New Area

Whoo! Well this week has been action packed since arriving in Desert Hot Springs. It has been so much fun! I have loved it.

My new companion is Sister Lee. She is from Colorado and goes home the end of this transfer. I love her-- We are having great fun together.

The work has been booming this week! We have had so much going on! It has been great!

We are working with so many people! We have LaVerne. She was a refferal from a member of the ward that was recently reactivated. We are helping her prepare for Baptism in April. She is really excited. It is fun to watch her.

We are also working with Penny and Pauline. Pauline is married to a returning less active member and Penny is her mom. They are so great! They are loving the Gospel. Pauline is always so excited to tell us about what she has been studying and such throughout the days.

We also met a nice young woman named Wendy this week. She is fun. She has a lot of struggles. However, a few weeks ago she moved in across the street from the church. She doesnt have a car, but wanted to go to church so decided to try that one. She happened to show up right at the end of a relief society luncheon. We were able to teach her the Restoration that day and she loved it! She came to church on Sunday and is now singing in the ward choir! How fun :)

Well, I love you all! I hope that you are having a wonderful week! Stay close to the truth and be the best :)

Sister Hope

Sister Lee and I

Well, it has been another transfer week :) They are busy and crazy as always. I am so sad that I had to leave the Bermuda Dunes ward! They really are so wonderful. I am so grateful for the time I was blessed to be able to serve and work with them :)

Here are some fun families.

familia Flores

Francisco and Nathan

Sister VanBuskirk satisfied my cravings for Tajin for the rest of my mission. She is the best :)

Engle Family :)

John :)

Sister Schmid. This week on our walk she street contacted a man that spoke no English. 

Oh boy do I love her :)

Gabe and Michelle

Cant Hold Me Down

Well, another Transfer has come to an end. They seem to fly by too quickly!

This week has been busy. We met a Less Active that told us that she wasn't a "Mormon" but was Jewish, and then proceded to tell us how some Sisters coerced her into getting baptized like 20 years ago. She was really nice. She had a lot of cats. :) She told us that we could come over and start teaching her our missionary lessons. We will see if that works out :)

We had a really good lesson with Francisco this week. Well, I dont know if "really good" would be the best description of it. The Spirit was really strong, so that made it great. We were talking with him about faith and about miracles. He told us that he didnt really think that he knew if what we were saying is true or not. It was neat though because after a little talking, he told us that he knew what he needed to do-- That he needed to start reading and praying about the Book of Mormon on his own. His idea was to read two chapters a day-- one at morning and one at night-- and continue to pray and find his own answer. At the end of our lesson he said one of the most faithful prayers I have heard on my mission. He is such a great kid. He is going to figure it out one day. I am sure of it. I just dont know that it will be as quickly as this whole ward thinks it should be.

This week I also went on exchanges with Sister Jones. It was super fun. We had lots of lessons and things just flowed. It was great :)

Sister Schmid was at church for all three hours again this week, so she seems to be doing just fine. We sure love her :)

There are so many wonderful people here. Saying goodbye is really beginning to get old. I am grateful that The Lord has seen fit to bless me to be able to meet so many people though and to be able to learn and grow from them. I have loved each and every one of them, and though I am sad to leave the Bermuda Dunes ward after just 6 weeks, I am excited to be able to go to another new place. This week I am moving to Desert Hot Springs.

Oh, and just so that I dont forget, I owe the Flores family a trip to Tijuana for tacos :)

Well, I love you all. I hope that you are doing well and that you have many blessings to count. I am so very grateful for this Gospel. It really is a miraculous one. I cannot believe how blessed I am and how blessed we all can be as followers and disciples of our Savior Jesus Christ.

I'm off to new places, I'm off and away! Wish me luck packing!

Sister Hope

Many miracles, and many adventures :)

This week has been so crazy good!! I have been so excited to tell all of you about it! We were able to have some rally awesome lessons. We have definitely seen miracles from Heaven. It has been great!

This is sister Schmid. She is a less active that we have been working with. She is so funny. She cant drive, but she goes out to lunch every day and will call us once or twice a week and ask us to walk with her so that she doesnt have to go by herself. We had to take a picture since we were matching :)

We have been working with sister Schmid for a while working with her on getting back to church. We finally just started inviting her to help us with our missionary work by doing things like praying for our investigators because she doesnt really know that she is less active. She has been so excited about helping us and this week she came to church because of it! She is great :)

side note. Here is a district picture.

Sister Litster, Sister Bullen, Sister Letoa, Sister Hope, Elder Morgan, Elder Ashcraft.

Elder Morgan is the Elder that his family is in Lisa's ward in Hawaii. I am not sure who was requesting the picture of us, but here it is :)

Alright, back to business :)

This week we also decided to make some cookies since we had a car and they wouldnt get gross in the process of delivering them to people. My mother cannot say she didnt teach me anything. I can follow the Nestle Toll House recipe and make perfect cookies.

IT is crazy the number of miracles that these brought this week. We were able to meet with John, we were able to get into so many less actives that usually get quiet inside after they look out the peep hole. Wow! It is so wonderful to be able to show a little love and receive so many blessings in return! :)

Also, this week I held  a 15 foot Python. His name is Monty.

Miracle-- absolutely. I didnt even die :)  Sister Letoa was screaming pretty loud though :) It was pretty hilarious :)

^^ I feel like this is way cooler than sending home the skin ;)

Other than that, Francisco is doing awesome. We are still working on  the whole baptism thing, but he is doing great! He is getting super excited to go to Mormon Prom. (what??)

Sister Letoa's feet are doing better, so that is good.

Over all it has just been a wonderful week!

Today has also been super fun! We spent the Afternoon and a world tennis tournament! Its a super big deal. Today was the preliminaries for lower players  to play for a seed in the brackets. It was super fun though. Definitely the strangest sporting event I have ever been to. Everyone is dead silent, and all you can hear is the players grunting. Its like a huge deal here though. All of the famous tennis players-- Whoever they are-- are here. I guess that they have this tournament every year, and that is really the only thing that goes on at this huge stadium. It was definitely worth the day :)

Did you know that tennis players get their own umbrella holder? I think that we played the wrong sports growing up ;)

Sister VanBuskirk that took us :

Anywhoo! In super big and exciting news! Elder Brent H. Nielson from the seventy is coming in a couple of weeks! In case you are not all aware he is from none other than Twin Falls, Idaho :)  I am so excited about it :) He will only be here for a couple of hours, but it will be GREAT :) Our mission is so blessed. I am so excited :)

I love you all and I hope that you have a super wonderful week! Stay true to the things that you know to be true and keep being the salt of the earth! You are the best!

All my love,

SIster Hope

Week of surprises!

This week has been full of surprises. Let's see if I can recount many of them. 

We went to lunch Sister Schmid again this week. She is too cute :) She is always telling us all of her random stories. She was finally going to come to church this week, but then it rained on Sunday and she decided it would be too slick. Next week.. :) 

We also had a really awesome Relief Society activity this week. The women made care packages for the missionaries serving from this ward. It was kind of fun. We shared a thought and invited them to post their testimonies of the Savior on their Social Media accounts. So, that was good :) 

We finally got to meet with Francisco this week! Woo Hoo! He is so awesome! We talked about The Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity. He doesnt have any issues. Considering he is a 17-year-old boy living in Southern California, his life of faithfulness without the Gospel is nothing short ofa miracle :) He is awesome though! We are hoping his mom's heart will be softened so that he will be able to be baptized. great faith and mighty prayers :) 

The rest of the week has been pretty slow. Sister Letoa has some pretty monstrous blisters on the bottoms of her feet. We got a car last night, so hopefully we can pick it up a bit. Poor thing. We found out it is a foot fungus so we are cleaning everything so that I dont get it. Yikes! 

Hopefully the car doesn't stay too long. We dont really have any need for it in the area. We can walk anywhere. It was nice to not have to get a ride from a member to go grocery shopping today though :) 

So, this past month or so, our mission has been doing a Book of Mormon Challenge. President Van Cott invited us to read the Book of Mormon in 60 days so that we could be done in time for conference. It has been so awesome! I have read the Book of Mormon a few times already on my mission, but it has been awesome to just be united with all of the missionaries in doing so! It has brought extra power to our work. I think I am a week or so ahead, but I am in the Missionary chapters of Alma right now, and it has been extra exciting. 

I am so very grateful for the many blessings that are poured out upon us by the Lord. I know that He loves us and that everything we do really can be inspired and led and guided by Him. I love the work of Salvation, and I am so eternally grateful for the time I am able to spend being so involved in it. I love feeling like I really can give something back to my Savior, even if it is small and sometimes seems of little worth. I love the scriptures, and I am grateful for the prophets that took the time to bear witness of Christ and to write down those testimonies for our learning and our benefit. The Gospel is a wonderful thing. To live it is to love it :) 

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Sister Hope