"The Girls Who Work for Jesus are Here!"

Querida Familia,

  This was a really good week and a lot happened. Our area is picking up and we hope it stays that way! We had set a goal of finding 5 new investigators and ended up with a whopping 8! WOOO BLESSINGS! I heard some pretty profound things this week, and one of those is that missionaries learn the law of opposition pretty quickly. When something hard happens you can be sure you're headed towards something good haha. I've had the most extreme emotions of joy and sorrow on my mission but I have a testimony that the deeper the sorrow the greater our joy can be!

  A great thing about Wyoming is that the streets have names again(unlike Utah), so that feels a little more like home, even if the street names are "Hitching Post" and "Tumbleweed".

  I did one of my first STL things this week and went on exchanges this weekend! Sister Kimball is the best. We actually got to the field at the same time, so I got a bit of a break for my first exchange. It was different to go to an English area, we actually ended up talking in Spanish half the night lol. Favorite part was these two little girls. One of them had met the missionaries before and was so excited to see us. She was like, my mom can talk to you!!

When we met her Mom haha she said every time you come she comes to tell me "The girls who work for Jesus Christ are here!" Kids are amazing, I feel like they know more about God than the rest of us do. Another little girl who spoke Spanish came right up to me and hugged me and we started talking about the Book of Mormon. She seemed way interested even if her mom wasn't. 

  Lots of cool experiences this week, still learning and growing, having amazing and not so amazing missionary moments, but one of my favorites this week was the change we saw in one lady we were teaching. She and her family are from Mexico(most of the hispanics here are, versus my other area I taught people from a lot of different countries) and at first we were just talking to her daughter. Then she came in from the other room with a look on her face like "I'm going to tell you to leave". She started talking about how she already had her religion. Then in a very Spirit directed conversation we started talking about the question why are there so many churches? We taught her the Restoration and about how we believe in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. After we showed the family a video about the Book of Mormon and how we can know it's true, she looked at us and said "I feel like I want to learn more". Over the course of the lesson the Spirit had changed her heart! It was amazing!

 Green River had stake conference this weekend and Elder Warren(or Warner not sure) of the Seventy was there

speaking. It was way good! This area has a lot of less active people, so it was fascinating to here him apply the story of the Good Samaritan to everyone here. I learned from him that we should show love first to others, and then invite them to change things about their lives. That's what the Savior does! He is the Example.

  To explain some of the pictures, last Monday Sister Wilson and I went to a high place to do a little "rededication" to our missions. It was an idea we heard and we loved it. We sang hymns and read D&C 4 together. And then we

picked up rocks, talked about the things we were going to give up in order to be more dedicated to our missions, and threw as hard as we could. Haha it was awesome!

Love you all, the Church is true and the Spirit is the best! God loves us and everything he does is to help us come home to him as eternal families one day! 

Con cariño, 

Hermana Alley