Week 22 - Thankful

Hey!

This week was super super crazy! Tuesday night, we had to be in Bellevue (about an hour drive from Enumclaw) by 6 pm to pick up the new missionaries. Sister Deruvo and I had no trouble getting there, but getting back was another story...

First of all, the new missionaries didn't get to the mission office until 9 pm so we were just waiting around for 3 hours. I didn't mind it at all because I saw my cutie friend Hermana Wilcock (remember when we were in a trio double covering areas?) and we got to catch up on a lot of things. She will also be in a trio this transfer because her companion is training and she's just along for the ride. When the newbies came, we all stood in a line and shook everyone's hand that came in. Then we all sat in the chapel and President assigned the companionships. My trainee is Sister Waldron from Rexburg, Idaho and she's super sweet! I love her so much already! Not gonna lie, being in a trio is rough because we get so sidetracked and forget to get things done. I think each day has included me laughing until the tears start flowing because we are just too funny. Anyway, back to Tuesday night...we put in the church address in Enumclaw into Google Maps and we were making pretty good timing. I think we were about half way home when the maps app stopped working so we tried to refresh it. It started working again so we thought nothing of it. Then, we start seeing Seattle signs everywhere and we are like "why are we still seeing the Seattle exit signs? Shouldn't we be close to home by now?" Google maps had somehow put the mission office address in when we refreshed it so basically we drove halfway home from Bellevue and back without realizing it! We ended up not getting home until 11 pm so we were pretty out of it the next day. 

Wednesday night we finally had a lesson with J'nell and Rod! J'nell's mom happened to be there as well and it was incredible to hear her testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. We had an amazing lesson with them and J'nell was in tears at the end. Also...Rod is on date to be baptized December 22nd! Best Christmas present ever. Now if we can just get them to start coming to church...

Thanksgiving is so amazing as a missionary. Everyone just takes such good care of you because you aren't with your families. In the morning we drove with the hermanas to the stake center in Federal Way. Each year for Thanksgiving, all the missionaries get together and we just play sports for half the day. Volleyball, soccer, basketball, ultimate frisbee....we did it all. I think my favorite part of the whole activity was just getting to catch up with all the sister missionaries. Some of them have truly become my best friends. After the mission activity, we went to the Riendeau's for Thanksgiving dinner. It was AMAZING! Brother Riendeau's side of the family is mostly from France so we ate dinner with his French cousins. There was also family from Germany and New Zealand there! Sister Deruvo felt right at home...so many European accents! 

Friday we had to drive to the Renton church building for new missionary training and we had to be there at 8 am. Guess what happened? Our car engine died right as we were trying to leave! I am so done with our car. I think the car engine has died 5+ times last week so we are going to take it in this week and have it looked at. Anyway, we were frantically looking for anyone who might have jumper cables. Of course this is at 7 in the morning so either everyone is still asleep or at work. We finally saw a lady walking by and Sister Deruvo ran full speed at her. The lady didn't have anything to help us, but she knew a guy who would have jumper cables. In less than 5 minutes, we saw her coming back with a man who was clearly living in his car. He pulled up and got our engine to start in no time. We were extremely grateful for that little miracle and we weren't even that late to the training.

Saturday we had our first finding festival of the transfer. Sister Waldron was terrified to knock doors, but she did a great job. We didn't have too much success. We met a lot of nice people, but it's hard to teach someone who is so set in their ways. We just did our best in testifying of Christ and sharing verses from the Book of Mormon. There was one kid we met named Ethan who accepted our challenge to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. His father is the pastor of the church they go to, but that didn't keep us from sharing the restored gospel with him. We plan to follow up with him on his experience soon. 

Alright well that's about it for this week! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and ate lots of yummy food! The missionary work has been a little slow lately as far as progressing friends go...but I know we just have to be patient. The Lord grants miracles to those who are willing to wait. I know we will have more success soon, but please continue to pray for our friends that their hearts may be softened. 

I hope you all have a great week!

love,

sis. smith

We love sister Riendeau

So many pies!! All homemade of course :)

Black rain boots are a necessity for a Washington sister missionary 

Always gotta have a nature pic 

Week 21 - Transfer 4 Here We Go

Guys so much is happening and this new transfer is about to be the craziest one yet! Transfer 3 has come and gone, and was by far the quickest 6 six weeks of my life.

I'm still in good ol' Enumclaw with Sister Deruvo, but I'm also training again! Basically I'm training someone else within training Sister Deruvo so this is going to get interesting. Our apartment is pretty small already and we have to fit another sister in there but we are determined to make it work. We are going to have a lot of fun! Sister Deruvo will leave Dec. 18th to go back to Temple Square so we only have 4 more weeks together. Then it will just be me and my cute little trainee the rest of the transfer. Honestly so excited because the more the merrier right? Especially around the holidays! We also get a bunk bed in our apartment...lucky us right?!

This week we didn't have too much success. J'nell and Rod have been rescheduling our meetings every time due to Rod's unpredictable work schedule so we haven't seen them for quite some time. They still have not made it to church sadly so keep them in your prayers. Mike and Chelsea sadly dropped us so we will not be teaching them anymore. We still have not seen or heard from Joel, but the ward is doing their absolute best to reach out to him. We spent the majority of our week working with members and finding new people to teach. We made it a goal to go knocking on doors at least 30 minutes a day. It's definitely not our favorite thing to do, but we know it shows our Heavenly Father we are willing to work hard to find those elect people. We've actually seen some miracles come from it. Quite a few asked us to come back after Thanksgiving when life isn't so crazy, so hopefully we will have lots of new friends to teach soon! We've also seen a lot of rejection. One lady literally told us to "take our religion and get off her porch." It's moments like that when you and your companion just have to laugh and move on. 

We had a really successful discussion with our friend Arianna. Usually her kids are there every time we go over and as cute as they are....they are a major distraction. This time when we went over, her kids were in daycare still so we were able to talk with her one on one. She opened up A LOT and we finally know how to help her progress. She has been to our church once befote and really liked how she felt there, so hopefully we can get her to come again! 

I have truly planted my heart here in Enumclaw and nothing makes me more happy than getting to be with these people for the holidays. They have become my family and they will always hold a special place in my heart. 

I hope you all have an amazing Thanksgiving and remember to take some time to just realize how blessed we are! God is so good to us! 

Love you,

sis. smith 

Last district council together 

Yep that's us

 the ZONE

sister Deruvo and I have consumed way too much sushi lately 

 Look at this sunset, wow we live in a cool place!

How we feel about transfers

Sisters who make pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes together in their pjs are the best kind of sisters 

Week 20 - Zone Conference, Finding Festival, and Church Tour

Hey friends!

This week was another emotional roller-coaster which is actually pretty normal in the life of a missionary. I can't believe this transfer ends next week. I feel like it just started!

At the beginning of last week, we were invited to teach a lesson at the senior family home evening. Guess what the topic was? MISSIONARY WORK of course! We had a lot of fun with it because we practically had to yell the whole lesson so everyone could hear. Also the video we had prepared wasn't working and everyone was shouting their recommendations at us of what video we should watch. I love love love our senior ward members haha. Many of them are converts to the Church so we asked them to share their conversion stories. It was so amazing and the excitement of missionary work just overcame us all. I think it's so important that we realize missionary work isn't just about preaching the gospel; it includes being a friend and serving those around you. It includes being an example so others will recognize the light in you. Missionary work is so much easier than we think and I hope to be the best member missionary when I get home! 

On Wednesday, we had zone conference and it was amazing! There's nothing I love more than being surrounded by a bunch of missionaries and just learning how we can continue to elevate our mission. It only happens once a transfer and this time is so crucial for receiving revelation for our area. I know that there's some changes I definitely want to make to help progress this work. We also are already discussing Christmas plans which is crazy. It will be here before we know it! I'm so excited though to just serve everyone and talk about our Savior. 

Thursday was a very rough day....we spent basically half the day searching for Joel. He has fallen off the face of the earth and he won't reach out to us. We know something happened, but he won't talk about it. I felt like we were on a missing persons case because we were driving all around town, talking to different people that may have seen him. Luckily, we did finally run into him, but he's different. All I can say is, please please pray for him! Also, our car engine died again while this was all happening. Luckily, we have amazing members (the Ottos) that rushed to our rescue! 

On Saturday, we had another finding festival and our big church tour. We didn't see too much success with finding people, but we had a lot of fun with it. The elders found us a potential family to teach so we are really excited about that! I got to go finding with Hermana Aguayo and I'm convinced the Lord wants me to eventually go Spanish speaking. I'm always with the hermanas on finding day, and for the most part, I can actually understand what they are saying which is crazy because I was not good at Spanish in high school. The gift of tongues is a real thing and I'm going to teach myself Spanish now. 

We had some friends show up to our church tour! Brad came with some kids from our ward and I think he liked it. He took a Book of Mormon and said he will start reading it which is progress! Our elderly friends Douglas and Carol came too and they had a lot of good questions. Doug basically believes in the Book of Mormon minus a few details so we really just need him to be reading the scriptures everyday. We are guaranteed to develop a testimony of the Book of Mormon when we read with a sincere desire to know the truth. 

We haven't heard from Chelsea and Mike since they came to church so keep them in your prayers as well. We also still haven't been able to meet with J'nell so fingers crossed that they will reach out this week. Overall, the work is good. It's hard and yes, there are moments when I wonder "why am I even here?" You just have to look past all of that and when you do, the shower of blessings start to come. Trust me, it's so worth it to keep going. 

I hope this week brings you joy! Take moments to just laugh, even when you are having the worst day ever. Laughter will keep you sane! I can promise that. 

Love you all!

love,

sis. smith 

 Senior FHE with my favorite people

 My district sistas after zone conference 

Sister Cowley ❤

love my Italian companion

Views

Had to fit 12 balloons in our car for the church tour, it was nuts!

Week 19 - Tricks and Treats

Hey hey!

I hope you all had a lovely Halloween. Ours was pretty uneventful, but we made it fun! We spent all Halloween just visiting less active families and people we are teaching. We made little treat bags and wrote cards to each of them. They were all super grateful :) Also, as missionaries, we aren't allowed to be out past 7 on Halloween night so we just stayed in our apartment all night. We baked apples with cinnamon and brown sugar and watched church movies until we both passed out from exhaustion. 

Trick for the Week: Pretty sure Satan is trying to sabotage all our friends and members. Literally everyone we have talked to this week has the flu or has a family member with the flu. We are just waiting for it to hit us one day because we are surrounded by sick people. Our cute family, J'nell and Rod, were going to come to church this week and we were so excited about it. On Sunday morning we got a text saying they were hit with the flu and they couldn't make it to church. We also had to reschedule the lesson with them. It was pretty disappointing. It's also getting super dark at night which has made proselyting difficult. When we try to visit people in the evening, they usually don't want to talk with us because they are eating dinner or going to bed (yes, some go to bed at 7 pm just because it's darker outside). We've been trying to schedule more lessons in the evening so we can knock on doors earlier in the day, but it doesn't always work out. 

Treat for the Week: We had a trunk-or-treat with our stake last Tuesday and we invited all of our friends to it. Not all of them came, but we did see some of them there! It was great because they were able to meet many of the ward members so they can feel more comfortable about coming to church. Sister Deruvo and I just walked around and people kept asking us what we were dressed up as for Halloween lol. They think they are so funny. Our friends Mike and Chelsea were going to come to the trunk-or-treat, but guess what? They had the flu! Ok, but they totally made up for it because they came to church this Sunday!! They've been meaning to come for weeks now, so we were super shocked to see them actually show up. It was testimony meeting and they were super impressed with the way people would just get up and share their thoughts. They only stayed for sacrament meeting, but they loved it. They told us they had some reading to do....hopefully that means they are going to read the Book of Mormon. It was such a miracle. 

Well, that's pretty much all that happened this week! Pray for J'nell and Rod to get better so we can start teaching them again and get Rod on date for baptism! I love you all and I hope you have the best week ever! 

Be kind and be happy :) 

love,

sis. smith

 Thankful for Target and pizza costumes

Froyo is always a good idea

We made elder brewer a cake for his birthday (basically the best sisters ever) 

 Lol the district leader left this on our doorstep Halloween night. We have no idea what to do with it all