8649c2af-ec3f-44c0-9a6f-921bee5212bb Sister Danzel Park Back to Missionary Letters Sanding Flowers With Raw Fingers Hey guys! How are you doing? No really… How are you? I would love to hear from you!! Anyways if you are reading this it's because you want to hear how I'm doing, the answer is good :) My hands however not so much, I'll get to that… Bullet Points · It was Hermano Marcos's Birthday!!! FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS!!!! We made him a cute card and gave him a little chocolate · Cesar Vallejo… There was nothing to say about this. We went to a part of our area we don't go to often and we realized why. The best explanation is a ghost town with maybe the exception of 2 people who live there. · Gato y Raton means Cat and Mouse. We had a missionary night and played this game. It was so funny to watch everyone's faces, I was really stressed but it was fun! We played with two ties and passed them around but, if you get stuck with both ties then you lose haha! It was so entertaining =) · We found a new friend whose name is Mauricio, he is awesome and has really good questions. When we shared phone numbers he asked what to put our name in as. We told him to put the missionaries in and he said no… I am going to put mis blancitas amigas… HAHA I don't know where that came from. · Peach cobbler!! That is all that needs to be said other than I have the best comp ever! · The miracle of Evelin, We found her last Monday night. The Tabernacle choir is singing in Lima the 22 of February and we are inviting people to come and see. So we knocked on a random door… the first door we knocked was Evelin!! She is so cute and we had 2 lessons with her this week. Miracles are everywhere :) · Walter… Yeah… No one believed us on this one… Let me explain. Walter is our friend, he is interesting. We can't text him because he can't receive texts. So we call him for everything. Well he answers the phone but he doesn't talk. The elders who sent the reference thought it was so weird so we had them call the district council. HE ANSWERED THEM!! Hermana Mortensen and I were shocked!! So we set up a lesson with him with the elders to have a passalong lesson. Great idea! well the elders waited with us for 30 minutes with Walter on the phone not saying anything… We were right… but we will keep trying to contact him :) · REJECTED!! I have been told not a lot this week. I think I know how to take rejection with a smile now. I've practiced :) · Alexander!!! We put him on date for baptism!! 15th of March here we come!! :D Please pray for him. · Sad truth of missionary work :( We dropped two baptism dates this week and it was sad. We have been working so hard to help our friends but we will keep working hard! · Now about the title :) I will write more about it in my spiritual thought Spiritual thought I am so excited to share this spiritual thought with you guys!! We sanded flowers off a wall by hand :) It was a service project and it was really fun and really hard. Peruvians make their houses out of cement. And they paint directly onto the cement… We held the sandpaper and took all the flowers off the wall! It took a lot of work and time to scrub this wall until the paint was gone because there are air pockets in the cement. But just like our lives sometimes we choose to do something that is hard to get rid of. They chose to paint the flowers and they liked them at first, but with time we realize we might not like the decisions we made in the past. That is why we have people who can help us grow and clean the walls in our house. Through the power of Baptism and repentance We can be completely forgiven of all our sins and past decisions. Even if we liked them at the time, things change. Find forgiveness in your life through the power of the holy ghost. Start slowly removing the paint and other debris on your walls. One part at a time even if it hurts a little. It's not supposed to be easy. Sandpaper is what we used to remove the paint and little by little we began to see the cement once again. Keep going. You might not be able to get it all, but you can find the sure foundation again, Jesus Christ. I love you guys! Hope you had a fantastic week and don't forget to shoot me an email if you have a few minutes:) You're the best, remember who you are. And my new quote takes it with a smile! Keep me updated!! <3 Hermana Park Previous Letter Next Letter

13e715d1-054d-4680-8178-e5dd7d498a72 Elder Spencer Cox Back to Missionary Letters Followers of Jesus Christ in Summerwood TX · I LOVE BREAD! I enjoy visiting our local bakery and trying all the different delicious pastries and breads! However, even when I take 2 whole bags of baked goods home, the items don't last long and I'm hungry the next day. There is one type of bread that will never leave us hungry for more: "And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." (John 6:35) Previous Letter Next Letter

8577aa03-eabc-4a03-beb7-f5d062cfb9ef Elder William Barnum Back to Missionary Letters The last dance Hey yall!! I hope everyone is doing good! We've had a good couple weeks since the last email I wrote. Updates: • We've found 30 people in the last 3 weeks • I've given a talk in our branch 3/4 Sundays this month... and all 3 of them I found out about 2 minutes before sacrament meeting started • we've been super close to 2 shootings in the last 3 weeks • We saw a super sick dude walk out of the forest with an axe in one hand and a whole tree over his other shoulder • We've built a whole pond with brother Beavers (a member in the English ward) •Brother Beavers accidentally dumped his trailer in his pond😂 • transfers got moved to Friday • I'm coming home on Friday • my homecoming talk will be on June 11th 9 am @355 W Virgin Ave That's all I can think of! See you soon! Love yall❤️ -Elder Barnum Previous Letter Next Letter

b48a6157-d20d-4234-880f-403d39d02dfd Sister Calla Haviland Back to Missionary Letters ILOILO!! HIIIIII, how is everyone??? I MADE IT TO ILOILO!! I dont even know where to start. This place is incredible and so beautiful. My first area is in Makato which I am so blessed to be in. Its on the opposite side of the island of iloilo and not in the city at all. Its so so green and I love it. The difficult part about this area is they speak the hardest dialect thats on the island so that is lovely. I cant remember what its called actually, I think its like akalan or something like that. The people understand me when I speak hiligaynon but I dont understand them when they talk back to me. But its okay though ill get it eventually. I have the sweetest trainer ever. She matches my energy all the time and we work so good together. Her name is sister largo and shes from the philippines. The people here are all so sweet and they love the missionaries. Theres one girl her name is joyjoy and she was just attached to me yesterday. We have a special handshake, she shared her snacks with me, and everywhere we walked she just held my hand. She loves trying to jump higher than me because to her I am a giant. Thats most peoples first reaction to seeing me is that im just tall especially while Im next to my companion. So far not much has happened. Yesterday was the first day I actually went out and did anything but it went so good. We ride these little tricycles with side carts everywhere which is fun. In my area theres a lot of jungle like places so to get to peoples houses your like walking through a jungle. Its my favorite part though. Anywayyyyy thats my week for ya. Hope everyone is doing so good!! Love you all! Previous Letter Next Letter

1bc9c511-1cdd-4088-9763-32258ed2e887 Elder Kaori Iverson Back to Missionary Letters This week was pretty chill. Not too much happened Funny moment: we had interviews with president on Tuesday. I asked him how I can put off a more confident first impression. He says: *you need to stand up straight with your chin up. I don't want to be culturally insensitive...but IDK if YOUR culture is always standing like this *proceeds to awkwardly stand in a bowing position*." He was completely serious and it was so hard not to laugh at him. I'm thinking in my head "he knows I'm from Nevada right?". Anyways it was super funny😂 Tuesday night I took a pretty hard tumble on my bike due to the rain and my bad angle taking a curb. I scraped up my knees pretty good and sprain my wrist. I still have to call my mission nurse😬. It hasn't slowed down my effectiveness too much. We've been teaching this guy named Johnny. He's progressing a lot and attributes all his happiness to the Lord. He's so cool We found this new couple this week who we taught a sweet first lesson to. I'm excited to see where it's going. The work is great. My wrist hurts. God loves y'all Previous Letter Next Letter

e378f641-b668-40e5-823b-c13a3b918a62 Elder Jeremy Vogel Back to Missionary Letters Solomio (Harare), Zimbabwe Hello everyone this week has been a little crazy so let me try to sum it up. But first things first. Happy Birthday Dad! I would have called if it didn't cost all the airtime in our phone to call you for 2 minutes! Love you! Last Monday we actually had a combined dinner appointment that we attended to after we did our regular P-day stuff. We were with the other companionship in our district and we went to a small families house. The father of the house loves to have missionaries around and he is in charge of all the seminaries and institutes in Zimbabwe. His family is lovely and always likes having us around when we come. But this is the first time I would be able to talk to them all at once since I got here. So we used a good crowd pleasing object lesson (listen up David). We brought a bunch of vanilla Ice cream and a few toppings. Bring a few different things out and put it all on the table. Get everyone their bowl of ice cream and let them start putting on their topping from all their different choices; chocolate chunks, sprinkles, caramel, ketchup, pepper, and last but not least vinegar. Start asking them if they want some of the other things. But you start asking why they are not taking other things like ketchup and vinegar. After the "it doesn't go with ice cream" you start talking about how you spend your time. Because these things if you put them into your ice cream they don't come out. Tuesday started with a bit of a disappointment. After our District council we went to go get our lunch. We wanted to pick up a platter of meat we had ordered Monday morning. But the meat platter hadn't been prepared. So we are trying to do that again this week. We have gotten some new contacts at the mission office. These were people brought under pretenses that we were going to provide passports for people wanting to do missionary work. We are happy to help them figure out paperwork but we were not going to pay, especially when it was found out that these few were not members. And they were led over to the church by some members promising this is how to get free passports. But they are now interested. We went over to where they stay and it is an orphanage. And we are teaching them. But what is also interesting is the woman running the orphanage. She loves having preachers around her house. But she is a strong interdenominational person. Loves to have people from everywhere come and preach but never lets kids go to any other church than the interdenominational one run at the orphanage. We are working on her as she is a linchpin for a bunch of people. But she probably won't progress as many of the other children live at other peoples houses usually bring preachers of other faiths and now some of these kids are now like missionaries for hire. Taught them on Sunday after their session and we had like 15 new people from one lesson, so hopefully if we don't get through to the woman maybe this mass of children will get into her. Wednesday was interviews with President Makasi. Since the zone is smaller then before they decide just to combine everyone into one meeting. So we had a nice time just chatting about whatever we wanted. We had had exchanges cancelled that day (this is the third time in a row if you are counting). We are in the same zone as the Assistants and they showed up during the middle of their exchange. Weird but whatever. But then when lunch was decided the assistants were out, but ordered food for them but not the people they were on exchanges with, then told us to save their food. Hmmmm some elders decided to just help themselves. (I should mention that this was only one of the AP's ideas). But later the phone call if we had their food. Answer was no. Other then that we had a pretty regular week. Went around teaching. Shared what we could. But things got good during the week end. Saturday was the last attempt to do exchanges. I went with Elder Crook to Eastview while Elder Mhangwana went with Elder Ndlela to Solomio. We had spent almost all day at a wedding. At the end of it I did the baptismal for the couple. We only taught one lesson the whole day. During the wedding however we got a call from the Elders in Solomio. They had been joking with someone we were teaching. Then they told them I had got Corona and that I was being shipped home under critical condition. And she got uncontrollably emotional. They had to call me just to help her calm down. Apparently she had tears and everything. I had to talk her down for about 10 minutes between her sniffing and crying. Sunday was the last day for missionaries to Baptize. We walked all the way to Ruwa to baptize a member's little sister. He just barely received the priesthood so he got to baptize her. And another person (Edith) we baptized came to help. She had been baptized last month and she helped this girl when she got out of the font to get changed and redressed. But I am still trying to find another card reader for my photos. Because this is crazy So hopefully things come around. But I hope you all have a great week! -Elder Vogel Previous Letter Next Letter

8c2cdb7e-48a6-4575-bb8d-757a8779382a Sister Jasmin Bundy Back to Missionary Letters Contention is of me 🚨🌡 Whats up, folks?? Huh? What's up? It's a good day... to have a good day... so have a good day Mmmmhm! Let me just say that I've been raging around Cookeville this week. Our friend has been calling us everyday to scream about her work and her car. We've done everything we can to help her out, cause Jesus loves her! 🩷 Well she said she needed a ride to work one day so I called probably 30 members trying to find someone that could make an hour round trip to get her to work. I found a sweetie named Tera, around our age, to give her a ride. Tera gave her a ride to work but told her she couldn't give her a ride home because she had a job herself. Amy chewed Tera out and then called us demanding we find her another ride. I told her to get on her shank pony and walk home. Respectfully, some people needed more whoopins growing up. BUT ALSO WEVE SEEN MIRACLES THIS WEEK 🌎🌞 my first miracle was Linda. We knocked on Linda's door and she let us right in. She's an elderly lady with the thickest accent of my whole life. We taught her about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost and invited her to be baptized right then and there. We've seen her everyday since. We taught her about temples yesterday, and she just brightened up with the biggest grin and said "I'll get to see my daddy again?!" SHE IS A CUTIE 💓 My second miracle was GREG! It's 8pm on a Saturday night, we're in the bu**crack of our area, and we knock on GREG'S door! GREG is another old fart, around 75. He gave us a hard time the whole time, but he had some couches on his porch so we said "GREG, sit yourself down. We're going to share something with you." He did as commanded, and we taught him about baptism. GREG is getting baptized on may 10th now. I love GREG. We wrapped up with a prayer and GREG shuffled out to our car, opened our doors, and backed us out of the driveway. It was precious. 🙂↕️ OK OK last one: We've been teaching a man named David for a couple of weeks. We've invited him to be baptized, he's said no. But yesterday we sat and taught him about the first vision. The Spirit was strong enough to knock out an elephant 🐘 I could see it in David's eyes, he felt something. We invited him to read the Book of Mormon, he said no. We invited him to pray, and he made no comment. The man knows it's true, he's scared to admit it. I promise you all, as soon as David humbles himself enough to pray about This message, he will recieve an answer that confirms the truth to him, and he will choose to make covenants with God. This is because The Message IS TRUE. God has intentions for everyone to know that. I don't think there's a prayer answered much quicker than the prayer of an investigator as they seek to know if what they've been taught is correct. Have you prayed about it yet? Maybe you should. I love you all more than casaba melons! 💛/ Sister Bumdie Previous Letter Next Letter

29e89446-e8d0-4aa3-9fa9-b977b84d8133 Elder Maurice Perkins Back to Missionary Letters Miracles and No Church Meetings This week was very good. We have found some amazing people and miracles happen every day here in Nacala. This week we started teaching a man that came to church on his own last Sunday. He had been taught by the missionaries in Nampula while he was staying there for a few weeks and had gone to church three times. We started teaching him this week and he told us that he wants to be baptized. Also, we started teaching a man who recently moved to Nacala and decided he was going to leave his old church and start anew. He passed by the chapel and contacted the guard and then talked to the Branch Secretary and then came to church last week. We taught him a few lessons this week and he told that he wants to be baptized as well. As well on Friday we received the news that all the church meetings would be cancelled. I know that the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles receive revelation directly from God for our lives and for the church. Elder Gava is doing better now. He had gotten sick and was still recovering a little into this week, however he is good now. Other than that I am doing good, and I am healthy. I know that this is the work of the Lord. I am excited to see what this next week brings and know that God is our loving Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ is His Son. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom of God here on earth. We are guided by Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone of the church. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that the Book of Mormon is true. God loves us and hears our prayers. He is coincidence of everything that is going on in the world right now. I am grateful to be a part of this work and for the experience that I have here to serve! Estamos juntos! - Elder Perkins Picture P-Day Pizza Previous Letter Next Letter

b6ccc235-5a6b-431d-9d91-999cd9831061 Sister Jordan Memmott Back to Missionary Letters Forever grateful🤍🤍 Hi y'all! This is it! My last email on my mission! I can hardly even believe how fast these last 18 months have gone! Some of the best times of my life and I wouldn't change it for the world!💌🫶🏼 I had the best last week and we saw so many miracles every single day!! - had my departing interview with President John and it was so so good! He has been the best of the best and I've learned so much from him! #blessed - we got stuck at this apartment complex because of a little fiasco with this guy! There were about 15 cops cars surrounding the building and we couldn't leave. Everyone was out watching and trying to figure out what was happening! But hey during all of it we talked to so many people and even found a member who hasn't been to church in a couple of years! - I got to see a lot of my old comps and had to say goodbye for now😢 love them so much - we had 5 of our friends come to church!!! What a miracle. They all loved it and will hopefully come back again:) - everytime we went to visit someone yesterday they were either not home or busy but everytime we found another person who wanted to learn more and meet with us! So it all worked out and we were definitely led where we needed to be for a reason! I just love my Savior! There aren't enough words to express how grateful I am for Him!! I'll forever be grateful for my mission! I love all the people I've met in Texas and they've changed my life in so many ways! There's so much joy that comes from living the gospel! Just know that God is good all of the time and that he loves you💟 I'll see you guys soon! My homecoming will be this Sunday! Let me know if you want the info;) Sister Memmott🩷🩷 Previous Letter Next Letter

16e69d52-86c7-427d-9770-a034ce5d80b1 Elder Drake Wakefield Back to Missionary Letters Janjis Dang this week went so fast. We went to the office a lot, as we have to do work there for the whole mission, so that may be why. Me and Elder Hamilton are over reimbursement for everyone in the mission, so we could cook everyone and give them no money haha. We also had a bunch of Janjis or member visits so that was nice too. Oh my we went to an American family's house, let me tell ya, having a home cooked American meal was nothing short of a Tender Mercy. I love the food here but something about mashed potatoes and meat other than chicken was Heaven sent. I was so excited I ate most of it (this is my second plate too haha) before realizing I should take a picture. 10/10 meal, cant top my mom or either grandmas cooking but it was super good. The rest of the week was basically more Janjis, but something really cool that happened was the work was a little slow and I was trying to think of ways we can find new people who want to learn about Jesus Christ, and as we get to the office on Thursday the sisters who work there found there were around 100 recommendations from members on people we could reach out to as they were interested in learning. Me and my comp received about 7, which is so many for here in Jakarta. What made it even more of a blessing is the guy who seems the most interested, his preferred language is English! That is amazing as this weekend when we meet with him I can actually say what my heart feels. This is a testament that God listens to your heart and prayers, as that was something I was frustrated with. I sit in lessons with Elder Hamilton, he does all the talking as I can only infer what they are talking about and have minimal ways to give input. But with Joel, our new guy, I will be able to actually share my love of Jesus with him! So amazing and I can't wait to meet with him. Alright talk of the week is: Standing Together for the Cause of Christ https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2012/08/standing-together-for-the-cause-of-christ?lang=eng This talk is really cool as it is basically Elder Holland, who is such a powerful speaker and brings the spirit so strong, he tells what our beliefs are in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost to many Christian leaders. Definitely would recommend it as it goes over some core doctrine. I found this talk as while Facebook finding, I found a group of Christians who were bashing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints saying we aren't Christian as we don't believe in the trinity. This talk answers what our belief in Jesus Christ is, but I think the more important part is when Elder Holland speaks on the conflict between Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints church and other Christians churches. What I got out of it is why should we fight about the differences instead of praising the similarities. We should find the common good, instead of the "bad" or our differences. We are Christans, we believe Jesus Christ is our Savior, why can we not rejoice in that wonderful knowledge instead of fighting amongst ourselves. That is not what Jesus would want and is definitely derived from Satan. He is steering our focus to try and defend Jesus, all while we are drifting away from the contention. That is what I felt but it is a great talk so go find out for yourself! Yea still doing great, the water pistol still works like a charm. Crazy take, but I think I like it better than toilet paper. Might be withdrawals but idk. Yea hope everyone is doing great, stay close to Jesus! 2. This is Sultan, he's a G. He is a returned missionary from here and he showed me a picture of their zone, and it had Stetson Ludvickson in it, so that caught me by surprise haha. But they made us some fire food too. 3. Didn't know California had a fried chicken place Didn't know California had a fried chicken place Previous Letter Next Letter

5fe8b00d-24ed-41c7-94f2-08bef2841323 Elder Brandon Perkins Back to Missionary Letters Conference, Transfers and Spiders G'Day everyone! Im staying in Park Ridge with Elder Seely! We already assumed that we both would stay. However, what we didn't guess is that they would split our ward and make us car share 😂. So yeah now we have 2 sets of missionaries assigned to park ridge. Were also car sharing and possibly flat sharing, which means we take turns driving the car with the other Elders and when were not driving were biking or walking. It will be pretty brutal in this Aussie Summer 😂. Last Monday we had a district p-day! It was so fun to hangout with my district and learn more about them before transfers! Elder Seely and I also had to drop Elder greaves off at the airport and say goodbye. He's got transfered to north Queensland and they just needed him up there a week early, sure gonna miss that Elder. This week we were able to watch the funeral for pres nelson. I knew president nelson was awesome but hearing everyone speak about everything he accomplished opened my eyes, he will definitely be missed. I love how every mission is different, here in the ABM, President Gomez has told us to make our main focus member work. Because the members are so strong in this ward, we've got so many referrals from them. We have a couple friends right now that want to get baptized but are hard to contact and set lessons with, so hopefully we keep progressing with them. Our friend Lachlan is progressing really well! He was on date for the 11th and then kinda ghosted us for a week and half. So we rocked up on him, and he still wants to be baptized so we changed his date for the 25th and we're back to teaching him consistently! I had my welcome to Australia moment last week. We did service for our friends Luke and Ruth who are sadly moving out of our waes. We helped them move all this stuff out of these horse stables. I probably saw over 50 spiders 🕷 and there was webs literally everywhere. It was really hard work to be honest. One of the things we did was load all these battery's into this shipping container. Each of them weighed around 130 pounds and there were probably 30 of them. After we loaded them in, Luke told us that he didn't want them in there 😭 so we had to take all of them out. The service was over 5 hours, which I'm not sure if that is even aloud but he kept telling us it was okay cause his wife was a legit investigator. We also mowed 2 members lawns on Saturday, so we did heeps of service last week. I got to meet a really cool Elder this week named Elder Rollins, he came in the same intake as me and guess where he is from? Cedar City funny enough! He is the man, I hope we're companions one day. One of the highlights of my week is that I bought a ukelele😁, I love playing it. Because Australia is 17 hours ahead, this Sunday was our conference Sunday. So we were able to go to the church and watch it with some of the members. After,we had a feed with our senior service missionary and some of the members. This week was a roller coaster of things happening, but I'm so grateful to be here. I love Australia and the people here. Love you all heeps🙏 Spirtual Thought This general conference was so amazing, truly. Kevin G. Brown had a wonderful talk about testimony's. One of the parts that stood out to me is when he said "Your testimony will be a joy as you see it replicated in your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and in those you love and serve. It will be powerful when you share it and use it to testify." I hope my parents and grandparents have seen how there testimony has replicated my own. Because it has so much. They have definitely paved the path for me, and they are what keep me going. I hope my testimony will not just impact the people here in Australia but my future posterity as well. Previous Letter Next Letter

d4026640-14c6-424d-a914-179646faec27 Elder Christian Martinez Back to Missionary Letters The Journey North Hey everyone! Hope your week went well! This will be a shorter email this week because I will be preparing to depart from Salisbury. This week transfer news came and I found out I was leaving. I will be going to Souderton, Pennsylvania, it's about 40 minutes north of Philadelphia, so itll be a long drive tomorrow morning up there 😂 This means I will serve in all 4 states of the mission which is pretty cool. Salisbury was a blessing, I loved being here, I will miss it greatly. But I will go where the Lord wants me to go, I hope and pray itll be a good time over there, but idk if much things will stop Salisbury 😂 this also means I am 1 and doning another companion, goodness hahaha. I will miss Elder Heck, easily the funniest comp I've had 😂 A talk I read this week was from the October 2007 General Conference titled "The Only True God and Jesus Christ" by Elder Holland. The quote I loved was "I bear this witness. I testify that Jesus Christ is the literal, living Son of our literal, living God. This Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer who, under the guidance of the Father, was the Creator of heaven and earth and all things that in them are. I declare that in His willing submission to death He took upon Himself the sins of the world, paying an infinite price for every sorrow and sickness, every heartache and unhappiness from Adam to the end of the world." May we always remember that God and Jesus Christ live, and love all of us. Christ suffered the worst so we wouldn't have to. I know that they appeared to the prophet Joseph Smith, and they continue to talk with the prophet today. Have a great week everyone! Love, Elder Martinez The last District Council Previous Letter Next Letter