Week 30: Hospitalized

Hello, friends and family!

If you follow Ashley's blog but aren't her friend on Facebook, then you're probably wondering why you haven't heard anything from her lately.

Well, last Friday (the 11th), Ashley's mission president called Dad to let us know that Ashley was sick with pneumonia. At that time, they said that she would be resting at home until at least Sunday, and that her spirits were down because she really hates being sick, and really wanted to keep working.

Then the next day (the 12th), we got word that Ashley had been admitted into the hospital to receive IV treatment. They still expected that she would only be there for a few days, but we sent out a call for prayers, and many of us fasted for her on Sunday.

On Sunday, the mission president and Area Seventy gave Ashley a Priesthood blessing. They reported to Dad that she's alert and improving, just not as quickly as they'd hope.

Monday afternoon, Ashley was able to send a short email to the family. She sounded pretty miserable, but optimistic, as always. Her companion, Hna. Aldana, had been working with another Hermana while Ashley was in the hospital, but she invited us to send our emails to her so that she could print them out and take them to Ashley to read. She was so sweet to do that!

They said that she should be out of the hospital by Wednesday, but as far as we know, she's still there. We're so thankful to all of you who have prayed and fasted for her, and sent her encouraging emails! Your continued prayers are appreciated! We'll let you know once we hear more.

---Carly

Week 29: Follow the Light

My fam from Buenos Aires!!!! Just missing the other little girl

This week I studied about light.

The light of Christ is “given to every man, that he may know good from evil” (Moroni 7:16-PMG 90). Heavenly Father has given us this life to learn and grow and FOLLOW the light we were born with and to gain light.. Like Larry R. Lawrence tells us, “Would you be surprised to learn that your success in life depends upon how much light you gain while you are here.” Success is not about how much money you make, how many medals, or how much fame you achieve.. The real object of our existence is to gain light.”

My Utahn

He also explains how just as our physical bodies grow bigger when we feed it nourishing food, our spirits grow brighter when we feed it light. He loves us, so he gave us the Light of Christ, our conscience as some people know it as, to guide us. I was walking with Hermana Pattillo one day and asked her why in a talk I read it said that in the end when we are face to face with Heavenly Father instead of us being the ones begging to stay in his presence HE will be the one probably saying, “Please stay.” Wouldn’t everyone want to stay? She said, “Maybe it depends on how comfortable we are… maybe the difference of light?” I didn’t really get that… She said, “We don’t magically change once we die.. We have the same personality, charity, all the same attributes.. So if we want to be comfortable in front of our maker at that day we return to him, we should prepare now as if we want to be ready at any moment.. We shouldn’t wait till tomorrow.”

I thought about that and then read D&C 88 about how the Lord determines whether we receive a telestial body, terrestrial body, or celestial body. I learned how simple it is.. How if we accumulate enough Celestial light, we are resurrected with Celestial Bodies, and if we only accumulate enough light of Terrestrial or Telestial, that is the body we have.

I heard once how Heaven will not be Heaven to those who are not Heavenly, and even though I am never going to have a perfect understanding of this kind of stuff until after this life I understand better than before what that might mean.. Maybe it will be like walking into a party you decided to go to last minute and the invitation said suit and tie, dresses etc. but you were already late and thought maybe others would be in jeans too or wouldn’t notice… You get to the party and EVERYONE is dressed up, shoes shined ,curled hair, lookin spiffy.. You want to bolt out the door you just came through but your friends have already spotted you and are excited to see that you decided to come. Even though everyone is extremely nice and your theory was right that people didn’t seem to care or notice, YOU notice and care a LOT about how awkward this is haha. So about 30 minutes later you answer your phone that didn’t ring and talk to your “dad” and make the excuse that you have to leave. Your friends are sad to see you go but you are so excited to just get out of there.

The other Gringas

I used to think how could someone say, “Get me out of here!” or how could Heaven not be Heaven for some people? Well our acts don’t change, our personality doesn’t magically become the most charitable, non-judgmental, loving, happy personality because we died, our works are the same.. So if we want Heaven to be Heaven, well we should decide now how to act and work every day to grow the light that God gave as a gift to us before. Then when we show up to the party we are excited to see others and comfortable, not making the fake phone calls to dad haha.

“Exceeding light is an attribute of every resurrected Celestial being” – Larry R. Lawrence. Like the angels at the Lord’s tomb or Angel Moroni.. Their “countenance was like lightning.” It’s cool to think that we too have the potential to have this light. So how can we gain light in this life?

1.       LOVE and serve others—The second commandment equal to the first. –Matthew 22:39, 1 John 4: 18, 20, 21, 1 Corinth. 13

2.       Study the Scriptures!! There is always something new to learn.. especially in the Book of Mormon! It is the keystone to our religion!

3.       Go to church every Sunday and partake of the Sacrament to remember our Savior and renew our covenant of baptism each week! –BD: Covenant

4.       Go to the temple. Go each week! If it’s a sacrifice of time that’s a good thing.. It shouldn’t be on every 6 month thing.. Even if it’s just walking on the grounds of the temple! “Temple light is even more beneficial to our Spirit than sunlight is to your body.”

5.       Pray. Pray for help every day to be stronger than you were yesterday, repent daily! Repentance is not just for the sinner but an everyday part of who we are to become as Christ. Pray to have strength against Satan. –D&C 1:33, D&C 93:39

The fam with Presidente

There are a lot more ways we can gain light every day, following the commandments, loving our families, having faith and being a light each day in word and example. These are just the points I wrote down in my study journal because I want to be better at following all of the advice I found in my study for the rest of my life! Read Doctrine and Covenants 88:25-40.. or the whole chapter but 25-40 are really cool! At the end of our lives God is not going to say, “Hmmm well you only received 500 ‘likes’ on your Facebook during your life so…” What’s really important is gaining light in our spirits, nourishing our spirits every single day. That’s the goal!

We had a great week! Lots of walking, lots of talking, listening to Christmas music (cuz it’s NOVEMBER!!), great lessons, people bailing on us, almost got bit by a dog (we were walking with a lady who was walking her dog and a stray dog came and picked a fight with the other one and decided to run around me and the lady so we were tangled in the leash while they tried to kill each other..all is well but I have a cool leash burn!). Oh we also saved a baby bird because it fell out of its nest and the cats were going to eat it!

Making an appointment with the lioraff (giraffe-lion hybrid)

And last but not least we accidentally walked into a group of Adventistas and taught them about the Restoration! We were walking back from a lesson and passed a small Hobbit door and I heard people singing, “Grande Eres Tu” (How Great Thou Art) so I stopped and said, “Mormons!” We peeked into the hobbit door and saw a group singing and an old lady saw us and said, “Come, join us!” So I was all for it and so we went in and sat basically shoulder to shoulder with people singing at the top of their lungs extremely out of tune (pure soul haha). Then I looked around and thought, “Well this is kind of an odd group.. and wait a second, this isn’t the same song as in the hymn book (they were listening off YouTube). After they sang I asked “Are you all family?” An old lady responded, “We are a family in God!!” Right on… That’s cool! “Do you attend a Church?” Here it comes… “NO this IS our Church! We meet every Friday.” We soon realized we totally sabotaged a worship session. Then they started trying to teach us from a Bible written by a lady who lives in Peru.. who USED to be Mormon we found out! So basically they believe all we believe but don’t think it’s from The Church of Jesus Christ. SO, we taught them lesson one and also shared the video “Gracias a El” and it went quite well I think haha…

Well I’ll tell you more next week. Love ya!

---Ash

Lion or Giraffe we may never know

Helped make this...

Waiting for our investigators to open the door.. Any minute now........

Me wolfie buddy!

YAY!

THE CUTEST STORE IN THE WORLD!!

...confuzzled 

Week 28: The Best 18 Months Part 2

Happy Monday morning! And Happy Halloween! I hope you have a fun day today! I expect lots of photos of Jackson in his dragon costume and photos of the little M&M in her fat unicorn outfit haha. Next year I expect McKinley to be a fat llama.. actually all of us! We will be one big happy llama fam.

This week was great! I decided I am just going to write mini summaries/”a day in the life” for each day this week.. it might be a little random but here ya go!

Monday: P-Dayyy! Today we cleaned and studied in the morning, then went to the sketch internet café to write the fam.. it was cut short though because I had to go to the bathroom SO BAD.. So we went on an adventure to try and find a bathroom and ended up finding one.. that was quite disturbing and had a cat.. I think he was stuck in there. After that we went to good ole Subway! I met some travelers/hobo hikers from Cali! They were chill. Then some missionaries called asking if we wanted to play some soccer and we actually said no to soccer for the first time ever because we were to the point of not being able to function properly from a lack of sleep haha so we took a good nap! I have not slept on a P-Day EVER in the mission I think. So I was a happy camper. At the end of the day we had a Noche de Hogar! It was super fun. Sure grateful for P-days.. Now off to work!

Tuesday: Today jumped out of bed/half fell out of bed to get away from a spider.. I’m not going to be comfy in my bed for a month or 2 now (shivers). It’s your worst nightmare…invisible daddy long leg. They were like clear.. But they are there. I’m not crazy you can see them! Wanna know the worst part? I don’t know where he went.. He said howdy do and ran.. waiting for the next opportunity. Moving on.. Today we had district meeting which is the best! I love hearing peoples’ tips and experiences! Plus I get to see Hermana Mujica and Tyack! They got moved to open an area in Central so they are in our district! We talked about how to receive more references etc. We talked about how you shouldn’t just corner people haha! That’s creepy.. Look for ways to help them or compliment them and then talk to them and if they aren’t interested ask if they have a friend or family member that would be etc etc… Also, we always do an English study at the end and my comp bore her testimony like a boss! (In English!) Oh also Elder Turner brought us all beef jerky that his mom sent! The smell always reminds me of the terrible moment on the dirt road on the way to the ranch where I am already trying not to throw up and Dad and Mom open the beef jerky and the smell fills the car. Bleh. After district meeting we had our lesson with our new fam bam investigators! We got to their house and they weren’t home L UGHHH (Head on keyboard) But we rescheduled for tomorrow. Fingers crossed! We passed a market on the way back and decided to buy some fruit and veg and ended up giving every stand Restoration pamphlets. We met some awesome people! Later we had some great lessons, we met a lady doing a crossword puzzle on a bench and taught her and she is a new investigator! And finally, we had a lesson with our sweet darling investigator and practiced interview questions for her baptism this Saturday! Whoohoo!

This morning with the sistas

Look who I saw in a taxi

 Wednesday: This morning we went on a run! We decided to run every day! It was super fun haha and I had this cute dog as a running buddy the entire time! He was so so cute and wouldn’t leave our side.. except sometimes he would cut through the park to finish.. Cheater. After I made banana shakes for my comp and Lita (the grandma) was up so we made extra for her! In the morning we went to visit a less active who just got surgery and tried to cheer her up. Oh, later in the day we met this lady who was gardening so we helped her and got all muddy and it was great haha I love the smell of wet earth and plants! She showed us her entire garden and it is equivalent to what we could imagine as the Garden of Eden.. Complete with animals! But no baby lions or elephants.. maybe but I didn’t see them. Later this guy started arguing in the street with us and we were nice to him but it made my comp extremely sad.. I told her to shake it off and that it would be okay and taught her the “Tree, bush, spaghetti, confetti!!” with that one kind of plant hahaha.. That cheered her up a little. As we were walking back to dinner we saw from a distance Lita’s husband (grandpa) reading the Book of Mormon in his chair in the sun. It made us smile. :)

I usually hate bunnies..they are smelly and mean..But he was ok..still ugly.

Thursday: Today was the best day ever because I got a postcard from beautiful Teresa!! It made my entire day! Also it was Carly’s birthday! I miss Mufasa (her nickname during her entire mission haha) I shared stories about her to my compie all day haha all about how every single night growing up I ran to her room during thunder storms, or how we would write stories, our adventures in Utah the year I was on my own, and how we ate at Harmon’s almost every single night etc etc. I really need to write down all of our adventures. Charley we will have a blast next year with our famous pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies and go to Soldier Hollow for the sheep-herding contest!! That’s my favorite tradition. One day we will bring our own dogs to be IN the contest!.. I can see it now.. except your dog will be really obedient and mine will probably just stare at the ball in the water at the jumping contest and do an awkward belly flop baha. Ok sorry moving on! I can’t remember much about Thursday.. We had a lot of lessons! That’s a blessing in this area. We always have a full schedule of lessons. But yeah Thursday was a blur.. every Thursday is.. It’s not the beginning of the week or the end. People don’t like Mondays.. but I don’t like Thursdays.

Also this morning.

Not even sure how to explain haha we were trying to be cool but not

Friday: Today started with a district language study! (Sorry I don’t feel the need to say every point like we ate food, etc.) The language study ended up being a game of Charades in Spanish and the Elders just making fun of each other.. Elder Babble acted all love struck and trunky drawing a picture of the Lima Temple, and it turned out to be Elder Rayes because he has 2 months left haha. We all laughed super hard. Poor guy. Our zone leaders also surprised us with ANOTHER postcard from Teresa and a letter from Riley! It made me so happy and is such a fun way to start the day. :) Thank you thank you! The day went great! We went to visit the woman who had surgery again and it was probably one of my favorite lessons of the week. We sat by her bedside and sang hymns and talked with the sun coming through the window listening to the birds outside… Usually the neighbors are playing Regatone music or there is construction or something and we have to practically yell, “Jose Smith fue un PROFETA..” We also had a very interesting lesson with this super sweet lady and her family. (Think the grandma on “The Proposal.”) She kept trying to offer us food haha. Her soon to be son-in-law was extremely serious, very blunt, etc.. We asked him his name and in the most serious monotone voice says “Juan de Dios..” “Oh that’s cool! Juan de Dios.. do you believe in God?” “Well..my name is Juan de Dios…” You can imagine how it went.. I need not say more.

Found this on my door one night from cute Naty.. Hahaha!!

 Saturday: Today was a very big day! We had a baptism! Oh it was absolutely wonderful. I was so grateful for the members who came to support.. Our sweet investigator doesn’t have much family. She got so excited to see that people were there just for her! When she looked in the room she turned to us and asked, “Who else is getting baptized today?” We said, “Just you! They are all here to support you!” She was extremely shocked and had a huge smile saying, “Really?!” She said, “I love my new family!” I am so so happy for her and so grateful for her example of faith and love! We also had our pensionista and her daughter come and it was so fun to share such a great moment with them.

WHOOHOO!

Me saying I ruin every picture not looking...as I am ruining a picture not looking

Sunday: Our longest day in the world… But a great day. Sundays are a very good day. J

Monday: This morning we had a P-day with all of the other Hermanas! I saw Hermana Torres and she told me the amazing news that our investigator and her little daughter that we were teaching are getting baptized… With the ENTIRE FAMILY!! Her husband and their parents! I started crying so hard as we both hugged. Family, I can’t express to you how much I love this family. This is a miracle. I don’t know what else to say because just writing this I am tearing up again. This week before Halloween last year was the week I officially decided to serve a mission and started my papers. It is the greatest decision I have ever made. The Church is true!! The book is blue!! I love you!!

--Your kid in South America