Monday, November 28, 2016

Fighting Perfectionism


Three Generations!

Hello Everyone! This week flew right by! And it was a full week!

Monday was P-day as usual. We had some fun and I worked on my family history book for a while.

Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with Alex! he's doing really well still and has some awesome questions. Sometimes they're kind of hard though! Or just something that we're like, well we know the answer, but we don't know how to answer it. I don’t know if that makes any sense.  It's really too bad, because we have a recent convert in our group named Gerardo who's really smart, went to college, has a nursing degree, and is right at Alex's same age! He would be the perfect fellowshipper and friend to Alex, except that he's totally inactive and avoiding everyone from church! We can't find him and don't know what's wrong, so if ya’ll could just pray for him...

After Alex's lesson, we did some service for an old lady named Grace. It was actually so sad, because her house was nasty. She is basically bed ridden and can't do much and as we were leaving her granddaughter came and we were like, why doesn't she help her grandma clean? We were so grateful we could go and help and talk to her for a while, she seemed so lonely. 

We also spent some time Tuesday exploring a big trailer park on the outskirts of Kittitas that we just recently discovered. We knocked a few doors and met some really awesome people. The holidays really help soften people's hearts a lot. 

We had dinner that night with the Cardmans. They are awesome. They have seven grown children (youngest is a senior in high school) and five of them are married. They were all home for the holidays, and we had a HUGE family dinner it was so cool and makes me excited for the future. 

That night we had a really spiritually powerful lesson with Fernando and Sister Dillon from the ward. He's struggling SO bad with perfectionism right now! We ended up just spending all our time talking about and pointing out stuff that he's already doing really well, and ways that he has inspired and helped all of us. We also talked a lot about how the spirit talks to us. 

Wednesday was ZONE CONFERENCE. Woo hoo! To be honest, the last month or so, I've been struggling a lot with perfectionism, too which is why Fernando's struggles are so real to me. I found a lot of hope and healing in the training we received at Zone Conference. President and the missionaries who shared were definitely inspired. Especially one of Hermana Hull's comments really helped me a lot. She is so amazing! It was so fun to see her and Hermana Luevano and Hermana Shewell. I miss them all! SO glad I only have to wait another week to see them again at the mission Christmas gathering.  My baby is getting so grown up! She just hit her six month mark the other day, I can't believe it! her Spanish is getting SO good, and she's loving more and more aspects of missionary life and work. She even loves knocking now! I of course had to pull her over during one of the breaks and get all her wisdom. Teach me everything you know! She's such a great missionary. I'm so lucky I got to be comps with her.

 Hermanas Goodrich, Knight, and Shewell

 Hermanas Hull and Knight

 Family Resemblance!

 My mom and me. 
Isn't she so cute with her new haircut?!

 Hermanas Luevano and Pons

 Hermanas Shewell and Knight

 Me and my Ellensburg girls! Sister Atkinson
 and I have missed our roommates!

White Salmon sisters!

Hermana Luevano seems so grown up now, too! She's almost 21! I was so glad to see her looking so happy and confident. Hermana Shewell is loving Hood River! The tri-pan life is so fun. She can go anywhere and do anything! She was pretty nervous going into transfers because her other two comps are mom and daughter and have already been together for two transfers. But they are doing awesome! They have great tri-pan unity. I also got to catch up with a few people about all my recent converts! Romero is doing better, Tyler's actually struggling quite a bit right now Please pray for him! Everyone else is doing great as usual. 

Something SUPER SUPER SUPER EXCITING that we learned about is the new #lighttheworld Christmas initiative that just came out! If you haven't seen it yet, you need to!! We've already seen so much success with it! Usually it's just a video or two they put out for Christmas and Easter, but this time it's like a worldwide movement that we all get to participate in! It's all based on the life of Jesus Christ, and how He is the light of the world and we can light the world too by serving each other like He did. There’s a little video for each day of December leading up to Christmas with a theme of some way we can serve like Jesus did. For example, one of my favorites is "Jesus helped others to see and so can you." The suggestions are like, donate some old glasses, teach someone to read, or point out a good quality in someone that they don't recognize on their own. It's SO GREAT! It was also funny, because a Spanish elder, Elder Cannon, pointed out this is going to be really great for Spanish missionaries because most Hispanics are Catholic and the pass along cards have the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus on them!

 Light the World!



Thursday-Thanksgiving! It was awesome. We had dinner with the Jewels and it was so delicious! He's the institute director here for CWU so we had a few stray YSA's there too, it was so fun. We introduced #lighttheworld to them and they loved it, too!
We also met Mindy Gledhill's (popular Mormon singer-songwriter) sister! Turns out she's in 3rd ward and we went to their house. We got to talking about Emma Smith, and Sister Buss mentioned that song called "Emma" from the Joseph Nashville Tribute Band CD, and they were like "Oh yeah, our aunt wrote that!" It was so cool! 

 Thanksgiving Dinner YUM

Us and the Jewels after dinner 

We are excited for leftovers!

Friday EVERYTHING ended up getting cancelled on us, it was crazy. But I had a really great study. Lately I've decided to up my studying game and start doing all my studying in Puro Espanol (only spanish), not just my language study hour. It's a little tricky sometimes, especially because scripture language is so fancy, but I know it will help me a lot! 

Saturday we met Elendra and Blanca, two awesome new potential investigators! It was actually a total miracle that we even got in Blanca's house. She said she usually never lets people in, especially people from other religions but that she felt something different when we talked to her, she didn’t' know why. Then she invited us to come back and she's going to teach us how to make posole! (delicious Mexican soup!!!) 

We had a really cool experience with the Reina family on Saturday night, too. They had family in town for Thanksgiving who are all not members of the Church, so they invited us over. We started having a really cool conversation about the gospel. It all started with #iluminaelmundo (light the world initiative) and went from there! They ended up accepting a copy of the Libro de Mormon, and we got their address in Yakima. Now Hermanas Luevano and Pons are going to start teaching them! Woo hoo! Hermana Reina is a really powerful teacher! She did so amazing. 

Sunday was so great. Nearly everyone came to church! Except Fernando!!! It was so sad, it's making me really worried to be honest. I hope everything is okay, because he's not answering his phone either. Sunday School was cool, because one of our investigators, Lamencia, actually has to return to Mexico for about a month to take care of some business. She was super, super nervous because Mexico is so dangerous right now. She expressed that to us at the end of class and asked us to pray for her, and then we talked about the priesthood. Brother Clarkson and Brother Reina gave her a blessing! She said she felt better afterward. It was so cool! 

After church we met Carlos and Elisabet, two other new potential investigators. Hopefully this goes well! They also loved #iluminaelmundo. Then we had dinner with the Grobecks, some of my favorite members ever! 


It was a great week. I love and miss all of you!! 

First snow of the season!

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