Week 11

okay so i don't really know what to say! I just have sooo many pictures I need to send hahaha okay so the work is going and going strong. MIRACLE. we have been trying to find this less active lady for the past two months and could not find her. and finally we went to trenton, knocked and knocked and waited and finally someone came and we asked to see Elizabeth and he took us to this building on the side of the house and there she was in this like make shift salon of hers! she was doing someones nails and did not want to talk to us and would not set with us so i was like okay here I go, "Bueno. Podria cortar mi cabello?" Sister B looked at me like no way ahahah I'm a little nervous and we are going over there today at 3 so send some prayers my way that my hair will make it out alright hahaha but hey at least we set an appt with her! 

Okay so i dont really remember exactly what i told you guys last week but I'm pretty sure I talked about Elio from Guatemala and how he is so awesome and humble and wanted to pay me after the lesson when we gave him a book of mormon hahah okay so when we met with him I felt impressed to invite him to read Alma 32 and looked at it and I didn't really take into account how long it was and he was like "well i cant really read very well" and So we committed him to read just a little every night until our next appt. we called or texted him everyday to remind him to do it. okay so we saw him this friday and he explained that whole chapter to us better than i could have! I couldn't believe it. I almost cried because someone actually kept a commitment! hahah seriously such a blessing when we have people that truly want to learn and what is even better is that I don't  feel like i did anything! he read for himself and learned and bore testimony of what he knows is true. that was all him and the spirit. I am just blessed to me about to witness it and grow. I'm so lucky to be a missionary!

Okay so sooo many pictures.
I will send them in a different email.

our investigador! he is the best. he is finally able to come to church

All of the sisters in my zone!

some of the young women in the branch. we were on our way back from a service project and contacing in hamiltion when the yw pres saw our car and invited us over. all the yw hid from us but by the end of the breakfast we were all friends hahaha

La familia Combas! hna combas knows dad from when he served in puerto rico! their house is BEAUTIFUL. like an art gallery in there

Labor day (P-day)  we went to this Grounds for Sculptures day and this was a giant labor day american pride sculpture!

teaching the sculpture guy about the book of mormon. during this picture this group of people were asking me about the book i was sharing with him because he (the sculpture) cant read. hollaaa so we talked to them about the book of mormon 

initial shock when the air vent went off

missionary version of marilyn?

we gained some weight

muggin with mona

Week 10

oh my goodness crazy crazy things are happening over here. Well first overall i think today has been one of the best days of my entire mission. Its just absolutely flown by and i love getting lost in the work. So we found this girl last wednesday and she was working at this restaurant where we were going to meet this less active. and she is this DARLING columbian girl. She came here a month ago and we got to talking with her and SHE asked US for our number! and then we left and were like wait a sec... lets go back there and get hers! so we went back like two days later and she gave us a big hug and SHE was asking US when we could get together again and everything and we invited her to church and was like, "digame, a donde, cuando" and I was just like oh my gosh the words couldn't even come out of my mouth I had never seen anyone want to know all these details so fast! unfortuantely, she has work like everyday. but we will work with that ;) anyways, we met with her again on Friday and told her about our purpose here as missionaries and she asked us why in the world we were serving. I told her that through a lot of prayers and studying in the scriptures, I recieved an answer through the Holy Spirit that I must serve a mission and teach others how we can return to live with God again. And she asked right then, "okay, well how can I live with him again" I'm pretty sure that shes the closest thing i have ever seen to a golden investagador. we talked to her about the steps of the gospel and how the book of mormon is the evidence of our message and taht by reading it, she will come to learn for herself that it is true. We gave her a book of mormon and she hug us so big! hahah i just love her can ya tell? like COME ON. Then we met with her this morning and she was telling us about how she had a really hard year and the religious part of her life took a backseat because of how lost and angry she was and she also knew something was missing but she just doesn't know what. we talked about in Alma 7 with Jesus Christ and how he suffered through EVERYTHING that we go through. everything. every pain, emotion, sickness. Just just our sins. she looked right at me and said, "well how does him suffering for me help me" I was like well shoot, thats a good question. She was just so sincere that I paused for a little bit to really think of what she would need. Sister B said, "because we must have faith in him. We cannot act, we cannot repent, we cannot make promises with and live with our Father in Heaven without first having faith in him" woah the spirit just washed in so strong. shes so awesome! and then we had an in zone exchange at 11 today (people think they are fun, and they are cause you get to meet new missionaries! but I think they are just stressful... espicailly when im the only one who knows spanish) but they put me in my area still with sister Kafu and shes awesome! she came in one transfer after me! the two new girls hahah anyways, then we had a meeting with this guy Elio and he is someone we street contacted. and hes awesome. came straight outta guatmala like 2 months ago and ever since the first day we contacted him would text us or call us like everyday just to ask us how we are doing or to say that us talking to him was such a blessing. (he is pretty lonely since he is here without family or anyone he knows) the spirit was so strong during the lesson and we committed him to read Alma 32 and he was so awesome and he was trying to give me a 20 dollar bill after the lesson for the book of mormon! hahaha that was a first! Sister Kafu is so cute. Shes said, "I have no idea what is going on so i just smile and nod" i laughed so hard i was like, "oh sister... thats how i learned" 

OH MY GOSH AND MILAGRO: ALFREDO (our investagador for the past like month now and husband of a member) CAME TO CHURCH THIS SUNDAY. he always works on sunday and we called him sunday morning and asked him if he we was coming to church like EVERY sunday and he was like "si claro!" (yes of course!) i almost fell out of my chair. UMM NOT CLARO YOU HAVENT COME YET. so yeah miracle. and in principios del evangelio, they asked for a volunteer to give a prayer and he raised his hand all cute and gave a prayer and all so cute. and so anyway, we saw him today and i invited him to be baptized and reset the baptisimal date to October. He looked and me and said that his life is changing for the better because I am here. Its times like that when being a missionary is really the best thing in the whole world. I would trade this for anything.

OTRO MILAGRO: one of our members knows dad from when he served a mission! not even kidding. okay we had dinner at this members house this last sunday and we had never been over there before because they have been in puerto rico this last month and so we went to their house and it was like this mansion house and the inside was BEAUTIFUL like an art gallery or something. and she was so awesome and they were talking about how they were from puerto rico and I was like oh my dad served there! and she looked at my name tag and said "I know him" and I was like no way. and she was like "do you have a picture" so I showed her and shes like yeah we know him! so how awesome is that! 

OTRO MILAGRO: I have been praying fervently that my silbings starting school would be able to adjust smoothly. I was killing me a little bit not to be there for them and I could ONLY imagine how scary and hard it is. (I remember changing schools in first grade and to this day it humbles me hahah) but to read their emails and see how many amazing friends they have made and how brave they are actually brought tears to my eyes. I know the Heavenly Father sent me to be the oldest so that I could learn from their examples! (i.e. Laban and Lemuel ;) )

Sorry this is almost painfully long haha ugh and i have so many pictures i wanted to send but i left my camera cord :( until next week! 

Week 9

Oh my goodness where to even begin. FIRST OF ALL, shoutout to my dear friend Tori who is married and sent me pictures. Wait in the world. If you think about it the mission is the weirdest thing because my life is kinda totally on pause right now and i forget that everyone elses is still going full speed. I love pictures. So weird but so awesome. 

Well last week was awesome. we taught a total of 28 lessons and were just busy busy all the time. And then this week was just really hard hahah but hey its okay. I feel like the weeks were are numbers are the lowest are the weeks when we are working the hardest. Something that grandpa sent me has really helped me and its something that he said to his missionaries when he was a mission president! I loved when he said, "Pray like it all depends on the Lord, but work like it all depends on you" I feel like sometimes its easy to say, oh well that person just juked us (again) so maybe it just wasnt meant to be! NO. that means we have to work even harder, find people who are willing to keep appts and commitments, and teaching a little better to have the spirit be strong enough to inspire people to repent. 

So heres a funny experience kinda. We were juked last night and we were in princeton. so theres just a lot of lil apartments and run down condos for sooo many streets. so we are walking around and decided to just contact and it was getting darker and there was think group of guys just hanging outside and talking and stuff and secretly i was worried that sister b was gonna be like (hey lets go talk to them) and i was kinda relieved when she didnt hahaha and I felt like "hey we need to go and talk to them" and then I was just like ugh how awkward we just walked by them and etc etc maybe their sketchy. but then i felt it again. so i was like okay lets go talk to them. so we made the walk of shame back and were talking to them and after the initial shock that i spoke spanish (you would think i would be used to it by now haha) we got to talking with this group of people and just asking them what they were up to and where they were from and talking about soccer and before we even said anything about being missionaries, one of them asking us, "why are you doing this? why are you sharing the word of god?" HOLLAAAA we're in. so since there was a big group of them i went over and talked to him more and he telling me how generations before him were always super strong in the catholic church but once he got older, he never really went to church. I asked him why, and he said he doesnt know but hes at a point in his life where we want to know if he should go to church and which one. I testified that I know God put us in his path so that we could simply be the guides to helping him find the answers to these questions for himself. We took down his number and are gonna meet with him soon. 

Sister B and i drove over to drop something off at the zone leaders and perfectly ran into president Taggart! he was on a split with the zone leaders. He is so stinkin inspiring. He was telling us about Elder Bednard's talk that he gave at BYU to use social media to sweep the earth like a flood. I later listened to it and wow chills. This is what we must do. I am seeing first hand that people simply do not have the time to meet with us but as they are telling us they are too busy, they are scrolling down their facebook feed. We must use this outlet to reach our people! What we have started doing with members is asking them to bring over their laptops after a dinner appt, and asking what is something that brings them the most happiness. They will say something like, oh my new baby or my family! and then we ask them if they have a picture of their baby or family or something and ask them to post something easy and simple like, "My family brings me the greatest happiness because I know because of temples, I can be with them forever." Slowly but surely, peoples hearts will become more and more open to this message. I'm pretty excited about it can ya tell? and its so easy! we should be getting ipads in october so that'll make it even easier to be a part of this!

me and sister maclay! we went on the exchange together last week but i forget to attach this pic... smiling a little too hard but thats love right?

Week 8

Oh my goodness. This week was a break through for me as a missionary that is for sure. So heres the thing. This week we had an exchange and I WAS THE ONE LEADING THE AREA. okay people. I dont get like super stressed or anything. but wow the couple days leading up to it I was getting pretty anxious. The main reason to was because my sister training leader that was going with me doesnt know any spanish. So yikes. I was praying SO HARD that I would be able to call and text all the people I needed too to set future appointments and drive everywhere and teach lessons and do all that. And guess what, the day came and I was forced to do all the spanish on my own and the Lord truly helped me. I was able to understand everything that was being said on the phone and I wasn't afraid to ask people to repeat what they were saying or anything AND I was able to find a member to come with us to our lesson and then they got lost and were asking me for directions and i was just like yeah right i dont even know how to help you in english let alone spanish so yeah stress but he finally made it and we went to go teach our investigador alfredo who has a baptismal date for september and his wife is a member. I felt so calm that whole lesson and really felt like I could communicate everything I wanted too. We talked about prayer and why we pray and how we should pray. He is so cute and he wrote down his prayer last time because he would always forget to start with "Padre Celestial" and end in the "nombre de Jesucristo" but now he kinda just repeats the same prayer over and over. The spirit was so strong when talking about how Heavenly Father is literally our father and he wants to hear the desires of our heart because he loves us and he was always answer our prayers. I asked him if he has prayed in this way to know if the book of mormon is true. He said he hadn't. I wanted to ask him to do it right then but hes pretty shy around other people, espicially with out member present and a new missionary. So he said he would do it that night. My sister training leader that was with me, Sister MacLay was so fun to have for the day! I got some good translating practice in too! She even said the the spirit was so strong even though she didn't understand what was going on! Just one more experience to strengthen my testimony that I know I am recieving divine help from the Lord everyday. I LOVE SPANISH. I used to be like, wow this is so hard, but now im just like WOW THIS IS SUCH A BLESSING. I love walking up to hispanic people and just going off in Spanish because they are always so surprised that I speak spanish and then I tell them im from Mexico and they almost always believe it hahaha so then Im like just kidding california, and they are like well there are a lot of mexicans there! and just laugh and think about how Irvine is like all asian. 

So our mission has this huge focus on service so we found this food pantry and its at this catholic church and its called Rafael's celestial angels so we are like oh yes lets do it. so we called them and told them we wanted to serve and it was such a great experience. They were all asking who we were and why we were serving mission. It was so great to just answer with a short testimony, "I am serving a mission because I know that God is our loving Heavenly Father and he wants all of us children to return to live with him again in our own families for eternity" or "because I know that the same church Christ established on the church has been restored again!" they were so nice and it was so great to work with them. And then as we were serving saturday morning at the food pantry, I would find all the hispanics and help them and talk to them in spanish and invite them to meet with the missionaries! (perks of speaking spanish and no one knows what im saying hahaha) 

Something I have come to learn and just accept is that questions to most hispanics like "could you please share an experience about when you recieved an answer to your prayer" is just not a good idea. because then 27 minutes later, they have finally finished their story about their 6 different cousins and how all of them have different problems and every life lesson their grandmother taught them. Yes I let my feet hover above the ground to stay awake as my eyelids start to feel super heavy. I'm trying to think of anything else happened.... so many things happen and the days feel like so long because of all of people we see and then before you know it im already sending an email! Oh okay one more thing. So our investagators just aren't really progressing. they dont want to come to church and getting juked starts to become pretty normal by the time the third lesson hits. I was feeling a little frustrated about it and then I remembered a lesson we got at the MTC and it was about specific prayers and how we can bind the Lord. We as a companionship coventented with the Lord to talk to everyone we see if hopes that he will place a family of 5 who has been prepared and is looking for the truth. Know its go time people. Stay tuned. It'll be good, the Lord always keeps up his end. 

Love Hermana Mortensen

It was Luis 22nd birthday (he's from guatamala and his mission papers are almost finished and he loves to come out with us he's the best) and this was after his face entered the cake.

We met with Cesar, he is a less active who works at this restaurant and hes trying really hard to get sundays off. we met with him at his restaurant and he bought us shin guards and soccer socks for soccer because we have so many bruises. COME ON HOW CUTE.

sister b and i have cantelope and ice cream after a hard day because why in the world not

Week 7

I dont know what it is about the first week of the transfer but I'm pretty sure that the best stuff happens then. This week has been so good and we have been so busy! At one point last night when we were adding up our numbers to send into our district leaders, sister boudesocque and I looked at each other and were like, "wait a second. how did we get 8 new investigators?" It just goes to show that when we get just go to work and not think about anything else, we arent focusing on numbers, we are focusing on souls, real people. Seriously good week. Okay so I dont really know where to start.... i should have thought out my email more before sitting here now typing aimlessly. The bruise count on my legs is definitely going up. I am forever grateful for shin guards. Soccer is brutal without them. but still so so so fun. So last sunday was fast sunday, and since sister boudescoque is almost done with her mission, she told me that she was going to do a 40 day fast. She explained to me that she was gonna pray and think about things that she could do better to become a fully more consecrated missionary and do or not do these things for the next 40 days. So I thought, well I might as well do it too! So we both prayed that sunday and when we came together, we found that almost all of our things were the same! And WOW what a difference I have seen in myself. I decided to give up saying "I'm tired" because, lets be real, did Jesus ever say he was tired when we was busy teaching the gospel? nope. he did not. I also decided that at every appt, I was going to knock on and walk up to two people around the house or something. During planning, we felt like we had to be at that place for a reason, so if the person isnt home, we might as well find out who is in that area that is prepared for us. Another thing is I took down a lot of my pictures. I would be easy for me to look of during my personal study and think, "I wonder what my friends or my family is doing right now!" (also my life before the mission all feels like a dream... like did I really go to BYU? I dont even know hahahah) Now, I just have a ton of these quotes or scriptures about missionary work that really motivate me and help me stay super focused. 

So something cool that happened this week was on tuesday night we went over to try and meet with this less active woman who lives in an apartment complex next to where we live! She has never answered or been home since we have been here. Before we left the car we prayed super hard that we could finally just meet her already! we were walking up the steps and we heard this girl say "Las misioneras!" Thats not a common reaction hahah she ran up the stairs and told us that she had been waiting for us! I thought for sure she was like 14 or 15 but nope she was 11. Reminded me of Paige! and she let us in the house and I just adore her and her little sister! They are so cute. They are dominican and their mom is the one who is inactive. It was so good to finally meet them and turns out they had been in the dominican republic for a month! Emely told me that she had been waiting for us to come! She said that she really wants to get baptized and that she had met with the missionaries before. So we are working with them now So amazing to see how the Lord puts us exactly where we need to be at the exact time. 

Oh my okay so fun fact about why I love sister boudescoque. So hispanics do not ask you how much food you would like on your plate. I think that they just assume that we are malnurished or something. So they feed us the equal amount of the men. actually sometimes more. Well that day, I just simply could not eat all of it. Like the more rice I ate, the sicker I felt. I looked over at sister b and was just like sister literamente no puedo. when they werent looking, she swapped our plates and finished mine for me. If thats not true love I dont know what is. 

Oh one other miracle that happened! So we take turns leading out planning and so this night was my night and I remember during planning having this little thought pop into my mind that we need to visit this less active lady over in princeton. I was like... ehhh she probably wont even be home but we wrote it down anyway. So we went over to her apartment and knocked and no answer so we tried a couple doors around there not knowing if they would even be hispanic or not. And then someone answered! and she was hispanic! We were talking to her and she invited us in right away! We were talking and she was so receptive and it was just so obvious that she is prepared for this message! She has 2 kids and a husband and they are from guatamala. We left her to read the intro of the book of mormon and when we went back this morning, she had the book right out on the table and said, "I read it and I loved it! My favorite part is when that man, jose smith, says that this is the most correct books of all books" Im sure i was smiling so big. She was like, "could you tell me more about him?" POR SUPUESTO (of course!!) It truly was one of the most powerful lessons we have ever taught (I probably feel that way about alot of the lessons but yeah its true hahah) 

Okay so one more thing! all these things are just popping into my mind so sorry if this makes like zero sense. Yesterday, in sunday school, the lesson was on the nature of god. So we were talking about how as children of good we have a responsibility to bring others to the knowledge of god because all of us are his children! Someone mentioned how they are super afraid to ever bring up God or anything because they dont wanna offend anyone are feel awkward. And then I raised my hand against my own will (I dont know how these things happen, ever since I was little I would subconsciously volunteer myself for commentary or answers hahah) I talked about how before my mission I would also be afraid to open my mouth and bring up religious topics in casual conversation but I just didnt now what it truly meant to be a child of god. In the Bible, in 1 John chapter 4, we learn the God is love. And perfect love casteth out all fear. I promised them that when we truly know who we are, we will never fear and will desire to call up our heavenly father to help us bring His children back. After I had said my 2 cents, the ward mission leader raised his hand and said, "I testify that what this misionera said is true and I know this because I have seen her grow in the language and teach with power" He said other things but I cant really remember because I just started tearing up and what not hahah I love our ward mision leader hermano pinto. For him to say that meant SO much to me. the language is coming and i love the mission. Until next week! 

Week 6

Okay so let me just start out by saying that I get asked out on more dates and a missionary than I have ever before in my life. I guess this is good because I'm getting really a lot better at saying no! Those who are friends of mine know how terrible I am with this hahaha sister boudesocque just laughs every time it happens. So heres one funny story. We were just finished up district meetings and then after that we have like an hour for lunch so we all went out to eat and this place near by. it was average. like an east coast cafe rio. so all us missionaries are heading out to the parking lot to leave and then this guy is walking over to me and he says "I dont wanna look stupid or anything but i have a question" and I was like "whats your question??" thinking that its like who in the world are you guys or why are you wearing nametags or the usual. But then he says, in front of my WHOLE zone, "will you go on a date with me?" I feel like the whole zone was just like waiting for me to respond and here I am the new greenie hahaha so I just said "aww thats so nice of you! but I am a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and I gave up all of that and left my family and school behind for 18 months to share the gospel" and then I quickly changed topics by asking him about his religion or something and he was like well I have a bible! and he pulled a bible out of his backpack thing. So then I was like "wow thats awesome! Youre half way there!!" I dont think he really appreciated that much. He wouldnt accept the book of mormon we offered him but hows that for a funny story. my zone just makes fun of me now hahaha. OH AND ONE MORE THING. So in all the mission cars there is this thing called a Tiwi and every time you go like 5 miles over the speed limit it says "CHECK YOUR SPEED" and lets just say thats its taking some time for me to adjust to having to drive 65 on the freeway. I'm having dreams that consist of the phrase "CHECK YOUR SPEED" 

So a couple things about this week! I have made an observation. The more I contact during the day, the happier I am and the more energy I have. So what we have been doing is trying to talk to everyone and then guess what happens, people have started coming up to us! I swear the majority of people in Princeton have english as a second language. We were teaching a less active outside of his home and this man and his two super cute daughters walked by and they were from Germany and had only been here for like a month! and then when on of our appointments juked us and we heard another language and we both thought it was spanish coming from the neighbors so we knocked on the door and they answered and they were Egyptians! The husband was wearing this giant like dress thing and it was like a mini party they were having cause he just got out of the hospital because of a heart attack and they invited us in and give us some coconut things and gave us thing mango drink and everything. This random things happen all the time. we asked to leave them with a prayer after talking to them for a little bit, and they asked if they could do their prayer. It was like this super intense chant and song thing in egyptian so that was definitely a new experience. 

Another thing that happened was when another appt juked us, (all too often people) so we tried the neighbors. Sister Boudesocque has taught me a few great clues to know if the house has spanish people are not. If the cable dish thing has 3 prongs and if there are a lot of plants just all over the place. This man opened and he was hispanic! so we were talking to him and asked him if we could share a message with him about jesus christ. he said of course and let us in! he was from Puerto Rico! I told him that my dad served his mission in Puerto Rico and he was like where are missionaries like you in other places? we replied yes!! we are just about everywhere!! He is sooo awesome and was so receptive. He was super interested in the Book of Mormon and kept saying, yes i'll read it I want to read it and kept asking us questions like, do you know what happens after this life. I just wanted to reach over and hug him. we told him that the evidence of the truthfulness of our message and the answer to all of our questions is right there in his hands! We set another appt with him and we asked him why he let us in in the first place. He said that we seemed really nice and that he felt like he really needed too. 

thats how you know people are prepared. When the spirit touches them, they follow the prompting and they let us in. 

One more cool thing. So we had exchanges this week with our sister training leaders! I was with sister Pack and she is so awesome! We had so many truly amazing experiences. I went up to her area with her which is an english area. I'm not gonna lie, I wondered for just a moment why in the world I was called to speak spanish! It was so nice to be able to understand every word they were saying and not thinking about little grammar things and stuff. But then one of the members found out I was with her and spoke spanish and referred us to one of her neighbors that only speaks spanish. So we went over there and I went solo folks. What a blessing it is to be able to learn another language. Everytime I wonder, wait a second... why was I, mallory mortensen, called to speak spanish, the thought always pops back into my mind, the Lord needs me the be able to speak spanish in the future. It is such a blessing to be doing this work. I love it people. LOVE IT.

one of our investagadores Ulises! ( we thought we was moving away but turns out hes not but we took a picture with him just in case)

Meeting with with our sister training leaders, Sister Pack and Sister Collins!

Transfer cleaning calls for some frozen pizzas and self timer pics feat. our colorful couch

for our zone activity today we went down to the Princeton stadium and played some ultimate frisbee. I think I missed my calling in life. I love Ultimate frisbee. Yes I am wearing basketball shorts. Yes this is just one of the many miracles that have occurred here on the mission

Week 5

SOME FUN THINGS: We played soccer on Saturday for a branch activity and oh my word it was so much fun. I love soccer. these people are so legit too. Its in the latin blood Im sure of it. Also I have maybe 14 mosquito bites on my legs. So my legs may or may not ever recover. Also I got to go to Vanessa's house and we talked with Vanessa and her mom (I call her mom) Karen!! I love those people. Seriously my second family. The spirit was so strong as we talked about the gospel. I wish that every missionary could have the opprotunity that I have to be able to have the responsibility to be a representative of Jesus Christ and share what we know now more than every to be true with their friends from before the mission. Its the best experience ever!! It also makes me wish so bad that I had been better with sharing my beliefs before my mission. 

Okay so wow. So picture this. Two people are jumping on a trampoline and they one of them gets launched due to timing of the bouncing. And then the person that gets launched gets launched SUPER high.(me) Okay then then someone comes along and takes the trampoline out from under them(satan) and whabam smack into humility. But then you just jump back on the trampoline again. This my friends is the life of a missionary at times. Emotional rollercoaster every single day. 

So our investagator that we were meeting (the mom) was all set to be baptized and then she finally told us that she actually wasnt divorced from her first husband that she was back together with her boyfriend and had no interest in marrying him. So yeah that ones gonna take sometime. So we told her to pray what she should do and the Lord will give her the strength she needs to make some changes that we understand are hard. Then we had a dinner with Branch President and his family planned for that Tuesday with our investagador and her daughters. Just hours before she calls us and told us that right now she doest have the money to pay for a divorce and just doesnt feel worthy to be in our presence or in the presence of the members. So yeah there a heartbreak for ya. What many people dont realize is the the church is a hopsital! we all have problems, that why we come to church! No one there is perfect! 

That day we tried really hard to put our trust in the Lord and remain super positive and not dwell on it. So we just kept working hard. And then Ulises called us! I dont know how much I have said about him but hes awesome. Hes from Mexico and we have been teaching him for a few weeks now. We pushed his baptismal date back in August to give him time to live the WoW and thatTuesday afternoon we taught about the 10 commandments and repentence. He would laugh occasionally about the commandments and we just couldnt understand why! So he called us like two hours later and told us that he was sorry for laughing but that he was just uncomfortable when he talked about adultery and not coveting and asking us for more council on how he can control his thoughts. We talked to him more on the phone and he expressed his desire to be completely obedient to these commandments. He then asked us why we pushed his baptismal date back. We explained that it was because we wanted to give him time to live the word of wisdom (not smoke or drink coffee). He told us that the night before he had a dream and a man (whose face he could not remember) came to him and kept telling him over and over that the book of mormon is true and the ulises needs to believe that the book of mormon is true over and over. His voice started to shake when he told us, "I know that the book of mormon is true. I want to be baptized any day." We told him to pray and ask God when he should be baptized so that he can recieve that confirmation and answer for himself and then call us after. About an hour and a half passed and we were walking out of the dinner appt that we had with the branch president and his family when Ulises called us! We told us that he had been praying for that whole time and as he was praying, everything bad that he had done that had caused feelings of shame and guilt came into his mind and he had repented of them and now all he wants is that remission of his sins through baptism. He just started crying when he said, "I want to be baptized this Sunday". I nearly passed out people. True story. We were so excited. 

So heres the thing: When people recieve this confirmation and want to be baptized, Satan works on them even harder because thats the last thing Satan wants is for us to make covenants that will lead us to everlasting happiness. Well a member who heard that Ulises was going to be baptized this Sundaycalled him on Friday and she told him that she thinks he needs to wait and take his time and not rush into baptism. This obviously caused him to be really nervous about baptism. When we met with him on Saturday we was really bummed and felt bad about canceling the baptism. My patience is definitely being worked on here. But in every prayer I pray that I will be able to accept the Lords timing before my timing. The important thing is that he will be baptized one day. 

Well we have dropped almost ALL of our investagators. so its back to the drawing board. I guess I didnt realize how tough this area was until a member told me that this area we are in hasnt had a baptism in almost a year. But Its a blessing for me to realize early on the i have to completely rely on the Lord to get anything done. I had my interview with president taggart and he made it very clear that proseltying is not working here. We have to do something else. So we committed us to serve. So go volunteer in hospitals, in soup kitchens, at food banks, the members, anywhere! He also committed us to focus on the members. Our branch really struggles with preisthood holders remaining active. So reactiviation and strenthening our branch is our main focus right now. We mowed a members lawn on saturday! My first time hollaaaa. And the grass was past my knees and it was a super super old lawn mower so that was an experience. 

My testimony grows more and more every time I share it. I am finding this council from my Savior to be more and more true, "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt 10:39). Its not about me or the numbers. It is about always being on the Lords errand and becoming more and more like him. One of the members gave a talk about preparing for a mission. When we came in he was really iffy about serving or not. he is 19 and his family are all members and they moved here from Guatamala 5 months ago. It was really hard for him to move from a place where everyone was mormon to here where we are few and far between. We have been working with him alot! He mentioned me in his talk about how I have been sent to a different place within my country but called to speak a different language and that we teach with power and authority. He said that it has caused him to think, well if they can do it, why cant i do it? He has started his mission papers! my eyes were welled up with tears that whole talk. My love for people have grown so much. so so much. I love this work. there is so much to do. and it is such a blessing to rely on my savior and redeemer. I love him. he is my best friend and he is with me always. I feel your prayers. Keep them coming!! The church is true. This gospel is perfect. 

okay so on pday last monday for a zone activity we went to washingtons crossing and i was like "oh how cute a nice little tranquil lake" then we left. and  then I was talking to one of the missionaries and he told me that GEORGE WASHINGTON ACUTALLY CROSSED THAT LAKE. thats a national monument people. I didnt even realize. Good thing I took a picture. 

Sister Stout!  i love her. Shes from bountiful like dad!

Elder Bell! hes awesome. Hes also from bountiful. and hes so tall and SO funny. hence the need to take a picture for height difference purposes. and leaves this transfer! 

MY BEST FRIEND VANESSA :)

momma dipersia!

eating at this little guatamalan place and its like so tiny and sometime i swear i am in another country. (rice on rice on rice i literally cannot with the rice)