What did one skunk say to the other?

Hola familia/amigos

To answer the question what did one skunk say to the other... I have no idea I was just trying to think of a clever way to bring up skunks, because this place is crawling with them!! Mostly at night we smell them, but when we do, it is bad, especially mixed with the stinky hops haha. but anyways, it was an AWESOME WEEK!!

First of all, I'm not sure if all the missionaries in the world got to do this, but on friday, we got to watch a sneak preview of the new movie that the church is putting out, Meet the Mormons! It is SO GOOD. I don't know if you have heard anything about it, but it is a documentary of 6 mormon families and it is pretty much a super long mormon message! I just loved how the focus was that members of the church of all colors, backgrounds, and places are just normal people trying to follow Christ. It comes out in theaters on October 10th, so you should go see it if you get the chance!

Also, on Friday we had zone specialized training with President Ware. They taught us the new way that the mission is going to do weekly planning aka week-long planning.. haha (that's funny because the new way takes a lot longer than it used to) but it is going to be so awesome! So what we do now is plan every hour of every day for the whole week, and I can already see how its going to change the work for the better. It is really cool, because everything is so much more detailed and we are so much more in tune with what we are doing as missionaries and it is really connecting us to our purpose. I am excited to see how this week goes with our first week implementing the plans!

I kind of overcame a pretty big obstacle recently.. being a new missionary is not too easy with the learning a new language, adjusting to missionary life, adjusting to being with a companion for 24/7, and trying to figure out what kind of person/missionary you really are! but something that I have recently started to recognize (if only it would have come sooner! haha) is that the reason it is so hard at first is because satan wants us fail. He knows how much good missionaries do and he knows that we are here because we have a desire to bring others unto Christ and thats exactly what he doesn't want... everyone is subject to the temptations of satan and the power he has to make you feel like you're nothing, but I feel like he works extra hard on new missionaries. As I apply the atonement I have felt the spirit so much stronger in my daily life, and I am so much happier which makes it harder for satan to bring me down on myself! Don't get me wrong, we all have rough days, but it is so much easier with Christ!

Yeah, so friday was a jam packed day haha because friday night we did a church tour with all of the branch missionaries! We were so pumped to have about 8 investigators there. Each companionship took on a different role and had a different principle that we were teaching. Ours was the Gospel of Jesus Christ (my fav). The spirit was so strong in the church that night, and it was cool to all work together to make the tour happen. We are going to try and do another one in a couple of weeks and hopefully get more members/investigators to come!
It was hilarious because we were all sitting in the primary room after with our branch mission leader, discussing what we could have done differently, and what not, and we had milk and cookies for the investigators after the tour, so we were eating the leftovers and all of a sudden one of the elders chairs broke and his milk went ALL over his companion hahahaha his companion's face was priceless and everyone just started busting up! I wish so bad I had it on video, I could win an award or something because it was hilarious.

We had a miracle this week! We were knocking the other day and we knocked into this house where the guy answered and asked us what church we were from, we told him and he said "you're kidding." We weren't sure if that was a good "you're kidding" or a bad one haha but he stepped outside and told us that he was a member of the church and that he hasn't gone in a really long time... but just the other day he was wondering how he could get in contact with the church here, since he had recently moved from Texas. He told us that he has been going through a really hard time and that he remembered how much the church felt like a family and that's all he really needs right now. We were able to get his information and pass it along to the English missionaries. It was such a cool experience because it's a huge testimony of how aware the Lord is of us at all times. This guy was in need and the Lord sent us his way without us even realizing it!

WOMENS CONFERENCE WAS THE BEST. Ok was that not one of the best meetings ever?? The speakers were great, the music was great, I loved the video, and the spirit was so strong. (I am pretty sure I saw the Murdock girls when the showed the congregation!) It seemed like the overall theme was getting yourself to the temple to receive those blessings and to in turn, be able to bless the lives of those around you.
A few of my favorite quotes were:
"covenants connect us personally to God"
"every mighty change of heart matters to the Lord"
"simple consistent acts carry eternal significance"
"cherish the light-posts He has given us"
"It is our fear, doubt, and sin that act as umbrellas from the blessings that are raining upon us"
It was so good and I can't wait for conference this weekend!! We have transfer calls this week so I will let you know next week what happens!

I hope you all have a super radical week and enjoy conference this weekend!! I LOVE YOU ALL!!

con mucho amor
hermana wortley

(us trying to be cool on some train tracks this morning haha)

"We are looking for the ones He has already found"

Hola!

It has been a pretty good week! On Saturday morning we got to go to a family history fair!! Family history is THE COOLEST. So Hermana Mohun and i got to go to the fair to help the Mitchell's (the people we live with) with the classes that they were teaching because they were doing it for the spanish members. I helped some of the members type in their information into family search and it was so fun to be able to learn about their history! I love the members of the branch. They also had some crazy cool displays of old pictures and things. There are some awesome new apps that the church has come out with.. not that I can use them haha.. but all you folks back home can! They are the Family Search app and there is another one called Memories. Seriously if those apps don't get you excited about family history, I am not sure what will.

We had a really cool lesson with a family this week (I can't remember their last name.. probably Juarez or something haha) the parents are Hugo and Erica and they have two kids, Gissella and Oliver. It was actually super awesome when we first talked with them we had just knocked into them and it was about 8:45 pm so we were just about done for the night, but we knocked and Hugo answered. We asked him if he was attending a church right now and he said no we're not, but we would like to go to your church if we can. OF COURSE YOU CAN!!! haha so yeah, that was during the week and we went back saturday and had a lesson with them and they were asking really good questions and when we asked Hugo to pray at the end, he was kind of nervous, but his wife was like, "I'll do it!" Walking out of their house was like Christmas and we were so happy because we can really see that the Lord has been preparing them! They didn't end up coming to church, but I have high hopes for them! (knock on wood)

I have been studying in D&C this past week or so and it is full of some really great things! I have noticed that there are A LOT of things repeated throughout the chapters which means they are that much more important, because if the Lord says something once we need to listen, but if he says things more than once, we better take what He is saying and apply it!!

There is a phrase that I have noticed quite a bunch that is Christ speaking saying that He is the light in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth not. I never really thought about that before, that the Light of Christ is so powerful that the darkness can't even comprehend it... that when we have the light of Christ (which we all have) Satan won't be able to understand the goodness and righteous things we do. The more fully we are seeking to have the light of Christ in our lives, the easier it will be to confuse Satan and to overcome his temptations.

There is a really good talk that Hermana Mohun has by Hank Smith called "Break up with the World" and it really focuses on what we can do to forget the worldly things and follow the Savior. It is also really hilarious haha One of the scriptures he focuses on in the talk is D&C 33:6, I had the thought come into my mind that as missionaries, we are looking for the one's He has already found. Thank you for the prayers, I love you all!!!

Have a super rad week :)
(also, I just realized how much I say awesome and super.. so sorry about that haha)

con much amor
hermana wortley

I LOVE TO SEE THE TEMPLE

Buenas Tardes!

Ok let me just start off by saying that I LOVE THE TEMPLE!!!!! I got to go today for the first time since May and it was the best day ever!! I really didn't realize how blessed I was to live one second away from the temple in Bountiful and could go any time... the quote 'you don't realize what you've got til its gone' is SO TRUE. but yeah, anyways, my companion was probably so sick of me this week because every 5 minutes I would say, guess what? we are going to the temple in two days or we are going to the temple tomorrow! haha but now its over, but it was a pretty awesome day! (and we got to go to costa vida!!!!!!!)

I especially needed to go to the temple because I had been having kind of a rough week and there is nothing closer to home than the temple (home as in heaven and home as in bountiful), the temple just puts everything into perspective! So yeah, if you get a chance to go to the temple this week DO IT, you won't regret it!!

BIG NEWS.. we had exchanges this past week with the sister training leaders and I took over the area! It was such an awesome experience because Sister Gamble (the sister that came to Moxee with me) doesn't speak any spanish so it really forced me to use my spanish! I taught a lesson all by myself in spanish with sister Gamble just smiling next to me hahaha and I was able to contact a couple of referrals! It was super cold, but yeah, I still need a lot of help with my spanish!

Anyways, the theme for our exchange was "Doing the Lords work His way," it really helped me to put things into perspective. Sometimes we just get so caught up in trying to get the lesson across or share the message, but is that really what the Lord wants? Well I am not speaking for Him, but I think His way is a little different... and that when we are really, genuinely and truly seeking to help the people we teach to follow Christ, that's all He wants.

I'll be honest, the mission is hard, I mean I was expecting it to be hard, but sometimes the rejection and the non[progressing investigators make things really discouraging... but something that has really been helping me is the Atonement. The Atonement of Jesus Christ, Our Savior, Our Redeemer.... I know that I exaggerate a lot but it is no exaggeration that Christ LITERALLY knows each and every one of us perfectly. PERFECTLY. Think about that for a second... every sad or discouraging or hard thing we have and ever will go through, Christ has gone through it, but hey not just that, He has also gone through every happy and exciting thing too! I just have 4 words... the Atonement is Incredible.

Anyways.. this past week we had a service day that was super fun! We got to clean up a creepy graveyard! and you're never going to believe who showed up... the may or Union Gap! so exciting... and it was funny because he was a bit of a larger man with sort of a fro and he showed up in basketball shorts with a tie dye shirt and flip flops... if that doesn't describe Union Gap I'm not sure what would. so classy.

We have someone on date!!! (aka going to be baptized) her name is Elena and she is such a sweetheart! She is on date for the 4th of October but she hasn't come to church yet so we may have to push it back.. but I love teaching her! I will give you more details about her next week if she comes to church and what not, but yeah, she is legit!

We also got a couple of three new investigators! One of which is Alejandra and she is adorable. It was pretty crazy how we first met her... we were going through the branch roster trying to find people in our area that we could visit and we came across someone that neither of us had met so we stopped by and turns out, he doesn't live there anymore... but Alejandra does! She is 18 and stopped going to school so she could take care of her siblings and nieces so her mom and sister could work. We have only met with her twice and I already lover her so much! Coincidence that we randomly went to her house? I think not!

I love you all so much and I am so grateful for all of you!! Have an awesome week!!

con mucho amor
hermana wortley

pic #1 THE TEMPLE
pic #2 me randomly holding a lizard that was on some dudes shoulder

HOLA

Hello to my favorite peeps!

I hope you're all doing awesome! This week was full of some really awesome things and some awkward and also some funny!

I think I mentioned last week that we were going to be teaching a guy named Omar and HE IS AWESOME. His wife is a little hesitant because she is a major Catholic but Omar is so open to learning more. We had two lessons with him this past week and we had members with us both times which was so great because members are the best. Our first lesson we watched finding faith in Christ with him and talked about how he can develop faith because that has been something he had been struggling with. At the end of the video I looked over at him and he was smiling and he just said "thank you!" I know that he felt the spirit and that the video finding faith in Christ really does help people to find their faith because it is such a good reminder about all that Christ has done for us and is still doing for us every day as we make those steps of repentance and change in our lives. He has prayed at the end of all of our lessons with him and his prayers are so sincere. And there is nothing more humbling than when an investigator prays for you.

We also had lessons with Lupe who is so sweet and he is just amazed by missionaries and that we choose to leave our lives back home to share the gospel. He has SO MUCH potential but his mom is super Christian so we are hoping she doesn't get to him and that we can keep teaching him.

A super awesome miracle that happened this week was that we got some referrals from the english sisters!!!! which is a miracle because we almost never get referrals because of the language barrier haha but yeah we got some potential investigators to try by!

This is especially for trevor because you have been in this situation before... the other night we were eating with some members and the food was so good but they gave us SO MUCH and with all the tortillas we eat with the food I thought I was going to blow up hahaha I remembered the story that trevor told me about being so full you could feel the food in your throat and I was laughing so hard (inside of course, I wasn't just randomly laughing my head off at dinner). but yeah that was fun ha ha!

Also something else hilarious that happened was when we were over at Cindy's house, the less active that we read with every week, I noticed a bee on my companions skirt so I said "don't freak out, but you have a bee on you" and what did she do... freak out! haha I don't know how it happened but the bee ended up in her hair and then Cindy thought it would be a good idea to grab the fly swatter and hit Hermana Mohun in the head at least 15 times to get rid of the bee... meanwhile I am laughing my head off on the couch becaue as you can imagine it was pretty funny to watcher her swat the bee away from hermana Mohun's head! and then we got back to reading and Cindy says to Hermana Mohun, "you better watch out, that bee is coming for you" hahahaha SO FUNNY!

I have been cruising through the Book of Mormon and I have been reading in 3rd Nephi these past couple of days and a couple verses that stood out to me were in 3 Nephi 19:25, 30. This was when Jesus was visiting the people and he had just taught them to pray and Christ was also praying. In these verses it says that Christ smiles because the people are praying. I just loved the thought of Christ smiling every time we pray.
I know it sounds so "primary" but the gospel really is that simple! Christ rejoices when we are doing good things, when we are following the teachings and principles of the gospel and when we are obeying the commandments, and when we pray! Christ has done SO MUCH for us and suffered SO MUCH for us, don't you just want to give something back? Or do something that can make Him smile? Well it can be as simple as offering a prayer of gratitude!

At zone meeting this week, we got a bunch of new mission rules like we can no longer wear shirts with logos on p-day and a couple other rules, but obedience brings blessings and for whatever reason, President Ware has received revelation for these new rules and guidelines! So we are going to embrace them!

As for my companion, I am still working on figuring her out... haha one second we are pals and all is dandy and the next she is a completely different person! So yeah... I have been trying to help her to not takes things too personally, because that's one thing that I think has been holding us back. Some people are rude and aren't going to accept the gospel, but if we let that affect our attitude, then how are we going to help those people that are going to accept the gospel!

Well I love you all and I am grateful to be here. The gospel and the doctrine of Christ are so essential and so incredible and I am learning every day little by little how to apply them! I hope you have a great week!

con mucho amor
hermana wortley

I wish I could come up with clever titles for my emails......

Wowzers!

So since we usually email at the library and it is labor day (library is closed), we had to go to the stake center to email... but so did all of the other missionaries in our zone so yeah I am now emailing!! haha

This week was pretty CRAZY.. no actually it was just your average week haha. I will start with my favorite family that we are teaching.. The Gonzales family! I am pretty sure i have mentioned them before, they are the part member family that we randomly found who has two daughters who are old enough to be baptized! But we can only meet with them about once a week because they are super busy but THEY ARE SO CUTE, seriously I die every time we go over there because I love them so much. Our biggest issue with them right now is that they haven't come to church and Maria, the mom, hasn't asked Angel, the dad, if the girls can be baptized... but we are meeting with them tomorrow so we will see how that's going! They are really awesome though.

We also had a super awesome lesson with a guy named Omar. He is probably about 30 and is married with an adorable little baby. We taught him the restoration and he was really interested and said that he would pray about the things we taught him. We are also going to visit him tomorrow!

Now we had a bunch... I mean a bunch of doors slammed in our faces this week and came in contact with quite a few catholics hahaha yeah EVERY HISPANIC IS CATHOLIC. But amongst the difficulties and hard parts about this week, we did have a miracle!! We were knocking in a trailer park and hermana mohun was on the phone and a guy walked past us so I just said hi how are you? and he smiled and kept walking... failed attempt at talking to him haha. But yeah so we kept walking and then all of the sudden we hear "hey!" we turn around and guess who it was... that guy! he said he had a feeling that he needed to talk to us and that it was a feeling from God!

WOWWOWOWOW. yeah super cool. Well he was actually on his way to a bible study class that he invited us to.. unfortunately we couldn't go haha but he said that we could come by and share more about the message that we share as missionaries!! Yay for people who are in tune with the spirit!

My favorite  part of this week was the Doctrine of Christ training that we had on friday!! It was for all the missionaries who came to the field on July 15th so I got to see my MTC buddies and President and Sister Ware!

One of the focuses in this training was 2 Nephi 31. We read the chapter verse by verse and picked out different things that stood out to us. The scriptures are THE BEST! I feel like I have been getting so much more out of them since being on my mission.

President Ware always has some awesome quotes and a couple of my favorites were, "we are only as powerful as our motive, and Christ is our motive." He also talked about desires and how "we are on a direct course to whatever our desire is." and along with the doctrine of Christ he said that "if we fail to use the doctrine of Christ, we will be dragging burdens that could be made light through Christ."

Something I REALLY noticed in the training and something I REALLY needed to hear/ need to work on is the focus of who I can become, rather than who I am right now. Because it is so easy to get down on myself for not being able to speak great spanish or adjusting to missionary life or feeling bad for being frustrated with my companion, but those are all things happening right now that are in the end (hopefully) going to push me in the right direction of becoming a better missionary/person.

Sorry I don't have any funny stories this week, I promise I haven't turned into a boring person!! I DO MY BEST TO BE FUNNY!!!!!! Anyways I hope you all had a great Labor day and Labor day weekend! You are all the best and I love you!!

your favorite missionary in the washington kennewick mission....

hermana Wortley
(sorry no pictures:( )