Wenatchee bound!!

Hi everyone!

It was so good seeing you on Christmas!! Sorry I was so awkward but I just didn't know what to say because it was just great seeing all of your beautiful faces!! I LOVE YOU. 

Christmas was definitely one to remember! After we skyped we ate dinner with the Fourniers and then Hermana bailey and I played the piano for them and we headed over to the Moreno's house because they invited us over for posole. Hermana Moreno makes THE best posole! We were SO FULL after haha. And then we went and visited less actives and brought them cookies. The Mitchells are the best, they gave us both some stationary and stamps for Christmas! They know missionaries needs too well haha.

Well as we predicted on Christmas... I am getting transferred!! I leave wednesday for Wenatchee (not sure if I spelled that right haha) but anyways I am so excited! My companion is going to be hermana Pulido and I have heard great things about her! Also pretty awesome news, in an effort to get the mission ready for the mission split, they are creating 2 all spanish zones, one here in yakima and... one in wenatchee!! It is going to be so awesome! The work is hastening so fast here. We got the call saturday morning because hermana bailey is going to be training next transfer, but it didn't really sink in that I am leaving until church yesterday. MY HEART BROKE saying goodbye to the members of the branch. I have grown to love this place and these people and it is going to be really weird leaving! But as much as I hate to go I am really excited to be somewhere new! And I am already planning on coming back to visit the branch after my mission haha. 

As sad as church was saying goodbye.... we had 5 investigators at church!!!! It was amazing! The branch is on fire right now (not literally). 4 of the 5 were that family that I was telling you about on Christmas. The Vaca family (yes, that means cow in spanish haha). I LOVE THIS FAMILY. you probably think I say that about everyone, which I pretty much do love everyone, but I am serious... I was meant to teach this family. I seriously feel like they were part of the reason I came to this area even if it was just to start the teaching process with them because I am leaving. We haven't even been teaching them that long, but I am dreading saying goodbye! Alma, the mom, was with me when I was saying goodbye to one of the sisters in the branch after church and she was like "you're not going to be here next sunday?" can you say dagger to the heart? haha but I am so excited for hermana bailey and her greenie to continue teaching them because they have so much in store for them!! We also found out that they are really good friends with some recent converts in the branch, and one of their daughters is friends with some of the young women! They are going to do so well in the branch.

JESUS IS THE BEST. He brought 2 friends to church and he got the priesthood yesterday! Hermana bailey and I can't even get over how awesome he is. 

I am so grateful for the time I have had here in moxee. Other than bountiful and lake powell, I am convinced there is no place better!! I have grown so much here and developed relationships with people that i'll have forever. I'm sure Wenatchee will be pretty great too!! 

I LOVE YOU ALL and I hope you have an awesome week!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Les Quiero

hermana j. wort

#1 dinner with the moreno's on christmas

#2 saying bye to the Ibarra's :(

!FELIZ NAVIDAD!

HEY.

It was probably one of the most stressful weeks yet... BUT drum roll please.. JESUS GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!! It was such a good day and we couldn't be more excited for him! Everything went well this week and we were able to finish up the lessons and find out that he doesn't actually have 2 wives which was great news haha. 

On wednesday he had his interview with our district leader and Elder Wright (our district leader) couldn't get over how awesome and prepared Jesus was to be baptized, and the best part about it was that he was prepared before we even started teaching him. 

So saturday came around and we headed over to Jesus' house so he could follow us to the church (because the baptism was at the stake center not our building) and he was waiting for us! And he also had a friend with him who he had invited to his baptism. So we get to the church and he gets dressed in the jumpsuit along with the other two people who were getting baptized from the branch and then it was time! 

It was such a cool experience to watch someone who is so willing to follow Christ make that next step, the step that ultimately will lead to his undeniable happiness. Our branch mission leader Manuel baptized him and helped him tie the tie that hermana bailey and I got for him :) Ok the baptism was great, but it was Jesus' testimony that he gave after that made it that much better. He gave the most simple sweet testimony about how grateful he is to be in this new path in life and that we were able to teach him about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I guess 10th times the charm haha :) 

I am so grateful for the opportunity that we had to teach Jesus and to help him find the truth. My testimony has been strengthened by his example of faith and perseverance. THE CHURCH IS SO TRUE. 

After the baptism it was the branch christmas party and Jesus came with his friend! It was so cool because there were probably 20 investigators there from all the missionaries. Christmas really is the time that people recognize Christ in their lives, if only it were December all year round!! 

We had a Christmas conference on thursday with our zone and the Yakima zone with a bunch of musical numbers and a slideshow of pictures that missionaries has sent in! It was great! We also did a big service project at the Salvation army with our zone getting Christmas boxes ready for the food bank that they have. We packed about 600 boxes with different canned and boxed food and what not! 

Well this week is Christmas!! Its going to be an awesome week. I love you all and I hope you have a great week! See you thursday :)

con mucho amor

hermana wortley

#1 Us with Jesus and Manuel before the baptism

#2 the baptism crew :)

fui al dentista

hola :)

It was a very interesting week!! It seemed like it was just one weird thing after another happening haha. Hermana Bailey and I are convinced that we have the weirdest luck out of all the missionaries probably in the whole world. Anyways so as some of you know I formerly had a permanent bottom retainer... yes you read that right.. formerly! hahaha So i'm not sure what happened but I think it may have been because of the 500 million apples that I have eaten since I have been here but the good ol retainer came loose. So I called sister ware to get some information about a dentist in our area and luckily there is a member dentist here in yakima! So we went to the dentist and they decided to just take out my permanent retainer rather than just fix it haha so I now have a retainer for the bottom that I wear at night! But it was free so that was pretty cool haha. Hermana bailey was laughing at me the whole time because I was freaking out (I was jokingly freaking out haha don't worry I wasn't really scared). 

We also had exchanges this week! It was super awesome. I went to Yakima with Sister Toomer and Hermana Bailey stayed here in Moxee. It was pretty cool because we were able to teach someone on exchanges that I taught on exchanges back in July when I first got here, and he is getting ready to be baptized! Sister Toomer is so great and it was good to change things up a bit because I kind of feel like i've been here my whole mission... oh wait I have hahaha! But really I love this place and I wouldn't mind if I spent another 7 months here :)

We got an email from President Ware today.... kind of big news but they aren't announcing it until wednesdayso don't tell anyone I told you... They are splitting our mission! They are making a Yakima mission and then the Kennewick mission! The official split happens July 1st. We won't find out if we will be changing missions until it gets closer but that's pretty crazy huh?!

We aren't 100% sure yet if Jesus is going to be baptized this week... we still have some things to figure out about his marriages haha. He is so great though! We finally found him a large print spanish book of mormon because apparently they don't make them anymore... so it has been a LONG process trying to find one but we did!! And he came to church this week :) We also got some miracle referrals this week because we never get referrals!! It was when I was in yakima so I haven't met them yet, but we are super excited to start teaching them!! 

So our mission has been doing an 80 day book of mormon challenge and we are supposed to finish on Christmas but I finished a little bit early. I LOVE THE BOOK OF MORMON. It gets better every time I read it and I learn new things each time! One of the scriptures that really stood out to me this past week was Moroni 8:16, "perfect love casteth out all fear." As we recognize the perfect love that Christ has for each and every one of us, there will be nothing to be afraid of. His grace is infinite and His love is perfect. As we rapidly approach Christmas, I pray that we can each remember our savior more in our hearts and #sharethegift that we have! 

HAVE A FANTASTIC WEEK! I love you all :)

Les Quiero mucho

hermana wortley

(sorry I forgot my camera cord so no pictures :/ )

on cloud 9... literally we have been in a cloud for 2 days

HI

wowzers has it been a crazy day! well first off I am emailing today because today was temple pday!! the best kind of pday there is :) It started off normal, we woke up got ready and drove over to the members house who was going to drive us to the temple... but it was SO FOGGY. you couldn't see anything! We got to her house and then we headed off for the temple, both hermana bailey and I noticed that we got on the freeway headed the wrong direction but we just thought that she was taking a back way to get there or something so neither of us said anything... that was our first mistake! 

So that would be the first advice I have for this email is NEVER DOUBT promptings haha. Anyways we got going and we were really headed the wrong direction and it was about a half hour and hermana bailey, since she was in the front seat, was like "are we supposed to be going north?" and sister goos, the sister that was driving, was like "no we are going south..." AHH yeah so we pulled over and figured out where we were which was not where we wanted to be haha. So we jumped on the freeway heading the right direction but by this time we were running super late! and it didn't help that it was as if we were driving in a cloud! Anyways we call our district leader and told him that we were going to be getting there right when the session started and to see if maybe they would hold the session for us, he said that they could only wait 5 minutes. So we drove as quickly and safely as possible hahaha but to our disappointment we ran in the temple just as they closed the doors for the session! It was probably the saddest 1 minute ever, but all of the temple workers were so awesome and trying to help us out and they ended up getting us in for a later session! 

I LOVE THE TEMPLE :) wow after having such a crazy morning there was nothing that could have been better than soaking up the spirit of the temple. I feel like every time I go to the temple something new sticks out to me and today I just gained such a greater appreciation for our Savior Jesus Christ. He was and is at all times ready to do the will of the Father. He never questioned or doubted the Plan, He simply did what Heavenly Father needed him to do. He is the perfect example of obedience and love. Everything he did was out of love for the Father, and out of Love for us. As every day, I am grateful for my Savior. After the session we even had time to go to costa vida! haha so it has been a crazy but good day!

Not a lot of new things happened this week... Jesus is still on track for his baptism on the 20th! He is so great. We have taught him all of the lessons except the laws and ordinances which we are going to start teaching tonight. Our tithing and fasting lesson with him was so great. He totally understands tithing but it was hilarious when we told him that we go two meals without food on the first sunday of the month. He was so surprised! haha and when we committed him to fasting on sunday he said yes but he might have to bring a bag of tortillas to eat after church! hahahaha #onlymexicans #spanishmissionaryprobs 

The only thing that would be keeping him from getting baptized on the 20th is that there is a slight chance he has 2 wives..... hahaha its kind of a long story but he was married in mexico over 40 years ago and hasn't seen any of his 6 children since then (sad right??) and then he got married when he was in the states.. so yeah we are going to try and figure out that situation tonight! 

Also he couldn't come to church because someone stole his car! Poor guy!! He was praying the other night at the end of our lesson and I just had an overwhelming feeling that wow, he is a child of God. That probably sounds kind of weird but being a missionary has opened my eyes so much to the fact that we are all children of God, that no matter who we are, what our circumstances are, or what choices we are making or have made HEAVENLY FATHER LOVES US. Sure we all go through different things, no one is perfect, but when we take a minute and remember that we are all children of God things just kind of work out even if it wasn't the way you planned.

Did you watch the Christmas devotional on sunday?? IT WAS SO GOOD. I loved the focus on the importance of the christmas story and Christ's family. Just everything about it was great! 

Something that has been super cool these past couple of weeks is the sharing of the He is the Gift video! We try to watch it with as many people as possible. The spirit that it brings is incredible. We went over to a member of the branch's house last night to pick up some food that she made us and we watched it with her and then her son in law came over who isn't a member and doesnt speak spanish but she wanted to watch it with him too so we watched it with him in english! If you haven't watched it, do it. And if you have watched it, watch it again! haha 

Thank you so much for all you do. I am so beyond blessed to have such incredible friends and family! :) 

Les quiero muchisimo

hermana wortley

we almost got a puppy!!

HI everyone!!

This week went by really fast but thanksgiving was good! So turns out that the mitchells (the people we live with) signed up to feed us on thanksgiving but they signed up on a copy of the dinner calendar so someone else signed up to feed us too! But we didn't find out that the other people signed up until the day before so we couldn't tell them that we already had another dinner and we couldn't tell the mitchells that someone else signed up to feed us because they we excited to have us eat with them...it was crazy but we pulled off having two thanksgiving dinners one right after another! hahahaha! Dinner at the mitchells was crazy because they are the coolest nicest people ever and they just pretty much invited everyone in their ward and the terrace heights ward who didn't have anywhere to go for thanksgiving over to their house! There ended up being about 36 people! The Fourniers were our second thanksgiving dinner and they were so awesome and hilarious! They also told us that they signed up to have us over on Christmas too so we will be skyping from their house! Thanksgiving was not your usual day but it was still good!

Good news about Jesus. He is back on track for his baptism!! He is working towards December 20th! We were super excited because we taught him the Word of Wisdom on saturday and we were kind of worried beforehand that it was going to be a problem, but he is so ready to live it and make changes in his life. He told us that he quit smoking in 1995 and only occasionally drinks a beer but committed to stop. HE IS PROGRESSING. He also came to church again yesterday :)

the puppy... well hermana bailey and I were walking, and visiting some people and while we were on our way, we ran into or should I say she ran into us... the most adorable puppy (not as cute as boomer of course). But it was about 16 degrees outside and she was freezing!! Ah we were freaking out because she was shaking and so hermana bailey took off her sweater and wrapped it around the puppy while I held her and we tried to find the owner! We knocked all the doors in the direction from where the puppy came but no one answered their door! We had to leave because we were about to head to dinner and we couldn't take the puppy because its a rule that we can't have pets... I know weird right?? haha but our hearts broke because we had to leave her behind but at least we warmed her up right? We laughed and said that its a blessing and a curse to have big hearts hahahahaha i'm serious.

Ah the work is so good here. We have found a bunch of really cool potentials and someone told me that my spanish is good which is the best thing ever. I CAN'T BELIEVE ITS DECEMBER!! Happy month of remembering the birth of Christ!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (because he was actually born in April haha) #HEISTHEGIFT 

sorry this email is so random but it was a pretty random week!! I LOVE YOU ALL :)

Con mucho amor

hermana wortley

pic#1 THE PUPPY

pic#2 thanksgiving with the Fourniers!