Merry Christmas

We had a really good week!

On Monday we had a great FHE with a family in the ward. The dad
is less active and it has been good working with the whole family. We
taught them the importance of focusing on and finding Christ during
Christmas. It was really fun.

J. Is doing really well and getting ready for her baptism. She was in
church on Sunday and had a good time. She has even
started handing out pass along cards to her friends and has been
inviting her friends to church.

A. just left for Mexico on vacation so we will have to continue to
teach her when she gets back.

A. and E. Are doing really well, they have come to church many times
and they love going to primary. They really like church and their
grandma who is a member has been bringing them.

Christmas was really fun here! On Christmas Eve we had dinner with a
family in the ward. Then on Christmas day we did a gift exchange with
the roommates. Then we went to the visitors center and watched Inside
Out. After that we had a Christmas dinner and I was able to Skype home
and talk to my family! That night we sang at the visitors center.

football at the apartment

Carrie Cooke from BYU Hawaii

Our shifts at the visitor center were crazy this week. One night 7,000
people came by. It has been really busy but has been going really
well.

Working at the Visitor's Center

Christmas Lights

Shepard in Zone Nativity Scene

Thanks for all the support! Happy New Year!

Hola Everyone!

I hope that everybody is having a good week and that things are going well!

This was a good week for us, we were able to see some cool miracles in
the mission.

Working at the Visitor's Center

J. Is doing well. Unfortunately we have not been able to see her as
much but this week we met with her and she came to church! She is
doing well and she also came to the ward Christmas party! She is ready
for her baptism date on January 10.

Costco sells hats

J needed to go to Costco, so we tagged along and taught a lesson in the food court!

A. Is doing well. We had contact with her this week, she is switching
jobs right now and has been really busy but we have been talking with
her and hope to meet with her soon.

E. And A. are two boys that we have been meeting with. They are doing
really well. We taught E's mom this week and his dad came to the ward
Christmas party. Their grandmother is an active member and she has
been taking them to church, they really enjoy the meetings and were
excited when we gave them the children's Book of Mormon comic
books.

Our ward Christmas party was great! We had 6 investigators come and it
went really well! They all had a great time and enjoyed it a lot. It
was really cool to be able to celebrate Christmas and learn about the
Savior as a ward and having our investigators there with us.

This week we stopped by a less active family that we are working with.
They are doing really well, it is a mom and dad with a ten year old
daughter. The day that we got there they had just got a brand new
puppy. It was so cute. We got to play with the puppy for a little
and then they fed us lunch--we had four member meals that day-- and
then we had a really cool lesson with them about Christmas and how to
focus more on the Savior this Christmas. It was good.

Puppy!

We are getting all ready for Christmas here! We are doing a gift
exchange with our roommates and our apartment closet was full of old
decorations for Christmas so we have been putting all of those up!

Things have been going great here thanks for all the support!!!

This week has been really good and very busy!

We worked three shifts at the visitor center this week. The visitor
center is starting to get really crowded and there is a lot of work to do.
We were able to teach a few lessons and meet some people that were
interested in the church. We actually met and taught one person in our
area at the visitors center and we then went and taught her in her
home this week. It was a pretty good lesson, but we are still finding
out if she is interested.

We taught our investigator V. this week and he is doing well. We met
him contacting on the street a few weeks ago and he has been meeting
with us at a members home and has come to church. We had a really good
lesson with him about the book of mormon and we think that it went
pretty well. We are excited to see him continue to progress in the
gospel.

We met with our investigator C. and her family this week. They are
doing really well and we are excited for them, we had a cute christmas
lesson with them and then we helped them rake leaves in their
backyard.

We had the opportunity to meet with a lot of less active members this
week which was really good. We have been able to see some good
progress with a lot of them snd we are excited for them.

Things have been going pretty great here in Maryland! We got call-outs
last night and we will be staying in Land-Over Hills.
We are excited to keep working in this area and to see
the progress our investigators are making.

This week has been great for a lot of our member and less active
lessons we have been showing the video," A Savior is born", recently
released by the church. It is a great video, and the members have
really enjoyed watching it!
https://www.mormon.org/christmas

Thanks for everything!
Hasta Luego

We were pretty busy this week but it was all good.

Our investigators are doing well - we taught J. all of the lessons and
now are going over everything to get her prepared for January
10th. We are so excited for her and her family.

Our other investigator C. is doing well. We just finished teaching her
all of the lessons. The only problem is that she is not married, so
she cant be baptized quite yet. Her children have been baptized and
she comes to church every week. Her youngest was actually just
baptized this last Sunday and it was really cute.

We are also teaching R. She is the sister of a less active and has
been listening in on our dinner appointments. She is starting to seem
more interested in learning and we have another appointment with her
for this coming week.

We also had the opportunity to meet with some less active members this
week. We were able to meet with W. who hasn't been met with in a
while. His family stopped going to church and we stopped by to meet
with his mom but he answered the door and let us in. He also wanted
to hear our message. He expressed a desire to go back to church and we
have another appointment with him this week.

Lots of good food lately, I had to eat a whole fish, two different times this week!

tortillas!

This week my companion and I started our Temple Visitor Center shifts. We are
working there three nights a week. The first night we worked was Diplomat
Night and the other nights were normal.

my roomies!

my zone rented out an ice rink for P-Day

my comp's first time ice skating!

Thanks for the support!
ADIOS

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a good week and a happy thanksgiving! Things have
been going well here.

This week we met with A. again and she is doing really well. We taught
her about the Book of Mormon & prayer and she agreed to be baptized
on January 17. We are so excited to keep working with her and watching
her progress. She started reading the Book of Mormon and she liked it
and she enjoys our lessons. The only problem is she works Sundays
during church, but she is also looking for a new job so hopefully she
will find one where she can attend church!

Kids in the Ward

J. Is doing really well. We have taught her all the lessons and we are
just waiting for her marriage. She is progressing really well but her
husband doesn't want her to rush into anything. Her baptism date is
for the 10th of January and we are excited to get things ready for
that! Her two sons like learning about the gospel as well and we have
enjoyed teaching them as well.

J's Brother gave us soccer jerseys

We found two new investigators this week. They are the nephews of a
less active member, and they came to church this Sunday and they want
to learn more so we have started to teach them.

This Sunday we had 6 investigators come to church, we are really
excited about the progress that they are making.

We also had a cool opportunity this week to take two new members
to the mission "recent convert temple baptism trip". It was an awesome
experience and the new members had a great time. I could tell they
felt the spirit really strong and it was a special experience.

Recent converts at the Temple

Thanksgiving was great. We were not allowed to proselyte, instead
 we were encouraged to build relationships with members
and do stuff like that. That morning we
went to a feeding the homeless service project that the church set up.
Then we went over to J.'s house and helped her and her family cook.
Her mom and two brothers are members and it was really fun. We played
some games and ate dinner with them. After that we had
another Thanksgiving dinner with a less active family and it was really
awesome!

Feeding the Homeless on Thanksgiving

DC Pride hats

Thanks for everything!!!!!!!!!
ADIOS!

This week has been good and I am liking my new area a lot!

We met with our progressing investigator J. a couple times this week.
She is doing well, but we changed her baptism date to January 10,
because she decided not to get married until January. She is doing
well and is liking church and our lessons.

Our recent convert, I. is doing well. We met with her this week and we
are starting to get things ready to take her to the recent convert
baptism temple trip that is happening later this month. We are really
excited for her to do that.

We also had contact with G. this week. He is the son of the woman we
made carnitas with last week. We aren't sure if he is interested or
not, so we gave him a book of Mormon and invited him to read it.

This week we had a lot of success visiting less active members. Some
have not had contact with missionaries for a long time, but we were
able to visit them this week. A lot of them are going to try and come
back to church and we are really excited for them.

"heart attack" for a less active member

Driving in Maryland/ DC area is really crazy, but it has been good. We
have a device in our car called Tiwi, that will record when we drive
above the speed limit, so far it has only marked me down once....

our hot rod

We have really sweet members in this area who like to feed us a lot.
The meals are great and it helps us get to know and connect with them.
Some of our investigators like to feed us as well - but this
week I had to eat cow tongue, again!

Things have been great here! Thanks for all the support!!!
Adios!

Hey Everybody!

We had transfers this week and I am now in Landover Hills which
includes a few other cities as well. . I love my new area and I love
my new companion! Its great here but its pretty different than Gaithersburg.

My New Companion!

New Apartment

For our investigators this week we met with J. She is doing well and
is ready to be baptized, but she has to get married first. She is
doing really well and we are excited for her!

We went to go meet with two investigators who are brothers this week
but they weren't home. We ended up talking to their mom for a little
bit and ended up helping her make carnitas and pupusas.

One cool experience that my companion and I had this week is we were
driving looking for a place to go tracting and she suddenly stopped
and said that we needed to start here. So we stopped and got out of the
car and about a minute later as we were walking and ran into a man from
El Salvador. We found out that he was baptized into the church in El
Salvador a few years ago and stopped coming when he moved here. He
told us he was ready to come back to the church, but he didn't drive
and didn't know where the church was. We were able to find him a ride
from a member who lives nearby.

Since I'm done with training I am also allowed to start driving, and
driving in Landover Hills is super crazy!

I had some really good food this week! But I also had to eat tongue.........

On Sunday we went to the Visitor Center event, "Why I Believe", and J.
came with us! It was also really cool because I was able to see my
friend Carrie from college! It was such a good day.

J

Carrie from BYU Hawaii

My new ward is great! I like it a lot, its pretty crazy because the
children in the ward have behavior problems. Apparently a few weeks
ago one pulled the fire alarm in fast and testimony meeting. This
week they were screaming things into the intercom. Its pretty funny,
all of the sacrament meeting talks were about helping children be
reverent haha.

P-Day Sightseeing

Botanical Gardens

who walks by a pile of leaves and doesn't jump in?

Thanks for all the support!!
Hasta Luego!

We started this week with C.'s baptism. Its was a really cool
experience. A lot of family members and friends came to
support her. It was a really nice experience and we are so excited for
her and her family. She was confirmed in church this last Sunday.

C's Baptism with Her Family

C's Baptism Day

J. Is doing really well. We have been getting to see her pretty
consistently and she is progressing well. She likes to learn and her
family is very supportive of her. Hopefully she will be able to come
to church as soon as her baby gets a little older.

We have been working with a really sweet part member family from
Mexico for a few months. The parents are members and the two kids are
not, but the father does not want his children to be baptized or go to
church, but the kids and the mom want us to come over to teach them.
We have started getting the two boys involved with scouts and they are
really excited to start scouting.

We were able to find a really cool family from Honduras this week to
teach. We got a referral on our area book, that said the family wanted
some bibles and we dropped some by. It turns out one of the children
in the family wanted to learn more about the bible and more about
religion and figured out how to order one off of mormon.org. They were
really sweet and wanted us to come back to teach them more.

This week my companion had to go to all the different zones in the
missions and we got to see a lot of different areas of the mission. I
also got to go on some fun exchanges this week.

This week was also my companion's birthday and some members took us out
to eat and me and my companion went to go get ice cream!

This week we had our call-outs and I will be leaving. I'm the only one
in my apartment going.  Wednesday I will find out where my new area is!!!

Winner-Winner Candy Dinner - P-Day Zone Activity

P-Day with the Zone

Hasta luego!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

This week has been good and fun!

Fall in DC

We started off meeting with our investigator J. Who has a newborn
baby. The baby is doing well and we had a really good talk with her
about baptism and living the gospel. She loved it and really likes the
church and what we have been teaching. Our progress is slow because
she wont be able to go to church for a while with the baby but she
likes to learn and is really open to what we have to teach.

We met with C. this week and she is being baptized tonight (Oct
2nd). Everything went well with her interview and we finished
teaching her the last lesson this week. Her husband is less active and
her parents in law whom she lives with are active in the church and
the whole family is really excited for her.

We taught E. and her family again this week. They are from El Salvador
and teaching them is always a crazy adventure. The mom doesn't really
pay attention and keeps getting on her phone and zoning out and the
three kids are really crazy and are running around breaking and
spilling things during the lesson, and to add to it there are four
dogs that run around like crazy. I also had to teach that
lesson by myself because I was on exchanges and my companion didn't
speak Spanish - hahah.

I went on three exchanges this week and all of them were with English-speaking
sisters, but they were pretty fun and the sisters I was with were
really sweet!

My Friend from Spain

For Halloween our ward had a trunk or treat on Friday. It was really
fun but me and my companion ran out of candy in the first twenty
minutes. C. Was there with her family and her baby, it was really cool
to see her there and they had a fun time.

Trunk or Treat

Halloween was really fun, we had to be in our apartment at 5. We went
and got some pizza with the roommates and then
carved pumpkins and cooked pumpkin seeds.

Halloween - Home by 5pm!

Today we are spending the morning in DC with the other Sisters from the mission
  and then we have to get things ready for the baptism!

Kennedy Center Tour

Famous Cupcakes

Baptism Trip

Dinner at Dennys

P-Day with the Sisters from the Mission

Thanks for all the support!!!