October 14, 2013

Wow, I'm so happy to hear that you're feeling better.  There is serious power in the priesthood.  Priesthood + faith = miracles!  Winning combination. :)  I'm sorry to hear about the car situation... life will never be perfect, we just have to recognize the blessings and keep the faith through the tough times.  Thank you so much for always being a rock.  It seems that dad dealt with the situation calmly though, huh?  

Never forget that your Heavenly Father loves you bunches and so do I!  I pray for you every day and every time I read your emails or letters, I can see that He's watching over you. I'm very grateful for that. :)

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Photos: The one in the house with the family that's kind of blurry is the Munoz family.  I've written about them before.  Super awesome, hilarious people.  The hispanic woman where we're outside?  I've never written about her before, but she's a super awesome hermana who always came out with us.  The Gym?  The only one I can think of is I took a picture with Hermana Zegarra and Hna. Cardenas after a Zone training meeting... they're both missionaries.  Yeah, I love the Valadez family.  They gave me gold earrings when I left. :)  When I came back for Jose's baptism, their little son, Nathan comes up to me and goes, "HEY!  I missed you!"  With his little sassy attitude and everything.  It was soooooo cute. <3  I didn't realize how much I loved everyone over there until I left.  

Yeah, my birthday was pretty great.  Haha.  The video I have of the cake thing sucks, I know.  One of the elders, elder Daneke, was filming and I think he was too fascinated with the camera to pay any attention.  I swear, every time I bust out my camera, elders swarm to it and are all like, "wooooow, it's like iron man!  sweeeet!"  Anywho, I know sister Webb has a better video of it, so I'll try to get her to send it to me or something.  And yes, the Hopkinsons did make me a farewell/early birthday cake.  I miss them, too!  Apparently as soon as I got transfered, they moved the other 2 sisters out of their house and into an apartment.  The Hopkinsons were heart broken...but apparently their thinking about moving to Virginia or something like that.  I talked to sister Veazey the other day and she said they heart attacked their house, so that's nice. :)  

Yay!  Can you take more pictures of the board for me?  Maybe one with you all standing next to it?  Yeah, it would make me happy if you sent me pictures of you, because everyone asks me and I don't really have any to show them. :(  I don't know why, but there's a picture in our photo album where mom is holding me and she looks super beautiful and I'm a baby wearing a bonnet... is there any way you can send me that picture or a copy of it?  I miss that picture.  

Ahhh, I'll remember to keep Pierce in my prayers as well.  That's alllll part of the mission.  I still feel frustrated with the language almost every day!  It's pretty painful to look back on my first few weeks, though.  But he's in Chile completely immersed in the language, so I can't imagine...you understand that better than I do.  Haha.  He'll be fine, though.  It's the best learning experience.  We had a sister luncheon/meeting the other day and sister Nieder was talking about how in a mission we struggle and grow and learn more about ourselves than we would in any other atmosphere.  So much so that when we get back, we'll have more life experience than a lot of others people our age.  And I'll be a 20 year old RM.  That's intense!  Not that that makes us better than other people for serving a mission, but just that we'll get there a little quicker than other young people as far as life lessons are concerned.  We are literally relying on the Heavenly Father everyday to give us the strength to keep going.  I still have many life lessons to learn, though!  But I'm grateful for this opportunity.  What a blessing to have been called to His work!  :)  

Our area is huuuuuge, so we actually haven't been biking.  It's kind of impossible.  We have to take the freeway to get to different parts of our area, it's so big.  So we've been having members help us with rides.  Also the other elders in our branch.  We got permission to ride with them in their car.  We all eat together everyday, so it's convenient.  We're probably going to make them brownies today or something because they've been super nice about it and also, we didn't get our car back on Friday like the man said...actually, we STILL don't have our car.  Haha.  We should be getting back today at 2:30.  

Oh, and this Sunday we gave talks in sacrament meeting.  About member missionary work.  It was "ehh" in my opinion and I'm pretty sure I rambled on in Spanish for like...I don't know...7 minutes?  Oh well.

Anyway, I love you, I'm proud of you, and i'm about to hit my half mark, so get ready for pregnant pictures to celebrate 9 months. :)