Bonbones Mormones

Hermanas Knight and Buss

This has been a roller coaster week of ups and downs for sure, but lots of exciting things to look forward to! We have Zone Conference this Wednesday!  I get to see Hermana Luevano, Hermana Hull, and Hermana Shewell! I miss them all so much.

Then we have THANKSGIVING! Woo hoo! We are going to eat with the Jewels, and it's going to be wonderful. Some awesome lessons have been planned and we got 2 new investigators this week, so woo hoo to that, too! 

So a quick run-down of the week:

Monday we had P-day here in Ellensburg with our district. We were playing basketball (which I 100% love, but I kind of got a little crazy. Haha. I was literally screaming at this one elder at one point, "GIVE ME THE BALL!!!!!!!" Haha so I had to sit out for a little while and calm down, I never knew I was so aggressive till I came on my mission and started playing sports. After P-day was over we went to Rosa's and had a lesson with her. She has been like a different person lately, it's amazing! I think she's finally getting through the grief of losing her father a few months ago. 

Tuesday we had some fun raking leaves for the Reina's! It was awesome. I actually love raking leaves, it's good exercise and it's productive at the same time. We also had a fun member dinner with the Richlands. Sister Richland is SO funny. She was cracking up so hard every time I said ya’ll and she would try to say ya’ll and couldn't. Haha! She was a little ditsy and SO cute!  I love them. 

 Raking Leaves

Wednesday night our member dinner was awesome, too. We ate with Hermana Martinez and got her really excited about Family History work! We helped her start her "My Family" book (ya’ll should do it too, it's really fun!) and we started her free familysearch.org account.

 My Family Book

Thursday we spent about four hours outside exploring Kittitas with Brian (Returned Missionary, who just came home from Mexico last month.) It was fun, and we met some interesting people but it was SO COLD. 

We also saw a house burn down!! It was crazy and we took a ton of pictures. Of course there were tons of college kids crowding around everywhere.

 Scary and crazy!

Friday we had an AWESOME lesson with a new investigator, Alex. It's funny because Hermana Shewell and I had seen some notes left about him from previous missionaries when she was here, and tried to contact him and see if he would like to learn again. (He's a college kid who went home for the summer but is super ready and interested.) and we texted him and he was like "Yeah... I'm Catholic." Then when Sister Buss got here she said Sister Hinkle (who served here like 6 months ago) told her to find this kid named Alex Lopez and teach him! So I was like, "Well he said he wasn't interested anymore, but we can try!" So we texted him again, and he said "Hi Hermanas, I would love to meet up. Can we have a lesson at the Institute Building on Friday at 12?" We were like, “UMMM yes!” That never happens! It was a really good lesson, too. He has perfect questions. 

Saturday was pretty busy. We had a fun member dinner with the Dorm's. Hermana Buss came up with this creative idea to play Scattergories with them. We picked a letter (D for Dorm) and then they all had to write a list of ways you can share the gospel that start with the letter D. They were really creative! They said "Donate time to serve others" or "Decorations in your house" "Drive the missionaries to appointments." It was so fun and then we challenged them to each do at least two of the ideas on their list. 

We had a cool experience Saturday night. We have this potential investigator named Ameila who Sister Shewell and I met like a month ago. She was a referral from the Calaways in our ward. She seemed to have a lot of potential, but we could never get in with her. Saturday night we went to contact a different referral, the Gomez (not really interested but still very nice, fortunately,) and then were going to try by Amelia again after that. For some reason felt like we shouldn’t right then. We said a little prayer and for some reason felt like we needed to try to contact another referral named Rosela who lives all the way out in Kittitas! SO we were like, "Well that's like 30 mins round trip but if it's where we're supposed to be..." So we drove to Kittitas to her house and nobody was home! We were so confused! We tried by a few other potentials in Kittitas as well and no one was home at their houses either. I was thinking... okay why did God tell us to come here if no one is even home? So we went back to Ellensburg, and the strongest feeling came over me that we needed to go to Amelias now. So we went and she was like, " Hey that's so cool! I was just thinking about you girls today and was going to call you, but I just barely got home from Yakima!" We then had an AMAZING lesson with her, and holy cow she is so ready for the gospel in her life! She asked all the perfect questions. We realized that the reason God had sent us to Kittitas for an hour was to stall us! He needed to send us somewhere else for a bit before Amelia's because if we had tried when we originally planned to, we would have gone and no one would have been there, and we probably would have given up on her.

Sunday was great! We had Stake Conference and we got a new stake presidency! It was so cool to see and the spirit was seriously SO strong. Two members of the Quorum of the Seventy came and spoke, as well as all three members of the old presidency and the new three members of the presidency, and the new and old president's wives. It was high spiritual impact! After church we had a Linger Longer for our Spanish group and had Abuelitas (Mexican hot chocolate) and Pan Dulce (Mexican donuts). It was awesome! One thing that was super funny was a couple of the members (I won't say who, but they were grown men with families!) Were putting marshmallows in their hot chocolate and started cracking up, referring to themselves as "bonbones Mormones" the word "bonbones" means marshmallows! They would hold their big bellies (both of them are overweight) say "Bonbones Mormones!!", laugh, and then pop a marshmallow in their mouth. It was so funny.

Then that evening we had a lesson with Fernando and Brian. We want them to be friends. :) Fernando opened up to us a lot about some trials and doubts he is struggling with. It was hard to see and really sad, but I'm so grateful he trusts us and feels like he can open up to us. I'm also really grateful Brian was there so Fernando can have a friend to turn to even when Hermana Buss and I aren't here anymore. 

After our lesson was done we had a SUPER AWESOME member dinner with the Walkers. Fernando was invited too, so he followed us in his car. We ended up being like 15 minutes late because FERNANDO DRIVES SOOOO SLOOOOOOW? Haha we got up to the door and he was like, "Hermana Caballero! Why do you drive like a crazy person! Why do you go so fast?!?" Hahahahahahahaha! I was going like 3-5 under the speed limit the whole way! it cracked me up so hard. Then he cracked us all up again, because he asked what their names were again and Sister Walker said "Walker," and in a thick Mexican accent he responded, "we are all walkers in this journey of life!" Hahaha! Then he asked if "Runner" was a last name in English, too. He's so funny.

The Robins and LeBron were there, too! It was a fun dinner party. And it was cool to see Spanish and English coming together. We and the Robins are bilingual, and the Walkers only speak English, and Fernando and Lebron mostly just speak Spanish. But we had a really spiritual unofficial testimony meeting after we finished eating. I'd never heard Fernando speak English before! It was a little broken and pretty simple but the way he shared his feelings was so sincere. He said, " That the thing that originally attract me to the Mormon religion. Everyone is sincere, no judge, and you live what you preach." It was so sweet and so genuine. He said "I wish I could be like all of you," and then Sister Walker lovingly put her arm around him and said "You are like us, Fernando! We're not perfect, we just try to love people as best as we can. And you're really good at loving people." GAH it was so sweet and honestly I got chocked up a few times. It was a great night. 

I think that's it! I'll be sending lots of pictures! 

I love and miss you all. 

More pictures of our gorgeous area!