The Missionary Life of: Week 44

Hola hola!

This week was a harder one, we had transfers and I'm now in the San Rafael zone in Novato! It hurt my heart to leave Woodland. I think it's safe to say that it has been my favorite area. The people there are amazing and I will miss it SO much.

Later Woodland

I'm slowly coming to know Novato, it's always hard to be in a new area and not know where things are but it seems like a good place! My companion is Hermana Tribe! She's pretty awesome, her Spanish is really really good and her desire to work and change lives is pretty big! So slowly but surely I'll come to love Novato maybe not as much as Woodland but it will come!

Hermana Tribe

At transfers I was able to see Hermana Bennett and Hermana Garcia so that was super exciting to see them and others that I've become friends with out here! I've also made some new friends in this new zone, I don't know anyone super well yet but everyone seems pretty cool! Elder Osorio and Hermana Rivera are here with me though so that makes things fun!

Hermana Bennett (MTC Companion)

Hermana Garcia

Hermana Rivera

This week has been a mash of a bunch of things but we did service for the food bank and we were able to visit a lot of people! The people here are so great! We visited with la familia Escamilla who have such a great spirit and a dog named "cosita" which literally means cute little thing. They have three young kids that got totally into the lesson and were asking us questions.

I also meet George who is a less active that has just gotten back into the Book of Mormon. He's the cutest little old man that had read the testimony of Jospeh smith. The spirit totally led the lesson and guided us to read Joseph Smith history and it all began to make more sense to him. The spirit is a great thing!!

It’s hard to leave an area but meeting new people is so awesome and the people here are very open and welcoming. We meet with a women named Rosie, we helped her daughter with her English reading. We meet with her and had an awesome lesson! She really opened up and talked about deep questions she had concerning the world and the people in it now. It made me smile because they were questions that the gospel can answer and help her with and we were able to set up a return appointment with her to talk more about what she asked. So that was very exciting!

I met the Jimenez family. They have a little boy name Christen and I don't know how old he is but I want to be his best friend. He asked us question after question and he started asking about siblings. He proceeded to ask me if I was the oldest and I said yes and his reply was, oh so you're going to die first? It caught me so off guard and that doesn't happen often but I almost spit pupusa across the room I was laughing so hard.

There was a fall harvest festival for our branch and an English ward. So we went and tested chili, corn bread, and pie. #howwhite but it was fun and we square danced with some little kids there. Then we got to go contacting on the Golden Gate Bridge!!

The quote of the night was when a sister said she was on the collegiate dance team and an elder freaked out and said what? And then he proceeded to say "oh I thought you said the paraplegic dance team".

I have been reading the book The Infinite Atonement and I read about power. It talked about how as we exercise power we gain power. "One of the ironies of life is that we acquire love as we give it away; we increase in knowledge as we dispense what we have, and so it is with certain powers. As we exercise power in righteousness, we acquire more power." It made me think as I read about the savior and each step of the atonement it talked about how maybe as Christ went through the atonement he gained power. So as he continually accomplished each step he gained the power needed to complete the next. When he suffered for the sins he gained the power to be crucified and when he was crucified he gained the power able to resurrected. So he couldn't have moved forward without accomplishing the thing preceding it. Love it!!!!!

I also want to talk about my love for the scriptures! I love them so very much. It's been a hard couple days with everything changing and leaving some people I really love but wow are the scriptures amazing! Right now I'm really working on trying to memorize scripture references so that when they are needed during lessons or at random times I will be able to remember them.

Through doing this I was able to read so many beautiful verses our father in Heaven has provided us with. He gave us the scriptures for SO MANY reasons and one of them was comfort. I could read the words and know that God wanted me to read them and know he was with me and that was something that really helped me push through this week. So I invite you all to read. To read, ponder, and love because of all things our Heavenly Father wants us to feel of His love for us and one way we can feel that is by reading the words He has specifically supplied for us!

Les quiero muchísimo!!

Con amor,

Hermana foster