IF YOU ARE ON THE COMPUTER WRITE ME AN EMAIL!!!

Note from Mom : This weekend was crazy and I did not get emails out Sunday evening as planned, so I got up early on Monday but alas both missionaries had already emailed and I about died when I saw the emails.  Lucky for me both were on the computer while I was!! Tender mercies for sure!!

Hola Familia.

I looooove you.  But I wish you would write me emails so that when I have Pday I can read them.  Remember we are three hours earlier here.  And we usually come to the library first thing after we finish our studies.  So that means about 10:00.  Which means I need an email in my inbox by about 7:00 on Monday.  Feeling chastised?  Good.  It's just becuase I love you and I miss you.

Happy Thanksgiving week! Commence the best part of the year (minus the cold).  Are you so excited to only have two and a half days of school?  I am.  Or at least I would be if I were in school.  No breaks for missionaries.  What are your plans?  To eat delicious food I hope.  I'm not sure what we will be doing.  We might have made plans with two different families, but we're not exactly sure.  So we'll either be eating a lot of food or no food.  But I'm pretty sure it won't be a traditional Thanksgiving.  And I'm pretty sure there will be no green bean casserole.  When we do our grocery shopping today I am going to buy supplies to make it.  Then at least it will feel somewhat like Thanksgiving.  What are you most thankful for this year?  Me, I'm most thankful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I've been studying a lot about the Atonement, and it's everything.  Even when I'm not studying about it, somehow everything circles back to it.  I'm so thankful for my Savior, and for what he did for me, personally. I don't know if you knew this, but being a missionary is hard work.  It's hard, and it's work.  And I couldn't do it by myself.  It's the same thing with everyone.  We each have our own trials--our investigators have very difficult lives--and their are things we simply can't do on our own.  The beautiful thing is, we don't have to.  I was reading a quote by John Taylor today that said that Jesus descended below it all so that he could raise us above our trials and our weaknesses.  He said, He could not save us from something He could not do himself.  But He did it.  And because He did, He knows how to help us.  Why?  Because he's already been there and He's already overcome it.  Whatever the challenge might be.  So no matter how much we feel we're on our own, we're not.  If we have the faith and humility to turn to Him, to rely on Him, and to cast our burden upon Him, He will rescue us and He will heal our hearts and our souls.  The more I learn of Him, and the more I begin to understand the Atonement, the more I come to love Him.

It's been amazing to see the atonement work in the lives of the people here.  There is a recent convert in the ward, Ana, who I look up to so so much.  She is a single mother of three crazy ninos.  Those kids are so naughty.  And I love them. I think I might have been predisposed to love naughty children.  And she comes to church, by herself with her three ninos every week.  Even though they are noisy and they don't listen and everything.  She still comes. We sit in front of them, and usually at least one of the kids comes to sit with us (speaking of that, do you think you have any of those sacrament meeting matching velcro thingies that you could send me? I would love to put together a little church bag and I think those things would be great!).  I can imagine it's probably a relief to drop them off in Primary.  And why does she come?  She said, coming to church has changed my life in ways I couldn't have ever imagined before.  I've noticed a change in myself and a change in my children.  I'm more patient, and I have more strength to be able to do hard things.  And she's being a missionary!  She's probably a better missionary than I am!  She has a friend, Walter, that she's invited to church, we didn't even know he was interested.  He's looking to change his life, and she told him that she knows that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the way to do it.  He wants to keep coming and he wants to take the missionary discussions.  I am so proud of her!

Teaching the gospel is so fun.  There are two boys, Juan and Luis, that have been taught by the missionaries for a couple of months.  They are 10 and 12, and we love those boys.  They come from a crazy home life, as in sometimes I wonder if they have parents.  Don't worry, they do.  But they also live with their sisters and their brothers and their boyfriends and girlfriends and there are a ton of ninos born to not married parents running around like crazy.  But Juan and Luis are so well behaved.  And they are so good!  They love the Book of Mormon and they love learning about Jesus.  And they really want to come to church.  So on Saturday we invited them (and we finally met their mom).  She said they would come, so we set up a ride and everything. Well somehow we had a miscommunication and they thought we had arranged for a ride to pick them up at 10:00.  They woke up at 9 and got ready and everything.  But then, when nobody came at 10:00 (because church starts at 11) they left.  When their ride showed up, nobody was home.  They got home about 15 minutes after their ride showed up to take them.  They were so sad.  When I heard that I felt so sick.  We didn't have their phone number so we couldn't call them, and they lost ours. It was so sad.  But they want to come again.  We have their mom's phone number now and we are going to get them to church this Sunday!  After we figured out that confusion, we started talking about the Book of Mormon.  Luis (the 10 year old) asked why we needed two books.  And I talked to them about how the Bible had been translated a lot and how there were lots of different versions of it, so a lot of important things got lost.  And then I explained how the Book of Mormon was translated once through revelation. Then Juan (the 12 year old) said, "Oh, so the Book of Mormon is more important?" Basically yes!  These boys really seem to get it, we just need to get the mom on board. Agh they're so good! I was teaching them and some of the other kids, who are probably about three and four cam in and were so noisy.  Hermana Steward distracted them so that I could teach.  The little girl pulled out her finger nail polish and started painting her nails and she started spraying her with body spray and feeding her chips and everything.  Weird.  And she smelled so bad. But we decided this is why we have companions: so one can teach while the other distracts.

We also put one of our investigators, Moises on date for baptism.  His mom got baptized two weeks ago.  He's still not sure that he's ready for it, but we told him we would help him prepare for it.  He's 15 and so so funny.  Even though he doesn't try to be.  He's just kind of socially awkward. As in he reminds me of Jon from the pool, but less chatty.  We texted him the other day to see how he was doing and he just texted us back saying, "No duck, duck, goose.  Bad day." Hermana Stewart and I are still laughing over that. Apparently they had played duck,duck, goose in PE the other day and he thought it was the dumbest thing ever. 

I hope you all are doing well. And that you have an awesome Thanksgiving.  Give Baby Alex lots of hugs and kisses for me when you see her.  I can't wait to skype you at Christmas.  When we figure out what's happening for that, I'll let you know.  Thank you for being so wonderful family.  I love you lots and I pray for you lots too.

xoxo

Hermana Simpson

We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto‏

Hola Familia!

I love you so much.  It was so good to talk to you (Mom and Nathan) on Wednesday.  I miss seeing you everyday and it was nice to hear your voices again.  I finally made it to DC!!! Well kind of.  We have exactly 0% of DC in our mission.  But I'm glad you got the email from President Riggs.  He did indeed take us to George Mason University and we did street contacting.  That was the very first thing we did after leaving the airport. And it was terrifying!  As soon as we got there and he told us what we were doing, I wanted to jump back into the car, lock the doors and hide under the seat.  I was so scared!  But, since that wasn't really an option, we companioned up and started talking to the gente.  And they were so nice!  The first person we talked to was totally interested.  I just opened my mouth and words came out.  It was a miracle.  But we gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he'd read it and that he'd like to meet with the missionaries!  Yay!  That night it was so cold.  Even when it's only a little cold here, it's freezing.  I don' think I like that very much.  After GMU we went to the mission home and ate some yummy food (way better than the MTC) and had some meetings and had an interview with President Riggs.  I've never met a person so full of love.  I'm excited to get to know him and work with him more! 

Thursday we had a transfer meeting and I got my new companion!  Her name is Hermana Allie Stewart, she's from the Mesa/Gilbert area and she's awesome!  We hit it off right away.  She actually reminds me a lot of Liz, so we have a lot of fun together.  

Thursday night we had a neat experience.  We stopped at a McDonalds for a bathroom break.  As I when in there Hermana Stewart started talking to a big black man.   I came out and thought we were going to leave. Nope.  We talked to him for another 45 minutes.  We talked a lot about why we are serving missions when we could be doing pretty much anything else, and we also talked about the atonement.  He was very interested and he said he liked being around us.  He also said he'd love for his kids to meet us (he is divorced and has three kids).  Unfortunately, he doesn't live in our zone.  Boo.  But we gave him a mormon.org card and got his number and gave him ours.  He put the card inside his cell phone holder because he said that's where he puts the things that are important to him.  If he didn't care about it, he said he would have put it in his back pocket and probably washed it.  Woohoo, he liked what we had to say.  He also told us that if we ever needed help in talking to people he would like to help us out.  He said that a lot of "young guys" wouldn't listen to us because they were too hard and too tough and the wouldn't respect us.  He then proceeded to tell me that part of my problem was that I look like "I'm from the burbs."  But those young kids would respect him because he's OG.  Don't know what that means?  I didn't either.  Apparently it means original gangster.  Like the real kind.  Not the kind with saggy pants.  He's been around the block a time or two and people respect him.  I'm learning all sorts of things here.  Like the meaning of OG.  But also that no matter how rough around the edges someone seems to be, they can always use the gospel.  And a lot more people than I've expected are receptive to it.  

Saturday was a bad day.  All of our appointments fell through.  As we were heading to the bishop's house to give ask his family if they had received revelation for anyone that we could help, we got into an accident.  Before you panic, don't.  Here's what happened:  We were heading down the street and the person three cars ahead of us tried to make an illegal left turn.  Bad.  And then the car behind her slammed on it's breaks and the car behind that car swerved and then the car in front of us slammed on his breaks.  And we slammed on ours.  And rear ended the guy in front of us.  But no one got hurt and hardly any damage was done to either car.  It could have been a lot worse.  We're glad it wasn't.  But that took up a huge part of our afternoon after we exchanged information and got an accident report and filled out all the paperwork we needed to for the mission and blah blah blah.  I'm glad I wasn't driving.  In fact, I think I never want to drive here.

On Sunday I met the ward.  This ward has so much personality.  And it's so diverse. I love it.  Also, the people were very surprised at my Spanish.  They asked if my family speaks it or if I grew up speaking it.  When I told them no, they were even more surprised.  Hermana Stewart likes to tell them I'm from Mexico.  And sometimes they believe it!  Silly.  When they ask where I'm actually from, and I tell them Washington, they get really confused.  Most people here don't know that Washington is a state.  I try to explain that it's on the west coast, close to Canada.  Then they start thinking I'm from Canada.  It would probably be easier just to tell them that.  

As Spanish missionaries, we cover the entire zone.  Zones are set up according to stakes. We're in the Mount Vernon Stake, so yes, Mount Vernon is in our mission, as is the Masonic Temple, and TC Williams (as in Remember the Titans!).  We have some fun Pday plans!  Our zone covers all of Alexandria and half of Arlington.  But not the cemetery half.  We're about 10 miles outside of DC and we're allowed to go to DC every other transfer.  We're planning on going closer to Christmas.  Could you find out from Phyllis where Dustin is at?  I thought she said he's in Alexandria, but I can't remember.  And does he still speak Spanish?  We're always looking to have members present at our appointments.  

I really love it here.  We definitely don't live in the classy part of town, but that's okay.  The people here are amazing.  They are being prepared by the Lord.  Sometimes I feel like Buddy the Elf because I just love everything so much!  I love the people, I love my companion and I love sharing the gospel.  

One of the scariest most exciting thing we do is knock doors.  I never want to because it's scary, but when people open their doors and want to learn more, it's so exciting.  Anyone that's looking for an adrenaline rush should probably just go on a mission.  We've had some really neat things happen when we've knocked the last few days.  On Sunday we were at an apartment complex and a women answered the door.  She's from the Congo!  I taught the entire first lesson by myself!  Of course, we had to give her a watered down version because neither of us had English scriptures with us so we had to paraphrase.  Luckily we had an English Book of Mormon in the car that we gave her and she said she would read it and wants to learn more.  She speaks better French than English so we're looking for someone that can go with the English Elders that speaks French.  I'm meeting and teaching people from all over the place.  I'm keeping a list.  So far I've met people from El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Venzuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, China and the Congo.  And I haven't even been here a whole week!  Last night we also had a neat knocking experience.  We had about 30 minutes before it was time to head home and so we picked an apartment building to knock.  We prayed that we would be able to find people and we did!  We made four return appointments!  The best part was that one girl answered the door and she was on the phone with her dad.  I thought she was going to shoo us away, but she didn't.  Instead she said "I'm just talking to my dad about my brother that is having some problems.  It's so perfect that you stopped by!"  And then she said to her dad, "Dad, some women from a church just stopped by and they want to talk about it, isn't that good timing!"  We're going back to teach us the first lesson tonight.  And we also met a family from Honduras that wants to learn more.  I'm so excited.

We have a couple of golden investigators.  One of them is so close to being ready to be baptized.  He was on date once, and then got scared so we pushed it back.  But I asked him again the other night if he would be baptized and he said yes, now we just need to get him back on date.  The only problem is his girlfriend.  She's not supportive and she's really not making his life easy right now.  We all think he would be much happier if he would break up with her.  But he's too nice to do that.  Hopefully though we'll continue to make progress.  

I love you all so much and I hope that you are all doing well.  You're the best!

xoxo

Hermana Simpson

One last MTC experience

Jessica sent a letter to her Aunt Elise in which she shared the following experience.  I thought I would share with you.  

"Being a missionary is so fun.  I never thought it would be like this.  I love teaching the gospel.  We had a teaching appointment today (the last one before we go into Babylon aka the real world)  with our progressing investigator.  Her name is Hely and she's from Guatemala.  She was talking about how she loved going to churches as a young girl in Guatemala because she felt safe and she felt loved.  I then explained to her that through the gift of the Holy Ghost she could have that peaceful feeling with her every second of every day if she wanted.  Then my companion invited her to be baptized.  I have never during any of our teaching appointments felt the spirit so strongly.  The only way I can even think to describe it was that a hush and stillness began to fill the room until I was sure it was leaking out the cracks in the door and window.  It was so powerful and we all felt it.  I know she's just a volunteer here, but if the spirit testifies so strongly here where most of the investigators are already members I can't wait to see what it's going to be like for reals.  Being a missionary is the best."

FOUR MORE DAYS!!!

Hola Familia!

 

Sorry you didn't get an email yesterday.  We had in field orientation all day long so our Pday got moved to today.  You know what that means? I'm going to DC in four days!! I got my flight itinerary earlier this week.  It looks like this:

Depart: SLC 6:00 AM

Arrive: DALLAS 9:35

Depart DALLAS 10:55

Arrive: WADC 2:35

We have to leave the CCM at 3:00 in the morning.  Yucky.  I will call you after my flight lands in Dallas.  So that will be at like 7:30 or 8:00 your time?  I hope someone will be home.  Mom, I'll try to call your phone first, so have it on you.  I'm very excited to get to DC.  I'm bursting with excitement to share the gospel.  Yesterday during In Field Orientation I learned so much.  Like how to contact people (we got mormon.org passalong cards to share on the plane, which is awesome!), and how to utilize members.  Members are so important in missionary work.  You have no idea. But the missionaries are here to help the members share the gospel.  It's so important.  I've learned so much during my time here at the CCM.  I was joking with one of my teachers that I should have stayed in the intermediate Spanish class because I still have so much to learn. He just said, "No, Hermana, you need to get to the field.  I'm starting to feel more confident about approaching the people about the gospel as I've come to understand more of my purpose as a missionary.  And that is to help people fully access the atonement of Jesus Chrsit through baptism, which is the gate to salvation.  We are not just sharing a nice idea, we are working in the same work as Christ, which is bringing salvation to as many souls as possible.  And that is why the gospel is so important.  It's not about the people at church or the fun things that different groups do, it's because it's the way to get to the Celestial Kingdom.  Now if only I could say it that well in Spanish. 

 

 I'm glad to hear that Brady is doing well.  I got a little note from him.  He's going to be a great missionary.  How did the game last night go?  I hope it went well. Tell everyone to write me letters my last few days. If you do it on dear elder it means i get it the exact same day and it's free.  And I've gotten more letters from Grandma than I have from you guys.  You're slacking!  Just kidding, but I would like to hear from you (Kelley I know you're reading this).  It would be best to send the package to DC if you haven't sent it yet, or else I don't think I will get it.  Also, if you can't find my patriarchal blessing, I know you can have another one sent to me if you log in on my lds.orgaccount.  And did you have a chance to find anything out about my brown boots?

 

Our district has grown even closer this week.  I think we realized that this will be our last week together.  They've really become my family here at the CCM and I love each and every one of them.  We've started going around the room at night before our district prayer and giving compliments to each other.  This has become one of the best parts of the day because it's so uplifting and we laugh a lot.  A couple of nights ago our district leader decided to compliment me.  He said, "Hermana Simpson, you are the Americanized one in the group.  But you really love Spanish and I like that."  The Americanized one?  We all laughed, but it's true.  I'm the only one that's had to actually study Spanish because I didn't grow up speaking it.  That has been really challenging for me, but I think that I'm improving.  It's hard for me to be able to say exactly what I mean in English, but to have to state it more simply in Spanish because I don't know the words.  Especially when we're teaching.  But I can tell that I've improved and with the Lord's help, hopefully I'll be basically fluent by the time I get back.  We've also been playing volleyball as a district and that has been really fun as well.  And a little crazy.

 

Michelle got here on Wednesday.  And she lives on my floor, right down the hall!  I've actually run into her a lot, and it's so good to have her here.  I love Michelle!

 

Being a missionary is seriously the best thing ever.  Right now I never want to not be a missionary.  Does that make sense?  I just feel just a joy within me when I think about sharing the gospel and how it's changed my life, and I want other people to feel that same joy and purpose in their lives.  I hope all of you at home seriously consider serving a mission.  Pray about it.  Ask Heavenly Father if it's right and he will answer you.  He loves you and he wants you to share that love with others.  This gospel is so much bigger and so much more important than we reailze. 

 

Keep being awesome and being good examples.  I love you so much and I miss you. You're the best family in the world. 

 

xoxo

Hermana Simpson