EASTER

This week has been great but it has been pretty stressful! I have been working so hard that every night I get back home and I am just exhausted! We have to study so much now with training and the language and everything that I just get so tired! I am really working hard to help my companion and everything so that he can start teaching and speaking more! I love it though because now I don't have enough energy to think about myself! It truly is about other people now!

Our investigators are doing great, Ventura came to church again and she is fulfilling her commitments so we are just trying to get her on a date! She even called one of the members yesterday and had him come over to her house because she made him and his wife tamales! She is doing great we are just working on her finding her own way to church now! She loves the gospel though there are just some minor things! Our area is really progressing though now! When I first got into the area we taught one lesson a week and one less active lesson too. Last week we had 6 lessons and this week we had 4! We are truly being blessed here for our efforts! I love this new ward though! After only being here for a transfer I already feel like it is home! I miss the old area though too because today on our way here to the Logan Square church we rode a road that we would always go on and it just brought back so many amazing memories though!

  

My spanish is doing great though! I can understand basically everything now! I am shocked at how well I understand! Of course there are still some things at time I don't understand but I am doing so much better! I have so much confidence in my spanish and everything right now! And I am getting great at cooking too! I am now husband material! JK I am still a baby! Everyone talks about marriage and I just am laughing at the squirrels and stuff

For Easter yesterday, we just did normal missionary work. We didn’t do anything really special. It just felt like a normal day. Thank you for the package and everything by the way! But we have this less active family who we are working with and last week we started talking to the mom because we were just mainly working with the grandma and the grandkids but we finally got in contact with the mom and we are working so hard with her right now! She has so much confidence in us and she wants to come back to church she just doesn't know how! I love their family so much and they are my goal for this area! That is the thing I want so badly is for them to come to church! I love their family so much! I am so tired but I love it here! I hope you have a great day and good luck in China!

 Elder Martinez and I with Hno Crespo, he is so funny and he is the assistant ward mission leader.

Elder Martinez and I with the Bishop's family.

Elder Martinez and I with the Liconas family

Chicfila

Transfers with my new companion

NEW COMPANION

Sounds like you all had a great week! You are lucky that you got to go to the cubs field and everything!  But I hadn’t heard about Daniel!  That is so crazy!

But Elder Martinez and I aren't staying together. He is going down south to be in the YSA ward there and I am now going to be training! I am way nervous but I am so excited! I am sad to be leaving Elder Martinez though because we were such great friends! This transfer was amazing and we had so much fun, we have become so close that I don't want him to leave! I love this area though so much and it is crazy, I am training the only Spanish speaking missionary that is coming in this transfer.  I don’t know about my new companion, all I know is that he is a new missionary.   I thought for sure we wouldn't get split up though this week because we are working so well and so hard together and we are finding some great investigators! We did tons of service this week so that was great too!

This week’s message is a little short because I haven't felt great the last few days.  It’s from food I ate on Saturday!  But I am really loving being a missionary! I love you and have a great day!

This is what came out of one of our vents here. Soo gross but now it is all good :)

CHICAGO DOG!

Everything here is going great! We found a golden investigator this week! Last week when we were contacting we talked to this lady and it was pretty late at night but anyways we taught her this week  We brought her to a ward activity on Friday that is called Noche de Hermanamiento so basically just a family home evening one day a month and we can bring people to it and she had the best time there. All of the members were so great to her and they were all bringing her around and just making her feel right at home. Then on Sunday she came to all day of conference and so she was there at the church for 6 hours and then right after she wanted us to come over tomorrow (so today)! She is amazing that she was still interested after being there for so long and she said next week she is going to bring more people from her family!!!

But for conference we all just go to the church for all of the sessions and the members go there too.  During the breaks we just went out to eat but on Sunday the members all brought food for everyone! It was great and I watched the whole thing in Spanish! But Jesus never got baptized they are still working with him, it is a crazy situation kind of right now but they are working towards everything! I love everything here so much and thank you for sending me the package by the way! I love it here though and I hope you have a great week!

Tell Annie I can load her message so I will try to respond if I can get it to work but tell her that I love her too! But one other thing, Josh's friend and a bunch of other kids have their baseball gloves out here so can you send me mine?? I love you so much!

But I took a pic with the hat the other day though...  [I think I crocheted Garrett’s hat a bit small - heehee]

THE BIKES ARE BACK

Yeah everything is great here! Today it is in the 60s and yesterday high 50s! It came out of nowhere and it is absolutely amazing! There are no flowers here still though or blossoms or anything. But about all of the places that you gave me to take pictures, I can for sure get the picture with the Chicago sign because I have seen it tons of times but Wrigley Field may be hard because it is really far north in Chicago so it’s pretty far out of the way. And the bean I  can get if we go there one day so I will try!

Everything is going great here though!  The last few days have been really tiring because we were challenged to read the Book of Mormon by General Conference and I am doing it all in Spanish so it has taken me a while so the last few days I have been reading so much of it!  We have started to find some legitinvestigators this week too! The whole time I have been in this area we have been doing so much finding but now we are actually starting to teach more! The thing that is hard about this area is that it takes us 30 plus minutes to bike to church each way. It is so tiring and then on Tuesday I was on exchanges and that is in a big area and we rode 30 miles that day and it was freezing and I had no gloves.  But now that I am getting back into the groove of biking I love it again.  But yesterday I already got my first flat tire of the year...  

Something funny that happened was on Sunday, normally we get a ride with one of the member families in our area to church and so in the morning it was getting kind of late so we called them and something happened so they couldn't make it anymore so we are like Oh crap.. Then we texted the bus and it wasn't coming for a long time so we just got the bikes out and left. When we were walking out the door, Elder Martinez put the helmet on backwards and was like I hate helmets.... I just started laughing because he didn't realize it was the wrong way.. But everything is going great here.  I love it here so much! I hope you have a great day!

NINO

Hola mamacita!

Everything is going great here right now! But I am happy that you are helping get everything set up for Grandma and Grandpa so they feel more at home. I am so sorry that he fell and got cut up! That is so sad!  I am glad that that you are helping out that missionary! That will help him so much and get him started out on the right foot! Having him just feel happy and feel loved is the best thing that you can do for him because he is so far away from home! Thank you for sending me all of that stuff though! I haven't gotten it yet but I bet it is arriving to the mission office today so I will get it when the zone leaders go over there and get all of the stuff!

[Answers to the Mom’s many questions]: I think I will get my light gray suit done for sure though because I haven't dry cleaned it since I have been out :) We don't need a nutribullet though! We have something similar it is just like a blender but instead of the huge pitcher part it is just a water bottle so we use that some times! But the grocery stores here are all great! They have a big Jewel-Osco that is like Smiths but we don't normally go there, but we always go to Aldis that is cheaper and has great stuff so that is where we always go! The apartment definitely needs some work but everything is great here, it gets the job done! But I don't really know a lot of the people in the apartment around me too well but we are starting to talk to them a little more. The area is super safe though again! We have 0 problems here (kind of sucks). The Spanish is getting much better too but I still have tons of work. It is getting a little warmer like it was in the 50s once this week and it felt like we were at the beach! It keeps randomly snowing though so we never know here, but it is getting better! I love Spencer though! Just change him into a bengal with the orange!

Everything this week has been good but pretty hard. We only taught one lesson and we are struggling to find people to teach but we are working hard to find more people! We have been talking to everyone. Although it is hard I love it more than anything! I am so happy to be here and to be working in the Lord’s Vineyard! The people that we found on the bus last week we have to give up because only part of them speak Spanish.

But I have gotten some letters from Dad and some from grandma that have gone straight to the new house! I also wanted to thank you for sending me those talks you used to teach about the atonement! I love them so much and I have been thinking about them and praying! I love the one about how we have to work to change our circumstances; we can't just pray and expect everything to be okay! I also love the talk where Holland talks about coming unto Christ and how we do that! I am actually going to use those to teach district meeting this week because it is so important for our investigators to know and also for us just as people in general.

Something funny that happens here is literally everyone here think I look so young.  Yesterday at church the Hermanas in our ward got a less active member to come to church and I bore my testimony because all the new missionaries had to do it, but after she was talking to me and she was like how old are you and said that I looked like her son in law.   The hermanas were in an appointment with her after church and she showed them a picture of the son in law and she was like he looks like the niño.

I love it here so much though and I am just happy to be able to feel the Lord’s love every day! I know this gospel is true and I know I am called here to Chicago for a reason! The pictures are from a store that we have close to our house that sells live poultry. I am going to try and send a video that was us doing MTV cribs in one of the houses here. I wouldn't put that video up on the blog because I don’t want someone to see it and be like hey that’s my house! But I hope you have a great day! lOve you all.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY

Happy St Patrick’s Day to you too! But I am happy you talked to Dan! I haven't heard anything from him but I think I will email him soon! And the baseball stuff seems fun - I miss it so much! We walked into sports authority last week and I saw all of the baseball stuff and I am not going to lie it was kind of hard to see. How is the team doing and everything then? Have they played any games yet? But we have a lot of places around here to eat and everything so that is good but we don't really have a ton of money to eat there so most of the time it is just at home or with the members.  I love the picture with Dad and Debbie though! I love their whole family so much and I love the picture with Austin too! How has he been doing lately? I love him and miss him so much too! But we live on the second floor so I think you can just put #2 on it.  But thank you for sending me the package! I loved it and Elder Martinez and I are wearing the green ties right now!

But this week has been great but it has been pretty hard. The missionary who was with Elder Martinez before had been here for almost 8 months so last transfer he was just sick of working and wouldn't do that much, so these last two weeks we have been contacting a lot trying to find new people because we don't have any investigators. We have been working some miracles though! Last Monday we were going to make one last visit to try and see someone and while we were there these two girls and one of their boyfriends and yelled at us and asked if we were Mormons so we started talking to them a little bit more about what we do and then we told them a little about the restoration and we got their numbers to come back.  We ended up taking the bus with them because we were contacting them but the bus came and after we got off we met the other girl’s boyfriend and they were all interested! So we went back and taught them on Saturday and we had a great lesson with them and we invited them to be baptized after and almost all of them said yes! The girls also had two little sisters there in the lesson! We are so excited and they are so legit but the only problem is they speak English.  Their mom speaks Spanish and so we are hoping we can still teach them but we will most likely have to give them up.  It was such a miracle because they were so willing to listen! Also, we had a less active member, Linda, come to church yesterday and when she walked in it was one of the happiest moments of my life! She is so funny and she is the one that yelled we scared her last week and always calls me baby face, but she came!! I honestly was so happy and had the biggest smile on my face! This area is hard because we have to find everyone but I love it more than anything!

Oh and another funny story is that we have one kind of half investigator who Elder Martinez has met like 3 times and every time this man will let them in but would never let them teach or anything but we went and visited him and he was giving us food and everything and then he went to the door and we knew he wouldn't let us teach him right away but they had never gotten him to do anything and he came back and I bore testimony just about prayer and how it could help him he agreed right away. They never could get him to but I got him to so easily! I feel like that is one of the reasons why I am in this area because it was just like things clicked in his mind! I also have seen a few people that I met in my last area that were referrals from out of the ward and I swear they all live in my new area! It is truly amazing and I know that The Lord was the one who is working in this mission because President Woodbury is so in tune with the Spirit! My testimony is growing so much and I really love this gospel! I love you so much though and I hope everything keeps going great!

5916 FULLERTON, CHICAGO

[I goggled his 5916 Fullerton address and got this picture of his apartment  -- it's amazing what you can find and see on the internet!]

Oh I am so glad that you got the package and that everything was still there! But I am not sure if we will be able to go downtown for St. Patricks day because they might change our pday because it will be crazy but I really want to go!! We are going to ask president this week for permission to go down there! I thought that you would love the journal though! But that is so fun that you all went down on a girls trip! I miss St. George so much!

But this week has been great! I love my new companion! We are working so well together and I love our new area! His name is Elder Martinez and he is from Arizona! We are already great friends! We actually live in our area this time too so that has made everything a lot easier! My first district meeting this week was a little awkward because I didn't really know what I was doing! All they really told me what to do was they gave me a binder to put the numbers in and then that’s it.  It has one page of instructions which doesn’t explain anything really. But I love having the opportunity to serve the people in my district and ward! The new ward is great though! The members are so funny here! We have a less active named Linda who we were talking to her son and then he let us in and she walked out and just like yelled "Elderes, me asustaste!!!" meaning we scared her and she kept calling me baby face. I was laughing so hard and I love it in this area! We meet in the Foster building which is on Foster and Pulaski if you look that up but it hard because it takes us about an hour to get there by bus so it is hard to get investigators there. Our area is struggling a little right now so we are really working hard to pick everything up! Our house smells pretty bad though and I think it is from the heater so that is kind of weird but after you are in there for a minute it stops smelling. Everything is going great though and it is like 50 degrees today and it feels amazing! Yesterday it was like 35 and then it just jumped! These last two days have been so warm compared to the rest!

My address is 5916 w Fullerton, Chicago IL 60639. Send packages and everything to the mission office because it is an apartment so its not great for that but you can send letters straight here! I love it here though and all of the people! I am just happy for a change! I was wondering if you could maybe send me some more preworkout though? But I love you mom and I am so happy you are happy! I love you more than anything!