Artesia week 9

Meet my new friend!

HEY! I am glad the girlies like my letters. And yay that the family missionary work is going so well! That's awesome to hear that you had someone  over for a lesson with the missionaries. How exciting. The Lord will always answer our prayers as we seek for missionary opportunities :)   I did get the box. Thank you very much. It arrived perfectly on time last week. On p-day actually when Elders Van Voris and Young where down here from Dexter. We made it through a whole bag of chex mix within like an hour. It was great!

Here are 2 random pictures of me making beans. Wow, who knew that beans would be so complex to make. I even mashed them up to make some refried beans. Then I used my Mexican side and threw in some eggs, cheese and salsa. I put it all in some warmed up tortillas for Elder Nowland and I and it was suuuuper good.

This week we had personal interviews with President Heap. That was great. Of course, we had to bike over to the church, so I told Elder Nowland to put his jacket in the backpack so we wouldn't have to wear it outside biking in the heat. Upon arrival at the church we discovered that the jacket he had grabbed was not the matching pair to his pants. LOL. Had to get a picture.

 

Interviews were great though. I already love President Heap. He has a real concern for us missionaries, I can tell. He and Sis Heap have been working super hard to memorize everyone's names, a large task considering we have 260 missionaries in the mission. I can already tell some differences in presidents. President Augustin was more about us being hard working missionaries, knowing how to focus on the investigators and get a good number of baptisms, lessons and so forth. President Heap is more focused on us as the missionaries. He wants to make sure WE are doing good and are converted first. Then we can worry more about our investigators. I think both were needed for me and in the perfect timing in my mission. I love it. And I love President and Sister Heap. You can really feel their sincerity. 

Nothing exciting in my nacho picture.

Buy hey, it's a picture.

One guaranteed good thing about Texas and New Mexico is that you'll get some good sunsets. 

This week was pretty eventful. Ryan, if you remember him from about a month ago, got out of jail on Friday. We were able to teach him and then he made it out to church on Sunday and loved it! He's still on probation, but I think he's doing much better and by taking some action and showing up to church he is demonstrating his level of seriousness in wanting to change. He's still got a ways to go, but he is taking some great steps towards preparing himself for baptism when he gets off of probation.

Rita: This week we went over the 7 day stop smoking program. She really wants to quit. We'll see how she's doing on that tonight. She went to church this Sunday. But not our church.... She went to her boyfriend's mom's church. Dang.

Mark is like our best friend. And we are his best friends. Which is good, but also bad. Since we've been teaching him for a couple months now and we have been able to develop a good relationship with him I am only worried that he will think of us more as friends and not as missionaries, which isn't the ideal situation. We'll have to make sure we keep things as formal as possible. We're not here to hang out, and it isn't a missionary's job to fellowship.

Well fam, I hope you have a good trip to Newport. Do lots of swimming and enjoy Ruby's for me! Y'know I am getting pretty good at my blender abilities. At Nielson's (Courtney will remember) I was quite a pro at making shakes. And now on the mish I can make smoothies that to me taste like tropical smoothie. But alas, nothing can quite measure up to Ruby's out on the peer in CA. I love you Mom! I love you Dad! I love you Meg! I love you Court!