Group email 6/13/2017

This was a great week!

Prez family

We taught the Perez family the restoration and they are all still

excited for baptism. We all have felt the spirit so strong again that

Monday, even though it was hard to communicate because our translator

blew his ear drums from shooting guns outside minutes before we

began. The spirit took over and even though the communication was

difficult the feelings from the holy ghost really taught and we could

all feel it. From our tough week last week me and my companion thought

maybe it was the adversary scaring us from this particular family.  He's

working on them a lot as well.  They have a lot of family and friends

who drop by on the weekends so they can't come to church. They

promised to do better for the weekends and they don't think they will

be here at all this week.  We were able to also schedule an appointment

with them for this Friday and check up on the during the week.  We

stopped by on Thursday to give them more Spanish bibles and Book of

Mormon and we found out that they have been reading every night as a

family. It was so great to hear them say that! Family scripture study

and prayer. They have been coming closer as a family when they do

that. Then Friday we were told they canceled, and started to

worry...Sunday happened and they weren't at church. Evidently there

house it chaotic because a couple of their friends with kids

moved in and so did an older daughter and her kid. Some who might have

problems with other faiths beside Catholicism. We're not giving up on

them.  We pray for them everyday. Our Fellowshippers/translators will

be gone for 2 weeks so that will be hard too! But we have the spirit

as a teacher that can still touch their hearts...NOT GIVING UP ON

THEM...NEVER!!!

On Wednesday we got to go to Dallas to have a Sisters Conference, we

talked about how we can become better covenant keeping women and the

great power and miracles we can do when we keep our covenants with our

Heavenly Father, are happy (choose to be happy), and exactly obedient.

We are promised that if we have regular exercise, eat healthy regular

meals, get more sleep, have meaningful prayers, personal scripture

study, we will be strengthened and be able feel those blessing lift us

when we go through those hard times and face trials.

We will receive the physical and spiritual strength we need to cope

with our lives. So we as a mission will be doing a 5K at the end of

summer and have certain workouts and healthy eating/sleeping we need

to do. I'm excited...except for the food part...I like ice cream and

Dallas has a lots of donut shops. Not to mention the way our members

feed us... We were taught how to say no more and avoid needing to get

seconds...the thing is I always want 4ths or 5ths so this will be

tough. I love my mission President and his wife and all the sisters

from my mission.  They're all absolutely welcoming and nice! We all spent

the day together and then after a missionary couple took us out to

dinner to get steak burgers and ice cream....already off on a bad

start with healthier eating thing...oops...

MTC photos I didn't have the chance to upload:

Email to mom 6/13/2017

Hey mom! Yes, I got my package, I honestly can't wait for 4th of July which is a Monday so we can probably have during the day and use some of the fun stuff you sent me. Thank you! So exciting about Mckenzie and Jeff, Jeff is awesome! I didn't know Mckenzie worked at sonic. That sucks for her, I would hate that. I Heard my friend Kassandra at Idaho pizza is engaged. So exciting! Jessica also told me about Kobe and trek, that is so exciting. I wish I was teaching him. He seems like he has a lot of potential.

And yes, I have known about Kristy and Cole for about two weeks, they're Facebook official evidently now. Cole appeared in her life after I left so I don't know him and he hasn't emailed me yet to introduce himself to me...

 

Life's good, were still teaching the Perez family, which btw, I absolutely love the Mexican culture out here, they're all so sweet and and welcoming and some of them will just talk to me in Spanish as if I can understand them and they talk and talk. It's so funny! Some of the white people I think otherwise hahaha but I'm getting more used to them, not all are bad. 

I honestly like it so much here.  There's a Mexican restaurant here that has the yummiest tortillas in the world. Probably weird to hear me say that since I've always gagged on them! I still miss steak and BBQs though, we haven't really had much of that here.  I can usually eat a lot but not three meals a day so by the end of the day I regretted it and was feeling gross oops hahaha I won't get fat...hahaha the average wait gain for my mission is 20 pounds though hahaha.  (Refer to group email.)

MTC pictures I never got to upload before.

 

 

 

 

Email to mom 6/6/2017

So I haven't been able to buy a bike yet, I didn't have missionary money the first few weeks because I was waiting on my card for ever, FINALLY got. So I have been having to use my own money to live. They said that I will still get all my money back and can just replace it with my bike money. And here in my area it's impossible to ride bike. The roads are horrible and will kill the bike really quick and most our work isn't around us. Our area is so big, it would be like all of Nampa, all of Caldwell, and all of Middleton. It's that big and were the only missionaries in it. So were like the Spanish and English even though technically were only English so we have to have a lot of translating fellow shippers for our investigators.

We cant do foot either...everything is too far so we have to do member rides which I always feel bad asking people to drive us around.

No one lives around us! We do phone calls and other things, luckily the car just started having major problems yesterday so it hasn't been too long without it, it's more the fact we don't know what to do when we might not have it later on if it's not fixed today! We have people coming down today to come look at it. But we don't know if it will be fixed right then or if they have to tow it somewhere to get it fixed hahaha.

There is this girl in my ward whose great great great great(don't remember how many greats) great grandfather is also Ricks. We going to get out her genealogy to figure out where I fall from along with her, do you know the line we come from...like the names that lead up to Ricks?

(Mom's answer: Thomas E Ricks and Elizabeth Jane Shupe, then their son is John Ricks, Then was my great grandpa Archie Leroy Ricks then grandma (Elva) Ricks Jenks, then my mom Marcia Anderson then me then you!  That means he's your great-great-great-great grandfather.) 

Group email 6/6/2017

Crazy week

This week has been tough, with lots of good and bad.

Prez Family

We had a lesson with the Perez family and again the spirit was so

strong. This family is super special. We asked them about church and

there thoughts. They said that they could feel the spirit and the

peacefulness. Then we asked them if they have still been praying as a

family. Marcelino (the dad) said that the past missionaries from 10

years ago never taught them about family prayer and he was so happy we

taught him because when he's doing this with his family time seems to

slow down and he see's that happiness and love as a family and all

there problems seem to go away during those brief moments. It was so

amazing hearing him say that.

Opposition

Through out our whole week we have has opposition. After we got out of

the Perez lesson we had a  incident with a cop, we were so happy and

excited but could only feel like that for about 30 seconds because

next thing we know we're getting pulled over...we were so confused

because we weren't being reckless and were going the speed limit. The

cop came and said we didn't have our lights on (it was night time).

That was scary because as missionaries we have to always have them on,

even in the day so we had no clue how they turned off. Then we

realized the missionaries before us lost our vehicle registration  and

insurance, luckily we got off with a warning and the missionaries in

charge of the vehicles for the mission are working on it.

We had some other incidents happen where it seems like the opposition

is trying to scare us from the work. But we also feel Heavenly Father

love and protection. This is what me and my companion are now calling

a spiritual tornado. We could feel war of good and evil around, Satan

playing with us and heavenly fathers protection. I have never ever

experienced that feeling before and it was exhausting but I know that

as we do what is right we will be okay and will hopefully soon see the

blessings that come out of it.

My companion has been struggling with it worse then I have but as of

now we don't have a car to work with (which we have to have because

we're in the country and its impossible to do the work on bikes)

because we're now having car problems. But we are not giving up and

have been trying our best. If anything we have been strengthened and

were doing good.

 

Zoo

So last Monday as a zone went to the zoo, that was a good day. I love

meeting more people out here in the mish. I got to excited when I saw

the giraffes. And got pet all the llamas. And when the lion totes was

eying me down, that was scary actually hahaha. So exciting, I have now

seen more African animals on my mission then my sister, Neicia who

served in Africa saw on her mission.

I won't let my district/zone take awkward pictures anymore so we had

fun taking some at the zoo park.