Mountains and Miracles

Dear Family,   The Lord has shown me miracles little by little this week! He is really starting to teach me, and I've felt myself changed as a person and a missionary. A couple experiences for lack of time:   The Lord's timing is crazy. For dinner on Friday we just happened to run into Elder Don Clarke, an emeritus seventy (general authority of the church) and his wife. They invited us to eat with them! They have been mission presidents, done hundreds of mission tours, and he's spoken at general conference at the MTC. He just started answering our questions about missionary work and I left feeling so inspired and grateful that God put Him in our path. Sometimes I forget what power missionaries have and I felt like he gave a little of that back to me.   Sunday we were somehow super busy and we were able to actually have a lesson with the people who dropped us recently and invite them to the temple open house! The member that came with us was a returned missionar...

Mis Queridos,   I'm gonna be honest, this week was super long and super hard. No need for me to explain all the details, but it involved feeling inadequate and not sure why I'm still in the same area, and having some of my favorite people tell us they were not going to come back to church, lots of tears, and saying goodbye to other favorite people moving back to their countries. Just lots of opposition and not feeling sure if I'm a good missionary.    That being said, I also grew more this week than almost any other week on my mission. I realized a lot of things about myself, about trusting in God more, allowing myself to use my personality in my missionary work, and how to just really love the people better. It is part of God's plan for others to have the choice to follow him, and I need to respect that. So even if I cannot control whether others continue to listen or choose to come closer to our Savior through his gospel, I can at least leave them with a feeling o...

Hello!!   The longer I'm out on my mission, the less desire I have for worldly things. The Spirit is the BEST! And the things of heaven and of God are way better than anything the world has to offer. Ok, let's get to the highlight of this week...the Jordan River Temple! So on Friday us Sisters got a preliminary tour of the Jordan River temple in preparation for us to help out with the open house. Wow I love the temple. It was so powerful. And it was just powerful to simply be with many other sister missionaries. So Sister Burton, a general authority for women in the church who has spoken in General Conference (see "Certain Women" and "I was a Stranger") was there directing things and she spoke to us!! I got to say hi to her! Whaat. She's amazing. Her husband was the one who led us through and he stopped us in the sealing room. He said the temple president said the Spirit was strongest in that room. It's true, and I am so grateful for my eternal ...

Hola gente que yo amo!   The #unity aka Hermana Alley and Hermana Garbett team are staying together!!  Here's to seven and a half months in my first area! #ActuallyCalledtoMillcreekUT My sister got transferred a lot in her mission, so I guess I'm destined to never leave haha! We got transfer calls this weekend, for some reason our zone was the last to know what was going to happen.   Another thing I never thought would happen: I participated in a WAVE in the CONFERENCE CENTER! Haha it was the best thing ever! So here in Salt Lake they had an event for part of RootsTech called "La Luz de Naciones", a celebration of latin culture. So my companion and I, an investigator, and a couple members joined some 20,000 people in this concert of remembering ancestors and honoring culture. I LOVE the latin culture!! It reminded me of going to concerts at Byu, such high quality, beautiful music and dancing. You all can check it out on lds.org !  https://www.lds.org/b ro...

Fam,   I'm afraid that I have gotten to the point on my mission where coming up with an email every week is hard. I still enjoy making titles though, haha. I want you all to know I love and think of you, and appreciate every email I get, even if I can't respond to everyone.    So I have a goal to become a Latina, and so far I can gradually eat spicier and spicer food #thankyoufuegoTakis It's interesting to see how my tastes change. I love the latino culture! These people are real, hardworking, open, and loving. I've gotten several invites to go visit Colombia with people so we'll see how that goes one day haha.    First things first, two miracles, two souls came unto Christ in the waters of baptism this Saturday! [D], the son of my recent convert [A](they speak English), and [F], our investigator from Colombia who has made amazing changes in his life. My mission president baptized him which was super special. We joined the baptism with the Elders and it...

Familia,   Couple thoughts today, since it hasn't been that long. Sister Garbett and I had to get a pep talk last night because we've both been worn out by opposition lately.    Something cool this week was that we had a fun pass off lesson with the English elders. We found a young man tracting a couple weeks ago and taught him a time or two. It's part of our recent effort to find the Lord's prepared everywhere, whether they speak Spanish or not. It was really fun to work together to explain how the Spirit feels to this young man. I loved hearing him say that he feels like he is ready for a more spiritual part of his life. He's been feeling lost lately and searching for the light. Golden! His grandpa is a member of the church and had shared his testimony with him. The young man attempted to describe this warm feeling he had in his heart. It really is hard to describe, but for me I think it's like warmth and love filling my heart. And then I just know ...

Heyyyy familia!   We have P-day today(Wednesday) instead of Monday because we're going to the temple(yay!), so it's been like a week and a half since my last letter. More exciting events this week, though it was a little slower than last week   Hermana Garbett turned 20! Fun to make her cupcakes and everything. I'll be turning 20 soon too that's super weird. One of our investigators also had a birthday last week and we set up that we would all fast the day in between their birthdays haha. I'm learning about the power of fasting and we're trying to help him receive and recognize his answer about the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the Book of Mormon, and the prophet Joseph Smith :)   While trying to figure out how to explain it to other people this week, I learned a lot about faith. Faith is a principle of action and power. We must act first and then we receive the witness! I decided it's like a car, if we expect God to help us and an...