This week was filled with so many tender mercies. I truly love the work here. This week I focused my personal study on the temples in preparation to go to the Temple. So, on Wednesday we got to go to the temple as a zone. It was so amazing and so beautiful. I love the temple. So, we tried to emphasize the temple when we taught this week. It was amazing to see how excited some of the families got when they realized that they could be an eternal family and to see them make this goal to be sealed.

This week I witnessed an amazing miracle. It has been very interesting to see that as we try harder to be exactly obedient and rededicate all to the Lord, that he often tries our faith even more. One day this week we had almost every single cita fall through. We had not been able to contact anyone that was really positive and we had an hour or so left in the day. We felt impressed to visit with an inactive sister in the ward. This sister is such a rollercoaster. The last time we had visited with her she told us she did not want anything to do with the church and refused to even look at the Book of Mormon. But Hermana Judd felt like we really should go so we headed over and she let us in. We sat down, talked a little and sang a hymn. We were going to say the opening prayer when she suddenly opened up to us about her life. She got very quiet, looked at us and said, “I am not a good person. I have lost my way and rejected my Savior. It is time for me to change. I want to forgive the people that hurt me and to be a better person, to be a better example for my sons.” I think my jaw might have dropped. This woman had rejected us and anything associated with the church and here she was asking for forgiveness. Hermana Judd looked at her and invited her to pray right then and confess to her Heavenly Father, asking for his help to overcome these things. She bowed her head and said the most humble, heartfelt, forgiving prayer that I have ever heard in my life. It was a sacred experience. When she finished she looked up at us with tears in her eyes and said, “I know that this church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true… I know my Savior lives.” It was a miracle. We are still working with her but this was huge progress.

I am so grateful for the atonement. I am grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary because I have learned so much about the enabling power of the atonement. I heard a story this week at zone conference. Hermana Judd told me about an 80 year old convert. She joined the church and after some time she received her patriarchal blessing. In her blessing, it said that she could have been converted to the gospel much sooner in her live had it not been for one young man who decided not to serve a mission. This hit me so hard… The time the Lord has given us to serve really is so sacred. I hope to use it to the best that I can. I love you all. Thank you for your support!

Hurrah for Israel

Hermana Hipol

Another week in the vineyard. I love being a missionary. This week we had so much rain! We were soaked almost all week long, but we kept a sunshine in our heart and smiles on our faces.

We had quite the surprise this week too! We were bringing an investigator to church when the Elders ran out to meet us and said, President is here! Our mission President had stopped by to give us a surprise visit. I love my Mission President and his wife. They are such amazing people. It just so happened that Hermana Judd and I had a confirmation that day, so that was pretty cool.

I love how the Lord works! We had a baptism this last Friday and it was so beautiful. We have only been working with this girl for about two weeks and she wanted to be baptized so badly. I love her so much!

This last week we also went and did a service project for a less active in the word, helping him clean out his house. He had over twenty years of trash and decay piled up… It was super gross but we had so much fun. Some of my favorite memories have been from serving others.

Sorry, super short this week but I love you all and I know the church is true!

Hurrah for Israel!

Hermana Hipol

I love this family so much! They are such a miracle. We contacted this family through the brother and doing some service. We helped them build their house and have only been teaching them for about two weeks. This past friday their daughter Marisol was baptized! She looked so beautiful and it was such a beautiful day! She is such a miracle.

Another amazing week and more and more miracles. It is crazy to see the Lords hand in literally every aspect of life.  I love being a missionary. It is so hard. But it is beautiful and epic!

I love Hermana Judd. I really cannot imagine doing the work with anyone else. We have been trying to be healthier and really we have way too much fun being missionaries! She is the epitome of hard work. She is so dedicated to Zion’s cause and she inspires me to be better in every aspect. She tries her hardest to be exactly obedient in all things, and is quick to repent, even when she has done nothing wrong. She is an example of a consecrated missionary. I love her so much. She teaches with so much love.

This week we found so many new people. I really do love the people here. They are so simple and so humble, and often so hilarious! We met with a Brother Juan Cien Fuegos this week for the first time…. I love this man. He lives alone, is 70+ years old and extremely autistic. He was our last lesson for the day and it was way too much fun! He had so many stories and so many things to share. He has a really lonely life and was so excited to visit with us. Well, we finished the lesson and we were getting ready to go back to our house… only he insisted walking us home to make sure that we were safe. It gets dark around six here and we are always really cautious and obedient, but people often freak out that we walk home in the dark…. So, Juan walked us almost all the way back home. It was so sweet and so kind.

This week Hermana Judd and I have been working hard with this miracle family that we found. We had left them 3 Nephi to read and we invited them to pray about the Book of Mormon and to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet. Well, when we followed up their responses were nothing short of miraculous! The Brother looked at us and said “I prayed, I know that it is all true.” The mothers answer was the same. And then, we turned to their daughter. She told us that a couple nights before she had a dream. She was looking out her front door and there were people walking past in white tunics with white horses. As they passes she saw that they all, horses and people, had wings. They walked off a short way and “ascended” heavenward. She and her Mom said that they knew God sent us to their family and that they knew our message was true. We set a date with their daughter for this upcoming Saturday. I love this family so much! It was amazing!

Another thing I loved this week was our Principios del Evangelio class this week. We were talking about the priesthood and we had five investigators, all who had severe doubts about priesthood authority. It was awesome, the teacher explained it really well and calmed any doubts or fears. But the best part was when the teacher asked one of the Elders to share his lineage. The spirit was so strong. How amazing that priesthood authority can be traced literally to the Savior. I know that the priesthood was restored through Joseph Smith, that this is the true church. We are so blessed to have the Priesthood in our lives. I am so grateful to have worthy priesthood holders in my home. To all my brethren out there, HONOR YOUR PRIESTHOOD!

I love you all so much. This is the Lords work. Always make sure to do your part, that you serve others and forget yourself. I am trying harder to forget myself and go to work and it is crazy to see the Lords hand.

I love you all! Hurrah for Israel!

P.S. It rained a lot this week… hence, lots of puddles. I totally took an epic fall… but I caught myself in midair… IT WAS CRAZY! I was so dirty, so very dirty. But I didn’t hit the ground!

I love being a missionary. It is so hard, a lot harder than I could have ever imagined. And yet, it is so beautiful. There are so many tender mercies all around me, so many blessings, so many lessons to be learned. This week was amazing. Time flies so fast, sometimes I wish I could have another day in the week, or even another hour or two in the day.

I love my companion. Hermana Judd is the biggest miracle. She is so compassionate, so selfless, and such a hard worker. We work our hardest, and every day pray that we can work harder. The hardest part of this week was not being able to really truly see the fruits of our labors, but I hope and pray that we can cause some person to come a little closer to the Savior. This week was also my first intercambio! For twenty four hours I was on exchanges with the Hermana Training Leader, Hermana Garbett in Molino. It was so much fun, and really quite the adventure, She taught me some great lessons, and I hope that I can apply them and make my teaching better. Intercambios were fun, but I truly recognized how much I love my companion. I dunno what I am going to do without her!

This week we saw so many miracles. We found some new investigators that are so prepared. We got to work alongside two sisters, Paty and Miriam as our missionary family for the week. They are so amazing! We went with them and met with a sister that we had contacted earlier in the week. This sister, Hermana Marta, is so amazing. Hermana Judd and I had been looking for someone else when we knocked her door and we asked to come by and visit with her another day. Well turns out, she had visited with some elders years before but they had left the area and she had not heard from them since… Well she is so ready to recieve the message now. We have been changing how we have our first lesson, and emphazised more on the importance of prophets and Joseph Smith. When we shared the first vision, Hermana Marta started to cry. We invited her to be baptized and she said yes!!! I love being a missionary!

Okay, conference. I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! I learned so many wonderful things and I hope and challenge all of you to take the time to go back and study the messages that were shared. Now is the time to do the Lords work, to gather the harvest! The hour is very near at hand, it is so crazy! So many prophecies in the scriptures were fulfilled.  I love the prophet. Because of some technical difficulties I listened to the first session in spanish. I was able to understand a lot of it… but the spanish that they speak here and the spanish used by the translators is very much not the same language… remotelly. But, no worries, thanks to the Lords Tender Mercies, I was able to listen to all the other sessions in English.

This week I have focused my personal studies on mercy, and as always, the Lord never ceases to fill my cup to overflowing. Throughout my personal studies, companionship studies and even General Conference (which was completely amazing) I have learned so much about my Saviors atonement for me, and his endless compassion and mercy. In my studies I was also struck by the emphasis on repentance, of change, of drawing nearer to the Savior. Really, it is our purpose as missionaries, to invite people to come. Come and repent, come and partake, come and see, come and rejoice. This is my fathers work. It is a noble and glorious cause. IT IS EPIC!

I love you all so much… Thank you for your love and support!

P.S. One day this week this stray cat somehow made it into our house…. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life… It was almost completely bald, skeletal, and had these deep, sunken eyes that pierced the soul….We somehow got it out the front door but it just mewed there for about fifteen minutes… Oh El Salvador…