oh my gosh her face was priceless. Hopefully the videos will send so you can see, it was her re doing her reaction her first one was better but we didnt catch it on the video.

I just got news that evodio from woodlands is the. New ward mission leader and he will be getting endowed in December!! I didn't get to teach him everything but Carbajal and I found him and he seriously is so amazing! I'm so happy for him!

Friday we had zone meeting down in Huntsville and like always it was really good. We did a Ton of role playing and we definitely learned a lot! So we drove home and we stopped at our apartment so we could finish our weekly planning. Then we had an appointment to go to we got into the car and I was driving (our car will tell you how much air is in the tires) and when I looked at the screen one of our tires was at 23! We pulled off to the side and looked and we found a nail in our tire. That was a joy, we managed to call a member to go pick up our investigator and being them to the church for a lesson. We ended up doing a church tour and it went pretty good. We had tried to find someone to stay with one of us and then another one to come with the other one of us to take our car to get fixed but either everyone was busy or they weren't answering their phone and so we didn't take our car in till after the lesson. It was scary having to drive when we had a tired at 13 but we drove really slow and had a member driving. Whine us to make sure we got there ok.  We got that fixed which was really nice. We made it just in time, they see going to stop accepting cars pretty soon after we got there. 

We went over to the Morgan's and they gave us some blue bell ice cream that they had just bought. Blue bell is officially back!! The Morgan's told us some news that they were being released from our ward. We are super sad but it is for the best. 

Yesterday church was pretty good, we went to a members house after church and helped two of them with some family history and then we went with one of he members to visit her sister and that was the saddest experience ever. She is going through a really hard trial and is really struggling. It was really sad to listen to what she was saying. Surprisingly I was able to follow along even when she started talking fast. 

Tonight we have a lesson with our investigator who has a baptismal date and we are going to get everything sorted out so we can teach the lessons by the time she needs her interview in a week. And we are also having an Fhe with a couple families tonight. We are super excited!i love you all!! 

We learned how to make Pupusas