HUMACAO

I am so sorry that it has been a little bit since I have been able to email a group email but I am in Humacao now and it is one of the most amazing areas. I love it here so much. My companion is Hermana Allred from Las Vegas, Nevada and from Saratoga Springs, Utah!! We lived 20 minutes away from each other in Utah but did not meet until we came to Puerto Rico:) She is a spiritual giant and is helping me grow so much. We are seeing some amazing miracles from being obedient to our mission rules and the advice of our mission president. As a mission we are asked to talk to 10 new people every day for every missionary. That is 20 new contacts every day and we have been able to complete with that promise everyday for these past 2 weeks and now we are seeing some wonderful blessings. 

We are  teaching Jaileen who is getting baptized on the 7th of December. We were able to go to a members house and have lunch with the Youngs :)  We have some pictures from that really fun lunch. We  are also teaching a man named Tony :) He is amazing at painting and drawing and he drew a picture of the Puerto Rican Temple as his way of keeping his eye on the temple :)  

I love you all so much :)  We had a wonderful Mission Leadership Conference yesterday with Brother Corbitt from the missionary Department of the Church and he talked a lot about the faith that we had in the premortal existence and how we really just to be reminded of the faith that we already had. We are of infinite worth and value and are able to go through hard things. As a companionship we are working on increasing our faith to find the Elect of God who are the ones who will listen to us and not harden their hearts :) 

Also my companion had the talk on Sunday in church. .... And when we looked down in her bag after the sacrament we realized that she did not have her talk... SOOO while the other speaker was giving her talk we RAN ALL THE WAY TO OUR HOUSE to grab the talk and ran back before the 1st speaker finished her talk! It was the most stressful sacrament meeting but she got her talk and no one noticed that we were gone for 10 minutes :) So we are good. Its fine, I'm fine, its fine. :) 

GO FIGHT WIN! 

Remember to tuck your tail. 

Have a wonderful week friends and family!

Jeffrey :) Transfers

This week we had a baptism for Jeffrey. I have been teaching Jeffrey for the past 6 months and he has become one of my best friends out here. We have celebrated birthdays, cried together ( me more than him) , and have grown for our love of God together. It has been one of the biggest blessings in my life to teach and struggle with Jeffrey and then see him grown in his trust and Faith in God. He was baptized this last Saturday and received the gift of the Holy Ghost  yesterday.  I learned a lot about how the Lord really is taking care of his children here on earth. I know that our Heavenly Father Loves us and is incredibly patient with our faults and weaknesses. Heavenly Father really does answer prayers and when Jeffrey received his answer if really did confirm to me that our Father loves us. We come from loving Heavenly Parents and they want us to come home to them. 

The hard part about the Baptism of Jeffrey is that I will be leaving Toa Baja and him behind. I have fulfilled my purpose for the people in Toa baja and I will be moving on to Humacao back into the zone of Caguas which is on the southeastern side of the island. I am so grateful for the time I had with Hermana Carrasco and her hard work and everything that she has taught me with our time together. I will miss some of the most amazing members here. Hermano Toro, Joanna, Hermana Nerida, Gina Lopez, Los Bushers :) SO many amazing members here in Toa Baja :) 

We also had a really wonderful district activity where we went to a cool lookout with one amazing district. But also we have a shout out to part of our old MTC district :) #8A

 

BAPTISM!

Hello Family and Friends :) 

This week was such a wonderful week. This week we were able to have the baptism of Julio (or Tortuga- his Puerto Rican name) It has been such a humbling experience teaching Julio this past month. Some of my favorite memories with his is when he bought us water at 8:30 at night with the little money that he had earned for that day selling avocados. He insisted on buying us just a little bit of water and continued to share how important we were to him. That we had taken the time to teach him about Christ and all he could do to say thank you was buy us a little bit of water. I wanted to cry when he pulled out the 3 dollars he had to buy us water. Julio has such a sweet spirit about him and he has some wonderful friends in the church now. I am so grateful to be serving in Toa Baja still and I love this ward so much. 

This week we got to do some wonderful service opportunities and I might have gone to the baptism with paint in my hair but the spirit was still there. Puerto Rico is still SUPER hot all the time and I am still not tanning :) BUT ITS OKAY! 

I know the Lord loves his children and if he wants me to be a pale, burnt redhead in Puerto Rico then he has his purpose for why I am here. It is such a blessing to be serving in this weird little island learning some really weird Spanish but I honestly love it here.

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GENCON #2019

Hello dear friends and family :)  I hope you all are doing well and had a wonderful conference weekend full of answers to prayers. We watched conference in the stake center and there is a picture of our English room set up with almost all of our zone :) 

I wanted to write a little bit about how Heavenly Father will always strengthen us during difficult times. One theme that I heard a lot about was finding Joy through temple covenants. Finding joy in the small things and especially finding joy in living the gospel is an important thing to learn. I know that when we are struggling or when others are struggling we can call upon the powers of Heaven to help those in need and help ourselves. He will give us strength to say what we need to say but we still have our personal agency in order to be the mouth piece of God. I am so grateful that we have living prophets on the earth today and that we are in the true church of Jesus Christ. 

So sorry this is such a short email but I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week :) I would love to hear about your conference experiences :)

Questions of the week 

What are your "General Conference" snacks?

What was your favorite talk?

What are you going to do differently in the next 6 months before the next conference? (remember the invitations from President Nelson) 

 

Wow.. What a week....

Well I had my birthday this last week and that was eventful....

To start off my birthday we woke up in the middle of the night to a pretty good sized earthquake and a notice for a tropical storm that was going to hit Puerto Rico. We ended up not being able to enter our area due to the storm so we worked in the area that we live in. Through a weird series of events we ended up going to a members house to have lunch with the elders in the area and while they were singing happy birthday  lightning hit the nearby telephone pole and caused a black out for the day also... But I made it through the day and I am now officially 20 years old :) 

But the next day was the best day because one of our investigators and 3 of our recent converts surprised me with a birthday cake and a box of chocolates :)  Talito, Miyito, Miguel and Tortuga

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I would love to talk about opposition. In 2 Nephi it talks about opposition in all things and I think I would not have loved that birthday cake as much as I did if not for the earthquake, storm, and lighting strike the day before. I know that we have lows we are able to experience the highs. I am really grateful for the blessing that the Lord has given me but I cant be grateful for the blessings without also being grateful for the hardships. :) 

We have seen some amazing blessings in our areas and we have seen some amazing progress in Tortuga who has been giving up some really hard addictions recently through the help of the Lord. 

The members here are amazing and I love being in Toa Baja. I will also be staying here in Toa Baja as a Sister Training Leader with Hermana Carrasco for this next transfer and I know this is where I need to be and the Lord knows what he is doing :) 

I LOVE YOU ALL AND I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU ALL :) 

Our first day as STL means FRAPPES!!!

Shawn and Cesar in our lesson :) #rules