Letter 35

Letter 35

Hey family! &friends!

This week Hermana Thomas and I had an AWESOME WEEK! I am not over reacting, I promise. Let me tell you what happened. First of all, Andrea came to church! And she brought her 8 year old son, Ismael! AND they both LOVED it!!!!!! It was perfect because the bishop’s daughter who is leaving for her mission gave her farewell talk did so perfectly and Andrea really felt the spirit. (To answer your question Mom, no its not like our home ward, everything is all in Spanish in our ward it’s not like half and half. There are definitely more hispanics here so it’s enough to make a full ward). It was PERFECT. She said after that our church was so beautiful and everything. We had another investigator come to church, Omar!!!! I don’t remember if I have written much about him, he is totally a bromista and he has an amazing family. His wife Marta is really sweet and likes to listen to us but we’re not sure if she is as interested. He can’t read very well however he has been reading el Libro de Mormon and trying his best. I said Omar I learned the majority of my Spanish from reading the LdM en Espanol and I learned it quickly from doing that, I know that book is powerful and if you read it you will get better at reading. Not to mention you will come to know that it is true. Omar is someone who has gone to all kinds of churches and went to ours about a year ago. He has never wanted to come back to any of the churches with the exception of OURS. Hmmm. I wonder why? Maybe because its TRUE. So he also came yesterday (without his family) and loved it. He has a friend in our ward, Hermano Jose Garcia, so he has a built in friend/fellowshiper. Basically, he is also golden and Hermana Thomas and I love teaching them! We are having dinner at they’re house Tuesday and then teaching them the Plan of Salvation after, and we expect it to go really well. Oh, by the way, he already said yes to our baptismal invitation. YEAH. He is ready. 

Hermana Thomas and I are also really close to some of the less actives in our ward and have seen them come back to church! It is really exciting. Jesus Gutierrez has come 2 weeks in a row now, and so have the Pintos. SO EXCITING! One of our goals was to get a lot of the less actives coming back to church and we have seen the fruits of that. It makes us really happy.

Something fun that also happened this week. Sister Lewis, President Lewis’ wife, came out with us on Thursday night. First of all, she is SO sweet and spiritual. We went to a lesson with Andrea and it could not have been more perfect. We taught her about having a living day Prophet, about Thomas S. Monson, and how we as a church can receive continual revelation. And Sister Lewis was PERFECT to have with us (we translated her english into Spanish so Andrea could understand it. I am getting pretty good at translating fast!) She knows President Monson, he was the sealer at her son’s wedding (long story), so she testified that she knew he was a prophet. Andrea as usual was very pensive and soaked everything Sister Lewis was saying (and that I was translating). She said she would pray about it. We also invited her to watch General Conference so she could hear what he had to say! Andrea seemed excited about that. Hermana Thomas and I left that lesson so happy and excited because, well, Andrea is just amazing. She’s like Honorio. I absolutely love teaching her. She should be picking a baptismal DATE THIS WEEK! Yahoooooooooo!

One neat experience we had this week…. we were visiting potentials a few days ago and saw 2 Mexican guys sitting outside of their house. I said, okay hermana, le toca a usted, it’s your turn! Hermana Thomas was like no I’m scared!!!! Until this point I have been talking or at least starting the conversation when street contacting, just because it is hard to do at first. But I said okay Hermana you go up and talk to them. She was so scared and was like I hate you! (She was joking but not really). This is the fun part about being a trainer, muahaha. Haha. She was like okay I’m not talking to them. I said okay let’s go to the next house then. I knew she would feel guilty if we didn’t talk to them so she gave me the stink eye and I smiled and said let’s go and we went to talk to them. Well obviously she was perfect and we just started talking to them. And you know what? One of them, Jose, was really touched by our message! He was like wait, so literally it is the same church that Christ established? We were like yeah it is! He asked us about the organization of the church, the prophet, the quorum of the 12, and we even mentioned the 70. He said well yeah that is exactly how it is in the Bible, huh? Jose was a real thinker. Most people don’t get that when we start talking to them. Or ever. Haha. So it was awesome! When we walked away Hna Thomas said, I loved that! I was like, yeah, I knew you would. It was great.

Well those are the basic highlights of this week. It’s been great. I can truly say I love East Sacramento, the ward, the people, the investigators, my companion, Sister Schow….. it’s incredible here. I’m thankful. HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYONE!

con amor, 

Hermana Aud

Letter 34

Date: March 19, 2013
Area: East Sacramento, California
Companion: Hermana/Sister Thompson

 

Letter 34 – Hot off the Press

Well this week we have been working hard and it’s been a good
week. We had an awesome lesson last night with Andrea and actually with
her HUSBAND as well……this is a huge breakthrough! His name is
Rosander. He is a really neat guy, I really like their whole family a
lot. But he had never been interested in learning or talking to
us…..until last night. Yesterday night we went over to Andrea’s house
but she was having a family get together but still invited us in. We met
some of her older kids (they’re in college) and her niece. Once
everyone else left we had a chance to talk to Andrea and Rosander the 4
of us, and it was awesome because Andrea was totally able to testify
about her belief in the Book of Mormon, why she believes it to be true,
how it’s even more precious and clear than the Bible to understand, etc
etc. Hermana Thomas and I were like OH MAN! It was a great feeling. Her
husband says he believes in God and Jesus Christ, but doesn’t really
like other churches, or sees why it was important to go, etc. They
studied with the Jehovah’s Witnesses for a long time but neither of them
joined, he said he didn’t feel anything at their church like he didn’t
feel anything in the Catholic church either. He likes studying ancient
religion, he said. We said…..READ the BOM! That’s ancient religion
right there! Oh man that book is so powerful. He also said he believes
that Christ’s intelligence was some kind of extra terrestrial
spirit….. I was like well that’s some deep doctrine right there so we
wont talk about that but we know these things are true! And so does your
wife! We are going to give him the testaments to watch because we
thought he would like the ancient religion part of it. Who knows if he
will progress or anything BUT it was cool to have Andrea, our
investigator, testify of what she knew to be true. LOVE HER so much! She
just needs to pick a baptismal date! Tonight we are having a noche de
hogar (fhe) with the Rojas-Bustos, a family in the ward that lives
really close. Andrea is excited to go, so hopefully it will go well. Hna
Thomas and I are so excited!
Let’s see….interesting
experiences from this week. We were out Saturday tracting and visiting
potentials, when this guy came up to us holding a bible and asking what
church we were from. At first I thought he was going to try and bash us,
but he was actually really nice! His name is Solon and he if from Peru.
He asked us to come by sometime!!!!!!!!!! Wahooooooooo! How often does
that happen? People ask us to come by? Solon knew a lot about the BOM,
Joseph Smith, and even the angel Moroni…. we were impressed! So we
will definitely be going by! He asked us: why are you called
hermanas/sisters? We said well we call everyone in our church brother
and sister, because we know we are all children of God. He said I was
waiting for you to say that! That’s exactly right. It was so cool! We
will definitely be going by soon because he said he is going on a trip
soon and won’t be back til April. He even told us he about his friends
nearby and that we could go visit them. So. cool.
Well I would
say that pretty much sums up the eventful things for the week….nothing
super significant to tell but it was still a good week. I’m happy that
our area is finally progressing! We have worked hard to find people and
teach them. It’s been about 75 all week which is nice but I’m afraid we
will be in for a HOT summer….like probably as hot as it was when I was
in India, we are talking 110 degrees. Yikes!!!!!! I hope I survive.
Haha. Also, Hermana Thomas is doing so well! She is already an awesome
missionary! She can already teach people and speak with them. We have
tons of fun together too, she’s a super goofball like me so……..
yeah. Haha enough said. Work hard/play hard I would say is our motto.
Pray for us to find more people! Especially people like Andrea! We are
looking for the searchers, always. I am so happy Easter is so soon!
Crazy! We’ll be eating at Hno Pallares house for dinner on Easter.

THE GOSPEL IS TRUE, it’s the most important thing in my life. And if it
weren’t, I wouldn’t be here preaching the gospel. I LOVE IT.

Hope everyone has a great week, love you family! Abs &Elle, I
promise I am writing a letter today! Sorry I have run out of time every
pday but I promise today!!!! Love you all.

con amor,
Hermana Aud.

PS. Grandma thank you so much for the CD! We love it! and Grandpa, for the jellybeans! I love getting your mail.

oh yeah! that’s me and hna taylor and i found ugly sweaters and sister
schow’s house and decided to take a photo. and that’s our district after
dinner at the bishop’s house. fun stuff!

oh yeah also!!!!!!!
We had a great lesson with Andrea about the word of wisdom and tithing
this week! She loved it and said okay, any more commandments I need to
know about? We were like well, the law of chastity but you are already
married so we will talk about that a different lesson. Haha. She loved
it and said she would give up drinking coffee and try to replace it with
something else. SMALL MIRACLES (but really, they are all big miracles.
🙂 )

 

Letter 33

Date: March 11, 2013
Area: East Sacramento, California
Companion: Hermana/Sister

 

​Hola familia y amigos!
     This week was AWESOME and Hermana Thomas and I saw a lot of miracles. Like I predicted. It was incredible. Well I guess I’ll start with the most exciting because that’s what comes to mind. We had a lesson with Andrea, and we were teaching about the Doctrine of Christ. We had this really cool RM girl named Diane with us too (she just got back from Chile a month ago and actually reminds me of Kelly Heath, she even looks and dresses like her! Haha! And has the weird/cool Chilean accent). So it was just a spiritual powerbomb lesson. I told Hna Thomas before the lesson: Okay, you are going to extend the baptismal invite. She was so nervous and was like no way! I’ve only been out for a week! I was like Hna, you can do it. Just ask her to be baptized when the spirit is strong. So we talk about faith, repentance, and then we get to baptism. We found out Andrea had been reading in the book of Mormon and praying and everything, like really GOLDEN. Then almost out of the blue, Hermana Thomas transitioned perfectly into inviting Andrea to be baptized and………… she thought for a second and……… she said YES. We were like oh man! She is going to be baptized! She definitely knows its true! Andrea said she felt like we were true messengers from God and sent to her at the right time in her life. I don’t want to get ahead of myself because she hasn’t set a date yet and wants to learn more, but it was really exciting. This is new missionary power for the win. Some bad things were happening in her life before we got there and she could feel the difference when we started teaching her. Hermana Thomas and I really love Andrea, we have high hopes for her in the next coming weeks. 🙂
     We also had an interesting lesson with our new investigator named Maria from El Salvador. Last week we went by and she answered the door and said, oh Hermanas  so good to see you! We were like, um, hi? Most people don’t greet us like that. She said come back next week and we’ll chat. So we went by on Thursday not knowing what to expect. Maria was happy to see us and as soon as we sat down to talk she said, ok I have to set the record straight, I am a devout Christian and I am not going to join your church, but I am interested in what you have to say and I’ll respect what you have to say. So we were like okay……. not much you can say to that. We started with the Restoration and then started talking about the Book of Mormon. And let me tell you, that was PERFECT. Maria said, well why wouldn’t there be prophets here in ancient america? If God really does love all His children? Why doesn’t everyone accept the BoM as the word of God? I said well if they did, they would be a member of our Church. Haha. So we read the introduction with her and she really liked it. I asked her if we gave her a copy if she would read it, and she said she would. But NOT for spiritual gain or because she wants to join our church (as we all know, the BIBLE is sufficient and that’s all she needs…..), but because she is curious and likes to read. OH. Ok, we said. I think Hermana Thomas and I were both smirking because we new she would read it and if she did she would know it’s true. But we played along and were like okay well just for your curiosity, start from the beginning. We also showed her that there are cross references to the Bible because oh wow she loves the Bible. So that was kind of neat, she wants us to come back again this week so we will see what kind of adventure awaits.
    Also our less active Jesus Gutierrez came to church yesterday! Wahooooooooo! It was so awesome. I swear getting less active people to come back to church is just as exciting as teaching investigators and watching them progress.   
     I have to say I really like training so far! No wonder missionaries get excited about it, it is really fun. It gives you the chance to relive everything like it’s new again, as cheesy as it sounds. Because after a while you really do get used to being a missionary and it feels normal but it’s fun to enjoy the big and small miracles as they come and just love every day. Time is short here! And it goes by fast. I can’t believe I’ll be halfway through next month………………. crazy. I’m so THANKFUL to be here holy cow it’s such a blessing. Oh also something cool I got to translate in church today! From Spanish to English through a mic. Every week missionaries do it and I guess this week was my turn. (The Bishop’s family is white and they don’t speak Spanish so they listen….although their daughter is going to Brazil on her mission this month!) It was kind of hard to go fast without pauses but it was fun as well.
    WELL hope everyone has a great week! Love &miss you all and I pray for you ery day! You better believe it.
con amor,
Hermana Aud

 

Letter 32

Date: March 04, 2013
Area: East Sacramento, California
Companion: Hermana/Sister

 

​Hello family!
     Well well well another pday! I can’t believe how fast they seem to come. This week I have actually been sick all week, sore throat/cold/runny nose/lost my voice for 3 days. BUT! I didn’t really rest because I am TRAINING and I felt good enough to work so that’s what we did. I feel better today but I should probably try and rest later. Speaking of my trainee, she is AWESOME. Her name is Hermana Thomas from Orem. She reminds me a lot of Chloe, so we have fun together and get along really well. Hna Thomas did Spanish immersion for 9 years in school so her Spanish is already really good! She also went to the Dominican Republic and Guatemala for humanitarian trips. We are just working on grammar and stuff like that but she already speaks super well. I am impressed, she is already a really good teacher, and everything. It’s been great so far. I feel weird being a trainer but Hna Thomas makes it easy.  
     As for things that happened this week. Hermana Thomas and I got to teach a recent convert family, the Mora family. Angelica Mora (the mom) got baptized right before I got here. They are AMAZING. I really love their family and you can just feel the spirit there so strongly in their home. Angelica has that light in her face so it is just fun and easy to teach them. Hna Thomas was nervous because it was her first lesson but after we left she said, I didn’t even need to be nervous! I said I told you! And she did a great job too.
     We also had this cool lesson with one of our investigator’s friends, it was kind of random. We went to see Susana our investigator and instead found her friends that go to the Christian church there as well. So we all sat down and started talking and we found out one of her friends had actually been baptized in our church!!!! We were like whoa! (Back when she was in El Salvador where she is from). So we talked a little bit about why she got baptized in another Christian church. So then I started talking about the book of Mormon and she said she would still be interested in reading it, she always thought it was beautiful and had truth in it. So we whipped out a copy of the BOM and gave it to her and committed her to read a chapter (3 Ne. 11). She said she would. It was kind of cool! So that was a fun lesson.       
     Also our investigator Andrea is progressing! We had an awesome lesson with her last night with one of our members, Maria Gomez. Andrea is READY for the gospel, she is a searcher. I am really excited. She told us she wanted to come to church with us Sunday so we will see about that. She is reading in the Book of Mormon and I can really see her faith growing. We are also going to try to teach her husband soon. She said he believes more in “science”, and I was like hahaha well….I do too. There’s nothing wrong with both. I think it’s funny when people think like that. So Andrea is also going to invite her husband to church. She loves having us over and reading/learning about the gospel, so we are happy and excited for her to progress!
   Well I am expecting a week of MIRACLES this week! We have lots of appointments and are busy all the time, I feel like East Sacramento is picking back up finally. I am excited especially to work with Hermana Thompson. Have a great week everyone, love you all and I really do pray for you always. TRUST in the Lord and your weaknesses will be strengths! That is what I have learned here most on the mission. (ETHER 12:27

Letter 31

Date: February 24, 2013
Area: East Sacramento, California
Companion: Hermana/Sister

 

​Hello Fam!
 
   Well this week was a great week and guess what dun dun dun IM TRAINING. Crazy! I was really surprised when I got the call last night actually. Hermana Marroquin is going down to Tracy west to be with Hermana Crane. President told her she is getting that area ready for training. It feels kind of weird jumping from jr companion to trainer but hey I guess that’s what you have to do when there’s lotsa missionaries coming in! I actually think there are only 2 new spanish sisters that are coming in this transfer so there are a few sisters older than me in the mission that could train that aren’t, but I think president is getting them ready to train 2 (possibly?) at the end of this transfer. So we will see! All I know is that I’ll have a new sister for the next 2 transfers here in East Sacramento. I’m excited!
 
    Our investigator Andrea is AMAZING. I don’t remember if I’ve written a lot about her but she is reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and asks us amazing questions during lessons. She has yet to come to church but said she wants to come with us this Sunday. We taught her the plan of Salvation and she LOVED it. She was really pensive, said she liked the idea of the Spirit World where everyone gets to hear the gospel, and it answered a lot of her questions about life. (She goes to a mainstream christian church right now). Andrea said she was always confused about where we go after this life so it was really cool to see her brain really working around it. She said she’d like to read about it in the BOM (2 Ne. 2 and Alma 40) and really pray about it/ponder it before she knows if it’s true. Hermana Marroquin and I said well YEAH that’s exactly what you are supposed to do! It was exciting. She GOT it. So that made me happy.

    We also got to talk to come crazies this week! Hahaha. We actually were knocking doors and this big ol’ white lady answers the door. She says, “Mormons? Are you BLEEEEEEEPING serious?” …….and begins to talk to us. We said, yes, we are serious. We are from the Church of Jesus Christ. But it was a cool conversation! She began by saying, I’m going to tell you why I have a problem with your church (come to find out she was actually knowledgable about a lot of different religions). Male heirerchy, polygamy, blah blah blah. She asked us if we were allowed to go to college, I said yes I am actually almost done with school, I almost finished before my mission. She asks me what I study. Anthropology. So that brought up a conversation (throughout which she begins to swear and cuss like crazy). I said lady, the church has given me so many opprotunities as a woman and a person, I’ve had so many leadership/educational opprotunities and I am an independent woman and thinker, but I just have to tell you I KNOW this is the true church. I think she gained a lot of respect after that. I said I’ve never felt repressed by the church in any way, in fact, I feel impowered and like the gospel has made me such a strong person. Well after that she had respected us and we started talking about the BOM, come to find out, she actually has one and had READ parts of it! We said, will you read it again? She said she would. It was about a 20min conversation total but it was really cool, I felt the ability to testify come to me in the exact moment I needed it. SO COOL. I know it was help from Heavenly Father. I love having conversations like that, even if it’s with someone we can’t teach. At the end she told us her name was Irene. She even said, well, you ladies are lovely, good luck with your missions. SO COOL.
 
   Well that’s about all the excitement for this week, I’m sure I’ll have more with my trainee this week! I’m sad I won’t be companions with Hermana Marroquin, we had so much fun together (pictures to come in the next email!) In all honesty it took me a while to get the swing of things in East Sac but I love it here and I know I’ll see MIRACLES with my trainee. I’m excited!!!!! Love you all have a great week!
con amor,
Hermana Aud

Letter 30

Date: February 18, 2013
Area: East Sacramento, California
Companion: Hermana/Sister

 

​Hello!
    Well per mom’s request I will be sending pictures this week. The first one is of me and Hermana Marroquin with a member of the ward, and the second is of Hermana Marroquin at the Peruvian restaurant we ate at last week. I’ll try to send another email with more pictures after this one. Well for the fun things of the week, I tried my first mexican corn! People here walk around and sell chips with lime &chili (yummmm I love them) and mexican corn. Its steamed and smothered in mayo and then they put queso fresco on it, then they sprinkle chili powder and spray some lime on it. SO DELICIOUS. Holy cow I hope I can still find that stuff after my mission because it was so delicious. Hna Marroquin was nice enough to treat me for my first official corn in East Sacramento so I will have to pay her back somehow.
     Well next week is our transfers because this transfer was cut short due to the change in the MTC schedule. I’m not sure if I’ll stay or not, things are going to get crazy at the end of the transfer. We are actually not sure how many new Hermanas will be coming into the mission because we have heard at least 3 different things. First we thought 4 then we heard 8 and the last thing we heard at our Zone conference from an AP was that 2 will come in at the end of this transfer and then 8 at the end of the following transfer. (eeeek, that means double training!!!) So I am not sure if I will be training or opening up a new area or if next transfer will be completely normal and the next one will be crazy? I don’t know. I will just do whatever I am asked to! We will see.   
    We had an incredible Zone Conference on Thursday, it was really long but good at the same time. Spiritually draining but uplifting at the same time. It’s funny how that happens. President’s theme was “what can we do to personally hasten the work?” So it was all focused around that. It was fun, we had lots of workshops and it was fun to be around a lot of missionaries even if I didn’t know them very well. I always love seeing Sister Lewis especially.
     So our main investigators right now are Yesenia, Maria, and Susana. And we had awesome lessons with them this week! Yesenia’s big problem is that her whole family is Catholic (well duh) and she is scared to change, even though she knows its true already. We feel like we are getting through to her though, her desire to act and come to church is growing and she can really feel the spirit. Yesenia works on Sundays so that’s a problem for church but she is praying to know what to do. She is so sweet and I’ve really grown to love her. We didn’t come by for a few days and she said where have you hermanas been? I missed you! I’m glad someone loves us and wants to listen to us. 🙂 Our investigator Maria read the first 5 chapters of the Book of Mormon!!!! Yahoooooooooo! She said she loved it and thought it was really beautiful. So that made us really excited. We also taught her the Plan of Salvation and Maria could feel the spirit, it was awesome. You can tell she really listens and soaks up what we are saying. And Susana also read the intro!!!!!!! It is so amazing when people actually keep their commitments we leave them. She didn’t fully understand it so we read it together and she understood it. We taught her the restoration finally (we focused on the BOM before we got to L1) and she UNDERSTOOD IT! So cool. Susana’s big question was why is there only one church in Mexico (Catholic) and so many here? Well we answered her  with the restoration and she said that makes sense. She carries the BOM around in her bag to read it. In that lesson we had a cool RM named Heidi with us who served in the Dominican Republic about 6 years ago and she was perfect to come with us. WE have investigators!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This makes me happy, I really love these women we are teaching I have high hopes for them.
      One last thing, we are teaching a few less active members who I just LOVE. The Pinto family, they are just hilarious especially Hna Pinto. She is going back to highschool to get her GED and so we help her and their daughter Leslie (15yrs old) with their homework for service. We are trying to get them to the temple prep class so they can get sealed. They are mostly less active because of work. There is also an amazing man named Jesus Gutierrez who is one of THE most intellectual and thoughtful Hispanic men I have ever met, he loves having us coming over. He is SO GOOFY and a jokster, we are always laughing right before and after the lesson. And sometimes in between. Haha. He has a lot of faith but thinks he doesn’t, he doubts himself a lot. But Hermana Marroquin and I can see plainly that he does. He told us to come knock on his door Sunday morning to come to church but come knock on his window if he doesn’t get up. Hahaha. His house is funny because they have a picture of Jesus (the main one the LDS church uses, just that head portrait of Him) next to a Virgen de Guadalupe because his roommates (crazy people from El Salvador) are Catholic. The joys of Spanish work! I love it.
     Well that’s all for this week, love you all and I pray for you everyday! Stay tuned next week for crazy transfer calls….or not. We will see!
con amor,
Hermana Aud

Letter 29

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Letter 29 –

 Hello!
         Well what to write about this week. Hermana Marroquin and I worked really hard. We had a lot of members that were able to come out to our appointments, which was nice. The only sad thing? We were hardly able to see any of our investigators. So that was discouraging. We worked to have everything all perfectly set up and were like yay! We have investigators! And members to come out with us! But….almost all of our appointments cancelled. So that was…unproductive. However! We did have a really great lesson with a woman named Sylvia Ruiz, a dropped investigator from about a year ago. We brought this awesome recent convert (the best members to come out with you are recent converts, just fyi 🙂 ) named Yenni. She is our age and wants to go on a mission! So we brought Yenni to the lesson with Sylvia and it was awesome, we hardly had to talk at all! That’s how it should be. Yenni taught basically everything, and connected with Sylvia because Yenni is the only member of the church, the rest of her family is Catholic. (As you can probably see, that’s a common theme in Spanish work). Sylvia said she didn’t know why the missionaries stopped coming by, she had actually had a baptismal date before they dropped her. She knows its true!!! She would only need to get married before baptism. (Another common theme……). It was a spiritual lesson and Hermana Marroquin and I felt really good about her.
         I realized the reason Hermana Marroquin and I get along so well is because she reminds me of Sarah Wilson. We are crazy together. When we tract we are usually dying from laughter and have to pull ourselves together before we actually knock on the door. It’s fun. This week we chased ducks around an apartment complex we were tracting.
          We also found a GOLDEN investigator!!!! The only problem is that… she doesn’t live in our area. But it was still really cool! We ate dinner at a member’s house named Vidi (&her husband Sergio, they are awesome). Vidi is a big latina diva for sure but so sincere and sweet. She is a hair stylist so she’s all fashionable and all of that. Her sister in law and mom were there at dinner too, and her sister in law isn’t a member. She’s actually separated from her boyfriend (they’re actually not married, go figure) but Vidi and her sister in law still act like sisters even though she is separated from Vidi’s brother right now. After dinner Vidi’s sister in law was asking us all of these questions about the church and she was asking the GOOD questions, the ones where you are like ok yes you are ready for the gospel. Missionaries in the past tried to teach her but she felt like they were pushy, and she didn’t like that pressure. She had actually gone through the temple tour of the Sacramento temple before it was dedicated and LOVED it. She said she and her boyfriend stood in the sealing room together (she was also pregnant with their child) and looked at them for eternity. She told us that since they split up she cannot get that image of them standing there out of her head! It keeps coming up over and over, every day. She said that she likes a lot of things about our church and they make sense when Vidi and Sergio explain them to her, even though she still likes some of the things from the Catholic church. We gave her our # because she said she would have more questions for us by the end of the week. (She lives in Sacramento so she would go to the Sisters there to be taught). But it was really cool to just sit there and have an amazing discussion with her about the gospel, it reminded me of the kind of people we need to be teaching. She is so ready to hear the gospel, it’s the right time in her life and she’s looking for something. It’s sad we haven’t been seeing as many miracles here in our area but I am determined to find them. There are people here, we just need to FIND them! Find the searchers!!!! And if Vidi’s sister in law gets baptized, Hermana Marroquin would get to go because we taught her. 🙂 That would be a miracle.
           Well hope you all have a great week, love you &pray for all of you everyday. The gospel is REAL, it’s the most real thing we can be a part of.
con amor,
Hermana Aud

PS. Also this week, Hermana Marroquin and I ate at this AMAZING Peruvian restaurant! It was soooo good. It was funny though because it was Mexicans and like 2 Peruvians in the kitchen making the food…hahaha that’s what you get for being in California. We started talking to them (in Spanish obviously) and left them with a pass along card on the table. It was cool! I’m so happy we can speak Spanish and make friends everywhere with the natives! It’s fun. They’re always impressed when white girls can speak Spanish.

 

Letter 28

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Letter 28

Buenos Dias!
           Well, this week was really great. It was. We were out all the time, teaching and finding and PREACHING THE GOSPEL and you know what? We found investigators! And we taught lessons! It was GREAT. We added this really sweet lady named Maria with 2 kids and left her with a Libro de Mormon. She really liked the first lesson so we are going back again! It was the most perfect 1st lesson we’ve ever had, because she was just listening and taking it all it. The spirit was really strong. We think she is around 24 or 25, really young like us. We also taught this lady named Adriana, she just started going to the Christian Church but she can’t remember the name of it (we took that as a good sign 🙂 ) and so she is looking for something, and we felt really good about her. We taught our investigator Yesenia as well (the only one that was here when I got here), and found out she actually has a testimony but is scared to act because her whole family is Catholic! So we are going to help her with that by taking members over who were in that same situation. We were just out all the time contacting potentials, drops, and just plain ol tracking (something we actually didn’t do a whole lot in Tracy). It was more exhausting than actually teaching, that’s for sure, but it was worth it and Hna Marroquin and I feel like we are helping East Sacramento GROW! Which is good, and our numbers were up a lot from last week! Not that numbers are important for numbers sake, but because they represent people and children of God. So we were really happy about that and are going to continue to help East Sac grow back up again. Because our area is HUGE (like 4x the size of Tracy East) so there are definitely enough people here! We just need to find those who are ready. Our transfer motto: “We gon FIND you!” Yes, we are going to find them. I really love East Sacramento just because it is so PRETTY. Just green everywhere and orange trees and palm trees and rolling hills. Tracy was more of flat fields. It was still pretty though.
         Sister Schow quote of the week: (She got up earlier than usual and I said oh you are up early!) She said, “I just get out of bed when the Spirit moves me, and sometimes it moves me to go to the bathroom!” what a goofball.
         Yesterday we had our stake conference which was really neat, it was a pre recorded video from Salt Lake and Elder L. Tom Perry spoke. 2 members of the 70 also spoke and Sister Cook from the YW Presidency. It was nice and the spiritual boost I needed. I really liked what one of the 70 members said, he was talking about how spiritual knowledge and physical/secular knowledge are separate, and sometimes one cannot understand the other. We should never let the ways of the world interfere with our spiritual knowledge, just because the spirit is not an audible voice doesn’t mean its not real. In fact, it’s the most real knowledge we can have. It brought peace to my heart. Whenever in doubt, read the last verse of Alma 34! Because it’s TRUE!!!!!! I know God helps us through our trials.
          Also yesterday was a HUGE superbowl party right outside of Sister Schow’s house. It was crazy. All the way down her street and blocking her driveway. We were like what is this. (Sometimes I cannot believe I am in America……..). It was so crazy we decided to go outside and take pictures during lunch, haha! Because Hna Marroquin is crazy like that. I love it. I don’t even remember if I wrote about her! She is really cool, from Colorado. She was adopted into a family with 22 kids!!!! CRAZINESS! Hna Marroquin is a reformed rebel now on a mission (proof: the atonement is REAL!) We have a lot of fun together. We are also working really hard together! I think the hardest part about working hard on the mission is that sometimes you see success, and sometimes you don’t even though you are always working hard. Sometimes you just don’t have anything to show for it, which is discouraging. But it’s okay, we know that no effort is wasted in the service of the Lord and He still knows we want to bring people into the Gospel. Siempre vale la pena!!!!!!!! It’s always worth it! It really is. There has been no day that has gone by on my mission where I have not thought, I am so happy to be on a mission. Even when it’s hard. It’s a BLESSING to be here.

Love you, I pray for you always, and hope everything is going well at home! I can’t believe its already FEBRUARY and wow I will turn 7months this month! Holy cow time is a flyin!
con amor,
Hermana Aud

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Letter 27

        Audrey is starting up a new area from scratch (Sacramento East) and gearing up to teach newbie Hermanas. I continue to be amazed (and grateful) at how happy she is and how much pure joy she is getting out of this work. Inspiring for Colin to follow in the happy wake of service that she is creating as a missionary! Reposting a pic. of her Mission boundaries so you can see where our girl is.

Hello!!!!
            Well first of all COLIN CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR CALL!!!!!!!!!! Oh wow I would have never guessed you would be going to South Dakota, but then again I would have never guessed California Sacramento Spanish for me, either. Haha. I remember being shocked. But it turned out to be perfect for me and I know that’s where you are supposed to be going, little buddy! You are going to be a great, powerful missionary and you will be surprised and humbled at how The Lord will use you. Holy cow I can’t believe we will both be on missions coming up in May! SO exciting.
         Well this week was my first week in East Sacramento with Hermana Marroquin. It was really sad leaving Tracy, it’s hard to pass off the people you have grown to love so deeply to other missionaries. But I know they’re in the Lord’s hands. Saying goodbye to Sister Smith was sad as well, she almost started crying. I love the Smith family so much! I really love East Sacramento though. There is just one little thing….. we have no investigators. I mean none. It’s really depressing. It was hard this week to go from an area that we were working really hard in and things were happening, finding teaching and baptizing, where we had lots of investigators progressing toward baptism, to this area that has, well, almost nothing. We have been finding all week so that has made me feel better. We have only taught one lesson since I’ve gotten here though, which makes me feel like I’m not really fulfilling my purpose as a missionary. BUT! Hermana Marroquin and I are determined to pick this area back up, because normally East Sac is the leading area in the mission for baptisms. SO I know where it can be, it’s just not there yet and will probably take a few weeks to get back up there. Hna Marroquin and I have been finding and talking to everyone, tracting, visiting potentials and drops… we had the longest weekly planning session of my life to figure out how we are going to save this area. That is how desperate it is! But I know if we work hard we will be able to find those who are searching for the gospel. We set up a lot of appointments for this week so we are hoping to add a lot of them as investigators this week. Pray for this area! I read D&C121 this morning and it made me feel better. After a short trial it will pass, and we will be able to find new people to bring into the gospel. We especially need to save this area because all of the new Hermanas are coming in at the end of this month, and we don’t want to train new missionaries in an area like this. As for Tracy, I expect to go back for at least 3 baptisms! Still no word on if Fluvio is back from Mexico yet, but I think he should be coming back this week and Hna Randall is down there to take care of him.
           East Sacramento is really beautiful! Really green and hilly which makes me happy. We live with an 83 year old lady named Sister Schow. She is AWESOME. Really sharp. Her home feels like Grandma Forsha’s house, so I feel right at home there. She has this huge orange tree in her backyard which is so cool, we pick oranges almost every day. (I forgot to mention…. there are orange trees everywhere! I love it!) We were talking one day and I said Sister Schow, my great grandma is in her 90’s, you will live to be 100 no doubt! And she said, Don’t condemn me to that!!!! Hahahha we all started laughing it was so funny. Or one time I was eating an orange and she said, Sister White, I told you to eat a BIG one, not a medium one! I said, but I only wanted a little one, and she said I didn’t ask what you wanted!!!! I told you to eat a big one! Hahaha she is a goofball.
          Well all in all, even though this week was hard, I am excited to be here. I loved meeting the ward yesterday, I can tell it’s full of amazing people and I’m excited to be with them. I’m grateful to be able to get to know a new area, it’s making me grow as a missionary. Well I love you all have a great week! The Gospel is the most amazing blessing I can’t express the love and gratitude I have for it in my life!!!! Eternally thankful for it. Hna Marroquin and I joke that we go out into the lone and dreary world to work everyday…. but its true. The world it lone and dreary, but with the gospel your life is enriched beyond description. WHAT A BLESSING.

love you family &friends!
con amor,
Hermana Aud

ps. Our church is next to a Jewish temple. It makes me happy. Also there are the craziest churches here! Korean baptist! Chinese Protestant! …..tons of Russians, Black people, and Asians, mostly Korean, Cambodian and Lao…not like Tracy where there were tons of Indians! (I don’t remember if I even mentioned that…they were everywhere! It was so cool I loved it.)
pss. OH ALSO! Thank you grandma and grandpa for your letters, especially for the CD, my companion and I love it! It’s really nice guitar hymn music. We listen to it in the car every day!

Letter 26

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Letter 26

1st Transfer to Sacramento East!
Hello!
        Well first of all, CRAZY THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN THE MISSION! Because, well, we are gearing up for having a ton of new missionaries at the end of next transfer. Everyone has to get to the areas they are going to train in. (All the Spanish Hnas will be either training or opening new areas next transfer…..that’s me! yikes!). SO I am being transferred to East Sacramento and my new companion will be Hermana Maroquin! I am excited!!!!!! It’s a bittersweet feeling leaving Tracy, we’ve seen a lot of success here and I really love the people. I’ll be sad to leave the ward and our investigators and recent converts, Hna Romero and I saw a lot of miracles especially this week. I’ve been feeling like it’s my time to go though, after 3 transfers here. So I have heard that East Sac is AWESOME. And I have already met Hna Maroquin and like her a lot. Something else crazy. Hna Romero is leaving too!!!!!!!! That doesn’t happen often, they almost ALWAYS keep 1 missionary there in the area so they can continue the work. She is going to Stockton with Hna Beale. ALSO! Guess who is coming back. Hna Randall!!!!! Literally we are trading places. Haha. She is shotgunning this area (coming in without a missionary who was here the transfer before) for the second time, and she’s coming with Hna Toro. So I am really excited because I don’t think it will take long to fall in love with a new area. 🙂
           This week Hna Romero and I saw a TON of miracles! Also, it was one of the most hilarious weeks of my life. Funny things just happen here. First, we visited this woman named Liboria. Let me describe her to you: She lives in a trailer park. She is old. She is about 400lbs. (No joke). She has only 2 front teeth. She prays to the Virgen de Guadalupe every day and says her rosary prayers. She has 3 dogs that yap yap yap like crazy when we come in. Liboria always screams: “callate! CALLATE!” which means be quiet or shut up! (It’s better in Spanish). And holds one of the tiny dogs against her belly holding it’s mouth shut and tries to hit the other one with her cane. Its HILARIOUS. Straight out of a movie. That’s the theme of the mission, things from a movie. Haha. Anyway, we had an incredible lesson with her. We were actually going in thinking it would be a drop lesson (where you tell them you can’t come by anymore if theyre not keeping commitments) and asked her if she had prayed to know if what we shared last time was true. She hadn’t. We shared a few scriptures, and then Hna Romero asked some amazing questions and found out….she actually doesn’t have faith God will answer her prayer. SO I said a prayer first and then she said one. It was the first time Liboria prayed from her heart. It was sincere and powerful, although rocky at first. Then……….. at the end, she started crying. She said………..amen….and then tears were coming down her face and she hid her face in her sweater. It was powerful because the Spirit touched her so strongly. She always told us, I already told you I’m not going to your church! But, she felt it. We were silent for a good 5 minutes. Liboria knew it was true. All of her dogs were silent as we left, it was calm with the Spirit. We’re not sure what’s going to happen now that we are both leaving, but it was really incredible. Hna Romero and I walked out of there thinking, that lesson should have been on The District 3!!!!!! Haha.

         Also this week: Jose Salvatierra is still progressing! It’s incredible to watch. We taught him the plan of Salvation this week which was really powerful. He said he really understood the Terrestrial kingdom, he knows he needs to act on the faith he has to make it to the Celestial. We had a great lesson with Fidel, who we started teaching again. I LOVE him so much, he is an old fool and we are always joking around. We kind of had a breakthrough lesson with him where he understood things better. Just L1 the Restoration using cups so it was easier. He is praying seriously about being baptized February 9th! PRAY for him!!!!!! He can do it!!!!!!!! We also had a cool miracle, we were teaching his wife Adelina because she is less active (separate lesson) and her son David, who is actually a member too, was there at the end. David is less active and actually struggling with drug addictions, so I gave Adelina the Addiction Recovery Program info for him. Anyway he comes in at the end of the lesson and we asked her if she wanted to pray, and David actually asked us if HE could pray! He usually just leaves when we come over even though we tried teaching him before. It was a simple and sincere prayer. We were like…. did that just happen? This druggie just prayed to end our lesson? There is STILL light in him! So we were really excited about that. OH! Honorio bought a suit!!!!!!!! Everyone at church didn’t recognize him! He usually wears jeans and a sweater, which I thought was cute in an old man way. But WOW I have a picture which I’ll either send later today or next week, he looked like a different person. Oh Honorio, I love him so much.
           Well time to go but I still have some email time left, I might hop on later and send some pictures. I’m almost done packing so we will see! COLIN I can’t believe you didn’t get your call yet!!!!! I’m anxious I thought it would come this week and I would find out today. Oh well I’ll find out next Monday. Are you stoked!? …You should be. Ok love you all have a great week!

con amor,
Hermana Aud