♪Families can be together forever♪

Happy mothers day :) 🌹

Happy mothers day to all you wonderful mothers out there. Thank you for all you do :) and I'm so grateful for the chance I got to talk to my mom yesterday! And so many other great things have happened this week.

First off exchange miracles are so real. We are the only Spanish sisters in our Zone let alone all the neighboring zones, so we do exchanges with the English Sister Training Leaders. So I was left the lone Spanish speaker for all our Spanish work for the day, but it was incredible. We were able to meet with a referral we have been trying to talk to forever, Ramona. Her brother, Hno Cordero is high priest group leader. We were able to talk to her about the book of Mormon and she seemed a little hesitant to accept it, but she said she would read it and pray about it, because she knows that's the only way she can find out if it's true. And she also told us she would talk to her brother about it some more this week.

Bike day!

Biking in the rain, looking for a referral 🌧

We are trying to conserve our miles a little bit more this transfer, so we spent most of exchanges biking. Sister Wilcox got excited about talking to Spanish people, so she pulled off the road and started talking to some Hispanic people working on a roof. Long story short, they were not as interested in the gospel as they were in asking us if we were married and we both got proposed to. But we did invite them to church, so who knows, they might come someday. And it never hurts to talk to everyone. 

We are really excited because one of our investigators has come to church two weeks in a row now! Jonathan and Gina, his wife, a less-active/returning to activity member. She just had a baby a couple of weeks ago, and they've come to church since then, and they were able to have their baby blessed in Church yesterday. He stood right outside the circle to watch, and afterwards held the baby up in front of the congregation and he just looked so proud and so so happy. In our lesson this past week Jonathan told us he wants to get baptized, he's just reluctant to set a date yet because he doesn't know everything about the church yet. He's starting to read more often in the Book of Mormon, and has been learning a lot by coming to church, and we're really excited about the progress he's making, and hopefully he'll have a baptismal date really soon. The knowledge of eternal families and the huge blessing he has seen in his newborn son is really drawing him close to the gospel. 

There was a two hour marathon sacrament meeting yesterday, because our entire bishopric got released, and all the outgoing and all the incoming spoke, plus their wives, so it was a very long meeting. We're really excited about our new bishop, Bishop Wood. He is from an English ward in New Brighton, but he speaks fluent Spanish, and he has a lot of new ideas. And Hno Torres, our Ward Mission Leader, is now the second councilor in the bishopric. So a lot of big changes, but hopefully it helps us shake things up in this ward a little bit and see some more progress. Our biggest challenges in the ward right now are there's a small core of members who are really involved who are doing everything, and high priests who are home teaching ten families, and a lot of people come late to 1 o'clock church every week and end up missing the sacrament, and there are a lot of transportation problems because people don't have cars, or people have weird work hours, or people were offended ten years ago by something someone said in sacrament meeting. And there's a lot of work to do with the investigators and with the members and with the less-actives, and we're never not busy trying to call people or visit people or help coordinate rides to church or any other variety of things, but we're really excited because there is already a lot of progress happening, and we're not about to run out of things to do any time soon. 

I hope you all have a lovely week, and give your mom a great big hug and thank her for everything. I'm so grateful I get to be a missionary, and for the knowledge I have that families can be together forever, and how much joy that has brought me and that I get to share that knowledge with everyone I meet for the next 15 months. Love you all! Thanks for all the love and support!

"Soy una misionera de La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Días"

Achi is moving to Minneapolis 😭 but she promised us she'll invite us to her baptism 

Cinco de Mayo!

Cinco de Mayo Fiesta! 🎉

Feliz cinco de mayo! You probably thought that wouldn't be that big of a deal for missionaries, but it was a huge blessing this week. Even though it isn't actually Mexican Indendence Day, it is a real holiday that lots of people have lots of really big parties for. On Saturday there was a huge Cinco de mayo festival just a couple blocks down from our house, so we were able to spend most of the day contacting there and talking to all the hispanic people we could find. That was my first time officially contacting on my mission, but it went surprisingly well, and by the end of the day I was pretty comfortable approaching people and talking to them in Spanish. I've found that when they see you're trying so hard to speak Spanish and understand them, people have a lot of patience with us. We've been trying to find new creative ways to find new people to teach, and this helped us find a lot families and people we're really excited about getting to go visit this week. 

Transfers were this past week and Hermana Hughes got moved to Rochester, so my new companion is Hermana Shepherd. She's from Colorado, and this is her fourth transfer in the field, which means she has only been out of training for one transfer herself. Neither of us know exactly what we're doing, but we're slowly improving every day. Leading out an area halfway through training, speaking a foreign language is kind of stressful, and I was really overwhelmed and freaking out for the first few days, and I'm still freaking out just a little bit, but this is really helping me learn to rely on the Lord, because there is absolutely no way I can do it by myself even if I wanted to. We have already seen a lot of miracles, and have a lot of new investigators. And sometimes an ice cream break can solve a world of problems. 

The big breakthrough this week is I finally can talk to people on the phone in spanish. Fun fact, talking on the phone, to anyone besides family and close friends, is one of my least favorite tasks in the whole world. Last transfer I managed to always get out of it, but now since I'm the one who knows people in this area, I have no more excuses. I don't always understand everything, but I get the general message of what they're saying and they get the general message of what I'm saying, and the gift of tongues is real. 

We got a lot of new investigators this week, but didn't see a lot of progress in any others areas. We're getting the 611 potential investigators in our area book a little bit better organized and we've got lots of doors we're excited to go knock this week. It's amazing how quickly you get over the embarassment and awkwardness of knocking on a strangers door and trying to talk to them about religion when it's basically all you do most of the time. 

I hope you all know how much God loves you. It's a lot, I promise, more than we can imagine and I know he feels that love for each of his children. Thank you for all the love and support! Have a great week! 

There are Peanuts Characters like this all over St. Paul, hometown of Charles Schulz 🐶

Transfers

Ice cream solves all of our problems, well not all, but most of them.

Throwback to the MTC because it's still 100% relatable and I just got this picture. 

"They did lift their cries to the Lord their God, that he would spare them and deliver them out of the hands of their enemies"

La familia Servin. We are really excited that Alex
is going to be able to get baptized soon!

Buenos dias! 

Because it was the end of the month, we were seriously low on miles, and might have gone 30 over, but the elders in our district say they went 50 under so we should be good. We did bike a whole ton this week though, even a few miles in the pouring rain. But we survived, no one got hurt and we feel 500% more like missionaries when we're biking everywhere. 

Hermana Hughes also hurt her foot right before I got here, so 7 weeks ago, and this week we finally got permission to go to the doctor to get it checked out. So after waiting in urgent care for 3 hours we finally got in at around 9:30 pm and got an x-ray, and shared a gospel message with the people working the x-ray machine, and good new is her foot isn't broken, but they also don't know what's wrong so we'll just have to wait and see if maybe it starts to feel better after a while.

The word of this week is reconnoiter, the verb form of reconnaisance. I had my first zone conference this week, and it was incredible, besides the fact is snowed the whole time because Minnesota is crazy. We learned a lot about the importance of following up with everyone. Not just investigators or people you're teaching, but everyone you're working with. If you ask the bishop or a member for a referall you have to go look into it and report back, or in other words reconnoiter, within a week, and show that you place a lot of importance of finding through members and taking seriously the people they ask you to go visit. So now you'll never forget the word reconnoiter. And we had an incredible experience this week asking a member for a referal 

I have learned so many new things from the Book of Mormon this week. One of my new favorite stories is just a few verses from 3 Nephi 4:8-10. When the Gaddianton robbers are coming to attack the Nephites it says "And it came to pass, that the armies of the Nephites, when they saw the appearance of the army of Giddianhi, had all fallen to the earth, and did lift their cries to the Lord their God, that he would spare them and deliver them out of the hands of their enemies. And it came to pass that when the armies of Giddianhi saw this they began to shout with a loud voice, because of their joy, for they had supposed that the Nephites had fallen with fear because of the terror of their armies. But in this thing they were disappointed, for the Nephites did not fear them; but they did fear their God and did supplicate him for protection; therefore, when the armies of Giddianhi did rush upon them they were prepared to meet them; yea in the strength of the Lord they did receive them." As missionaries, and as members of the church, or as members of whatever faith or belief you are, people are going to think you're pretty weird for believing the things you do and doing the things you do. Our faith might be viewed as weakness, but we know we place our faith and our trust in God, and that is all that matters. When our first line of defense is crying out to the Lord God for protection, He can protect you against anything the world might try to throw at you. 

Missionary work is so hard, but it is also so amazing, and everyday you learn more and become better and know how to do more and be better the next day. Thank you as always for the love and support, keep doing great things! 

Spanish Speaking Missionaries in Minneapolis

Bike Day!

Road trip to Wisconsin (just to see this sign then
we drove back across the bridge)

Stillwater is the best! A great day of antiquing :)

Lions and tigers and sloths...

Hello all! It's been another crazy week in Minnesota. The weather is starting to warm up, but then some days it's 30 degrees and raining, so we're never really sure what to expect. 

As the weather has been warming up it's been great to get to use our bikes and walk around more and get to talk to more people. Every Saturday night we have soccer outside our church building, and try to have some ward members there and invite our investigators and less-actives, and it's been a really great way to help start fellowshipping a little more and get everyone more involved in missionary work in a fun way.

So many miracles this week. So the Spanish areas are weird here because we cover 5 English areas, but have the same amount of miles as the English missionaries, so it takes a lot of really careful planning, and getting to the end of the month and realizing you are out of miles and need to ask everyone for rides everywhere. We were in Hastings with the English sisters trying to visit some Hispanic people who live there, and the Cottage Grove sisters were driving us because it's twenty miles away from our apartment. Our mission was having a mission wide finding hour, where everyone sets aside one hour on Friday from 3:30 to 4:30 to spend either tracting or contacting, and our goal for that hour was for every companionship to find one new investigator and place one Book of Mormon. We had not been able to find any Hispanic people in Hastings who were home or wanted to talk to us and had just been talking to some English speakers. But we had 10 minutes left in our finding hour, and stopped in a trailer park and had time to knock on only a couple of doors. We said a prayer to ask for help to find someone who needed a message of the gospel today and to be able to meet our goals of finding a new investigator. And the first door we were lead to knock on was a Hispanic woman named Maria, and she gladly let us talk to her for a few minutes, and we were able to give her a Book of Mormon and testify of it's importance and of Christ, and able to set up a return appointment for next week. As we were going to leave we asked her if she knew anyone else in the area who spoke Spanish, and she told us she was the only one on that street who spoke Spanish. It was so amazing that even though it seemed unlikely and I didn't have a lot of hope of being able to meet our goal, we planned and followed the spirit and were able to find someone who needed to hear that message that day.

I have learned so much this week in my studies from the last few chapters in Alma. Usually I kind of skim through them and don't really try to get a lot of spiritual information out of them, but we've been talking a lot about how they do a really great job of showing us in our day how we can live righteously even in tumultuous times and still have charity and love for all when everything else about the world seems to be telling us to behave the opposite. 

That's all I have time for today, but I hope you all have a great week!

Alma 48:11-13 "And Moroni was a strong and a mighty man; he was a man of a perfect understanding; yea, a man that did not delight in bloodshed; a man whose soul did joy in the liberty and the freedom of his country, and his brethren from bondage and slavery; Yea, a man whose heart did swell with thanksgiving to his God, for the many privileges and blessings which he bestowed upon his people; a man who did labor exceedingly for the welfare and safety of his people. Yea, and he was a man who was firm in the faith of Christ, and he had sworn with an oath to defend his people, his rights, and his country, and his religion, even to the loss of his blood."

There's this amazing ice cream shop called Nelson's
and this is a child size and it's the best thing in the whole world.

Temple Trip!!

Dinner with the Trevino's and their friend from New Zealand,
he had an awesome accent and also shared a lot of
really cool stories with us about his mission as well

Hermana Hughes and I always get made fun of at
District Meeting because we bring salads to each for lunch

P-day at the Zoo = SLOTHS

Feliz dia de pascua! 🐣🐰

Hello all!! Happy Easter! This week has gone by so quickly, I can't believe it's p-day again already. 

Exchanges this week! It was a little bit terrifying, but it ended up being a great experience. Our STL's decided to leave me in the Spanish area, and out of the English YSA sisters came to our area, Sister Brett. She was great to work with, but she only took Spanish for one year in junior high, so it was a good experience learning to rely on the Holy Ghost. I probably prayed 500 times for the gift of tongues, but we saw so many miracles. One woman, Cecilia, who we have been trying to get in contact with for weeks, we decided to stop at her house and she saw and was like "Hermanas! Come in!" And we were able to talk to her a little bit, and I'm 90% sure she said she was glad to see us because she has a lot of questions that the church she has been attending couldn't help her answer, and we were able to set up a return appointment. Planning is really hard when you have only been in the area for three weeks, but the day went smoothly, and we got a lot of good lessons in. 

One of our investigators, Cruz, fell off a two story building about a month ago and broke both of his legs, so we go teach him in the hospital. And there's a flu outbreak going on, so we also get to teach wearing hospital masks. He's progressing pretty well, he has a lot of questions about scientific things, and this week we spent a lot of time talkinga bout artificial intelligence and whether or not they have spirits...but he also has a lot of good questions about doctrine he's willing to study and get answers for. 

There was also that awkward moment this week, when no one in the ward invites the missionaries over for dinner, so we our district just ate dinner at the church, and we had an interesting combination of sourdough waffles, barbecue chicken, and tortillas, because what would Spanish missionaries be without tortillas for every meal. 

Things are going pretty slow this week, our biggest breakthrough was that Juan y Juana, two of our most progressing investigators, agreed to think about not meeting with the testigos de jehova (jehovah's wittnesses) anymore. Think about it. And they agreed to cancel their appointment with them on Sunday at 1 so they can come to church. 

And every hispanic person we have talked to has asked about why the Easter bunny is such a big deal in America. If anyone knows, please enlighten because we haven't been able to find anything. We talked about the symbol of the Easter Egg though, and the symbol of life being born again out of death, or something that would appear to be dead. And relating that to the restoration of the gospel, in that the gospel was restored in a perfect form, the same way Christ was ressurected, and the same way we are going to be resurrected. Everything, even Easter eggs, testify that there is a Christ. The church is true! Read the Book of Mormon! Happy Easter!!

Thank you for all the love and support!

Have a great week!

Hermana Meredith 

"Feel the Spirit"

Buenos dias! It's been another great week.

First off miracles. Conference was incredible, but we were kind of sad that none of our investigators came to church to watch it, and many people we followed up with the next day said they forgot or didn't have time. Then we went to meet with a less-active we teach for the English Elders in our area because she doesn't like them. She hasn't ever shown any desire to come to church, but we invited her to watch a session of conference, and when we walked into our next visit she couldn't wait to tell us that she had watched all four sessions. She spent thirty minutes telling us about her favorite talks and all she learned, then told us that she wants to come church, and asked us if we could find a ride for her. I was so shocked I about fell off my chair, but we were so happy for her, and general conference really does bring miracles. Our motto for this week using the Easter Initiative has been "watch the video, feel the spirit, be baptized!" And as we've been trying to show it to literally everyone we talk to it has brought so many blessings, and it helps so many people realize that our message is about Christ.

One of the really strong members of our ward, Hermano Patiño, is an Uber driver, so he gives us referrals sometimes of people he's driven who he's started talking to about the gospel or about Christ. And he says "tell them you know their friend in Jesus, the Uber driver." We went to go talk to one of these, and he told us that her name was either Megan or Amanda, and that she lived in either 667 or 669. Apparently she was a little drunk so the information wasn't the most accurate. So we went to 669 and asked if Megan or amanda lived there, and the guy who came to the door said "yeah, Megan lives next door" so we went to 667 and asked for Megan or Amanda, and the guy who came to the door said "Oh yeah, Amanda lives next door." He closed the door and we just started laughing because we're still not sure exactly what happened. So we'll have to try back there in a couple of weeks. Fun part of the week was our whole mission got to go to a Twins baseball game. Finally something where I understand what's going on. It was really fun to go be with a lot of other missionaries, as well as attend a baseball game in dresses and suits and ties. We definitely got a lot of questions, but best p-day ever. 

This week I have learned so much about how God answers our prayers through the scriptures. When we sincerely inquire and ask the Lord for help, he will answer our prayers and lead us exactly to the verses or the words of prophets that can answer our questions. It's sad because the hardest part about getting people to progress is getting them to church, and a lot of people we teach can't get to church on their own, because they don't have cars, because they can't get drivers licenses or a loan to get a car...so we spend a lot of time trying to arrange for rides. It's a problem we can't really create a long term solution for, so we're doing the best we can to help. 

Thank you all so much for all the love and support. I love you all and love hearing about all your missionary experiences! Have a great week!
Hermana Meredith

1 Nephi 15:8 "And I said unto them: Have ye inquired of the Lord?"

"The Prince of Peace"

It has been another great week to be a missionary! I hope that everyone watched conference and loved it!! We didn't have as much success committing our investigators to watch as we had hoped, but there are a lot of messages we are eager to share with them this week. 

God really does answer all of our prayers in the best ways sometimes. The ward here is incredible, and I've already gotten to meet a lot of people, but I've been having trouble feeling like I'm able to connect with the members, because of the language barrier and "oh it's the new missionary from Utah." But we were at a member dinner this week talking about a Twins game this upcoming week, and the members were talking a lot about baseball and how much they love major league baseball and thanks to my little brother John's obsession with baseball I actually knew what they were talking about and was able to participate in the conversation, and they were really impressed I knew who David Ortiz was and the difference between the two leagues, and it's a really little thing, but a huge blessing because it was a way I was able to talk to them about something that they're interested in, and I have just seen so many blessings like that this week, little things that seem irrelevant but ways I know I have been prepared to talk to so many of these people. Every member and almost every investigator I've met has also commented "oh ella es muy alta" so apparently 5'7" is pretty tall for here in Minnesota. 

The language barrier is still difficult, but getting a little easier to manage every day. Because there are so many people here with all different kinds of accents, we have some investigators I'm at 90% comprehension with, and then some I just pray that Hermana Hughes has got that lesson because I have absolutely no idea what's happening and I try to just bear a little testimony at the end about what I think the lesson might have been about. The key is trying not to look bewildered when someone is speaking faster than the speed of light. A lot of our investigators aren't making a lot of progress right now, and it's been difficult the past few days to get people to answer our phone calls or respond, and we've had trouble setting up appointments and getting to meet with some of our investigators that have really been doing well recently. Our tracting strategy the past few days has included a lot of inconspicuosly listening at doors in apartment buildings to see if people are speaking Spanish inside. It's all very methodical, no worries. 

The best thing this week has been being able to share the new Easter Video. We are trying to share it to everyone we talk to, English and Spanish speakers, just anyone who will stop to listen for even two minutes. It really is such a powerful testimony of the Savior. This Easter Campaign is so powerful, and we have already seen that this is exactly what so many people need in the world right now. We've been inviting everyone we talk to to share it with someone who needs it right now, so I want to invite all of you to do the same, either on social media or with a specific person, but invite someone else to either watch the video or share a message of the peace the Savior brings with someone you feel need's it right now, especially if that person is you. I loved President Uchtdorf's talk in relation to this message in conference yesterday. We shouldn't dwell on fear or evil or the unknown, but we should dwell on the peace that God brings us. We live in such a great time and in days of such great oppurtunity with the fulness of the restored gospel. It brings to mind the line "Look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now." 

Have a great week! Thank you so much for all your love and support. Continue to do great things and share the gospel!

Hermana Meredith

Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

1- our ward building is in the parking lot of the St. Paul temple

2- The Torres fa tamily, he is our ward mission leader, and she always make us the best Mexican food after church, and fish tacos are now my fav

3- Conference!!