love and miss you

Hey there! i have time to write from 1120-1220! i love you so much and miss you guys. The start of this week was a little rough. I just felt like I wasn't good enough and wasn't able to compare to other missionaries, but I realized that there are many things that i can do that only I can do! Haha, but we had an awesome district meeting this week. We talked about becoming consecrated missionaries. This means putting our time, talents, ability's, thoughts actions and most importantly our heart to the Lord. I have tried to put this into action. I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do and how I can accomplish it, but I know that it is only through surrendering our whole heart to him that makes it possible and easy for us to complete those tough tasks. I had my first real tracting in Oregon experience. It rained and poured the whole day. A man literally slammed the door in our faces, then he came out and yelled "And don't come back!" haha it was funny. I don't really like that people reject this message of the gospel, but I can't help but to brush it off and push forward to the next house. I constantly have a prayer in my heart that someone will recognize that we are servants of the lord. It will be a great day! That same day we also went to a house that smelled like straight up marijuana (sp?) Wow the spirit was NOT at that house. I felt so gross and unhappy being there, we left super fast. To sum it up that was an awesome, but not so awesome day! Sister Abbott and I laughed a lot that day :)! Okay mom and dad- I can't have my ipod, but any church music is allowed, CD player is in our car so we like them. Thank you for the package! I needed that sooooo much! It was great to get some pictures and the shirt and shorts. I will send the watch to Elder Singley so thank you! I love hearing from you! What temple were those pictures from ? Mom will you make sure to save all the pictures I send home into a file on the computer, that way I can free up my memory card on my camera. Thank you! So we are calling from a members house on Sunday! whoot whoot! I will be calling about 7-9pm Oregon time, not sure what Mesa time is, but it will be awesome! And to agree with Cedar, sorry if I cry when I hear your voices! I am so excited to talk with all of you! The weather has been okay here, rainy today though! Today's pday we are going to the Oregon Vortex, not sure what that is, but some members are taking us and I am excited. Jeff J, he is a recent convert took us to lunch a couple days ago, the members are SO AWESOME!! He and another less active- Laura Randall and her kids are going with us to the Vortex, dad I am sure you can look it up online and see all about it before I go, we are going this afternoon. I am glad that the family and you were able to get together while Mindy and Kevin were in town! I really hope they can move down here, that would be so awesome!! Mom and Brighten you need to start doing things for weddings, aka candy tables, and let me join when I get home! I love those things :)!! I can't believe that Crew is turning 4! Holy cow time flies, just like my mission is right now! I have been gone for a month! Where has all the time gone! Happy early bday Crew bear! I sent you a letter so you better wait to open in till your bday!! That is so fun that you get to have a little water party! mom- keep emailing me Cedars emails! That is perfect! I love hearing from him and it is gonna be so awesome when we can talk in person about all of our experiences. We tract about 10 hours a week, visit a lot of less actives, teach investigators and have meetings. We only are home for lunch, about an hour a day. We eat at members homes every night, I need to stop eating all the yummy treats! We have a car 24/7, we borrowed the bikes from a member for that bike ride last week. I was so surprised that I wasn't sore! yippe! We are able to go to the temple once every other transfer. They want us to do missionary work on the earth I guess, haha! I am excited to go this transfer. We will get to go with our district. Some sad news. I will never get to serve on the coast. They only have sisters in about 5 or 6 different areas, but I am still happy that I am in the beautiful state of Oregon! it just gets more green everyday! Okay so about our investigators and how the work is going-- We got a referral from a lady in one of our wards so we went and visited them yesterday. The man and wife are in there 60's. She has pink and purple hair and they have tats all over their bodies. They are super sweet and had no idea that they were referred, but we needed to be there! He had a stroke at the beginning of March and is already able to talk and walk, the docs didn't think that would ever happen! They see the hand of the Lord in there lives and are looking for a church to attend to. They are so prepared! IT is crazy! We talked to them about the Restoration and showed the Joseph Smith movie. The lady just sat there and cried through the whole thing! It was so cool!!!! She and her husband felt the spirit and we are teaching them again on Friday. Tonight we are visiting with April and Derek. WE are going to watch a talk by Robert D Hales, it will be perfect for her. We are planning to make a solid commitment to baptize her on May 22nd! she knows everything she needs to know and is living worthily, but she is looking for something bigger! I just pray and hope that she can recognized the promptings of the spirit. They are such a sweet family and they are going to make us banana pancakes for dinner! They asked us over even though they aren't members ahah! We are starting to see a lot of success and hopefully this will be the start of lots of baptisms in May! I can't wait to see how this week goes! I love seeing the gospel that blesses families and what an amazing thing this is! I hope that you all see that God loves and cares for each one of us. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses, we can come to him in anything! I know that he walks and helps us in EVERYTHING! I hope you all know that I love you all and care about you and thank you for all the prayers and support! I feel your love and I can't wait to hear from you all on Sunday!!!!!!! Take care and be happy, it is all about the attitude, turn your hear to HIM, he will lead and guide every step of the way!