my weekly email that you have all been dying for :)

HELLO!!!!!!!!!

Wow this week went by so fast! Ah I feel like I was barely emailed! Well first off we had exchanges this week with our Sister Training Leaders Sister Bledsoe and Hermana Garcia. They are so great. I went to wenatchee with Sis. Bledsoe and we had some pretty random crazy things happen haha. First off we were knocking and a fairly large mexican dude answered the door and he wasn't wearing a shirt so you can only imagine our surprise when he answered haha and we start telling him that we are missionaries that share a message about Jesus Christ and we asked him his name and he says my name is Jesus (but he didn't say it in the hispanic way so it was hilarious) and then he went on to ask us if we always wear skirts and that its a sin if we don't wear skirts and its also a sin to eat shrimp so that was interesting hahaha. 

The next thing was that we were looking for a referral and we knocked into a house and the guy that answered was definitely not wearing clothes... luckily he stood behind the door so we didn't see much haha but geeze you would be surprised what some people think is acceptable to answer the door in #missionarylife but all in all it was a really great exchange and I learned a ton from sister bledsoe she is such a great missionary.

We put a family on date this week! Amy and Rafael and then they have two kids that are old enough to be baptized. They are working towards the 21st of Februrary. They are really cool but we still have a lot to teach them and also, we aren't sure if they are married which could potentially be a problem! But the are awesome!! 

We are also teaching another amazing family who came to church yesterday!! They were a referral from one of our members and they live in Orondo which is on the far end of our area about 45 minutes from where we live in East Wenatchee so it takes a bunch of miles to get there, so since it is the last week of the month we are saving our miles so we can go visit them!! Ah they are great. They also fed us super delicious enchiladas after our lesson with them on saturday. The Lord is blessing us SO MUCH.

So it was super funny last sunday during the spanish ward they announced that the missionaries were having a ward activity on friday... but none of us knew that we were planning it! haha so we had a quick meeting after church to plan it and of course since hermana pulido and I are the only sisters we got put in charge of the activity and calling people to bring food and oh yeah we brought the decorations too haha. So we ended up getting a pinata and then went to the dollar store and got some decorations. The party turned out pretty fun despite the fact that only about 10 people came hahaha. 

Great things are happening here and I know I say it every week but I am SO BLESSED TO BE HERE. I love you all so much and am praying for you always :)

Les Quiero

Hermana wortley

Super awkward picture but the post office here looks like Gringots in harry potter so yeah pretty sweet haha

a week of milagros

HELLO

Wow this week was a week of miracles. Seriously the Lord has been so merciful to hermana Pulido and I this week. We are working crazy hard to get this branch started up and looking in every place we can think to find new investigators! 

The first miracle happened on Friday.. It all started during personal study when I was reading my scriptures and decided to grab my preach my gospel but when I went to grab it, a preparing to enter the temple pamphlet fell out of no where. I didn't even know I had one of those on my desk haha but I figured since it fell out I should read it because who knows it could have been a prompting to read it or something. 

WELL... we headed to a lesson that night and were planning to teach about the restoration/book of mormon when she asked if we had any pictures of the temple... just so happened that we had one and were able to teach all about the temple and her and her less active husband were so excited! We invited her to be baptized and for her husband to prepare to perform the baptism. Ah it was amazing. 

The night just kept getting better because we headed to a less active to visit her but she wasn't there.. but her non member husband was! We talked to him a little bit on the porch and then his wife pulled up. They invited us in but he told us right off that he has a church and that he wasn't interested in changing religions.... it was also kind of crazy because their 3 year old was jumping all over me hahaha. She is so adorable but it's kind of hard to do anything when you have a 3 year old in your face so I kind of took charge of entertaining her while hermana pulido started talking to Ramon. She said that either our message is false or 100% true and the only way that we can find out is by reading in the book of mormon. We used the introduction to the book of mormon and he said that when he knew it was true that he would be baptized. I don't think I explained that very well but it was amazing to see that change of heart that Ramon had. 

Miracle number 3... we walked in a few minutes late to the spanish ward because we were coming from our other ward, we sat down in sunday school and hermana pulido nudges me and says look its Concepcion. In my head I was thinking no way haha but sure enough a lady that we had only taught one time like 3 weeks ago was sitting in sunday school!! Turns out her cousin is a member and he invited her, but better yet she became instant best friends with a less active that we recently got to come back to church and we have a lesson set up this week with Concepcion and Isabel (the less active) is going to come with us! SO COOL. 

Also random fun fact, I am I guess you could say the go to chorister in the spanish ward haha I am not even musical! Oh and hermana pulido and I have to speak in both of our wards this coming sunday!

We also had interviews with President Ward this week. It was funny because everyone's interviews were at least 30 minutes, some were even longer, and I managed to get out in less than 10 minutes... not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing haha... Oh and dad, President Ware says hi! 

Currently something I am trying to overcome is my gringo accent. yes believe it or not I sound like a gringo. We were in our spanish study with our district and we went around the room and read a paragraph so our district leader who is from Mexico could help us.... and what he said to me was, your pronunciation is great but you sound 100% gringa. I was like what do you expect I am a gringa!! hahaha So who knows how I am going to fix that. We do have the frozen soundtrack in spanish which is helping haha. 

You know what's fun? Tracting in the snow. I am serious! It really is fun until it starts freeze raining then that's when things get a little tricky because its 30 degrees but its raining but there is snow everywhere that turns into ice or slush or who knows what haha. good times. 

I am so grateful to be here. The mission is great, the people here are great, overall things are great. I hope you all have a super rad week!! LOVE YOU ALL :)

con amor

hermana wortley

(this was after 3 hours of tracting in the snow/freeze rain, but on the plus side its really pretty here :) )

church church church church

Well it was a good week here in Wenatchee!

It was actually kind of a crazy week! Well I will start off with the sad news... Our investigators Evonne and Libne, who were waiting for marriage papers so they could get married and baptized, broke up. I won't go into all the drama but they aren't together anymore :( the good news though is that when the break up happened, Evonne left and went to a hotel and all she could do was read the book of mormon all night! She is amazing!! She still really wants to be baptized but she has been up in Chelan at her brothers so we haven't been able to meet with her for a few days. Her faith is incredible.

The next kind of crazy experience actually happened yesterday! Since we are working on building up a new spanish group we are going to two wards (about 8 hours of church including our correlation and ward council meetings...no big deal), the english ward that is going to be the support for the spanish group and the spanish ward. It was my first time going to an english ward since I have been on my mission so that was super weird haha but it was good! 

Anyways the stake president came up to hermana pulido and I during church and said that he had someone that he wanted us to visit, but they didn't speak any spanish, but that he wanted us to visit them because the lady's (Christina) husband had just barely died in a work accident. Well we have english sisters in our area but we figured that since it was a referral directly from the stake president that we should probably go visit her. So we did. Let me tell you, it was one of the most spiritual experiences I have had on my mission so far. We knocked and she let us right in. We didn't know quite what to say at first but we let the spirit do the talking. We testified to her that she would see her husband again and that more than anything her Heavenly Father loves her and is aware of her situation. It was as if someone had opened a can of the spirit and it exploded in that house. We asked her if there was anything that we could do or if we could have members of the church bring them dinners and she just broke down crying and said that anything would be appreciated at this point. I don't even know how to explain it... and I probably didn't very well, but it was so inspired that President Hunsaker asked us to go and visit her. We wanted nothing more than to help her and her family, to give them this message of hope in a time of darkness in their lives. That is what missionary work is all about, bringing light into the lives of Heavenly Fathers children. 

We had a zone training meeting this week and it was so awesome! It was our first meeting as an all spanish zone! I gave a training on consecration and we talked a lot about the work in this area! Apparently the day before transfers President Ware called President Hunsaker (the stake president) and said tell me what you need in your area and we will send it to you. It was really humbling when they told us because wow.. the Lord and President Ware trust us enough to be in the hastening of the work in this area! 

Amazing things are happening here and there is so much potential!! We have a couple of awesome less active families that we are working with that will hopefully start coming to the new spanish group and also some great potential investigators! We are super busy, but the busier the better right?! I feel so blessed to be here at this time!

Fun facts of the week:

we had two dinners yesterday because we found out that we had a dinner in another ward after we made plans with another member... we almost exploded. 

our district leader is from mexico so he is going to start a spanish class for us once a week to help us become native boooooyaaa

I met the wife of the family we live with but then they went out of town again so I still haven't met the husband haha

We drive one of the most expensive cars in the mission (a 2014 VW Jetta)

Thank you for all you do for me I AM SO BLESSED!!!! I love you all and hope you have an awesome week... and i'm not just saying that seriously have a great week.

con mucho amor

hermana wortley 

some extra pictures.

hermana wortley sent a few extra pictures before she left moxee,

and here they are...

Pic #1 this is me with Cindy.... hahaha remember the story with the bee??

Pic #2 saying bye to hermana bailey

2015 say whaaaattttt?

Hi there Peeps!

This was kind of a crazy week with transfers and all that fun stuff, but I feel like I am going to really like this area! The mission is weird because you go to a place not knowing anyone and after time you grow to love them and they become part of your family, whether its investigators, members or just random people that you meet... and then once you get to that point you have to leave and start all over and it kind of feels like you are starting the mission all over again! So this week has been kind of interesting haha! 

The first couple of days here were kind of crazy because new years eve was the day of transfers and since its kind of a long drive, I didn't get up to wenatcee until about 3:30ish and then we had dinner around 4 with an investigator because we had to be in at 6 due to the holiday. And we didn't have a car because it was in the shop so we had to hitch a ride from some other sisters in the area so we could make it home in time! But I had bought a really awkward cat puzzle the last week at wal mart that we did new years eve... probably the most eventful new years I have ever had! haha 

On thursday we tried to go pick up our car but since it was a holiday the car place wasn't open... but we were able to go to service! We go to an assisted living place a couple times a week and visit with/play games with the residents. So I was playing cards with a group of elderly folks and decided I would try and teach them the game "idiot" because its the best game ever... but being that I am a missionary I didn't think I should tell them that the game was called idiot so I just told them that it was just a game that I had learned a while back, and it was HILARIOUS because they were all so confused and all of them hated the game because it had too many rules and one lady no joke... even said that some "idiot" must have made up this game hahahaha I was dying. Probably one of the funniest moments on my mission so far. 

The rest of the day could be summed up in one word.. cold. We had to walk because we didn't have a car and it was about 14 degrees Brrr.... But we do have some pretty sweet investigators! 

Friday was weekly planning but hermana Pulido (my companion.. she is great by the way) wasn't feeling great. We kept planning though, but after dinner she was REALLY not feeling good so we found a thermometer and turns out she had a 102.7 fever. yikes. So we go back home and call the elders to come and give her a blessing. She still had a fever the next morning and had pretty bad aches and chills so I made her go back to bed to try and sleep it off while I called Sister Ware to see if there was a clinic or something we could go to. 

Turns out the only clinic near us is closed on saturdays so we went back home and I had her get in bed and drink a bunch of fluids. 

Meanwhile I decided to try and do some phone contacting since I couldn't leave my companion haha. I called all of the potentials and former investigators in the phone. It was a MILAGRO day because so many people were willing to set up appointments with us! Phone contacting is super awkward because seriously who wants to talk to random church people on the phone and give them your address... I think I would be pretty skeptical about that haha. We have about 6 or 7 appointment set up from the people I called though so that was pretty sweet! Luckily Hermana pulido was feeling good enough after dinner to go out and try by some people. Don't worry she is doing a ton better! It must have just been one of those one day flu kind of things. It was great to practice my nursing skills though hahaha.

OK... it is GORGEOUS here. I feel like I am in another country or something like Germany or Canada (actually i'm not too far from canada) because the mountains are SO tall and covered in snow! I am sorry I didn't take any pictures yet, but I will this week! And it is super cool because the Columbia river runs right through town, that is actually the divider for our area with another set of missionaries. 

It was kind of a culture shock coming from my last area haha. We are assigned to a spanish ward, but the stake president a few years back called a bunch of english members that speak spanish to attend the ward to help build it up, but apparently there has been some drama in the ward so its really sad but there are only about 12 active Hispanic members and about 15 or so English members that attend! Kind of crazy! But the stake president and president ware have high expectations for this area and so that is part of the reason they created an all spanish zone up here. 

They are trying to start a spanish branch in each building in the area rather than the ward, so that is one of the things we are going to be doing this transfer! We are going to work on starting up a branch at the building in our area! We have a lot of work to do, but I am so excited to be a part of this hastening of the work here in Wenatchee! Also I feel like it was really inspired that I am here with hermana pulido... she came out one transfer after me and has had some super crazy things happen to her, like her trainer got sent home and all kinds of other stuff. She has had a super hard few transfers... I am not sure how yet, but I feel like I can really help her!

I love this gospel with all my heart and am so grateful for the time I have to be sharing His gospel with the people here. I hope you have an awesome week!! I LOVE YOU ALL

Les Quiero

hermana wortley

pic#1 me with the mitchells before I left moxee! THEY ARE THE BEST

pic#2 The Vaca familia