Week 14--She ate pig skin!

​Well first of all yesterday was the worst with food! We didn't really eat breakfast before our 8 week training (tell you more on Monday) and then we got home a little after 2 and we were hungry so we heated up so left overs and then we called to confirm our dinner appointment and she asked if we could come at three so we went and we ate sandwiches with her and then we went to our next appointment at 430 and these investigators ended up feeding us too and hermana C told me at the end that the rubbery stuff was pig skin. I didn't eat all of what ever it was but I ate probably half of it. We were so full last night and felt awful ugh eating three times in three hours was awful. But yeah no I wouldn't eat pig skin voluntarily but half the time i don't even know what I am eating because the name is in Spanish and I don't find out till after we leave and she tells me. ​

We had the primary program in our ward on Sunday too! It was so weird because they didn't even take up all the choir seats. It made me miss my ward where the kids fill up all the choir seats and then a couple rows in the benches! Hermana C and I were asked to sit up with the kids. She was able to sit with some but there wasn't enough for me to sit on a row with so I sat behind the bishop on a row with no kids. It was kind of funny. Primary programs are the best! 

H*** AND E*** CAME TO CHURCH!!!!!! They came to church last Sunday and they loved it so much! They stayed for all the classes!  And Hugo participated a TON in Sunday school! We were so happy when they walked into the chapel. They even sent us a text after church later in the day telling us how much they loved it! 

Oh so tonight we are kind of doing something a little scary. 

We are teaching H*** y E*** about chastity and basically telling them they need to get married so they can be baptized. Hermana is really worried that they will get offended but at this point if they have no desire to get married ever then there really isn't much we can do with them. It's the only way we can help them progress. So hopefully we can meet with them tonight they weren't sure if they would be home and we can't call them till six...hopefully we can!

On Friday we had a Halloween party and we had SOOO many investigators show up! I think we might of had more investigators than members! The investigators brought their kids and their friends and man it was just so awesome! We made the cutest cupcakes in the world! We cut the marshmallows in half and then put frosting and made little ghost on top of the cup cakes! Everyone had a great time! and H*** y E*** came and they loved it and all the investigators that came loved it to! It was really awesome to see all those people and all of us missionaries dressed up and everyone loved it! (pictures to come)

How is the new Hermana in your district?  Are the other hermanas in your district serving in your same ward? She is really good, this is her last transfer and so she goes home in December. Yeah all six of us serve in the same ward, but our district also grew and so we have two other hermanas and two other elders but no they don't serve in our ward they serve in a Conroe ward. But it's really good! it's kind of harder having a bigger district but oh well we will work with it!

This week you're going to reach a milestone of being out 100 days!  On Halloween you'll hit 100 days!!!  In some ways this is going really fast for me, in other ways it's slow!  Wow...100 days that's crazy!! It's been really fast for me I think, some days are really slow but the weeks go by really fast. I mean I can't believe that tomorrow is Friday!

What is going on with your investigators?  Are you teaching anyone new?  Any word on how J** is doing?  Well G*** has a baptism date for the 22 of November but we aren't sure about that right now because we cant even get them to come to church! Well we just got a ton of new area with investigators from the other missionaries in our district and so now we are teaching them and we've only met three of them so far and they weren't really lessons they were mainly just us getting to know them and figuring out where they are at. The Sisters that we gave J*** to told us about a week ago that he has canceled all their appointments so far...it really sucks but maybe it's just not his time or maybe he does have a lot of stuff going on in his life and he doesn't have time. But it's really sad but there's really not much we can do about it.

The past week was pretty great. On Saturday we did a service project. We went with the red cross and installed smoke/fire detectors in people's houses. They had a Spanish missionary in each group and I was the Spanish one for my group. Luckily we didn't meet anyone that didn't speak English. But it was really fun and then we got stuck in traffic for like 3 hours when we were heading back to the Woodlands! We had the elders in the car with us and so we were able to talk with them. And man our elders are so funny we love them so much! Elder Perez loves to be sarcastic and Elder Christensen is funny too! 

I have the best district in all the districts! Anyways that was all last week! and I'll wait till Monday to tell you about this week! :D

 

Ghost Cupcakes

Ghost Cupcakes

Woody and Jessie

Two Bumble bees

A ladybug and and bumble bee

This cute boy dressed up as a missionary for halloween

Shalyn's district

Sometimes when recent converts ignore us for a month we heart attack their door...

More to come

Hey mommy so I'm not sure if you got my letter or not. But today we don't have our P-day. We are only on to email president and put in numbers. I will email you on Friday!

Week 13

 Things were good this week, we met with president on Sunday because he is rearranging our area and we just got a huge new section and so we are going to start going up there sometimes. We are getting more miles which is really good. Not sure how much but enough to be able to to travel the long drive to the edge of our area to meet those people. Transfers are this week and one of the hermanas in my district is leaving which is really sad but I know she is needed somewhere else and I really didn't feel like I knew her all that well even though we saw them multiple times every week. But things were really good this past week!

 

What has happened with H and E?   So far they are just the same, the watched the restoration video just for fun which was amazing and they are just so perfect. We haven't found the right time to bring up them getting married but hopefully the spirit will help us know how to do it soon!!

 

 How was church yesterday?  Did you have any investigators or less actives come?  Church was so stressful...yesterday was just really bad. I got asked to play in sacrament literally 2 seconds before church started. It's really hard to know what song it is when it is in Spanish. The first two songs really stunk but the last two were good because I had a chance to look and see what they were in English. It was also hard because NO ONE IN THE WARD new the songs and so no one was singing and so I was constantly afraid that I was playing it really badly but the other hermanas told me that they didn't even know the songs. 

 

E was supposed to come to church!! H had to work and they only have one car but we called D (Edgar's mom  and she said that she would pick her up on Sunday. AT 845 e calls us (I answered the phone and talked to her all by myself!!) and D hadn't come yet. We tried calling her and calling her but she wouldn't answer and we tried calling other people to see if they could give her a ride but no one was answering. We were hopping that maybe D was just going to be late but after sacrament meeting she still wasn't there and she hadn't called us or texted us. E sent us a text half way through sacrament meeting saying at she was ready and everything. WE felt so bad. But there was nothing we could do about it. We texted her during relief society and told her how sorry we were but that we knew that god was happy with her desire to come to church and she responded saying that she knows god will help her get to church. 

 

Church was also stressful because we had to teach in Sunday school about the signs of the second coming. I just stood there and looked pretty...haha while Hermana Carbajal talked about our part of the lesson. We were told on Friday afternoon that we had to teach and we didn't have any time to prepare anything and so it was really stressful. 

 

We then had lunch at a members house and then had to go back to the church to meet with president about our area. and then we had the fireside which was really good! Hermana Carbajal sang my kindness shall not depart from thee, and I played the piano. I got told how excellent I was. My legs were shaking like 1000000MPHS it was really frustrating because it is hard to play the piano and pedel when my legs are shaking!! We sang in the choir and it was all amazing. It was really weird singing in English because we hardly ever do that. But I got to see Hermana Woodard AND Hermana Haslam. it was really weird being all together for the first time in 7 weeks. We were able to talk and get a picture...which I will send in a few minutes.

 

Tell me about your week?  This week was pretty good. It's gone by super fast. We didn't do a lot of finding this week but we had almost 20 lessons this week! Which is super awesome!

 

How are things with your investigators? Our investigators have been good we've had a lot cancel and W*** is basically inactive now because he got offended when we told him he had to pay his tithing. The only reason he got baptized was because he loves the missionaries. So many people have said that they wouldn't have baptized him if they had taught him. It has just hard because he's had strokes or something and so he basically has a mind of a 5 year old and doesn't understand anything really. I mean it's good for people to get baptized but it's not good if they do it only because of the  missionaries. We are really stuck at what to do and we are trying to get the ward to help out but we don't have the best support from our ward.  

 

What was your best moment of the week? the best moment was teaching E and H because it was the first lesson we tried to teach with talking together. Instead of each of us taking a principle we shared each principle together and I was able to do a lot and it felt really good. We had the exact same thing happen this week where I couldn't teach at all and we even were teaching in English. Sometimes it's hard to master teach. Master teaching is where they basically teach themselves. You ask question and they answer, if they don't know you read out of the pamphlet or you read a scripture. It's really frustrating sometimes. 

 

Worst moment? Not to many bad moments. Just trying to stay focused during lessons when I'm not understanding what's going on is always hard. 

 

How did lunch go last Monday with Hma C's previous comp? Lunch went really good. I didn't eat because I wasn't hungry but it was good. Hma C's previous comp's companion is going home today. She gave me a bunch of her clothes and a gps. Super sweet of her but I wish she wasn't going home. Everyone has been telling her to stay but she just doesn't want to do it anymore.

Plans for today? Hanging out with the other hermanas and taking pictures because Hermana Fitzgerald is being transferred this week!

 

I left my planner in our apartment so I can't remember some things from the beginning of this week but it was a good week. Just working hard doing my best to help people learn more and to come to church. I love it here so much and I love you all!!! I love being a missionary more than anything in the world!

Real Texas BBQ!  "It was a ton of food, we shared!"

MTC Companions reunite

Mission President's Fireside

Shalyn and Hermana Fitzgerald

Cute Companions!

Baptism!! Week 12

This week has been so good! Last Monday we hung out with the other Hermanas after we emailed and we went around some stores. We all bought this pin that say Woodlands...I left it in our apartment and don't have a picture of it yet but I will get a picture maybe this week hopefully!  They are so ugly but so funny as well!

 So on Monday we had a lesson with H*** y E*** and we talked about family history and the work we can do for them. And we found out some really annoying news but we are trying to figure it out. They are not married!!! It is kind of a damper because we need to get them to get married before they can get baptized so maybe sometime in the next few weeks we might help set up a wedding...we were going to visit them last night but we had some other things we had to do. But hopefully we will see them later tonight and we can figure out the reason they are not married and hopefully commit them to get married so that they can get baptized like they want to!

Tuesday was a really good day. We took one of our old investigators to the church employment center to help her find a job and by the end of it she was in tears and was just so grateful and so happy that people are so loving and kind. We talked with her in the car and she was crying the whole way back to her house and Hermana C was able to share her testimony with her and we asked her if she wanted to start taking the lessons again and she said she has been meaning to ask us for quite a while now!!! Hopefully we will be able to start teaching her again soon! We then went up to Conroe and met with a few people up there and we met with one of our members who lives next door to one of our investigators. She invited us to have dinner with her we really didn't want to eat because we were going to be eating in like 2 hours but we said yes. WAIT FOR IT!! I FINALLY HAD THE WEIRDEST THING I HAVE EVER EATEN!!! DRUM ROLL PLEASE.....I ate chicken NECK soup....yeah. I didn't know what it was until after I ate...so glad I didn't know what it was before or else that would have been really hard to eat. But it was good I guess. Haha.

On Wednesday we fasted for our investigators and to know what we needed to do to help them progress even more. We went to one of our members house and did some service for her because she broke her arm. We carried a toy box that was probably over 100 pounds because it was solid wood and was filled with some things down the stairs...it was really hard but luckily no one got hurt. She gave us a few games that she was going to sell. We got clue in Spanish and then this other weird game that I'm not sure what it is called. But good games for p day when we aren't sure what to do. We went to chick-fil-a and had a lesson with Carlos (he is a menos active) we had  lesson with him while we ate. (he is the kitchen manager there) we talked about the atonement and the scripture we turned to, he told us it was his favorite scripture and the first scripture he read when he started investigating the church and reading the book of Mormon. It was a really good lesson. We then taught a new investigator and the lesson was a big struggle for me because I had no idea what questions to ask or what to say. But I was able to do a few parts easily but some things in the restoration are hard for me to teach. 

Nothing really big or exciting happened on Thursday or Friday we made lunch again for district meeting and that was really fun. Saturday was amazing (E***'s baptism)! We had our baptism and H*** came!! The baptism was so amazing and we were so happy that H*** got there in time to see it. E*** is the cutest little boy ever! I am in love with his family. The baptism was amazing and it was a really special night. We went and visited his family last night after church and they now have it as a goal to be sealed and a few months ago they were close to divorce. This family has gotten closer and it is so amazing to watch. And they are wanting to get their patriarchal blessing and D*** told us that we make her want to do the right thing and come to church and do the things that she needs to do. Next goal for this family is getting them sealed in the temple!!! 

On Saturday we also had another missionary homecoming. So we were at the church all night. From like 4 until 930. It was all really good though. 

Yesterday we got another baptismal date!!! G*** is married to J*** who is a less active but has been wanting to come back to church and they have a goal to be sealed and right now the plan is that she will be baptized on November 22!! We were so happy!! Hopefully that goal will stay in place! We are meeting with them tonight. The only damper is they can't decide if they want to go to the English ward or to the Spanish ward. J*** want's to go to the English ward for some reason but we think it would be better for G*** to learn the gospel in Spanish. I mean J*** was born in Venezuela and he speaks Spanish so we can't figure out why he wants to go to the English ward. If they go to the English ward we can't teach them anymore. The English missionaries would have to teach them. We want what is best for them but we hope that we can still teach them!

When you met with your president last week, did he say anything about when you'll be getting I-Pads and how that is going to work?  No he didn't say but Elder P said his friend emailed him saying that in some missions missionaries have been using the ipads for evil (that is how he worded it) and so the church is rethinking the whole thing. I don't know how valid that is but that is the only thing we have heard. President has told us not to ask him about them apparently so I'm not sure.

Man bad things need to stop happening to you guys while I am here...Gosh dang it adversary go get your own life!!! I hope your shingles heal fast mommy!!

When asked if she was glad she chose to serve a mission, "I love it, I love it with all my heart. It's definitely hard but I wouldn't change anything for the world. I'm so tired by the end of each day and I either just want to crash or I get kind of hyper like last night where I kept doing hand stands in our apartment and other things but it's always a good tired. It makes me really happy I'm so glad I decided to come on a mission."

If you want another perspective of the missionary work in The Woodlands, this is her companion's blog http://hermanacarbajal.blogspot.com/

Last P-Day

Shalyn is learning to eat things she used to dislike

District lunch

They made Camo cupcakes for the baptism on Saturday

Gorgeous!

Camo cupcakes!

I sent them a halloween box--having fun with of the things in the box

I sent them a halloween box--having fun with of the things in the box

General Conference Week 11

Hey!!

  This week was pretty good, it was really busy and really stressful. Hermana C was sick and so it was hard to do somethings. I think it was Tuesday...maybe...that we didn't go out at all. The only time we went out was to go get food. The rest of the time we watched the district videos and I studied and she slept too. We also worked on our outlines that we have to have for every single lesson. We have to have so many questions for each principle and a scripture to back up all the questions. We finished it Wednesday morning at Denny's. (We went to Denny's and ate breakfast and finished our outline for the restoration) It was stressful to finish but we did. We thought we were going to need it on Wednesday when we met with the president but we ended up not needing it. Now we just have to start working on the outlines for all the other lessons. We met with President Mortensen on Wednesday. It was pretty good. He said my pronunciation is really good and that I say things better than some other people. I felt really good that I can actually pronounce things. The reason he knew this was because he asked me to say the prayer at the beginning of our interview in Spanish. He didn't have to correct me on anything else and he said that everything else was good!   It is pretty hard to believe it has been a month. Sometimes I feel like I have been here for so long but other times I'm like wait it has been a month?? Elder Dias and Bonzo is in our zone. Elder Dias is one of the zone leaders for our zone. He is pretty nice.   The people in my district are Hermana C and I, Hermana Hill and Fitzgerald, Elder Perez and Elder Christensn (who knows Jenica and Morgan and he came to snow the first semester I was there!) 

I loved general conference so much.  I don't have my note book with me but I really liked the talk about the four steps I think it was on Saturday....afternoon? maybe? I loved all of them. I wish I had my notebook with me so that I could share some more of my thoughts but I will have to write about them next week. But one thing I really loved about conference was they had people speak in their native language. I thought that that was really really neat. What did you think about it?  While I was watching conference I just thought about how you were seeing the same talk at the same time I was and that we were both hearing the same things. It made me miss conference at home especially Sunday session where I didn't get coffee cake ;) but it's ok. During the break on Sunday my district  made breakfast and ate together. I will attach picture of it once I send my pictures. 

I just hope you know how much I love you so much. I know how hard it is. Well I don't know everything you feel but I do know some. But I just want you to know that I love you and that I  know things happen for a reason. But sometimes we need things to happen in our lives so that we can get to where we are meant to be. Everything will all work out in the end, I  know it's hard. Just know that I love you so much and that I pray for you in every prayer! I don't think you are failing. You have a great job with raising me and my siblings! Keep doing your best and all will turn out well!! (really?  is this my 19 year old writing this?!?!)

H*** and E*** said once they know the things are true they will be baptized but they want more time because they don't want to play with God and E has been apart of many different religions already and they know that religion is important and they don't want to mess with it. They want to find the church they know they need to belong to and then stay in that religion. We hopefully are meeting with them tonight to talk about family history. And hopefully get a date tonight or soon!!!

How has the work been going this week?  Well...this week was pretty bad. We really didn't have  a chance to really do anything. We only had like 4 or 5 lessons this week. We just had so much stuff that we had to get done and so much that we had to do and we had the meeting with president and then on Friday we had zone meeting and then family history training and then conference and we are trying to re figure out our area boundaries because right now they are just crazy. So this week was  really not a good week for work. On Friday though we baked cookies and made general conference hand outs for all of our members, menos activos and investigators. It took for ever. But it was really fun going and visiting everyone and giving them a plate of cookies and reminding them about general conference. 

How do you go about finding contacts and people to teach?  Do you ever go ‘tracting?’   We sometimes go to the lavandaria which is were they all do their laundry and we talk to people and there are a few other areas near there that we walk around and find people. Sometimes we will be in a store and we will talk to people around us. We sometimes knock on doors but not really. We did that with our trailer areas but not really with any other place. 

What are your goals?  We have so many goals. We make goals for the week and then goals every night. As of right now I do not know where my planner is but today we are going to go and visit a lot of potentials and hopefully find 2 new investigators. But really we just try to set realistic goals that we will be able to reach. Our zone has a goal of getting 12 baptisms this month. hopefully we can do it! We've had a goal of speaking in Spanish more when we are around the house but it's been kind of difficult because sometimes I don't think about it but we are working on it that way I can keep progressing and getting better. 

How many investigators do you have?  Right now I think we have maybe 4 real investigators. There are some people that we teach that are just not progressing yet but we have a few that we are working on.

How many inactives are you working with?  not many...I'm not sure of the exact number. We have a few though that we are working on. Some of them are harder than others but hopefully they really do have a desire to come back!

What else is going on in the mission world?  Things are going really good. This week was just so busy. When we worked on family history on Friday I'm pretty sure I found someone's parents. But I found them at the very end so I wasn't able to do very much. But I was looking for someones death date and I am pretty sure I found the person and his parents.

What’s your favorite part of mission life? Being able to serve and know that I am here doing something that is worth while. I know that no matter what happens on my mission that I will never regret it. A mission will always be the most special thing that I can do and it will help me with many other things in my life.

What’s the hardest part of mission life? Sometimes just trusting and knowing that you just got to push forward even when you just want to sit down and stop.

What are you most excited about? I am excited for all of the people we are teaching and we have E's baptism this weekend and another missionary homecoming this weekend and hopefully some good lessons! We are going to fast this week for some of our investigators to know how to better help them this week.

Anything you’re dreading? teaching...it's so hard to teach in Spanish especially when I have to teach a certain part. Sometimes I dread lessons and dinner appointments but they will get better with time.

Happiest Moment? hmm...when the investigator (when I was on an exchange with Hermana fitzgerald) told me that my pronunciation is really good and that she couldn't believe that I have only been studying Spanish for about two months (besides that I did it in high school)

Anything scary happen? Nope nothing really scary I don't think...but I hate dogs especially at night. When you can't tell if they are tied up or not and they are just barking at you and you can't see them. That's when it is a little scary but nothing scary has happened yet.

Most random thing? Well we figured out that one of our members gave us iced tea to drink last week...Yeah that was interesting to figure out when we did. Oops oh well we didn't know!

What specific thing would you like us to pray for? Just for our investigators :) and for missionary work.

Hey y'all Have a great fantastic wonderful week!! I love you all! This morning I read Acts chapter 9 and I learned a lot from it! I would invite all of you to read it and think about it as well! Think about who the sauls and Ananias's are in todays world and what we need to do! Stay beautiful!! And remember who you are!!!

This week was long but can't wait for this next week!!!

Love ya lots!!!  Talk to you soon :)

I sent her this card the week after she was complaining about the amount of food she's being fed.  The card said "Dream Big"  I covered dream with Eat!  she loved it!

Photo booth at the mall

Working breakfast at Dennys

Cookies they made

General Conference reminders

General Conference Breakfast

Breakfast between sessions of conference

 

Picture of her today as she's emailing

Meet the Mormons! Week 10

This week has been pretty good! We got to watch the movie Meet the Mormons it is coming out into theaters on October 11th. It was so good!! You should all definitely go and see it! I would tell you what it is about but I will make you go and see it yourself :) haha. I got to see Hermana Woodard twice this week! Once during the movie and the second time on Saturday at the women's conference. I loved women's conference, we got to the church at 430 and practiced our song. (the 22 hermanas in our stake put together the Efy medley in Spanish and we sang it) the first hour was eating dinner and the members worked on service..I had two dinners that night...Pork chops at a members house and then lasagna at the church. Then at 6 we had our own women's conference where we had people talk and share their testimony and we sang. Almost everyone in the room started crying. I have a video of it but I don't know if it will let me send it...it might be too big but i will try!! We got to watch conference in English which was awesome! During the last prayer the tv stopped working so we all just said amen. It was really funny. I loved how they said a lot on the temple but it's so sad because we can't go very often. I want to go to the temple so bad!! but we have to wait :( I loved president Uchtdorfs talk...like always. when they announced he was going to speaking everyone got so excited! I loved the little primary kids from Korea that sang. Oh so precious! Even the musical numbers from the choir were really good. I remembered last women's conference where we went to Chocolate moose after and got that really good dessert :) That was pretty awesome! Sorry you guys couldn't go to the church I hope the boys were good while you watched it! Did Avery like it?

 I can't wait to see pictures of them in their costumes!!! that is so cute!!! Yeah on Halloween we have to be in our apartments by 6 so we will probably play some games and decorate the inside of our apartment, hang out with the other hermanas and make treats and watch church movies :D and hang out in our onesies ;)

Oh I hardly ever eat lunch. sometimes my breakfast is just a piece of toast, but I try not to really eat in the morning,  1. I'm never really hungry 2. if I eat I won't be hungry later. But, I know it's not good to miss a meal so I try to eat a little something when I first get up.

I am so excited to watch conference!! Yeah it will be at the church not sure which one will show it in English. I am so glad that i can watch it in English. As much as i love Spanish i am not ready to watch general conference or anything int hat matter in Spanish. i would probably only get a few words here and there, maybe next fall conference haha :)

 

In your letter last week, I got a little confused—you talked about H*** and E***, Are they investigators or inactives?   If they’re investigators, how did you find them?  They are investigators. We found them at the English class. We showed them the restoration dvd the other day and they loved it!! They are so awesome! We had tried calling them about an hour before our lesson and they didn't answer the phone. About ten minutes later they called us back and said they didn't answer because they were reading the Book of Mormon! that was so awesome! they always have so many wonderful questions. I can't wait till I can actual help answer questions instead of just teaching some principles. :D Later you talked about E***, are both of his parents members? Yes they have become reactivated in the time that I have been here.  His baptism is coming up!  Must be exciting?  we are so excited! And so happy that we have them as our people to teach. The family is really awesome. E*** is so funny, we just need him to read his Book of Mormon! He is the silliest boy. 

I liked your answers last week to the questions I wrote you so you get the same questions this week:

What was the funniest thing that happened this week?Hermana Carbajal was really worried about our miles this week and we were trying to figure out where the church building was we were meeting at for the movie and we were asking our district leader  who then forwarded the text from the zone leader with the address and the city on the text as Sandy, Utah. Hermana Carbajal thought he had just sent it because he knew she was stressing about the miles, as a joke and so she wrote saying something along the lines of "Well I definitely don't have that many miles so looks like we can't go." and he replied "have faith, faith moves mountains" Then after laughing we replied with "well Texas Doesn't have any mountains so we can't have faith." and then the last thing he said was "looked like someone already used all the faith in Texas to move all the mountains" It was really funny but basically the zone leader had just for some reason put the wrong address on it. 

What was the most random thing that happened? um....a drunk guy we contacted kissed our hand. We shake peoples hand when we meet them (if they are guys, if they are women we do the hug and kiss on the cheek thing) It was awkward. After that we quickly said goodbye and left. 

What was the most spiritual thing that happened?.When we sang The efy medley in Spanish on Saturday. It was so amazing and the spirit was there. So many people came up to us and said it sounded like angels were singing with us. 

What was your happiest moment this week? When we met G*** who is J*** wife (who is a less active who wants to become active and get sealed in the temple) and we taught her for the first time this week and the whole lesson was really good and when we gave her a Book of Mormon she was really happy and gave us both a big hug. :D 

Tell me about the divisions (or whatever the heck they’re called) Where did you go, who were you with, what did you do?etc.  know me..tell me everything :)  We call them exchanges. So far I really am not a big fan of them because I would rather be in my own area and I almost had to miss teaching H*** and E*** but we met early since Hermana C and Koch were in the area and so I got to go. And they really are just kind of a pain. Yeah it's fun to get to know the other sisters but I'm still trying to get used to our area and the only reason we went on one is because we had gone to the mission office and had picked up the letters for that companionship and Hermana Koch really wanted her letters. If I have any funner exchanges I will let you know :)

On Thursday I had to teach a lesson by myself. We went out with one of the members and earlier that day while planning we had decided to share a scripture on faith and Hermana C had me choose the scripture and then I had to present it to the Hermana. Hermana C hardly said anything at all. The hermana was so proud of me with my Spanish and when we were asking who would say the closing prayer she told Hermana Carbajal to since she had made me teach the lesson by myself. 

So guess what?? I am going to start teaching piano to one of the hermanas in our ward. I love her kids so much. She has four kids and they remind me of my siblings. They are so crazy! One of them is a month older than Cole. She has a son named L*** and i love him so much, he always comes up and hugs us and the other day he came up and hugged me and said "thank you so much for being willing to teach us the piano I'm so grateful!" aww!! He is the sweetest most loving boy. They are probably my favorite family so far in the ward. 

It's really fun meeting people from all of the world. i have met people from Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and so many other places. It's so much fun to find out where people are from!

Love you!!!!

We found a big chair at the mall last Monday :D it is huge!!

These are the two other Hermanas in our district. The reddish hair is Hermana Hill and the dark hair is Hermana Fitzgerald

After we were done with our district meeting we made lunch. Hermana Hill's mom went to France and sent her this sauce stuff and so we made pasta! It was really good :)

Beautiful Texas Sky

Our Car

Us with hermana C's old companion and her companion. Don't remember their names...

Hermana Woodard and I!

A few more pictures

 Shalyn and her companion bought animal onesies...."P-Day Eve: Animal onesies, Blue Bell Ice cream, and The Testaments.  Comp unity at its finest."