Week 61: July 25, 2017: Things are still going well here in Missouri!

Hey family!

Things are still going well here in Missouri! Unfortunately, we didn't have too much time in our area this week because of exchanges but we were BUSY! 

We had exchanges with the sister training leaders on Wednesday and so we spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning there. We got to visit some really sweet families and it was great to serve with Sister S! She is super sweet.

We found 2 new investigators this week that are so sweet! We were knocking on the door to a potential investigator and right after the first knock, we heard "COME IN" so we opened up the door and we were obviously not who she was expecting to see coming into her house but she let us in anyway! We ended up teaching the Restoration and they loved it and have been reading in the Book of Mormon. We are excited to keep working with them. We were talking with the teenager and then her neighbor, who is friends with the teenagers mom, so hopefully we will be able to get permission from the teenager (A) mom soon!

On Friday, Sister Farnsworth and I both got training calls to train the new missionaries coming in so on Saturday we had a train the trainers meeting where President Love and the assistants to the president gave trainings and got us motivated and excited about the new missionaries. President Love went through his expectations and everything was really good! 

Because of the training calls, we know that one of us will for sure be leaving the area on Thursday and we find out tonight who it will be. It will be so sad if I end up leaving Santa Fe! I have only been here for a transfer but I love it so much! I feel so blessed to have gotten to know all the people here and serve them. My spanish has already improved a lot since being here and I know that if I leave, I'll keep trying to learn on my own but I'll probably lose some of it. But we'll see what happens, and I'll be okay with whatever it is :)

On Saturday night we had another amazing lesson with V and her 2 daughters! We taught them how to pray and did little practice prayers with them! We got to meet another one of her daughters and her daughters friend that were there that night too. We will hopefully be able to start working with them too. They were so sweet and wanted to learn!

There was a big storm on Saturday night that took down a ton of trees and half of the power in the city was out. Lots of churches were cancelled or were held without power but our building was lucky and had power so church went on and there were lots of people there! Right after church we had shift at the visitor center and that was packed.

Sunday night was so good! We had a really sweet lesson with a member and his non member girlfriend (M) that has been coming to church for the past 4 weeks and is loving it. She is so open to learning more and applying it into her life. She is really trying to make sure too that she is doing this for herself and not for R. Then we had dinner with a super cute family in our ward that just had their daughter get baptized. We talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the blessings of baptism. Then we went to a members home who has only been baptized for about a year and a half and never had her new member lessons. We got started on those and she is SO SWEET. She is this cute little lady. Ill send a picture of her in her hammock. We finally got to see G on Sunday night too and got to talk with him a little about the Book of Mormon! It was so good!

We had a bomb lesson last night with a potential investigator and things are going well!

Thanks so much for all your love and support! I love getting your emails and seeing your pictures :)

LOVE YA

Week 60: July 18, 2017: WE GOT TO SEE ERIN THIS WEEK!

We hugged and hugged and hugged and her comp took multiple photos but one is sufficient here
to show you how happy we were to hug Erin!

I love this photo of us with Erin.  I can see in it why people refer to her as my "mini-me". She and I look so much alike!

This is the door we waited outside for Elder Petersen to surprise Erin with us standing there.  She saw us thru the glass and ran out to hug us! 

After a long long hug we took a selfie.  Big smiles!

Hermana Greenwood (5'3") and Hermana Farnsworth (6'). What a height difference but both so darling.  

Elder Petersen, the Visitor Center director, and our answer to our prayers.

WE GOT TO SEE ERIN THIS WEEK!
I have included my email to Erin after we saw her and her response.


OUR E-MAIL TO ERIN RIGHT AFTER WE SAW HER:

Dear Erin,

I thought I would tell you how we got to see you. I had prayed often that if we could see you while in Missouri at Liberty Jail and if the Lord saw fit than we would have the opportunity to see you. We didn't want to plan it or MAKE it happen because you had worried it would be hard. And I have missed you more since Mother's Day and agreed it might be hard.


Well, seeing you was an answer to prayers. Dad and I had been upstairs in the room before you go into the jail and it was overflowing. I headed to the bathroom and dad headed to save me a seat. However, the room was full so they sent part of our group downstairs to the other large room. Dad happened to save me a seat next to Elder Petersen. When I was time to go in the jail, I turned to Elder Petersen and told him we had a daughter on a mission at the VC and he said "I know Sister Greenwood". I was shocked he knew who I was but he said he had heard rumors that we would be there. He said he would drive us to see you if we could leave. I told the Him that you weren't so sure you wanted to see us because it would be too hard and he said "Oh, she is stronger than you think and she would benefit". How do you argue with that? We got permission from our leaders to leave and we took off. I couldn't believe it! If we had fit in the upstairs room or had we been in the second group we would not have had time or the opportunity to see you! The Lord answered our prayers. He just made it possible!

On the drive, Elder Petersen told us how great you are and what your strengths are. It was awesome to hear. He told us that you are very good at following the promptings of the Holy Ghost while giving tours. He said he can trust you to follow any instructions or ideas you are taught but that you also following the prompting you get while on the tour. He said he had a great referral from Salt Lake and he could give it to any of the visitor center missionaries and chose to give it to you because you would know what to do with it and do it well. Those are great strengths he sees in you Erin.


LETTER FROM ERIN THAT DAY AFTER WE SAW HER:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Ya, I was feeling the same way about meeting with you! I didn't want to arrange anything but I also didn't want to do anything to keep us from meeting. So I just let it happen. I did tell the Bronson's cause I knew they were on shift with you so I asked them to give you a hug for me and so Elder Peterson must have found out through them haha. That is so crazy! and I am so glad that I did get to see you! I think that it was good for me to see you! I'm planning to leave a thank you note for him
did you meet Sister Peterson too? They are so sweet and we are blessed to have them here at the Visitor Center now! They have taught me so much

I'm glad you got to meet Sister Farnsworth and I'm really glad that she got those pictures of us! Those were great!


ERIN'S WEEKLY E-MAIL:
So I don't have a whole much to say considering that I just saw you this morning haha but I just wanted to say how great it was to see you both! I'm glad that I got to see you!! It was such a surprise.

As far as my week went, we had a crazy unplanned lunch with an older lady in our ward. We got a call one morning from her son in law who was absolutely positive that we had her on our dinner calendar even though we didn't. After like 3 more calls from random family members who aren't even in our ward, the member was a little more than offended. We had already eaten lunch but salvaged the relationship by going to lunch with her anyways and ate more than I probably have in my life. But it worked and she loves us now haha! Just after we finished eating, she got a call from the elders...they were calling to confirm dinner. Haha it was a little ridiculous but it was good and now we are going to be working with her to teach her the recent convert lessons she never got.

The other morning, my visitor center director (Elder Petersen) called me into his office and I got to talk with him and he gave me a referral to teach a lady online. He said that the referral came from a member who sent it in to Salt Lake and he wanted me to follow up with it. Well I called her yesterday and she is so interested in learning more! A lot of her family are members of the church and she already knows a lot but has a strong desire to learn about the Plan of Salvation. It was really cool to see someone with a thirst to learn more about the plan that God has laid out for us to find happiness in this life. 

We had another lesson with D that went really well! He has so many good questions and is really interested in applying these things into his life. We are really excited about working with him and he has so much potential. We also have been working with V and A and they are doing really well! 

On Sunday we had an entire less active family at church and they brought non member family and friends too! Literally they all LOVED it and we went back on Monday to teach them more. We are really excited about them and about all the miracles that we have been seeing. 

It seemed like this week all the people that we have been trying to contact and that we have been reaching out to FINALLY have gotten back to us and things are going well! The work is picking up and we are seeing miracles daily! 

I love and miss you all lots! I hope that you have a great week :)


Sorry, I didn't have too much time to write today so I wrote this a little fast.
I LOVE YOU

Week 59: July 11, 2107: No weekly letter this week but got some photos.

                                                    

I saw this photo on Facebook thanks to a friend in our ward tagging me so i would see it on Missionary Mommas. It was a tour photo from a tour Erin gave at the visitor center. Here is what Erin said about it when I sent it to her:

"They were a great tour and it was good getting to know them. They have such strong testimonies. The lady in the red shirt has 2 children going on a mission this month and those are her parents that she is with. They were great and it is sweet when they offer to take pictures with us, its even better though when they send it home to you guys or apparently post it on this FB page"

Erin's little letter from this week:

HOLA! como le va?? Lo siento pero no tengo mucho tiempo para escribir esta semana. pero TE QUIERO MUCHO.

Due to my lack of time I will say the rest in english but it sounds like you had a great week!

Sorry that i didnt get a weekly out this week. it has been crazy. only had about 30 min to email cause we got caught up with other stuff. We did go out with the VC director and his wife today though and they got us these GIANT shakes, Ill send a picture, they were really good but it was a ton and probably just put all my efforts to waste cause it was pure sugar haha

I'll hopefully be able to send a weekly update today. It has been a crazy pday cause its a short pday and then on top of that, we got our hair cut, went to lunch with the director.

Congrats to Seth on his mission call to Oregon.
LOVE YOU LOTS

Week 58: July 4, 2017: Happy Independence Day!

Hey family!
So this week has been a little crazy because I swear that like all of the people we are working with are not in the country anymore. Both recent converts just went to the Dominican Republic and Mexico and neither knows when they will be back but they will be gone for at least a month. Our solid investigator went to the DR as well for a month and one of the less actives we starting working with just told us last night that she leaves for Ecuador this Thursday and doesn't know when she will be back. So that's throwing us off a little bit but we have faith it'll all work out!

Also, I don't know anything about politics but our branch president mentioned in passing that there may be some changes to immigration laws and we could possibly be losing like half of our members if the changes go through. So that's super sad. 

BUT we also saw tons of miracles this week too! 

We met up with the elders on Saturday night to start a special fast for our branch and for more direction in our area and then on Sunday the miracles started coming! We had been struggling with getting referrals from the members and then we all of a sudden got not 1... not 2... but 7 referrals from the members that want us to teach their friends! So we finally have a couple lessons lined up for this week that the members are going to come out with us to visit their friends. That was a huge miracle.
We also had dinner with our RS president this week and she came out to visit people with us after dinner for like 3 hours! It was incredible and we were able to have a great lesson with a less active and gain her trust a little bit more! The night did go a little unexpected though because we got a call while we were driving from a lady that we had never met before that said she needed help that night. When we got to her house, she told us she was actually a member and that she just moved here from Utah. Her emergency was just to change a tire so we all just went out to the parking lot and they taught her a lesson while I changed her tire haha (thanks for teaching me Dad! Its now the 2nd time I've had to do it on my mission). 

Those were just some cool things that happened this week. We are excited about this upcoming week and more good things to come! I love and miss you tons! Have a good week :)

Last picture with Sister Vest before she went home.

Aurora Cortez- one of the recent converts that just went to Mexico :(

Elder Fuller (the Car Czar)- he was cleaning out the mission

presidents car and decided to pose for us haha

It boosts our spirits to know we can at least send texts clearer

than some natives

There was a huge firework show at the VC last night! Too bad they

all started past curfew but from our apartment they sounded like they

were pretty haha