Semana 61 La Sombra/Hillpointe: Temple Trip!!

What a week! I don't really have an intro because too many cool things happened. But, I do want to ask a favor!! Time is ticking down on my mission and I would love to have any insights of things you wish you recorded or wrote down while you were on your mission or good ideas of how to preserve these awesome memories I'm making. Let me know!! 

Tuesday: Today we finished the night off with breakfast for dinner at the Smith's families house and they helped us print out our family names for our temple trip tomorrow! It felt really good to finally get to go to the temple and it was even better knowing I had prepared and got to do a family name. We finished the day putting final touches on our ad and responding to millions of messages which is always a little repetitive but super fulfilling. 

Wednesday: Today was the best day!! We got to go and do an endowment session at the the temple! It was so haply to feel God's love and to really understand the difference that is there when you have that spiritual uplift and boost. We ended the day with teaching English at HandUp and having correlation with the English ward. 

Thursday: Honestly the morning was pretty uneventful but, the evening was awesome! We had dinner with the Soderberg family and then we went to the Relief Society activity for the branch! It was all about community resources and it was really awesome for all the people in the branch to be a little more informed. The cool part about the activity was that I TRANSLATED!! Ahh!! I was pretty proud of myself, it was Spanish to English which is a lot easier but it was a big step in my language learning and I'm excited to keep progressing. I've really been praying for God's help and I've seen his hand a ton as I've had opportunities to serve. 

Friday: This morning started early with a stake meeting at 7:30am.... that was only a half hour... kinda sad because we didn't get to exercise. After that we studied and then had our first whole lesson in Spanish since being back! It was a little rough, and being the one that knows more Spanish has been hard and weird, but we taught the hardest lesson and it went really well! Beatrice is seriously so awesome and I can't believe no one has found her and taught her yet. The Smith's also took us out for lunch and we talked about school which was scary...! But, also super exciting. Then from there we went and dropped off a packet of all the resources we learned about to our friend Leticia who is seriously so awesome. She's shy but if everyone could pray for her that would be awesome. We also met an amazing new family who is moving into the branch and haven't been to the temple for the first time yet so we have our work cut out for us that's for certain. We ended the night with dinner at the Guzmans house and they made us authentic Dominican soup and it was to die for! All in all a crazy busy and crazy fun day. 

Saturday: This was a day of old fashioned missionary work. We started with studies, then headed out to go tracting! We had a quick appointment with an awesome recent convert family and they are seriously the best! We are hoping they start coming back to church. While we were knocking doors we ran into Anna and Barbra who speak Spanish and were looking for a church! Hopefully they will come tomorrow. Tracting is fun sometimes and that apartment complex we had a lot of success, the next one though not so much.... Literally had the first door slammed in my face in my whole mission, didn't love it, but at least I have a good story now. The funny part is I didn't even knock on their door, they just assumed I was going to and then opened it and slammed it again? I don't really know why people are that annoying, but oh well it's their salvation on the line, not mine. After some more door knocking we headed off to our apartment for studies and a much need dinner. 

Sunday: Pretty uneventful day, sadly none of our friends came to church but we did have a super successful lesson with Romina that went really well. She's slowly inching towards baptism. We had dinner with the Gaspar de Alba family and had some pretty fancy lasagna with prosciutto and spinach and white sauce. Mmmm. They are going to help is with some reels for HandUp! Fingers crossed everything goes well. 

I love you guys! Some fun pictures from this week🥳

Semana 60 La Sombra/Hillpointe: Transfer calls and a solid email

Wowza, this week was such an amazingly normal week in the life of a successful and happy missionary. Need I say more? Sister Susman and I are on top of the world because we survived transfers and get to stay together and in our area! Success! We are so excited to keep working here because we have found so many people with so much potential this week and we can't wait to see them take the steps needed to get on the covenant path with us. 

Monday: Today we finished off our Valentines day with dinner at the Smith's house. They have been so kind to us and are awesome examples. Then we planned our zone trainings, made some calls, and did some much needed yoga after a crazy day of Galentines parties, laser guns and shopping! 

Tuesday: This is our busiest meetings day of the week right now, but we did manage to throw in some missionary work too! We had an awesome lunch with the Branch Relief Society first councilor and got lots done involving calling people and getting everyone to come to the activity next week! God always manages to put big miracles in our path when we are least expecting it. We were knocking one door shortly after our lunch and on our way to the next thing and the lady didn't answer... I remembered Sister Edwards council and she said you never go somewhere without a reason, so we started walking and soon enough we found a lady mopping her porch (Yes you need to do that in Vegas, yes she was Latina) I had this sudden burst of inspiration like, this is why you are here! We talked to her and she is so ready and elect! She met with missionaries a long time ago in Michigan and is now living here! Milagros. We of course taught at Centro Hispano and I am finally reinstalling my love for teaching English again after a long dry spell and some hurt feelings and can I say? It feels so good! I love teaching people and helping them to learn a little more to express themselves and succeed in their new life here in the States. Teaching orientation is the best because everyone is so excited and the small first steps you take are monumental in learning a new language! 

Wednesday: Ok, today was the best. We had correlation with La Sombra which is always a party and while we were down there we decided to give this lady named Leticia another chance. We had met her once and gave her a Bible but she didn't seem that interested. So, we didn't go back, but the theme of the week is follow the spirit so we went and guess what? She let us in, and guess what? It was just as awkward as it was the last time. So we last ditch effort invited her to church and prayed that she would come! Scroll down to Sunday to see why this was a miracle. After Leticia we had an interesting lesson with Barbra. I'm pretty sure I basically became a lawyer, technician, computer programmer, and life coach in the matter of an hour?? She needed so much help with the randomest (yes thats a word) stuff. But, at the end of all that we had an amazing lesson all about the Plan of Salvation which I think is my second favorite lesson to teach. It was awesome. All in all a wonderful day ending with a graduation ceremony at HandUp for two of the people we've been teaching! They passed English Connect 1 and it was seriously the weirdest most happy proud mom moment of my life. They are two grown men, but ah! My heart was just so proud.  

Thursday: Today was such a chill day, I've come to love weekly planning because it's basically a two hour break. I used to dread it, but now it refreshes my soul and gives me new hope for my friends and area! So, we did studies, weekly planning at the library, basked in the sun at the park while talking to people and it was a wonderful day. Once the sun went away and it got "cold" we met with the Romero family which are actually related to the Villagomez family from Blanco Vista! How cool is that full circle? Then we had dinner with a cute member family and we were off. 

Friday: STL luncheon part 2. This one was definitely different without all the homies, but it was still so much fun, and getting the face time with President and Sister Reese is my favorite. They have so much knowledge and I just like to soak it all in. We had a great discussion about good, better, best, and it reminded me of one of the themes I saw throughout general conference. Marginal Gains. Weird theme I know but hear me out, God wants us to improve so badly, but we can't unless we are slowly an incrementally growing. The consistency is key and I am working hard to increase that habit on the mission, because as President always says, righteous routines lead to holy habits, and holy habits are what we should all be striving for. If you're a little overwhelmed with holy habits then start with a righteous routine. 

Saturday: Wow, you can't beat Vegas in February. We literally spent almost the entire day outside soaking up the vitamin D. The Lord put some girl scouts at the park we had planned to walk in so of course we had to buy some cookies they were just too cute. But, it ended up being a blessing because everyone was stopping to ask us where we got them and we ended up talking to A TON OF PEOPLE! It was pretty legendary. I hope they are at the park next week. We also had an amazing call with Romina and she is slowly inching closer and closer to baptism. We challenged her to start being more open about meeting with the missionaries to her family and she said she's going to do it! 

Sunday: The actual miracle day. Leticia came to church! With her 2 year old and 6 month old children and they stayed quiet the entire time! This is by far the best thing I have ever heard in my entire mission. She had a great time and the kiddos did too. We are going to try for nursery next week. She is so shy but obviously interested if she got a 2 year old and 6 month old dressed and ready for church by 10am. I'm proud. We were so happy to finally have a friend at the branch for the first time this transfer, and to see her be so welcomed was just fantastic. We also posted an ad for the HandUp page and it was funny to try and do it by myself, I'm sure Sister Hunter would be proud. 

Monday: Oh my goodness, we should not have posted the ad! 20 messages and counting for just today. It's gonna be a crazy party. We are excited to see HandUp grow from the advertising though! We can't wait! That was the highlight of the day today Sister Susman wasn't feeling well so I cleaned, made cookies to deliver, did tons of studies, it was a nice relaxing day. We also went to dinner with a family who is just so kind and they made the yummiest oatmeal cookies with vanilla ice cream and I ate wayyyyy too many. 

Pictures! You're welcome everyone I did my hair and makeup every single day this week. But, it was soooooo windy.....

STL lunch with Sister Reese

STL meeting at the mission home

STL meeting with Sister Reese

STLS

Hermanas!

Happy Valentine's Day

The Smiths are fabulous!

Another yummy dinner.  Hillpointe Ward is awesome!

Semana 59 La Sombra/Hillpointe: Galentine's Day

This week has been hot and cold! There's been good and some overwhelming so it's all good!! 

Monday: Tonight we had an awesome lesson with the Garcia family! They are super awesome and we are hoping to get people in the branch to give us people to find and teach! We also had dinner with the Jones family and we found out that one of the girls loves making cakes! We were thinking of going on a pday and making one together. 

Tuesday: Today we invited a ton of people to the branch fiesta this Saturday and we also went to district council and zone council! We are always doing these missionary meetings so we can build each other up and learn from each other. We ended our night at Centro Hispano and had 4 people in our class. At the end one of our friends was able to tell us how happy he was that he could finally spell his name in English and he was tearing up. It was really sweet and reminded me why I teach these classes every week. 

Wednesday: Embarrassing moment..... today we found out one of the people we have been "teaching" is actually just a super inactive member that is coming back...! But, we had a good time at breakfast and we were able to cater better to her needs once we found that out. After that we went to our La Sombra correlation meeting and enjoyed getting to talk about how we can help the branch better. After that we delivered Valentine's to inactive ladies in our English ward and got to set up appointments with a few of them. Then we made home made pizza with our member friend Mynda and finished the night teaching English over at the Just One Project. 

Thursday: Today we went and visited a ton of branch members and set up appointments with a bunch of them! We are super excited to get to know more people and practice our Spanish. We also did weekly planning and correlation for our English ward. The Quintana family was so nice and we are excited to get to know them better.

Friday: Today we had a pretty normal day but then we ended up with a ton of lessons all back to back at the end of the day. We had the Echavierra family and shared a message with them about being member missionaries. Then we went to Alejandra's house and taught her and her son Junior. Junior just got baptized but Alejandra did not so we are teaching them! It went really well and we were able to set up another lesson. We then went back home for a zoom lesson with Romina who as always is amazing and we had an awesome conversation with her. We talked about 2 Nephi 4 and enjoyed a conversation on the priesthood. All in all it was a super spirit filled day. 

Saturday: Today we had a crazy one. We started out with a baptism for our friend in the branch Roberto and I led the music yet again because let's just say music is not a branch specialty. After that we ended up helping set up for the Valentine's party and it's a good thing we did because they had no idea what they were doing. Big props to my mom for teaching me how to throw a cute party on a dollar tree budget. We ended up getting it looking pretty and then headed out to start our day. We ended up going to the park because it was beautiful and there were like a million people outside and everyone spoke Spanish! We invited them all to the party and had lots of really productive conversations. Then we did some studies, laundry list items and made it back to the fiesta! Our friend Elisabeth came and we think she had a good time? She is really shy but we think she enjoyed it. We danced with all the old Latina ladies and it was a blast! We had a total of 11 investigators at the party between the 4 companionships in our branch which is pretty awesome. It was a good day.

Sunday: Sadly none of our friends came to church which was sooooo sad. First time in a whole that we've had no one come with us. But, it's just motivation to work harder. After church we went and delivered super bowl food to a cute old lady in our ward and then went to dinner with the Masey family. The girls loved books and my inner fantasy and dystopia loving tween self came out and we had a blast. We ended the night with a post making party for HandUp NV and it was a great time. We got a ton done. 

Also, today we had a galintines party so pictures are included for that too. 

All in all a fabulous week!! Lots of pictures again!

Sister Sellers and Susman made breakfast for the Sisters they serve

Happy Galintine's Day Sisters!

Decorations from the Dollar store

Planting flowers with the girls

Sister Sellers and Susman perfecting the art of pancake flipping

Delivering sunshine

Superbowl snacks at the Smiths

Individual pizzas for dinner. Yum!

Helping with dinner

Ready to eat!

Heart attack from Mom

All dressed up for the Fiesta

Borrowed a dress for the fiesta

Que bonita

enough said...

Semana 58 La Sombra/Hillpointe: Meetings galore

Wow it has been an insanely busy week! Lots of meetings and fun adventures to thee other mission, but all in all a fabulous week. 

Monday: Today we went to Miriam's house again and got the page likes ad running for HandUpNV! We also worked on some content and refreshing the page a little bit. So far the ad is going well and we are going up in page likes so that is awesome! We ended the night organizing our schedule and planning for all the trainings we are doing this week. Also, we have started doing yoga at night and it has been awesome! We love yoga. 

Tuesday: Ok crazy day, we started out with our usual district council and the zone leaders have been including us in teaching the lessons for zone council which is much appreciated! It helps us get to know the zone more which is exactly what we want. After that we went to a baptism for Maria who is in LA Sombra. The elders were teaching her and it was a really sweet baptism. After that we ran to our interviews with President where we got to make sugar cookies with Sister Reese while we waited. It was super fun. My interview was kinda the same old same old, but it was nice. After interviews we had an hour free to do our studies then we went from there to teach at Centro Hispano where we had another 7 people in our class! That's huge because we teach the orientation class so that means we had 7 new people at the center on just our shift. So glad it is starting to pick up again after a long lull. 

Wednesday: Today we had both our English and Spanish correlation meetings with our ward mission leader and Brother Taylor fed us lunch afterwards which is always a win. We then went to go deliver a Bible from an online request and sadly Leticia wasn't really interested but we did invite her to our Valentine's Day part next week and hopefully she will come. We washed our car for zone conference and then did a ton of contacting because we knew we would be busy for the next several days. We ended the night teaching English at The Just One Project which was a new location for me, but was just as fun! I also got to see Sister Lusk which made my whole week! Hard to believe she got here 9 months ago! 

Thursday: Zone Conference part 1! We had zone conference with our zone and Las Vegas zone so it was fun to see my friends and super nice that we got to be normal missionaries and just sit back and enjoy the trainings. The zone leaders had the training we have to give tomorrow so we made a bet that whoever was better has to buy the other ones Canes on pday. I'm pretty sure we won ;) more on that later though. We had some super inspiring messages afterwards and Sister Atkinson sang a beautiful song. We ended with President throwing "mission gang signs" and it was pretty hilarious. Pictures are attached. After zone conference we went to a primary activity for Hillpointe and got to meet all the kids. I had to dig up all my among us knowledge, but I became the cool missionary, so that's a win. After that I got to meet up with Sister Tveten and go to the temple with Amanda! It was such a sweet spirit having Alex, Amanda, and Violet all there for the first time. They told us afterwards they wanted to go to the temple everyday and we agreed. It was prefect. Another sweet tender mercy was that after 23 years of battling anxiety and financial struggles Sister Linderman also received her temple recommend and was able to come with us as well. Seeing all these stalwart women with so many different backgrounds had me teary eyed and so grateful. Emily and Evie came as well and we were able to show them how to put names on the temple prayer roll which they loved. All in all a fabulous experience. We switched back at grandma Anna's house which was nice because she hasn't been doing very well lately and the surprise really made her night. 

Friday: Ok today we drove all the way up to the northern top of our mission and gave trainings at their zone conference! We talked about the formula for a prefect lesson and did some science experiments. We have really been focusing on praying on our knees with our seekers of truth and have seen some amazing things come from it. We talked about how without the spirit, a lesson is nothing. After trainings we got to go out to lunch with Sister Tveten and Caraway and then headed off to the family history library in downtown Vegas! They said I'd get sent home for driving on Freemont Street but I guess not because we got to go to the downtown library in the other mission. It was a really cool experience, sadly we were late so I don't have any pictures because we missed the tour, but, we did get to learn how to do family history better. I actually found some records that linked in a huge hole in my family tree and that was really awesome to see it all connect. We drove home and then had a great lesson with Irma Cobos and we talked all about the temple and the importance that it has in our lives. She shared a beautiful testimony and it was really cool to be able to understand her fully. I am getting to the point where I don't need to translate into English in my head to understand Spanish and let me tell you it is a weird sensation. It almost feels wrong, but is also super cool at the same time. 

Saturday: Today we went on exchanges so I went back up north with Sister Ruebush! She is a brand new missionary and it was really fun to get to be with her and answer her questions about missionary work. I have loved getting to know all the Sisters in the mission and I hope they know I love them too! We got to teach this guy named Joe the whole plan of salvation which I haven't done in a really long time and it was an awesome refresher. We also went to some really nice families houses and ended the day with some homemade donuts while doing our little review. Sister Ruebush is awesome she has a lot of good things coming for her. 

Sunday: Today our friend Margarita came to church and we finally set up a lesson with her on Tuesday morning!!! She is so elect but has been so hard to meet with, so we are excited to hopefully put her on date to be baptized this week. Her friend introduced her to the church and she comes every week. Sadly none of our other friends came. Covid is going around our English area so a lot of people are sick with that. Fingers crossed it doesn't lasting longer. After that we had a great dinner with the Ready family and talked about their conversion stories which are beautiful. Then we went to the Watsabaugh's house for dinner and man that was awesome! They are so fun and we also got to meet their exchange student from Italy. She was super curious about the gospel and we helped her download the BoM in Italian so she can check it out. All in all a fabulous Sunday. 

Wow, sorry for the long email if you're one of the people that's just here for the pictures then congrats, I have a lot this week! But before that I had this awesome spiritual connection reading the scriptures yesterday that I wanted to share. We have been studying the old Testament and in Genesis 6 it talked about a window, well, that "window" was actually glowing stones similar to the ones that the Brother of Jared made. I loved that when the Lord told him to figure out a way to have light, he turned to the scriptures and did his research and was able to find an example in the ark! So cool and it reminded me that when God tells me to figure it out that means he wants me to use the tools I have been given, not to just sit on a rock and formulate a random answer. I'm loving reading the Old Testament!

Sister Susman and Sellers

Surprise selfie of Elder Smith

Exchanges with Sister Ruebush

Dinner with the Smiths

Yum!

Fun pics Sister Smith sent to Mom

Zone Conference

At the temple with Emily and Evie

More fun pics at the Smith's home

Baptisms with Emily and Evie

Happy day at the temple

District pic - Lone sisters...

HERMANA <3

Zone Conference Training

Zone Conference "Members and Missionaries"