buenos diaaaaaaaas!
We have survived the first of the major holidays. It was definitley hard being away from home, but i'm SO glad you all had so much fun and ate so much food! Couldn't be prouder ;) God blessed us out here with being pretty busy that day so we didn't have a lot of time to think of how much we missed our families. Thanksgiving day only racked up to 3 dinners, not our best showing. We'll try again next year ;) but the dinners were all HUGE. Our first rivaled our thanksgiving dinner back home in all legitimacy... We ate with the Rojas' family, the family who makes up most of our branch, and they ate in the capilla so it really felt quite hom-ey :) Second dinner was with the Sumsion family- one from the Domincan Republic and One from America so their dinner was all USA style but it was the fanciest Thanksgiving dinner I've ever eaten... it was incredible. so good. They had a lot of family members there too! pictures all attached of course. the Third dinner was with one of our investigators and it was simple and straight DELICIOUS. Goodness. and the fact that we've eaten leftovers for every meal since... I love the holidays. THursday morning we also had a big activity with all the missionaries where we played basketball/volleyball/soccer for like 3 hours. IT WAS SO FUN. Goodness I miss playing sports so much. Luckily, there was one other sister who played basketball in her past life so the Elders let us play and guard eachother and we definitely held our own and it was A BLAST. Definitely a different Thanksgiving, but fun and successful! I wish you all could've been here ;) Other highlights of the week: TRANSFERS. We were so nervous. Hermana Souza and I both didn't want to leave because we're just getting this place going and we actually had an investigator come to church this week BLESSINGS. And luckily, we are both staying! All the hermanas stayed the same because we didn't get any new hermanas this transfer... which is a bummer because we dont even have enough to cover all the branches. Someone tell Pres Monson to send us some more! Just kidding. kinda. Anyways so we'll be here through the new year and we are STOKED :) PIcture is us after transfer calls celebrating with cake and cider hahaha also I'M OUT OF TRAINING WHOOOOO FINALLY. OTHER MAJOR HIGHLIGHT. This week we had an exchange and Hermana Gunner came to Graham which meant I was senior companion for the day! I loved it because 1 I drove the new car and 2 i got to lead everything! We stopped by a house of one of our investiagors and she was sick so we were talking to her husband at the door and he kept replying to everything we said in english... weird but okay we kept talking in Spanish. I finally at the end said "Puede dejarla saber a su esposa que pasamos?" can you let your wife know we stopped by? and he said "Yeah I told her." and i was like what? and he said "I will told her. Do you even speak English?" BAHAHHAAH BEST THING EVER. YES I SPEAK ENGLIGH BUT THANK YOU FOR BELIEVING THAT MY ONLY LANGUAGE WAS SPANISH BEST DAY EVER. Anyways that was the week. Our investigators are slowly but surely progressing, but we're going to amp up the game this last transfer of the year and we know Heavenly Father is going to bless our efforts. For all who haven't seen it, you should go to Mormon.org and check out the new CHristmas Initiative video! I love the comparisons it makes to Christ's life and what we can do daily to become more like Him. I love you all so much and I'm so grateful, especially this week, to think of my whole family together praying for me. I've felt your strength so much. I miss you, but I know this is where I need to be! Hasta Lunes, Fe en Dios y Adelante, Hermana Reed
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Feliz Semana de Accion de Gracias!!!!
This week is going to be so weird not being at home with the family, but I personally challenge every one of you to eat 2 extra peices of pie for me please! And I expect reigning champs from all of my siblings in the pie eating contests - no holding back! This week was really pretty special. We had Elder Gay from the 70 come and tour our mission which basically means he checks up on everything and the work and the members and all that but he also gave special conferences for the mission! On Friday he met with the whole southern half of the mission for a 6 hour conference and it was SO GOOD. He talked to us about how important it is as teachers that we teach to the concerns of our investigators which of course we know we should but then he talked about teaching to the concerns we dont know about. There is so much that has happened in the lives of these people that they aren't going to tell us, but Heavenly Father knows all and He knows His children. That is why the spirit is so important in our work! The Spirit is the one who will tell us what things we need to talk about and He is the one that will carry the message to their hearts as well. He then taught us how we can be worthy and how we can recieve these answers from the Lord through mighty prayer. Mighty prayer is my new FAVORITE THING. He used the Examples of Laman and Lemuel and Nefi and how Nefi always called upon the Lord, but Laman and Lemuel weren't and that's why they never recieved the same confirmations that Nefi did. We must recieve the spirit of revelation to have a testimony of Christ. Gah I could go on forever but it was so amazing and so aparant that he was a servant of God. Another thing I loved was his testimony at the end. He told us to never doubt what we know. NObody out there knows more than we do. They might know more for themselves or know differently for themselves, but everything we know is from God and it's personal and to never let others convince us that they know more. I love being a missionary because I get to be a part of so many other people's conversion to joy and to Jesus Christ. This gospel brings more happiness than anything on the earth because it is ETERNAL. NOthing else can provide that! NOt the Seahawks game, not your thanksgiving dinner, nothing. As Thanksgiving approaches, I've thought a lot about Gratitude. In this time, I'm grateful for a lot of things. I'm grateful for the experiences that have brought me to this point in my life and for my friends that have loved and supported me. I'm grateful for my family and their prayers and support constantly. I'm grateful for my life before the mission where I could take naps every day and go on instagram, but I'm grateful for right now where I skip naps every day to help someone feel the love of the Savior and come closer to Jesus Christ. God is so good! And we are so blessed! le quiero a todo! espero que esta semana este llena de gozo y comida rica. Next week my pday will be on Tuesday because of Transfers! Stay tuned!! Hermana Reed IV Hola mi familia bonita, What a week. I seriously blink and it's pday again but then looking back so much has happened! I heard about the Donald Trump victory hahahaha oh did I hear about it. As missionaries, we really aren't supposed to talk about politics, granted we really don't know much of whats going on anyways because we dont watch tv or read the newspaper, but in all seriousness I think every investigator we have or member we visited asked us our opinion on what happened. And we seriously don't know much and can't talk about it so it was a rough few days. November 8th 2016 I will probably never forget... a rough day to go out and see strangers to say the least. We talked to this one man who responded to everything we said with 'go away'. He was nice!! Then we asked a woman if she knew where any Spanish speakers lived and she told us "well I think your chuch is a false, wicked religion so why would I help you?" Thank you ma'am!!!!!! haha It was actually pretty funny, and as of this week I started a rejections journal because some of the things people say to us are just too good!! It was hard, but I am so grateful to have my Lord and Savior on this journey with me. He lifts us up whenever we're down, and as a missionary I've seen it more than everything. Every time we have hard days, we are always blessed with miracles as we continue in diligence and love to serve the children of God. I seriously don't know if I could do this work without His continual love and support that I can feel ALWAYS. I know I wouldnt be able to do it. hermana souza and I have been working really hard to talk to as many people as we can, even in the pouring rain, and this week was hard but we know we are going to see the fruits of our efforts! We are teaching this one woman named Irma and she's about 70 years old and recently lost her husband. She asks so many amazing questions when we're teaching like How can I use the book of mormon to answer my questions? and How will I know if what you're saying is true? We love it because it gives us the opportunity to teach more about what we know and we know she already has the desire to find God's plan for her. We are so blessed to know her! Gah it's crazy, all throughout the week I find myself thinking this work is so hard and then I sit down to write home each week and all I can remember is how blessed I am to be a missionary and how awesome this work is. God is so good! As a missionary, I am so blessed to feel the incredible love that our Savior has for His children. If you don't feel like He loves you, I challenge you to kneel down right now and ask HIm yourself and I promise you won't be dissipointed. HE IS AMAZING. Thank you for the prayers and the emails and the love! I know Christ lives, and no matter the president or our lives or our circumstances, that will always be true. Hermana Reed IV 1/2 Hermana Souza and I won cleanest car this week so we got a BRAND NEW CAR and THE COOLEST LICENCE PLATES IN ALL OF MORMONISM.
3 I love WA 4 Heres a pic of my desk mostly to prove to Dee that I look at her baby every day because he is WAY TOO PRECIOUS Buenos Dias Hermanos y Hermanas!!!! Wow Life is SO GOOD!!! Hope everyone had a great week :) Know that your fav missionary in the PNW is only slightly sick because she's been soaking wet for the past week straight but we're pushing through because we are seeing the hand of the Lord EVERY DAY. I dont have a ton of time this week, so this letter is basically going to be explaining the pics because they truly say it all. Being a missionary is the best because all the members love you and they dont even know you so they just give you stuff. Mostly food, but also random things like crocheted hats and giant quilts with Star Wars characters on them. Not complaining thats for sure!!! One Hermana also made us pan de muertes which is somehow so good and not normal bread??? Mom maybe you can explain to me because it looks pretty regular but I've eaten like 2 pounds of it this week. Other major news, Fabian was BAPTIZED!!!! yyyyyyyaaaaaay. We are so happy about this because he couldnt be baptized with his wife stephanie because he has an ankle bracelet, but he decided he was going to do it anyways and he was SO HAPPY coming out of the waters and entering that covenant with our Heavenly Father :) He was also so blessed because he didnt die and wasn't electrocuted by the bracelet and it still works so he wont get arrested either. MIRACLES. This week we ran into a family that speaks Arabic (so so cool. We're learning how to speak it, we'll keep you updated). Lessons are kinda hard because they all speak arabic except their kids know some English so they try and translate so it's kinda a crazy time but they're so awesome and loving and said we can come back anytime :) This Arabic book of mormon marked the 4th language of book of mormon I've given out!!! Love the melting pot that is the United States. Oh yeah, Halloween last week was super fun! We went to the stake center with all the missionaries in our zone for the last 3 hours of the night and we first ate our FACES OFF and then we got to PLAY SPORTS FOR 2 HOURS AND I WAS SO SO SO HAPPY. I miss being sporty and actually doing things all the time so it was a stress reliever for sure and so so fun :) Sad news was we brought a bunch of pumpkins but all their tops fell off with the crazy driving... whoops. Moral of the story this week was full of blessings, from members, from investigators, and From our Heavenly Father. I know without a shadow of a doubt that this is HIS WORK. 100%. He guides it and He guides us every day and I am so so grateful to be a part of it. Keep looking for miracles in your every day lives because they're there and when we see them it makes life all the more enjoyable :) Love you all! Con mucho amor y oraciones, Hermana Reed IV feliz halloween!!!!!!!!!
Holidays are so weird on the mission. Its a normal day for us basically but we're not allowed to go outside at night (bummed, I was stoked for trick or treating). I hope everyone back home is celebrating accordingly :) This week was back to the basics. After weeks and weeks of craziness at some point this week seemed pretty regular, except the fact we had to exchanges so I was only in Graham for like 5 of the days. but it was really good :) A few highlights: 1. We're teaching a girl named Jazmin whos living with her boyfriend, two kids, parents, her brother and his family, and her other brother and his family in this little two story town home thing. She is so awesome. She gave me acryllic nails last week for free which was pretty rad. But this week she committed to be baptized!!! YAYAYA. We have a few things gotta work out first i.e. the boyfriend thing but we are so so so excited. And her fecha bautismal just happens to be one of the best days of the year... i.e. December 17th. Happy birthday to me! We're so excited. 2. This week was slightly discouraging in that a loooooot of our appointments canceled, which unfortunately is becoming pretty normal. Specifically, Saturday night, we had 4 of our set appointments cancel... and we had nobody to see. seriously nobody. We decided to stop by one of our members house who has cancer and her husband is deployed. We went over and I started cleaning her dishes when and then this guy comes to her door and he works with her and she was like what what are you doing here and he was like i felt like stopping by (he is speaking spanish by the way so theres miracle number 1). We started talking to him and he was trained as a catholic priest but he never finished schooling and he asked us about missionary life and what we do and the book of mormon so we gave him one and he said can you write your names in it? so we did with like a short testimony right and then gave it back then he was like can you write your number too so i can ask you questions about it? and we were like UM YEAH. Then the hermana invited him and us over on friday to talk more and he was like do you have something i can read to prepare? HE BASICALLY ASKED US FOR A PAMPHLET AND WE WERE LIKE UM OKAY YES. It was amazing and such a testimony that like Heavenly Father needed us to talk to him to the point that all of our other appointments canceled so we could. Gah WOOOOOW GOD IS SO GOOD. It was a miracle. I am so grateful for a Heavenly Father who picks us up when we're down. because He seriously always does :) 3. As to the title of the email, this week at church the kids did the primary program and i seriously was crying it was SO CUTE. All these little kids trying to speak spanish and they were so shy that half of them didnt even say anything. but afterwards they invited the missionaries into primary and they asked who knows the missionaries names? one girl said I know hermana reed! Then I said well which ones that? and the girl said She's the white one. hahahahahah I'll take it, at least she remembered my name. The mission life is so awesome and I'm so grateful for the love I feel from home. Thank you for all the prayers! As the last thought I just wanna share how much I know Heavenly Father blesses us for making hard choices. The world is crazy, and the pressures are everywhere, and its really easy to make bad choices. But seriously, more people respect you for keeping your standards and believing in our Heavenly Father. And He will bless us for making the harder, but better choices. Love you all! Hasta Lunes. Hermana Reed IV |
Hermana Fallyn ReedMissionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Federal Way, Washington Mission. July 2016 - January 2018. Archives
January 2018
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