Good times and tan lines 😎🥵☀️

 https://photos.app.goo.gl/V1gka56kjUTcATXt8

HOWDY YALLL this week was a slice of heaven! Also it was so toasty! My tan lines are too good 😂☀️

MONDAY- THURSDAY: BENTONVILLE TEMPLE OPEN HOUSE!!!!

Monday- Thursday we got to stay down in Bentonville and help run the open house! We stayed at the mission home and ate watermelon and watched the fireflies each night with our mission president and his wife(((: it was soo fun! It was just a big sleepover with tons of sister missionaries! Also i totally thought fireflies were fake until i came here lol💀for the open house we had shifts where we would start the video's, fill rooms, welcome ppl in, take their pics! We weren't allowed to proselyte but they told us to think how christ would treat each person and proselyte with our actions, eyes, smile. I could write an essay on all the miracles that we saw at the open house but I'll share a few cool things: 

- watching the members who bring like 20 non member friends to the open house!🤯 it was soo awesome to see how members invited so many ppl to come and see. The open house was such a good opportunity for their non member friends to come see what we really believe! Watching ppls hearts soften as they watched the video and felt the spirit in the temple was amazing! 

- We had a group of catholic ministers in our video room, we get to just make convo with ppl for like 10 min while they fill the rooms for a rotation and so we got to know them, asked lots of questions about what they're missionary work looks like... it was amazing to see the mutual respect among different religions. After the video & tour they wanted to learn more and asked for a Book of Mormon. The said that they felt the spirit strong when they were in the temple, and are wanting to meet with missionaries to learn how are beliefs are similar or different from ours!

- we were out one day taking pictures at 2:00 the sun was brutal lol, my watch tan line is poppin! But it was actually one of my favorite shifts because we got to ask ppl how their experience was! We took 2 old guys pictures and asked about their experience and they straight up asked how they could join our church😆🤯 I died a lil inside when we had to just take them to the link to scan to learn more, it took so much for me not to put them on date lol. 

FRIDAY: ROAD TRIPIN! We took the fat trek back from Bentonville🛴 then we went back to the findin, teachin, baptizin grind! It felt so good! 

SATURDAY: JACK AND LILLY'S BAPTISM!! Jack and Lilly are 2 unbaptized youth from a family  we've been meeting with! They are so tender! The oldest boys were able to get the preisthood last week, it's been so awesome to see them get excited about the gospel again! The spirit was so strong at their baptism WOW! They are the first kids I'd taught on my mission and they just give the most profound comments! 

SUNDAY: VERGARA'S BAPTISM! AHHH I was freaking out because she showed up late to church so we thought her drill Sargent wasn't going to let her come but she did! 😅 her baptism was so cool, she said she felt too good to describe after((: all the soldiers felt the spirit watching her get baptized, I taught the restoration to a new group of soldiers after who said they felt warm and peaceful when they watched her get baptized and receive the gift of the holy ghost 😆😁

Invitation: 

Study the new pmg daily!!! 😆😆😆

Vergara's Baptism

Jack and Lily's Baptism

Our Bishop and his family made me a GF B-Day cake! 

Tú comes manzanas?

 HOWDY YALLL!! Sorry for the late email, we took our pday today cause we had the temple open house Monday-Wednesday!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/V1gka56kjUTcATXt8

MONDAY: THE ELECT!

we had a lesson with our friend Francisco who's so elect! We came over for our 1st lesson and he had chairs set up and was straight up just like so how can I get closer to God... it like low key took me off guard because he was so open. We invited him to be baptized and he said he'd pray about it!

TUESDAY: Hablo un poco español... 

We taught our friend who's on date, he gave us a fat ton of referals which is so sick! They all only speak Spanish though so we have to go back with a member who speaks it because I can't figure out how to conjugate to save my life lol 

WEDNESDAY:KIDS ARE SMARTER THAN MOST ADULTS!! we had a lesson with Jack and lily the 2 unbaptized youth who are getting baptized next week😆 they are so tender, we did a lesson on missionary work, we asked Jack what he would say if his friends asked why he wanted to get baptized. He said to get the gift of the Holy Ghost. SO TRUE!! This 9 year old boy knows that baptism without the holy ghost means nothing which most adults even in the church get confused about. I love teaching kids because they make the gospel so simple, always make the most profound comments!

THURSDAY: DOCTORS VISIT... we thought I had pink eye and our medical coordinator found out some how so I had to go to the doctor🫠 we were there for forever but on the bright side I don't have pink eye just a sinus infection✌️

FRIDAY: TEACHING THE WORD OF WISDOM TO A LOT OF DRUNK PPL😂🤭 we had a lesson with our friend who's on date and we planned to talk about the w.of w.  With him and his neighbor and we started to teach the wofw and gospel of Jesus christ, slowly more and more ppl came out and listened lol. He accepted to quit drinking and were working on getting him in the addiction recovery program ((:

SATURDAY: EXCHANGES!! We had exchanges with the Lebanon sister's! I got to be with Sister King! She's such a beast and it was so fun! We met some pretty dope ppl! One guy we tracted into was an excommunicated member who was wanting to come back to church! We gave him a bom and set up a time for them to go back!

SUNDAY: ROAD TRIP! I got to go over the baptismal questions with one of the soldiers in my class who's getting baptized next week and it was so tender! One of the soldiers who got baptized from my class when I first came to st. Rob is her bro in law and is coming back to watch her baptism 😆

Invite: 

For all my peeps who are able to go to the temple GO THIS WEEK!! For my missionaries try to go with a friend or set a date to go with a friend! I miss the temple so stinking much and even though the Bentonville temple isn't dedicated yet being able to go to the open house has helped me receive so much revelation and peace that's carried on throughout the rest of my week! 

😇☀️This week was a sneak peak of the celestial kingdom😇☀️

 HOWDY YALLL!! I have never been more sure that the church is true than this week! The beginning was rough but the rest was a slice of heaven!

Monday- Wednesday: LOTS OF CONTACTING. Sister Morris was on her death bed! I felt so bad! Being sick as a missionary is the worst but having your companion sick is even worse because you just have to watch them suffer haha and you wanna help but all you can do it boss them around, tell them to sleep, take their medicine lol. I caught it one of the days and was chillin after that. But the 2 days I stopped loading up on the vitamins I got ill so I'm currently sick typing this... rip. I will say though the mass contacting sessions paid off! We were able to find a less active new convert that had dropped off the face of the earth!

THURSDAY: TEMPLE OPEN HOUSE TRAINING! I MEAN HOUSE OF THE LORD OPEN HOUSE TRAINING! I thought I was in heaven on Thursday... imagine every Sister missionary in the mission at the temple. All my best friends I haven't seen in forever! The spirit was so strong. A group of 40 sister missionaries, no contention at all just pure love for every one of them. We got trained on some talking points and how to start the temple video, it was so fun! I've never been so sure that I needed to be a missionary at this time for this reason. Then THEY TOOK US ON A PRIVATE TOUR OF THE TEMPLE!!!!!! I wouldn't have been surprised if angels came down. The spirit was unreal as soon as we walked in, then we went in the celestial room. It felt like God was there with us. There wasn't a dry eye in that room. In that moment i KNEW not believed I KNEW without a single doubt that this church is true and that family's truly can be together forever. The Temple was absolutely beautiful, the colors and the artwork were unreal! Sorry to my fam but I definitely wanna get married there so they might have to work out some plane tickets ((: I still have a headache from sobbing like a baby. I just didn't ever want to leave. Moments like that though make all the rejection, hard days absolutely worth it. 

FRIDAY: THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND ... ELDER BEDNAR!!!! 

Boy did I get some spiritual enlightenment!! Between Thursday and Friday holy guacamole. Every single missionary in our mission got to go to Bentonville to have a mission conference with Elder Bednar. As we were all seated waiting for him to come in it went silent. You could've heard a pin drop. I just felt the spirit change and we all knew he had walked into the building. Sure enough a few seconds later he came in the chapel.  Elder bednar is so personable and funny! The way he taught was incredible. The whole thing was a council/ q&a format. He just let the spirit teach not himself, because of that I had questions answered that I didn't even know I had. I could write a whole essay on everything I got out of Elder bednar but I'll give ya a few highlights: 

- " don't just go on a mission, become a missionary" 

- he talked about becoming lifelong missionaries 

-" Heavenly Father only gives us gifts if he trusts us to act"

" he's not going to let you mess up as you choose to worthly serve him "

" the worst sin is the one you think you can get away with"

SATURDAY: THE ROUTINE TEACHING POOL CLEANING!

I feel like every few weeks our teaching pool just needs a refresh. Or we'll have a few people that we need to either start teaching or pause teaching. Saturday we did a huge clean out of our teaching pool, we visited almost everyone we were teaching lol.

SUNDAY: I LOVE GIVING TALKS AS A MISSIONARY ((: I got to give a talk on missionary work in the fam ward about missionary work and it was so fun! 

Invite: listen to Elder bednar's talk ask in faith! 

Ask in Faith

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2008/04/ask-in-faith?lang=eng

when you're getting sick... electorlytes to the rescue 

SATURDAY NIGHTS BRING OUT THE CRAZY PPL!

 HOWDY YALLL!! 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/V1gka56kjUTcATXt8

Monday: MERICA!!!!🇺🇲 I STINKING LOVE MEMORIAL DAY!!! We did bom experiments in the park and it was way fun! Holidays as missionaries are low key so hype because you get to get way creative with your approaches. We crafted a lil memorial day message and tied it to the bom and talked about the nephites fighting for their religious freedom. It found us a few solid ppl actually so that was way hype! Especially serving by a military post ppl are always down to talk about God and freedom!

Tuesday: PASSALONG CARDS🤌 If you read last week's email when we were out of boms. we decided to make bom passalongs. Yeah we're still out of boms... but everything happens for a reason bc if we hadn't made the passalong cards we wouldn't have found Athena! We tracted a neighborhood and only 3 ppl answered but we left those passalong cards with everyone 

# FLOODTHEEARTH🌊 and it paid off cause Athena is the first person i've found on my mission so far from a passalong card!!

Wednesday: PDAYYYY 

9 day work weeks ain't for the week! But man so worth it for all the tender mercies we saw for working hard even when we were tired! 

Thursday: THE CHURCH IS TRUE AND THE BOOK IS BLUE! So obviously I love and respect everyone's beliefs. But man when I listen to some ppl talk about what they believe it just strengthens my testimony of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. Like it just makes so much sense! It fills all the gaps for me, so many people have questions that are answered by the simple truths we teach as missionaries!

Friday: THE CUTEST CHINESE GRANDMA "ADOPTED" US! My heavens this woman was just the sweetest thing ever! We gave her a bom and introduced it to her and after she told us we were now her family and could come over whenever we wanted haha. When we left she hugged the bom kissed and held it up to the sky! It was so tender and made me want to cry 🥲🥰

Saturday: SOME PPL DO BE WICKED...

Wow we visited a Grey dot on a Saturday night and ended up showing up to her divorce party... talk about bad timing lol... as one could imagine this girl and everyone there for that matter was high and 4 beers deep lol! We got straight bashed by 5 drunk ppl all at once. Sister Morris was able to pull one aside and have a good convo but I almost got into a fight with one of them cause they started coming at me... while they were yelling at me telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about and I was being brainwashed lol I thought of the talk on missionary work and the atonement by Elder Holland. Specifically this quote " When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God. He knows all about your sorrows and afflictions". Even though that experience wasn't the best ever lol. I'm glad I had it because I've never felt closer to my savior than when I didn't shy away to testifying of him and his restored gospel.

Sunday: MIGHTY PRAYER AND FASTING! With Elder bednar coming this week, our mission president asked us to fast for open minds and hearts. We took it as an opportunity to stress the importance of fasting, We are doing a 40 day fast with our ward for missionary work! And we already have seen so many miracles! We were tracting and someone literally pulled over and rolled down their window to ask us for info on where church is!

Invitation: 40 day fast! Along with our wards 40 day fast, me and Sister Morris are doing a 40 day fast from anything that's drawing us away from the spirit! We prayed about it during sacrament and made our lists of things we want to stop doing and things we want to start doing. So ya'll should do it with me!

Restoration Lesson with the Soldiers!

Our Turtle Friend Timmy

 We Made Sushi and it was delicious!

The new youth album song came in clutch this week!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/V1gka56kjUTcATXt8

HOWDY YALLL!! Wow I'm so tired... we had a 9 day work week this week BUT they released a new youth album song and it helped keep us going lol!! It's actually so bussin so ya'll should go listen to it ASAP!

ALSO ELDER BEDNAR IS COMING NEXT FRIDAY TO DO A MISSION WIDE MEETING!! I'm sooo hyped!!!

Monday: 7 INTERACTIONS I GUESS... we thought we found a super elect guy and we were so hyped about it, but then he turned out to be kinda crazy); but hey we planted the seed lol 

Tuesday: THERE GOES ANOTHER ONE... being a sister ain't for the weak lol we keep having to drop some of the ppl we're teaching for being creepy ); 

Wednesday: WE FLOODED THE EARTH A LIL TO MUCH... so there's a shortage of Book of Mormon's and we had been "sneaking" them from post but we got in trouble for it so we decided to get super creative and make bom passalong cards! And I will say they are quite beautiful haha 

Thursday:BEST MPL EVERR

We had a lesson with our friends and they are absolutely hilarious! They have the cutest Lil down syndrome kid who has Dimond stud earrings and this kid comes out mid lesson blasting wiz Khalifa on a speaker just bopping 💀 I was dead! Our members were dying haha! But the lesson ended up being so good and that was just the cherry on top! We put them on date so pray for the Johnson family 

Friday:REACTIVATION STATION 🚉 

We worked on our 6 list on Friday and taught a few less actives, it was pretty good! Some of them weren't happy to see us lol but we got one of them to commit to come to church! They didn't end up coming but only because their kid was super sick. We also had a lesson with our friend Jack and his family ( he's a unbaptized youth) he reminds me of my little brother and is his age too so it's always super fun to teach him! He's on date to get baptized on the 24th((: 

Saturday: IM BILINGUAL I GUESS... 

We had taught our friend and her neighbor. We show up for our return apt and our friend wasn't there but her neighbor was, so were all his friends! None of them spoke English except for him and so I whipped out the 3 intros I know in spanish, then they thought I spoke spanish and I don't at all I just enough to refer them to the spanish missionaries... they gave us Gatorade tho so that was pretty lit, and they said we could come back with our members who speak Spanish!

Sunday: TEACHING TO THE MULTITUDES! So I got a new class this week on post and I called for my class and then we started headed to our meeting place, I turned around and like half the chapel followed me lol. I ended up solo teaching the restoration to 20 soldiers! It was both the coolest experience of my life and the scariest haha! 

Spiritual sauce🤌

"This is the Lord’s Church. He called us and trusted us even in the weaknesses He knew we had. He knew the trials we would face. By faithful service and through His Atonement, we can come to want what He wants and be what we must be to bless those we serve for Him. As we serve Him long enough and with diligence, we will be changed. We can become ever more like Him." - act in all diligence by Elder Eyring 

Love ya'll go make satan angry!!!🥰✌️