Rochester Mi Nuevo Hogar!

Hola Familia!!!!

From sunny and freezing Rochester! So let me tell you about my crazy week. So I got the news I was leaving Richfield and it was hard leaving all the people I love so much and I have watched grow soooo much. But it makes me happy to be able to look at the area and see how much it really has grown and developed! And im excited for a new adventure! I came over here to Rochester and Its kind of fun because my trainer hermana Jones was just serving here! The members of the ward are awesome. It is like Utah over here because everyone comes here to work in the Mayo clinic. All of down town Rochester is pretty much owned by Mayo and it overtakes the town for sure! We have an amazing bishop and ward mission leader. Oh and a huge plus is that we get feed EVERY night!! 

So my new comp is Sister Smith. She was my Sister Training leader when I was back in St. Peter and I am "killing" her! She goes home after this transfer. She is super sweet and a good worker. I am excited to learn from her and grow before she leaves! 

The first day that we got here we went over to a members and a recent convert from Sudan made us Sudanese food and it was one of the best meals I have had my whole mission. WOW it was amazing!!! Also when we were driving to my new home from the cities we stopped for a potty break and it was soo bitter cold even to walk from the car to the gas station. Someone stopped us and said he what ward are you in? I was taken back because we never get that! They were some people that had just moved in and didn't know where the church was or how to get a hold of the church. We found out they were in our ward. (Rochester has 5 wards!!) Cool how Heavenly Father puts those in our path always when we are doing what's right!!

This week we did a lot of finding and one door we knocked the screen door was frozen shut. So I decided to blow my warm breathe on it so we could open it up and it defrosted! It was super funny and helped up to keep the mood light even when it was freezing. That same day we knocked into a guy who was pretty much an identical match to uncle rico from Napoleon dynamite. Everything about him was so similar I wanted to take a picture so bad so you all could see it. It brought me great joy :) It was pretty cool because we got to go on splits with these two cute cute young women on my second day in the area. I didn't know anyone or what to do but we still had fun and it was so great to show the girl what missionary work is! 

One miracle we were able to see was just yesterday after church. Sister Smith told me the family we were going to visit didn't really like the missionaries and she was a little nervous. I thought and told her okay lets just go into this without preconceived ideas and just love them and be excited! So we did just that and we were received so well. Plus they are Hispanic so that was a big plus for me I love those people! I really felt a connection with the mother and she committed to re-start reading the book of Mormon each day. She doesn't really understand so we will be coming over to go over what she reads each week! She also invited us back to do family home evening each week and the whole family was really excited too. I am so excited to start building her faith as a mother so she can help the rest of her family. Her heart was softened and I know that was a blessing. 

We also have this really cool investigator who will be baptized March 6th. He is from the Dominican Republic and his name is Miguel Perez! He loves serving others and he had a rough life before..or you could say he lived of the world. He is now ready to leave that all behind! Its really amazing to work with him because he just accepts everything and is so faithful. It is amazing to watch people in the beginning of their conversion and all their faith that they have. We should always be having those "conversion" moments too in our life. If we can continuously find a way to grow our love and faith we can't fall! 

Well I love you all. I am proud of all of my cute family. The mission is better than ever. I am so happy. :) We are in the truth!

Un Gran Cambio!

Hola Familia!

I am getting transferred! I am going to Rochester and will be serving there as a Sister Training Leader! I am super excited for this new adventure and to see all that is in store! It will be really cool to work with the other sisters and learn from them as well. The only thing is that its a zebra area! So that means that I am a Spanish missionary and the other sister I will be with (sister smith) is English. So it will probably be a lot like St. peter with a lot of English work! I will miss it here in Richfield. Especially since we have so many awesome people here right now but I know God puts us where we need to be. I have loved working with Hermana Hougaard. I have really learned a lot from her. :) She is so sweet and cute and I am excited for her because we are taking on another area. Bloomington is being closed (the city we live in) and we are opening it! So Hermana Hougaard will be having a good challenge! The weather over here has been pretty cold. The air hurts to breath in haha. We were knocking some doors this week and saw this awesome ice glacier on the side of someone's house. I'll send the picture!

This week we had a miracle with the Rodriguez Family. There daughter is having a hard time in the teenager years and so we decided to go visit their family but specifically focus on her. We got a member to come out with us and when we were knocking on the door she asked us what she liked. We told her that she loves drawing and is really good at it! She was like oh that's cool because before I left I felt like I should grab this drawing book I have to give to her. She gave she  the book and it was perfect, such a great way to help them connect even more. That is why members are so important and SO COOL that she was in tune with the Holy Spirit.  If we just listen to the still small voice miracles can happen!

We had an appointment this week with a great family and so we had a member coming out with u s. When we got to their apartment building it was locked and they didn't answer and no one let us in. It was freezing cold and the member didn't have a jacket on. We felt bad because he really went out of his way to come with us and now he was just outside freezing. haha so we had another appointment that night and we just thought we would take him to that instead. We got there and started to teach and talk about our life on earth and the purpose that we have. The non-member wife started asking a lot of questions and our awesome member started bearing his testimony and answering her and just followed the spirit. It didn't seem like he said anything out of the ordinary but all of the sudden she asked us why did you choose him to come with you? And I was like well he is a great member and yada yada and we pray about who we take out...she was like did anyone assign him or why did you chose him, specifically. I didn't want to say well actually he was supposed to come with us to another person but they weren't there so we came here. Haha so I kind of told her about that but that Heavenly Father must have had a different plan and knew he needed to be here. She started to cry and marvel at how of Heavenly Father works. She said she wasn't going to share what touched her but something he said really hit home with her and really opened her up. She truly recognized we are in the Lord's work and that this is true. I am so excited for the sister to keep teaching her. She is a toughie but her walls were taken down by an awesome member!

There was a lot of other good stuff that happened like we met with Ely, had a fhe with maria and her family and we have been helping a LA member with cancer a lot. It is such a privilege to be guided by the hand of the Lord. I truly know he wants success for his children. We just have to listen him and then follow him. It all starts with our faith though! Grandma sent me this scripture in the beginning of my mission and its stuck with me ever since. Its in Luke 1:37 for with god nothing is impossible. Something along those lines :) I love it and know that it is the truth. If we have faith all things are possible with God!

I love you family and I always always love hearing how you are. Make it a great week!!!!!!

xoxox

Hermana Pentelute

Yo Se Que Vive Mi Señor

Hola familia! 

First of all sorry not to gives you a heads up before but yesterday we had zone conference so I couldn't write! Zone conference was really good as usual and President Stacey said something really cool I wont foget! He said in all the billions of people that have ever lived here on earth, we are the most righteous. We are the most righteous of the most righteous because we are serving missions at this time and we are on the planet where the most righteous are! I don't know if that makes sense but I really felt the spirit when he was saying it. We are here and now for a reason and I am so grateful to be his disciple at this time!

So this week we taught Maria about the word of wisdom and when we did she was already living it! What a golden investigator! We also taught her and her husband Jose about the Sabbath day and they didn't commit to living it because of their work situation. Jose usually works on Sunday and they get all of there shopping done that day. That is going to be there biggest hurdle but I know we can help them exercise their faith and make sacrifices with the help of the spirit. Jose doesn't quite have the faith of Maria but we are working on it :) One cool thing about that though was that Jose said he wouldn't be able to go to church Sunday and Sunday morning we went to pick Maria and the kids up for church and Jose was there and ready to go as well. The spirit works within each of us and I know that was a tender mercy for him to come to church and not work!!

We taught the part member family Ely and Gerado for the second and third time this week. Ely who is the girl friend of Hermano Hernandez really opened up to us. She has this desire to be forgiven and know what is the truth is. She is confused why she has had so much contact with different churches and why she has not been able to stay with just one. We were able to testify to her and connect heart to heart. She's one of the people I just click with! She says she believes in the Book of Mormon and will get baptized she just wants to know more first. It is a miracle because she has had so much contact with the church she is just now prepared. Heavenly Father gave her little by little the truth and now she is ready :)

Javier and the gang are giving us a hard time. Haha it is hard to be patient with them because they always want to contradict us but actually have desire at the same. It is super confusing! They didn't come to church this week but we aren't giving up on them quite yet. I know Jesus wouldn't! 

We had a really fun week this week:) We went to a big lunch as a district and went with the others sisters last p-day to the famous cherry on the spoon! We also got to spend some time with one of my favorite families here. The silvas! Here are pictures of it all. The silva's have a huge big crazy fam just like mine!!

Hermana Pentelute

Enfermita

Hola Familia!

Dear President Forbes,

This week I had the impression we needed to set some time aside and really go through some of our lists of LA, PM fams etc. again and make a "game plan" of how we were going to work better with these members. As we did we came across this name of a member in our ward who is active but doesn't have the priesthood! We found out he is living with his girlfriend who is a non-member. We were SO excited! We are going to help him progress and start living the law of chastity again....:) Also his girlfriend is very open and curious. We are going to start teaching them and the end goal will be to take them to the temple. God is so good and full of tender mercies. The spirit is the greatest tool we have as human beings down here in the earth. It is literally how we communicate with on high and are brought to become one with our Heavenly Father.

Maria is still progressing. HAHAHAHA so I have a great story about that. Last P-day me and my comp went and got a bagel and hot coco from Einsteins and well it was great but after that I felt SO SICK. I felt so bad and just layed in bed the rest of p-day. I decided that because I wasn't puking I was good enough to go out. We had an appointment at 7:30 with Maria and she is important! During the lesson I wasn't feeling too good and Maria grabbed me a TUM I took it and wow that made it WAY worse. A few minutes later it just hit me and I said "necesito ir al bano" which means I need to go to the bathroom. I got in there and I started taking deep breathes because well I hate puking and we were in an investigators house!! I couldn't take it though and ended up throwing up. It was so embarrassing! (I cleaned up everything and disinfected don't worry mom. Annie would have died.) I walked out and Hermana Hougaard is all like..do we need to go? And I was like yup, now. hahahahaha Maria was SO kind about it though. After we got out Hna Hougaard busted up laughing because they heard it all and so at least she thought is was funny. We both said Maria has to get baptized now I threw up in her Bano! But anyways she really had a lot of questions about the plan of salvation and it was even funnier because she was opening way up for the first time and I couldn't even focus. but we did go back and it was so fun to be able to answer them! :) We think that really helped her and is helping her to accept this little by little. We have a little bit of fear that she isn't just jumping in with both feet because of how skeptical her husband is. We don't get the opportunity to meet with him because he gets home late every night. She is really growing a connection with her fellow shipper and we think that will make things easier. That social conversion is just as important! Members are so important! We are still pumped for Maria.

One cool miracle this was being able to have Javier, his brother Hector and his cousin Bernardo at church with us this past week!!!!!!!!!!!! It took sooo much for them to be able to come but they were there and the testimony meeting was very powerful. I don't think I have ever been more nervous for a Sunday I wanted everything to go perfect and for them to really let the spirit in because they will be kingdom builders!!

Something else pretty cool that happened this week...So we were knocking in an apartment building and heard a different language so we thought it was spanish and quick knocked on the door. Come to find out the were from India! I really had to use the restroom so I asked if I could and they let us in. (I have gone way out of my comfort zone with using the restroom out here. You all know I always have to pee and well we are never home.. so there's no such thing as comfort or sanitary hahahah) We ended up sharing a message about Christ with them and in the end this girl named something like pretty gave a prayer. I wish you all could have heard it. It was SOOOO beautiful. She sang it in sun-script and I felt the spirit even though it was for something way different than what I believe. Any time we humble ourselves before God I think we can feel the spirit.

Well my cute fam and friends, I love you all! :)

I hope you have a great week!!!!! 

"asi hare su voluntad" 

xoxox

Hermana Pentelute

Pictures:
1. People give us botellas de agua  bottles of water all the time so I was cracking up about how ridiculous our back seat looks with everything we are given had to take a pic. 
2. Also awesome jello i love