Kirksville, Missouri

Hey! This week has been great! Kirksville has been doing great and I love it! We have some super solid investigator and we got a new one this week and he is super cool. His name is Dieu Merci Hilu, which means thank god in french, and he is Congolese. He speaks pretty good English and he loves Jesus and want to learn more and how he can be like us. He is so excited to be changed by god and we met him on Sunday and have already had like three lessons with him. But he is great and he said he is going to make African food for us tonight and teach us some french too because there are quite a few people from the Congo here. Im glad to hear things are going good at home and those are some nice fish you guys caught! I ask people sometimes where there are some good places to fish and there lots of good spots :) Well the its all been going pretty great here and I hope you all have a great week!! Love you!

Snow Day

December 12, 2016

Ya its been getting a bit colder but Ive been able to stay warm :) That taco stand sounds like a great idea to me!!! Actually some good tacos sound really good right now. Haha its funny I actually make salsa every week and will normally bring some to p-day and the elders really seem to like it :) 

Im so excited for Triston and tell him I say good luck and he's going to love it! Vegas sounds fun and I know Sebas will kick some butt. I really enjoyed those videos of him wrestling you sent last time and I would love to see how he does in his next tournament. But I'm so happy to hear you are all doing good :) This week was really good we got to go up to Iowa City for exchanges and it was really fun and cool to see how missionary work is in a big city. The work in Washington has been good too and we were able to meet with a lot of people this week. We were going to have 4 people come to church but church got cancelled because the roads were really icy but thats ok they can all come next week :) Oh ya and I can now say I have gone knocking in the snow and shoveled snow. We went to go shovel and older members driveway and side walk and kind of ended up doing the whole street so we had a nice arm workout :) And I love how this season has allowed us to serve people and people have been nicer too because that light of Christ is so strong this time of year. LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!!

New Calling

November 07, 2016

Well Im glad to hear you are all doing well and tell Tyler I said good luck ;) It sounds like you guys had a good stake conference and this past sunday we also had an area broadcast from salt lake and I guess it was the first time they have ever done that but it was really good. It was cool because they talked a lot about going to the temple and teaching like Christ. There were four different speakers, and I can't remember the first three's names but the last speaker was Elder Rasband. He really emphasized the idea of one by one and how each of us can make a difference one by one and how God knows and blesses us one by one. But it was a really good reminder of the difference we can each make. 

Oh ya and it was really cool to see Halloween happen in a small town, they went all out! All the kids in the town and other smaller neighboring towns all gathered together in the town square and all the shops handed out candy and the park in the center of the square had tables set up to pass out more candy. And now they are already setting up for Christmas! They go all out for that too :) The weather is starting to get a bit chilly too. The low tomorrow is supposed to be 33....thats a degree above freezing.... Well hope you all have a great week! Love you!

November 14, 2016 

Ya I love this little town, it does seem like it is straight out of a movie. My mission president and his wife always say that Washington is their favorite town in Iowa. It has been getting a bit colder and we are starting to get some ice in the mornings but everyone has been telling me it is normally snowing this time of year and this is very irregular for it to be this warm right now.The past couple of days the low has been in the 30's and the high between low 60's-50's but I have been able to stay warm so far :) 

We have been working with a guy named Rodney and it has been so cool to see the change in him. He once told us he used to be content with life but now he knows he can actually be happy. He has been trying so hard to make a change in his life and he has come so far already and we are so excited for him to keep changing.

That is so cool you and dad got called as ward missionaries! I know you guys will be great at it and will receive so many blessings from it! 

Tell Sebastian I said good luck and to kick that other kids butt ;) and tell LJ i said good luck too, I dont remember who she is but I might if I saw her face so you should defiantly send me a picture of her ;) And sorry I havent sent any pictures I keep forgetting to bring my camera when I email. But do you think you could also send me a picture of our family and one of all the cousins together too :) 

November 28, 2016

GO SEBAS!!! Tell him I said good job! So this week I got a new companion and her name is Hermana Beach and she is from California so we are in a zebra companionship (one english and one spanish). And we are still in Washington :) But I have been trying to work on my Spanish and I have been able to understand mostly all of what people say but I'm working on the responding part. Hermana Beach is super nice though and she is cool too so we get along great. We ate so much food on thanksgiving! The member that fed us lives on a farm and she makes everything from scratch and there was so much food. Then we got to pet some horses and sheep after so it was fun. How was your thanksgiving? Its getting colder here and they said it is supposed to snow this week so im excited for this week :) I hope your week goes great! Love you all!

oh ya and we just had a change in our music rule so we can now have any artist as long as they are singing a hymn so do you think you can ask LJ to put some music together for me? And here are the last pictures me and Sister Hilliard took together and the one with Nereyda she is wearing my name tag because she wanted to :) she said it felt funny

October Updates

OCT. 3

So my mission presidents wife has a facebook page for the mission and its Iowa Des Moines Mission Badger 2016-2019 if you to check it out. So this last week went by so fast and we met lots of people and the were all pretty nice this week. We think its because the weather is so nice out right now. It gets kinda chilly at night but its not to bad, but we'll see how I feel when winter hits :) But last week ended so great with conference, I loved it so much. It was super humbling and powerful to be a missionary and hear about missionary work so much and how we can improve. A lot of the talks focused on the more "simple" things of the gospel like prayer, reading the Book of Mormon, and the restoration but how we really need to know them and have a firm foundation. I feel they also emphasized the last days too and it really made me think if I am prepared for it and if I am preparing others for it. But I hope you all look back over the talks and pray about them. So this week is going to be pretty exciting. That Guatemalan family I told you about, the daughter, Nereyda, is going to be baptized this Saturday! She is slowly getting more and more excited and its amazing how much of what we teach her she retains. She is one of the smartest and sassiest 10 year olds I have ever met, but she is great! So she has been reading the Book of Mormon for about 4 weeks now and is in Mosiah 23....thats almost 200 pages in....she's great! Well hope you all have a great week!!!!! LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

OCT. 10

That's so awesome that Sebas got to go to Conference and spend time with Nellie! Tell Bro B I love and miss him too! I'm so glad you were able to have a great Conference experience! That talk you liked was by Juan A Uceda and he actually came and spoke when I was in the MTC, but he is such a powerful speaker and I loved his talk too :) Well Nereyda's baptism went great and she was so happy after that she couldn't stop smiling. She did almost give me and Sister Hilliard a heart attack though, she came about 15 min late to her baptism on Sat and on Sun when she got confirmed, but it all worked out! We also met this really cool guy who can't read or write but definitely wants to learn more and he actually came to church on Sunday. We are also working with a small family but the parents aren't married so we have to get them married before they can be baptized so we will see how that goes. But this week was great and after church on Sunday we both got super tired like the whole week just hit us like a truck. We were able to finish our day off going knocking in a smaller town and when we got home we just about passed out! Haha but this week should be another great week and I hope your week goes great too!

And yes Iowa is starting to get a bit colder I keep making the joke that its like winter in Arizona right now and I just get looks of concern in reply and that winter will be hard for me. I just laugh and say it will be fun :) But Iv'e been able to find some warmer clothes left behind by other sisters but I'm about to start getting winter clothes pretty soon so thanks ill be sure to let you know if I need more but I shouldnt. We just have to plan a trip to a bigger city to get that stuff because Washington doesn't have very much.

We were super anxious before the baptism and I had been wanting to go in a cornfield so we went in one right outside the church building....cornfields are scary.

Sis Hilliard, Eluvia, Nereyda, ME, Sister Lane (Hilliard's comp when they first met them)

OCT. 17

Hey so this week calmed down a bit but it was still a great week! We found a couple more people to try to teach and they seem really cool. We got to go to an amish home this Saturday with a bunch of the senior missionaries and got fed a meal. And it was sooooo good! We ate so much we couldnt move after! Ill send pics of it next week so sorry I ran out of time. But I hope you all have a great week! Love you!

Less is more!

So this has been a crazy week. We had exchanges and zone conference and Women's Conference plus other things that came up so we didnt have as much time as we wanted to go out and try to find new investigators. But it's so cool how, even with less time out finding, we were able to find five new investigators. Thats more that we have found in the past three weeks combined. And this week is going to be just as crazy if not more so. We have a meeting in Iowa City to go to on Wednesday, District meeting on Thursday, and then General Conference. But I am so excited for General Conference this  weekend, I'm pretty sure this is the most excited I've ever been for it. It basically like the super bowl for missionaries. One of the members invited us to come watch the Saturday morning session with them and they always make tamales for the first session of conference. So Im sure you can try to guess how much more excited I am for conference. I don't know if their tamales will be as good as ours but i'll let you know ;) Anyways I hope you all have a great week! LOVE YOU!

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Sister Mora

Busy busy busy!

Hey! I'm glad to hear that you guys have been busy and trust me I have been too. We have been talking to lots of people and have had lots of meetings. This week we have zone conference, exchanges, and woman's conference this weekend so we will be running around quite a bit but I'm excited. The people here are very firm in their beliefs but most are willing to hear us out. We actually got two new investigators this week and they are both pretty cool. We met Edgar at the beginning of this week and he is pretty awesome. He is a correctional officer at the jail here (which me and my companion didn't know they even had one) but he had so many good questions and we could tell he just really wanted to find the truth. He was super open to what we had to say and wants to learn more so we are excited to go back and talk to him more. Then we met Brittany later in the week and she and her husband have been looking for a church and she has family members who are members so she is very interested to learn more. But it has been cool to see how the Lord has prepared the people we meet and I'm glad we were able to find them.

I dont think I need anything special from home right now but I'll look forward to getting the package :) I hope Sebas has fun at homecoming! And I think I know who Brinley is. Thats cool to hear what everyone else is doing too and tell Sebas he better be nice to my baby! ;) Love you all!

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Sister Mora

Thats the view out our window. 

That was what my desk normally looks like when I study. 

And me and my companion did a face mask after a long day :)

Mission Call Opening