Allergies... I guess the season is changing!

This week has been... interesting.

First off, it was the county fair this week. So that meant that there wasn't any school and nobody was home because they were all at the fair. Which meant that the missionaries (me y mis companeras) were also at the fair, contacting people. We met a bunch of musicians that actually live in the area that we cover so we got names and phone numbers and set up a time to visit them. The funniest part about that experience (you didn't think it was funny?) was that none of us had our planners on us and none of us had a pen. We DID, however, have a foam tray and plastic utensils. So we etched their names and phone numbers into the plate until one of them took pity on us and handed us a sharpie. Yes, it was just a bit hilarious. A nice occurence happened when we were over by the art and a lady started taking pictures of my face. She said I was beautiful and that my face looked like it was from the Victorian era. Yeah, I was flattered but incredibly weirded out nonetheless. We were able to strike up a conversation with her and she mentioned that she had heard that we sang. Who knew that singing at a funeral a month ago would produce such nice contacts! Anyway, we had a very successful afternoon at the fair and met quite a few new people.

That same afternoon we also contacted a group of guys when we were driving past their house. Turns out that they were all from "Oregon" (Mexico, actually, and they made sure to tell us that they were there legally) and that they were down in the area for work. They only spoke Spanish, so that made Sister Christensen's happiness level shoot through the roof.  They invited us in, but they were all drinking beer, so we set up a return appointment for the next day. The next day we brought the Bishop with us (who also spoke Spanish) and we had a great lesson with them and invited them to church. They said that they would read El Libro de Mormon and that they would come to church! I was surprised at how much I understood as the Bishop and Sister Christensen were teaching. I still got lost on a few points, but I understood the basic gist. It made me want to learn Spanish really really badly.

Our truck has been amazing! We've been able to go so many places that we wouldn't have been able to take our car! It's been a blessing. We had another river crossing earlier this week and we took some pictures of the awesomeness :)

Well, I hope you all have a fantastic week! And keep writing to me! Yes, I'm being blunt, I'm not hinting at anything. WRITE TO ME!!! I love hearing from you all!

Love,
Steph
1) us and the AWESOME camero 2) our truck in a river 

The second to last week of August.

So. Here we are again. Another week....


AND SO MANY MIRACLES!!!! MY GOODNESS!! Where should I start?!

I know! I'll just start at the beginning of the week ;)

Never mind, we'll skip to the good stuff.

On Thursday we had an amazing experience. We have been trying to contact a referral, JJ, for weeks! And (dum dada dum) we finally got a hold of him on Thursday! (technically we'd talked to him on the phone previously, but who's looking at technicalities?) Anyway, we were able to sit down and talk to him for a while and give him a Book of Mormon and he invited us to come by again! Speaking of, he knows someone from Stockton/Tooele by the name of (and I may have forgotten it) Shawn Anderson? Let me know if we know him. I can't remember the names of his kids, so I'll try and find that out later. But, seriously, after WEEKS and WEEKS of trying to talk to him in person we FINALLY found him at his house! And he was super nice! It was incredible. That just goes to show how important persistence is. You persist until you meet them or until they tell you to stop. Yep.

We also played a scrabble-esque game with Linda this week and she's really opening up to us. She even took us out to dinner! Service is a major door-opener with people up here and it's been so cool to see them change their opinion of us as we serve them.

This weekend, we spent 2 1/2 days in Pie Town. We have a little trailer up there that we stay in, that's right next to the church. It's also right next to the community center, so when they had some sort of karaoke dance party there on Saturday night, it kept us awake for a bit. Oh the power of music. It can bring the Spirit of God or the spirit of the devil. It's pretty crazy how influential music is.

On Sunday we had some incredible blessings. So, to be honest, our plans for each day don't really pan out how we plan them. BUT on Sunday EVERYTHING fell into place. We had a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation with a family and gained 3 new investigators from that experience! We also had a great lesson with our dinner appointment and followed up on her goals for missionary work! It's so cool to see the drive these members are getting to share the Gospel. Once they find out how, they have just jumped right on it! Oh and we were able to contact another really sweet lady who is a retired 1st grade teacher and she was one of the nicest, most welcoming people I've ever met! I was seriously blown away!

Well, it's been a great week and I'm so happy that I get to be here, serving in this area and that I get to meet these very unique people. God has made us all so unique and he loves us all so individually. It's still kind of incomprehensible to me how much love God really has for all of us. It makes me want to be nicer and more sincere to everyone because I know how much he loves me and I KNOW that he has that much love for them. It's nice to think of people that way.

I hope you all have a Fan-diddly-tastic week and that you update your Mormon.org profiles! haha

Love,
Steph

Pics: we were given a 5 pound cabbage (how do you cook/ eat a cabbage?), this is Sister Gray (she makes AMAZING chicken tenders and fried antelope and calls us her chachas(that IS a Camero in the background)) and THIS is another New Mexican Sunset :)

new transfer! also a new week (in case no one noticed)

This week was transfer week! And that meant, because Sister Pass was transferred, we went down to the valley! It was really really really really really really hot. I mean, it wasn't the amazing 120 degrees that they'd been having, but MAN!! I was so glad that I was wearing a white shirt! It didn't help my face, though. That stayed beet-red almost the entire time :)

Anyway, we had something really cool happen this week.

We got FOUR (yes the number 4) new investigators!!!!! I was seriously blown away! All of the work that we've been doing with the members is really paying off! Up here, in the wilds of New Mexico, we can't really go tracting (houses are 10-20 minutes apart in some places up here) or street-contacting (the same 5 people sit in front of the general store every day) so the member finding is NECESSARY. I think I may have bolded that word in another letter. Goes to show just how important it is :) Anyway it's been fantastic! We were also able to meet with Cynthia this week. She's the investigator that took the lessons in the 70s. That lesson was incredible! She read every single section in the Book of Mormon that we asked her to! Not only that, but we'd asked her to read Moroni chapter 10 and she looked at the book of Moroni and said, "hmmm well, may as well read all of the chapters if there are only 10" and she read the whole book of Moroni on her own! In fact, before we left, she asked us if we could give her some more passages to read and said that she really liked reading the Book of Mormon because it's so easy for her to understand.

Yep, I was pretty dumbfounded. She said that she needed to pray about being baptized again, but she is one of the "seekers of truth" that they talk about in the scriptures. She'll get baptized, it's just a matter of "when".
A miracle that I realized today: My companions asked me to explain the war chapters in Alma for them (the mechanics, why the war started, who was so-and-so, etc) and I kind of stunned myself with how much I was able to explain to them. I never thought that I would understand the scriptures all that well. Even at the beginning of my mission, I struggled with it and I remember praying desperately for understanding so that I could teach my investigators effectively. It's funny that I didn't realize that my prayer had been answered until today when my companions pointed it out to me. And, looking back, I also realized that my prayer had been answered months and months ago. I have been blessed to completely understand the things I read and if I don't understand it, I've been blessed to know which resources that I can look at to gain that understanding. I just want to testify to you all that I KNOW that Heavenly Father answers our prayers. I know that he blesses us when we are obedient to his commandments and the laws that he's given us. I also know that, as mortals, we forget. We forget the blessings that we've been given. We forget to look for those blessings. Sometimes, like in my case, we even forget what we've asked for and therefore don't recognize the blessings. This is my 2nd time reading the Book of Mormon on my mission and I've made a special effort to highlight the word "remember" whenever I come across it. Because when we remember, we don't fall into the pride cycle. It's been pretty cool to see how many times we are told to "remember" in the scriptures.

Also something that my companions and I were talking about in our Companion study yesterday. We were talking about the difference between "hoping" and "wishing". In a letter or a talk or something, someone explained hope as being an expectation based on faith. And we decided that "wishing" wasn't an active thought. When you hope for something, you work for it and have the faith that God will make up the difference. Wishing is simply wanting it to happen without work. So we decided that "wishing" is discontent in the moment and that "hope" is the expectation that something better will come. Yep, I've learned a lot this week.

I love you all so much and I'll definitely be thinking of you all going back to school and work and all the fun Fall stuff that we'd do as a family. I thought about it yesterday and I only have one school year left until I see you all again. It kind of freaked me out because time doesn't seem to be going THAT fast. And who knows? Maybe I'll extend ;)

Have a great week!

Love,
Steph

pics for the week: the scorpion that we found in our house and us with a black powder gun (unloaded and we did NOT shoot it! We're obedient missionaries :)

Cowgirl missionaries

HI EVERYONE!!!!

The news for the week is pretty tame. We saw TONS of miracles yesterday, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Actually, maybe I'll do it now. Here goes:

WE GOT A TRUCK!!!!!!!

Yes, these cowgirl missionaries now have a truck! Just get me a cute cowgirl hat and I'll be set! Hahaha Anyway, we had been told that getting a truck may not be possible, but it happened! The Lord definitely answers prayers because I thought that we would bottom out at some point in time in our little car. We discovered this past week that our car may or may not do too well with river crossings if it keeps raining. We crossed a couple of small streams this last week in our car, but because it's monsoon season, those streams are going to get a bit bigger and deeper, so we're really glad that we have a truck for that. That also means that we'll be able to visit people that we had previously not been able to because of the water and the road conditions. SO Obedience and tons of prayer brings blessings.

Another miracle that happened yesterday had to do with our cell phone. We were down in the valley for transfers (we got a new companion, Sister Harrast, who happened to be a music major at BYU playing the violin) and when we switched cars with the elders, we thought that we'd grabbed everything. False. We discovered (after they'd left) that we'd left our phone in their car. So we had someone try calling it to see if we had it or if the elders would pick up. Didn't happen. So we called the elders from another missionary's phone and we arranged to meet them outside of town. In the meantime we had to go to the store and discovered that we'd also left something at the mission home, so when we finally got to the rendevous, they weren't there. Well, we figured that we would go to Payson and see if we could run into some members there that would have the number of the elders. When we got to Payson, we saw some elders coming out of a restaurant. We immediately jumped out of our car and ran towards them yelling "ELDERS!" (yep, we may have seemed a little crazy) and we discovered that they were NOT the elders that we were looking for, but they were really nice and called the other elders and we stayed to meet them and get our phone. SO after this massive goose chase, that happened over the space of 2 or 3 hours, we finally got our phone! MIRACLE!!!

Those are the miracles for the week. Some other points of interest were that we were able to visit a place called "the Blue" that missionaries had not been to for a VERY long time. We drove for over an hour on dirt roads (those are really the only kinds of roads out here) and had 2 stream crossings before we reached the houses of the people we were looking for. So, lots of driving, but it was BEAUTIFUL. I never really had much of an appreciation for nature until I came up here. It really solidifies my testimony of God because NOTHING in this world could have happened by chance. When I see the trees, the animals and the massive storms, it really hits me that Jesus Christ, through the power of God, created this world for us. I know that Christ and Heavenly Father live. I know that we have the potential to become like them and I know that we all have divine potential. Really, the more I really know about the earth and the more that I learn, the more I know that God lives. It's amazing how much knowledge someone can have and not believe in God. Knowledge becomes wisdom when we apply it and it's wisdom that tells us that all things denote that there is a God. We also have the knowledge that this Gospel is true, but it doesn't become wisdom until we share it with someone else. Just a thought that I had.

Anyway, I love you all so much and thanks so much for all of the letters and emails! I've really appreciated them and they've helped me a lot. Thanks and I'll have more to report next week!

Love, Steph

pics
the river crossing and a beautiful sunset. New Mexico really is the land of enchantment