December 21, 2015

Sorry...a little late!   

Hey everyone!!

First off sorry I've been a huge slacker and haven't written a blog post in forever and ten years! Alright if I remember right, I already told you guys I got moved to Taylorsville and I was white washing. If I didn't say that then SURPRISE! Ok so my new companions name is Sister Tekurio and she is from Tahiti and she's been out 16 months so she's almost done! Ccrrraaazzzyyy! 

So it's been a bit of a slow start but things are picking up for sure! So we've been working with Robert and he's awesome! He's working toward the temple and he's sooo close!! Not sure when he'll for sure get to go but I think it'll be semi soon. He participates a ton in class and has lots of awesome insights!

Next is Amy! She's also working toward the temple! We took her to temple square on Wednesday and she loved it! I mean she's been there before but it was still amazing! We took her to the Joseph Smith museum and watched the new video for the First Vision and it was amazing and the Spirit was soooo strong! She has a friend on a mission that really got her going back to church and so she's waiting for him to get back to go through the temple and he'll be back in Januaryish and that's gonna be soon too!

Now we have Mandy! She is seriously amazing! She's so great and just so ready for the Spirit in her life! She has kids that like to go to scouts and a daughter that is going to start going to achievement days. They all went to the Christmas party and just loved it! Everybody is super busy this time of year so we won't officially get to start teaching her until after the first of the year but we've stopped by and shared a scripture with her a couple times. Just short and sweet visits. Also her kids love us so that helps too(: 

So a major event that happened this week was that we went on exchanges with our STLs. STLs stands for sister training leaders and they just help us be better missionaries and such. Now exchanges are when we just switch companions for 24 hours. So I went with Hermana Ochoa. Now I'm sure you saw the "Hermana" and so yes, she is a Spanish speaking missionary. Yeah I went to the Spanish speaking area for exchanges and it was wonderful! So we went to one of her investigators houses for dinner and there were a ton of people there because they were celebrating the death of her grandma a few years back. So they made tamales (they were delicious and it was my first time having them!!) and had a family gathering. So Catholics say a prayer for the person and they asked us to say it. Hermana Ochoa was flippin out cause she's like I CANT PRAY TO THE VIRGIN MARY BECAUSE CONFLICT OF INTERESTS. Of course this was all internal. But I guess they usually get somebody from their church to do it but last year they couldn't get anybody to do it so they asked the elders and any way she just said a regular prayer to Heavenly Father and asked for peace and other good stuff and they said it was perfect. But any way after that there was one kid there that was golden! He's been going to church with his friends and he was sitting there testifying to his family about how great he feels at out church and how much more he learns and he loves that we split up and go to different classes and he's amazing!! (Sorry for the run on sentence I was really excited) but anyway he's not in either of our areas but he now has an English Book of Mormon (which was a miracle because he said he couldn't understand the Spanish one and the Hermanas don't really carry English ones but Sister Tom does so I had one and it was wonderful and he's super excited) anyway fun stuff!

So yeah miracles happen when you least expect them! I'm loving my mission, it's been an absolutely amazing, growing, spiritual, exciting, wonderful opportunity! God really does love each and everyone of us and wants to help us grow and learn. Sometimes we might disagree with His tactics, but He really does know what's best for us. We just gotta keep having faith and trusting in the Lord. It's not our job to do the heavy lifting, it's our job so seek out God the Father and Jesus Christ. I love you all and hope you have an absolutely wonderful Christmas!

Sister Tomkinson