Well.... that's a wrap folks

March 4 - 11

This week was full of everything you can think of when it comes to missionary work! It was the slowest yet fastest week. Every emotion was felt and good times were had! 

Monday: Well today we spent dinner with one of our favorite people! That's right, CLAY!!! and boooooy do we have some good stories to share! First a GIANT moth, the size of a humming bird, comes outta no where and Clay's dad proceeds to try and catch it while chasing it around the house. As this is happening Clay tells us a story from last week when they caught one and tied a fishing wire to it and flew it around the living room like a kite!! (We saw videos....I kid you not, it's real 😂) we are all enjoying a nice dinner of meatloaf when you hear "look, dudes. (his dad calls us dudes) if you are ever in survival mode and all you have is a Cheeto and a few matches, light the Cheeto on fire. It will burn 10x longer than the match" shocked by this random comment we say "really?" He then laughs and goes to the kitchen. When he comes out he has a giant cheeto lit on fire..... he looks memorized at the flame and says "I didn't think this would actually work..... I thought it would just blow up the cheeto." Oh and I can't forget our dessert, ice cream sandwiches chopped up into cubes and served on a silver platter! 
After dinner we had FHE where we played human battleship. 

Tuesday: Wallllllk dayyyyyyyyy!!!! We did lots and lots of walking and lots and lots of talking which led to lots and lots of referrals sent out to the family ward missionaries😄😄 oh!!! And Sister Brockbank hit 6 months today! 🎉.....I literally almost forgot the BEST part of the day.... We had a lesson with our sweet investigator Ande. At the end of our lesson she asked us "Sisters, how soon can I get baptized?" We responded with whenever you feel ready. She whips out her phone to look at a calendar and says. "Can I get baptized on the 24th of March?" Ahhhh that's in like 2 weeks!! Golden I tell ya, golden. 

Wednesday: Not gonna lie.....I have no idea what happened today....

Thursday: Oh boy. Today was a day. It started off with some good boothing. Buuuuuut during boothing we had some man come up and yell at us for a solid 20 minutes for being ignorant and stupid. So that put a little damper in our day. Some girl scouts saw what happened and came and gave us free girl scout cookies. 💕 So that turned our day back around! 

Friday: Luckily we didn't forget about district meeting today! So that was a miracle in itself. We then went to chic-fil-a with the Hermanas for lunch. After that we did our weekly planning which takes forrrrrevvvvvver on week 6. We then had to go to the mission office and while we were there the assistants showed us the transfer board so we know what's going on with basically everyone in the mission a day before they do. That's the one perk of going home hahaha they let you in on all the little secrets Hahaha. Then dinner with Cody. We then went to one of my recent converts house in Ventura and talked with him for a bit. It was good to see him again. Then sports night! While everyone played basketball we messed around with a very very flat ball haha. 

Saturday: Today was the faaaaastest day of the week! We started off by playing one last round of groundsies. Then we helped clean the church and someone bought us bagels.....I love bagels..... Then we went home for studies, ah my favorite part of the day! Basically I wrote my talk that I have to give tomorrow at church. We spent the day soaking in the rain, and visiting referrals. Lastly we boothed at the mall to find allllll those YSAs hiding. It was super successful! We taught a few on the spot restoration lessons right there in the middle of the mall. You could feel the spirit so strong in our little corner. After one of our lessons the kid tells us about all his missionary friends that are coming home within the next few months. He then asked us if we had any more pamphlets that he could read so he can talk to them more in depthly about what they did on their missions. It was a cool night full of miracles. Oh and the zone leaders gave us a referral for someone who wants to go to ysa tomorrow. Good solid day!! Tonight we, or Sister Brockbank...... got transfer calls! It was weird not getting a new companion or area..... sad😣

Sunday: Today was nutttttts. We started out with meetings: ward council and coordination. Then church. I had to give a talk, hopefully it went well haha. I made people laugh so I will count that as a success. During gospel principles we learned about Prophets. Relief society was about the importance on the Book of Mormon while reading the talk "The Book of Mormon: what would life be without it?" By President Nelson. It's a good read!! If you haven't read it I suggest you do!! Then we had a lesson with Ande!!! Man I love her. We taught literally alllllll the commandments in lesson 4..... twas intense but since she's so golden, she soaked it ALL in! We then said goodbye to some of people. 💕

Wow. A year and a half gone in the BLINK of an eye! Its still blows my mind how fast things have flown by. I feel like just yesterday I was learning how to gain enough courage to say "Hi" to people on the streets. Haha now they can't get me to stop trying to talk to them about the gospel. I feel like I have learned so much! I just don't know how to form it all into words but I'll sure try:
• Never get too comfortable. That's when change happens
• Find anyway to testify of the reality of our Savior and his gospel
• Talk to EVERYONE, even if it's a simple hello
• There's no growth in the comfort zone
• Trust God with EVERYTHING, He can see the bigger picture....not you
• Love your companion and those who are PURPOSELY placed in your life at this time. There is no such thing as a coincidence
• Never stop progressing
• God is mindful of EVERY people
• Its okay not to be perfect, perfect people don't need a Savior

I'm so grateful for my mission and for all it has truly taught Me! I know this church is true and that we have a living prophet today to lead and guide us. I know that our Savior lives and loves each and everyone of us. Thank you so much for your sweet prayers and love throughout the past 18 months. I love you all 💕💕

1- packing :/ 

2/3- soothing! 

4- the district

5- just us 

6- Ande💕💕💕💕💕  

7- sister Henry wanted to take our picture and then used Snapchat to put filters on it 😂 

8- saying bye to the Henry family

1

February 26 - March 4

Ahhhhhhhh p day already?! Man... time is just slipping out of our hands lately! 

Monday- today was super fun! We got all our shopping done and then played some kind of baseball game for our zone activity. Man..... thay was pretty wild.... elders are pretty intense. I'll just put it at that hahaha. For FHE we played a game called "who am i" actually. Idk if that's the real name for it, but I'm naming it that. It's a game where you have a name taped on your back and you try to guess who you are. We played it with Book of Mormon names. So that was kinda tough. 


Tuesday- we had an AMAZING lesson with a..... NEW INVESTIGATOR!!! Her name is Ande and she is sooooo sweet! Ah I just love her so much! She is truly prepared and just GOLDEN! Idk how we got so lucky to teach her! We did a "How to begin teaching" lesson with her and then jumped into the restoration. The spirit was so strong! MAN I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!! 💕 I finished myplan and while I was at the church I saw my dear old companion Sister McGuire 💕💕💕 I love her! Then institute. It was really good! Clay got a lot out of it! Ah he is progressing so well! I am so proud of him!! 

Wednesday- okay, I know something super awesome happened today.... but I cannot remember what it was.... but, institute was good! We had 7 people show up that don't ever come so it was really cool!! 

Thursday- today was "a trip" - Clay. 
Hahaha well basically we had this super awesome lesson planned with Clay and right as we begin, his dad walks up to us and is like "have you ever had a potato patty?" Then brings us a "potato patty" .... okay it was basically hashbrowns it the shape of a circle.... we finish his potato patty as we continue trying to share a message. Then we get a giant platter of tomatoes with pepper on it and Clay starts laughing and telling him to keep bringing food to see if we will eat it. Then we get like 6 glasses of different juices that we "had to try". Finally we get asked if we have tried "Casadillas" .... or as we call them quesadillas. I am pretty sure Casa means house but its been a while since I have spoken Spanish. Obviously we were not in control of what was going down. We then have Clay showing us all their "old Mormon books" basically a replica of an original copy of the Book of Mormon and lots of other random books. Then he pulls out the notes he took on the Book of Mormon a year ago and photos from his baptism. Then we got into a deep conversation with his dad about some doctrine and you randomly hear Clay yelling things like LOOKETH. SEEKETH. FINDETH. SEARCHETH. HEARETH. DOETH.....he was skimming through the Book of Mormon and reading off all the "eth" words. As we are about to leave we got handed an apple each, Clay somehow thinks this is hilarious and is like "heyyyy take the apple from Adam and Eve!" Idk..... YSA is a strange place my friends.... we almost made it out the door when his dad yells "cooking for these gals was quite the trip, Clay, have them over again next week for more food and bible talk!" .....looks like next Monday will have tacos and "old Mormon books" on the menu for dinner and discussion.... 

Friday- OKAY TODAY WAS SO EMBARRASSING!!! lemmmmmme explain. NORMALLY, we have district meetings on Friday and we do our weekly planning on Thursdays at 10 right after our studies. But yesterday we were so busy, so we were planning on doing it today. I woke up and knew that we were doing our weekly planning. So right after studies I start doing weekly planning and my sweet companion followed. It wasn't until 11 when I realized that we were supposed to be at district meeting 45 minutes ago..... for some reason I've been super stressed lately and my brain is stuck somewhere in January. So I totally thought it was Thursday because we were planning weekly that day.... oops. Luckily we made it for the last 20 minutes. The elders got a good kick out of it..lol what is life. The rest of the day was kinda crazy so we ended up not finishing our weekly planning. Haha oh well.... we had sports night tonight where they played volleyball. Half way through the game our ward mission leader decides to say either: bop it! Spin it! Twist it! Yell it! Flip it! Pull it! (Like that one bop it game) every time someone hits the ball. Idk why I thought that was hilarious, but I did! 

Saturday- Today we actually did our weekly planning. It went well. We also contacted around downtown Ventura where all the tourists were. That was fun. Then at night we went boothing at the mall.... let's just say Old people aren't as nice as college kids with that kinda stuff. But we did have one man come up and ask WILL I SEE MY BROTHER AGAIN AFTER THIS LIFE. We were able to bare powerful testimony on the plan of salvation. He was super interested so we have a cool referral for some missionaries in Oakland! 

Sunday- Today was fast and testimony meeting! Wow. The spirit was SO STRONG today! Ande came!!! There were so many powerful testimonies! After I bore my testimony the Bishop stood up and asked me to stay up at the pulpit.... So I awkwardly stood there and he proceeded to tell everyone that next week would be my last Sunday.... So much for keeping that under the radar.... 😓 gospel principles was good! We talked about prayer!! I looooove prayer! It's how we communicate with our Father in Heaven! Who wouldn't want to speak to God everyday!? Then in relief society we talked about temples! After church we had break the fast. Boy do I love that time of day....food. tonight we had a fireside at President Nakkens home and it was all about the Restoration 💕💕 ah my favorite lesson! 

Man. What a good week!!! 💕