Called to Serve: week 22: somos las hermanas ENFERMAS

Hola hola hola!!! busiest and best week of my life y'all!!

Transfer news!! Hermana Gomez and i are obviously staying together until she leaves in 3 weeks, but we are going full Spanish and losing our English stake (third area to leave haha) AND we are training a gringa together until for 3 weeks and then I'm fully training a Spanish missionary!!! President said I am now an Hermana until England!!! I have 3 weeks to really get my Spanish down so I can be a Spanish trainer! Who would have thought?!

It is sad to be leaving yet another area, but we had a GREAT farewell meeting yesterday with all the stake and ward leaders. Their stake is being combined with another stake in terms of missionaries, so they were pretty sad they are losing their own set of sisters. A bunch of people shared their experiences in going out knocking with us, joining us for lessons, having us in their homes, and what missionary work they have been inspired to do in the last month. It was so spirit filled and a great reminder to always be missionary minded even when you aren't a full time missionary! I feel like the last 6 weeks we really touched the lives of the members even if we didn't do much nonmember teaching. Perks of so many areas is that I have learned SO many different ways of missionary work and I LOVE IT!

AVERY IS ON DATE for march 27!! We had a miracle lesson and BOTH her parents were there, involved, and excited to commit her to a baptism date. She is so excited to get the holy ghost and we are so excited for her!! And I'm glad I'll be close so I can go to the baptism too!

We found 5 new people in the Spanish area this week: Dora, Gerrardo, and Sylvia(Santa Rio's wife)!

Dora and Gerrardo are a couple from El Salvador and all of their grown children are members of the church. Their daughter was married in the salt lake temple a couple years ago, so we talked about eternal families with them. They aren't quite ready to be baptized yet, but they want to learn more for themselves. Dora loves to cook, so she is going to teach us to make sopa and pupusas next weekend!!

Santo Rio called us this week and asked if we could come in the afternoon, when only he would be home, so that we could answer some of the questions he had about the book of Mormon. We went to his place planning to teach the Restoration and brought a fellowshipper and it went wild. Not only was everyone(AND coworkers and kids) home, but his wife sat in on the lesson and wanted to basically bash everything. It was a mess and the fellowshipper was ALL over the place leaving us with so many loose ends to tie and questions to answer haha. The longest 2 hour lesson of my life, but we got Sylvia as a new and she wants to come get a chapel tour since she works on Sunday so that was a win in the end haha.

Nestor and Zulai are from Venezuela and have a huge family! We have been trying to teach Nestor's cousin, Hector, and are already teaching Hector's cousin, Victor. Their whole fam came to Utah bc they love the people and the culture so they are happy to learn more about the church haha.

We also had some good service opportunities this week! We cooked for some of the elders(wish I had a pic, but we made some fancy bacon wrapped cordon bleu with Spanish rice for the DL!! and frijoles charros for our new ZL haha) and cleaned out a mega hoarder house(do have a pic from that). It was fun!

Milagro: Both Hermana Gomez and I were feeling a little sick on Friday night, but that didn't keep us from going out(that's what masks are for right?). We REALLY wanted to knock with our English stake high counselor in the Spanish area, so we had to push through lol. We knocked the door of what ended up being a member and she invited us in to talk. Before we left, she told us she had felt like she needed to make extra soup for dinner even though it was just her and her granddaughter at home. She sent both us and President Boyer home with big containers of caldo de res and it was exactly what hna Gomez said that she always ate when she was sick! Miracle from our sweet angel member!!

con amor, hermana dougall ♡