Companions w/ El Presidente?!

Hola todos from STILL sunny San Diego!! I still cant believe that it's January and we are still having 84 degree days. I am CONVINCED I am in paradise hahaha.

This week I got to be companions with my mission President, President Stubbs. BEST. (half). DAY. EVER. Kind of. One of the sisters I was on exchanges with got sick and had to go to the ER and so we met President Stubbs and Sister Stubbs there. She is doing just fine so no need to worry but that meant the I got to go with President Stubbs for about 5 hours and do some errands. It was really cool because he told me about his life and his kids and it was nice to be able to get to know him more. I love President & Sister Stubbs soooo much and I'm so grateful that I get to serve in the same mission as them. After that, he dropped me off in Imperial Beach with my companion and the sister she was on exchanges with. Super fun, President also told me that I'd serve in Imperial Beach and El Centro, so we will see if that comes true haha. Since we didn't really get to do a full exchange with those sisters, we will be doing them later this week, hopefully with no ER trips.

We also got to go on exchanges with Sisters Smith and Joyce. Sister Smith came to be with me in City Heights. We had SO much even though no one answered their door the whole day except for the last door we knocked on at 8 that night. We knocked on a former investigator's door. His name is Rafael and he has a wife named Gloria. We talked with him out on his porch and he said we could come back next Friday!! We are hoping that things work out this time around for him and Gloria. Sister Smith is such a great missionary and I'm really hoping that we get to be companions some day.

Unfortunately, this week one of our investigators moved to LA. It was really last minute, but she called us and told us she still wants to keep learning and as soon as she is in her apartment and settled in, she'll send her address so we can send some missionaries up there to her. We were sad but I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store for her in LA.

I don't know why my favorite face is now sticking my tongue out?

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to participate in a huge service at Balboa Park. It was in honor of MLK day. We cleaned the parks and my companion and I and the elders in our district went to the cactus garden. It was super fun apart from when I got stinging needle all over my arms. BUT lucky we were in a garden with some aloe vera haha.

Service with Sisters Rooks and Morales

I'm super excited for this week and fingers crossed that Raquel is baptized this time next week!!! We are so excited for her and we are hoping everything works out with her! We also have another lesson tonight with a guy named Antonio. He wants to get baptized but has been so busy with his work schedule that he hasn't been able to meet but we have something scheduled finally!!

BEACH AGAIN FOR PDAY :)

I don't have much else to write about but I wanted to share a scripture that I came across the other day. The scripture is John 14:18 - "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you"

I love this scripture and I love the comfort that the Gospel, the Holy Ghost, prayer, church etc can bring you. But most importantly i love the comfort that Jesus Christ brings me. There is no other person that understands us completely like He does. I'm so grateful for Him and that I can find comfort in Him.

I'm super excited for this next week, tonight we are doing exchanges with SISTER BATCHELOR!!! I can not wait!!!

I hope you all have a wonderful week and enjoy the snow hahaha. I love you all!!

Elder Andersen!

This week was pure heaven in sunny, sunny, SUNNY San Diego. Honestly I am loving the sun shining all through winter with a few days of rain here and there. The weather is so perfect.
Sunset cliffs:

Apart from the heavenly weather, this week was filled with some pretty sweet experiences.

First sweet experience: ENGLISH WORK FOR THE FIRST TIME!! On Thursday I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with Sister Montague (senior STL) and Sister Law (trainee of Sis. Montague&Whitaker). They're in English work so I was able to go a speak to people in a language that I know pretty well hahaha. I'll just start by saying that Spanish and English work are totally different, and I love them both for different reasons. We handed out a ton of Book of Mormons and added 3 people and so that was awesome. Also, the exchange was in Poway, and Poway is one of the "rich" areas of the mission, soooooo coming from the "ghetto" of the mission to there was like super weird. The sisters live in a little house behind some members and it was QUIET at night. It felt weird to not be hearing sirens and cars racing each other at night. It was also nice to have a non weed scented apartment for a night haha. We also got to help someone do some family history, which is really cool and I learned how to do some pretty cool stuff on the computer and all that fun stuff. Later that night, we exchanged back and I came back to my sketchy kingdom hahaha. I love city heights so much, so I was happy to be back.
This is how we heat our apartment.

Second sweet experience: ELDER ANDERSEN!!!! The long awaited day of Elder Andersen finally came and boy was it worth it. We first heard from Elder Klebingat. He talked about always leaving a good impression on people whether or not they are nice to us, and really just treating everyone we come across as Jesus would. It was a really good reminder. Next we heard from Elder Clayton. He talked about the power of the Book of Mormon and the importance it plays in conversion. He also talked about obedience. One thing that he said that really stuck out to me was "the difference between 6:30 and 6:31 is a lot more than one minute" aaaand if you know me, you know why that stuck out to me... Haha just kidding. But I really liked it, because sometimes on the mission and in life in general, it's easier to be obedient to the bigger "rules" more so than the smaller ones. I dont know why but it can be Haha. This small phrase has really helped me to be a little more aware of the smaller rules that maybe I wasn't following as closely as I should have been. THEN, we heard from the one and only Elder Andersen. He threw straight fire at us. He told us that if we were preaching the gospel in another language other than our native tongues, then we need to be reading the Book of Mormon, out loud and slowly, everyday. So, challenge accepted. I'll let you know how it goes Haha. He also roasted us about our church attendance numbers, he said our adding and baptism numbers were amazing but our church attendance number sucked, so we are going to put an emphasis on inviting everyone we meet to church this year, so hopefully we can improve that. He also mentioned that we should focus on the Hispanics and the young people to start teaching because missionaries have more success with them than anyone else. Super interesting!! The meeting was awesome and our whole mission was able to be there and shake his hand. It was such a blessing to be able to here from all 3 of them. I'm excited to start putting his words into action.
All of us with Elder Andersen.

So our mission has adopted the new dinner policy this year and we now dedicate 5-7 every night to solely finding. We have been having some really cool experiences with that and have added a few more people to start teaching, so fingers crossed that they all workout.

This morning I had the opportunity to go to the temple. I am loving the emphasis of the importance of BOTH roles in the gathering of Israel. I am so excited about all of these changes and its definitely an exciting time to be a woman in the church. I'm pretty sure the whole mission decided to go to the church also Haha, there were so many missionaries.

After the temple, we went to La Jolla cove. I am convinced that I am serving my mission in paradise, or my version of paradise. I looooove the ocean soooooo much. There's a spot that has a ton of seal and I dont know what smells worse, them or the church gym I'm currently sitting in with 40+ sweaty elders. Last week we went to sunset cliffs and oh my gosh I am so in love with that place. We got some cafe Rio and sat on the cliffs and watched the sun set. We also watched someone get engaged hahaha classic. But sunset cliffs has definitely been added to one of my favorite places ever. I will attach many photos hahaha.

 

Anyways, I'm excited for this week and to see what happens with the new people we have added. I love you all and I hope everyone has a great week!!!

twenty nineteen?!?!

Hola todos!! Wow time flies, I haven't spoken to you all since last year hahahaha dad jokes <3 my sense of humor right now is finding everything funny and I'm guessing it's because my missionary cicada rhythm was thrown off last night when I stayed up till midnight ahhhhahahaha. 

This week was so fun but unfortunately most of the people we have been teaching are in TJ until later this week so we haven't really been having too many lessons. We have been doing A LOT of walking this week because we had 0 miles but hey, new month, new miles.

Nothing terribly interesting happened this week. On Monday (yesterday) we had MLC (Missionary Leadership Council) and it was super cool. We got to discuss our mission vision and improve it so we can be more successful as individual missionaries and a mission as a whole. Because this was the first meeting for 2019, we all got to create goals for the whole mission for this next year. President Stubbs gave an amazing training which gave us a lot of motivation for this next year. Sister Rooks and I were happy with the goals that were set  and we are so excited to now start implementing them with the sisters!!

Walked to the chapel to meet with an investigator (that didn't show up) :(

The best part of Monday though was Monday night. Sister Batchelor (my old comp/trainor/my fav person) and her new companion, Sister Decker came over and we had a sleep over!!!!!! It was so fun and we ate way too much junk but it was so fun to be with my old companion again. There's are new year tradition that Mexicans do and basically you just shove 12 grapes in your mouth within like the first minute of the new year. I thought it was within the first 12 seconds and I shoved them all in my mouth and almost choked Haha whoops!!!

Welcoming in the new year with 12 grapes in my mouth hahaha

This week, Elder Andersen is coming and we get to be together as a whole mission which I'm super excited about!!! I can't wait to hear him speak!!!

Anyways, I hope you all have a great start to the new year!!! Hahahanewyearnewmemeshahahaha