I Love being a missionary!!!:) (Sept. 8, 2014)

Good Morning!!

I LOVED the Fuddruckers Picture!!!! Hahaha I wish you could send me one here too! But you know Saturday I was on an exchange in Chelsea, and I got a burger that was pretty delicious, it might have been the size of my face, but it was SOOO good! :) 

I'm so glad you (Mom and Dad) were able to go on a fun trip! It sounds pretty great :) I loved San Antonio, it was just beautiful!! Is that were you lived when you were first married? I can't remember where you were?  Wow the temple sounds GORGEOUS!! I Love the temple!! I miss visiting the temple frequently. You really can feel the quiet peace within! 

YA BYU! When I was getting my Macho burger, there were T.V.'s all over showing football games, and I didn't realize how much I miss watching football!! I love that sport! I'm glad BYU is looking good! 

So you met a Sister Missionary at the game! That's cool! And she gets to serve with her sister! I would have loved to serve with Melinda! I guess she'll have to come out on another mission so I can do that  :) So Mom, you asked about the Sister Missionary Leader... We call it a Sister Training Leader here. I'm not sure how it compares to other missions. But it sounds pretty similar to the sister who served in Texas. Here both sisters in the companionship are Sister Training Leaders, So yes Sis. Hartley is as well. We have 8 in our mission (so 4 companionships). We do get trained monthly, we call it MLCM (it's always the last Thursday of the Month). We get trained there, and we council on how to help the mission, or what to instruct in upcoming zone meetings/ training meetings. We go on exchanges with the sisters that we serve. Sis. Hartley and I serve 6 companionship's, so we do about once a week, except this transfer we weren't able to do too many at the beginning of the transfer, so we've been doing about 2 a week. Here Sis. Hartley and I both leave our area and split with them in their area all day. We study with them and plan with them. And we switch companions half way through the day. I won't lie at first I was very worried that we'd be out of our area so much and the work in our area would suffer....but boy was I mistaken!! We've been blessed tremendously and have actually been able to do more work in our specific area, even with less days working here! It's So amazing to see God's blessings! So yeah, those are basic responsibilities. We council with the zone leaders and President, and the district leaders to see how we can help the sisters. We give them calls throughout the week. We try our best to know their areas, investigators, less actives, ect. We send them texts and just do our best to lift, encourage, enspire, and bless! I feel so grateful to have had this opportunity to serve in this way! I think the best part is getting to know so many people in each area and learning from all of the amazing sisters out here!! I'm not sure if that was what you were looking for, but if you have more questions let me know :)

Ok, Izabelle is just BEAUTIFUL! I'm so excited to come home and hold that little baby :) Ruby got baptized! Wow! They are getting old so fast!  I just love our family, it's the Best! I'm going to get home though and everyone's going to be soo different. That will be fun!

So sorry for all that...I think I like to talk to you :) So this week we've met some sweet people!! So one night, we had finished our appointment early and I felt like we should go down this specific street, it was about 8:45 pm and we had maybe 7 minutes before we needed to leave, to get home on time. We start heading down that street and we walk over to this home, there was a SWEET girl named Nimsi outside. We start talking to her and she is SOO prepared!!! It was funny after talking to her for a few minutes, she said "Wait, so I don't know you right?" We told her no, and she explained that she was wracking her brain thinking of how she knew us, since we talked to her like we were best friends! haha That actually happens to me all the time! I'll smile and start talking to people and they'll say things like "I'm sorry, remind me how I know you." or "I feel bad but I can't remember where we met". HAHA I just laugh and tell them they don't really know me, but I just Love them a whole a lot any ways! (who knows maybe we did know each other in the pre-mortal life!)

We also got a sweet referral from a member! The only info we had was to say that Ron sent us. So we knock on the door and Victor answers, I just say we're missionaries and he cuts me off and says "I've been waiting for you!" :) Music to our ears. He lets us in and we ask him some questions. I ask what he's heard and he says " All I know about the church is that you don't drink alcohol and coffee right?" We say "ya" (expecting him to start questioning us) Instead he's like "I think that's SOO cool! When Ron told me that I immediately stopped drinking coffee!" I've never had some interested in learning because of the Word of Wisdom. He's so Prepared by God!!

And I have to tell you about this AWESOME Purchase I made! So while I was on an exchange this week, the Sister's had a former investigator that they just started teaching again, she's a HUGE couponer, like Extreme Couponing style! And she gave them some coupons for nail polish, so they were going to expire, so we ran to purchase some nail polish. We purchased 33 nail polishes and guess how much they all cost together..............................................$2.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was so crazy!! When I get home I'm going to be an extreme couponer! :)

Update on Bro. Winemiller. I think I told you about him. He's our neighbor that we helped bring in groceries one day, when I was on Nyquil.. He loves family history and has like a billion binders full of his history! Well at first he said he wasn't interested in hearing about our beliefs but just the genealogy. Well guess what... Last time we went over, All we talked about was the Gospel!!! We talked about the Book of Mormon and the pre-earth life, and God being our father in Heaven!! After he said, (remember he's agnostic) "If an angel came down and told me to join a church today, I'd join the Mormons"

Also I can't remember if I told you about Kathy. She's a sweet investigator that we met while having dinner with a member. She's his neighbor, and said she'd be find if we started coming over. Well we've been teaching her. And yesterday she got up and bore her testimony!!! She walked up and said "I'm not a member of this church and some of you might wonder who that strange lady is. But as I've kept coming, I've finally realized why I like it here....It's because God is present in this building." I felt the spirit sooo strong! Our church is the house of the Lord! The spirit does reside there and she can feel it, I can feel it! It was really neat!

Well I LOVE you all!! Have a fabulous Week! :)

Love, Sister Tracy