el TEMPLO

Hola familia y amigos!

 Hermana Andrus and Hermana San Juan

Teaching a skeleton about the Plan of Salvation 

Jr. Martinez and Katelyn

JR! It was so hard to say bye to the Martinez family. I will see them again soon though :)

What a great week. Seriously a good one. But I also have sad news. I am being transferred out of Channelview for my last transfer! It was a very big surprise to me, I was not expecting to leave at all, I thought for sure that I would end my mission here. But I know it will be okay because I know that God has better plans for me than I do for myself. I'm still sad to leave but the knowledge that this mission is for God and not me makes it easier. I'm leaving my hija Hermana Andrus! I am going to miss her but she is an amazing missionary and is going to do so good. Channelview is so lucky to have her. 

Jaime and Katelyn at the Temple 

So the highlight of this week for me was Saturday because we went to the temple with Jaime! It was my first time going with a recent convert so it was a special experience. He LOVED it. He kept telling us that he thinks it has to be what heaven is like. I agree. I thought back to the day that Hermana Williams and I met him just about 4 months ago. Smoking on his porch, very depressed. It's amazing to me to see how far he has come. He truly is a miracle. 

Also we got to see Meet the Mormons this week! SO GOOD. You all have to go and see it. It's very inspirational. In the movie the humanitarian said, "I'm not perfect but I'm perfect at trying." I loved that. 

I am doing really well! I can't believe I am starting my last transfer..this is not real life. Everything is just happening so fast. I am excited to work hard these last 6 weeks in my new area! Being a missionary is the best thing ever. Also it makes me really happy to think that Spencer is out doing the same things that I am. I think about that sometimes and it just makes me smile.

 

I love you all so much. Thank you for all your support and love. Your prayers are felt! 

Love,

Hermana San Juan

Can you see it? We find Lizzards everywhere! 

Trato Hecho

Hermana Andrus is pro at doing hair.

Wadd up!

Such a good inspiring week. Man I can't even describe in words. I feel like
Conference came just at the perfect time for me. It gave me the confidence
and faith I needed to finish these last months out strong. It's amazing how
God knows who we are and just what we need. 

I really loved Neil L. Andersen's talk on opposition. We face alot of that as
missionaries and it gave me strength and courage to face opposition with
humility and kindness. He said "Opposition against the good things of God
send honest truth seekers to their knees." Opposition should make us
stronger not weaker. And I loved his message on how the world may be
telling us all sorts of things but how we never need to doubt the prophets.
That just brought so much peace to my heart because I know that that is
true. I know that we never need to fear no matter what is going on around
us.

How did y'all like General Conference??

So this coming up week we get to watch the new movie Meet the Mormons! I'm
so excited. It looks like it is going to be really good. GO AND SEE IT.

We had a pretty good week here in Channelview! Not anything too crazy
happened just working hard, talking to everyone, sharing the gospel,
getting rejected, speaking Spanish, learning, growing, laughing, crying,
changing, singing, getting wet from the rain, reading, memorizing, loving,
smiling, understanding, believing and helping. There is nothing better
than being a missionary.

I love you all so much!!

Love, Hermana San Juan 

  

MEDUSA with her curlers in hahahah

Cool right? 

Paige you should learn to do this so you can do my hair every day when I get home.

Wadd up

esta muy pagado de si mismo

Hola!

GOOD SEMANA.

Once upon a time on Thursday afternoon we had a little bit of extra time before one of our appointments so we decided to go now. Everyone was apparently in a terrible mood that day because we got yelled quite a few times and someone shouted at us "no one is home" through one of the doors...  Classic. So we weren't feeling too hot but we kept going and we knocked on this door and a teenage girl opened it. She said sorry, I don't speak English and we said, "We speak Spanish!" (which by the way I love doing because half the time people don't believe us). And she got super excited and let us in. We sat down and met Rosa (mom) and Diana (daughter). They just moved here from CUBA. Their accents are so cool guys. I could listen to them talk all day. Anyway, long story short they have been looking for a church to go to here and they had a Mormon friend in Cuba and they loved our message! It was such a miracle after a long hard day. God really does put people in our paths.

Also TUESDAY WAS THE BEST. Perla and Hermana Fernandez and families took us out to dinner for my birthday. We went to China Star, a new Chinese buffet they just built around here. They all each bought me a present which was adorable and so nice of them and a tres leches cake. SO GOOD. I was stuffed afterwards to say the least. They had the restaurant people sing to me which was mean but it was a great day :) I can't believe I am 21??

We also saw Adela this week! Remember her? Well guess what she GOT HER MIRACLE SHE WAS WAITING FOR. She still won't tell us what it was but she got it...so she is planning on getting baptized in the next couple weeks!

General Women's Conference was AMAZING. We all went to the stake center and watched it together as a stake. They served refreshments after. I felt so uplifted and important after that meeting. Man I love General Conference time. I love President Uchtdorf's talk at the end about just being obedient, how God just wants to pour blessings on us but sometimes we put up umbrellas. So true.

I have a testimony of this Church. I know we have a living prophet today and I am so excited to hear from him this weekend I can hardly stand it. I love y'all so much!

Love,
Hermana San Juan

Hermana Andrus - Planning Meeting

[I am missing some pictures, so I will update this if I get them, so ignore the words below.]

PIX

#1 crawfish?

#2 They are THE BOMB

#3 Praty

Estoy hecho una sopa!!

Hey!

 

If I had to describe this week in one word it would be RAIN.

It rained too hard core this week. We got multiple flash flood warnings on our phone and were basically always soaking wet. It was actually really fun, lots of great puddles to jump in.

 

On Tuesday I went to another leadership meeting in Liberty. It was a great spiritual boost. The message that I got out of it was, "Fear no man" or in other words be proud of being a missionary and confident about the message you carry! Also I got to drive with Hermana Shannon on the way up there so it was awesome talking to her. Did I tell you she lives right across the street from us! It's a dream come true I love that girl.

 

Then on Wednesday I went on exchanges with Hermana Perez. She just got done being trained and is already training but she can totally handle it. She is an awesome missionary.

 

On Thursday we found out that Rolando and his family moved out of our area :( It was a little bit of a sad day because they were some of our most solid investigators but then we realized that we were being really selfish by being sad and that they will be just fine with other missionaries. We are all on the same team right? Plus they moved into Hermana Shannons area so it's all good :)

 

Friday was Fiestas Patrias for our ward. It was alot of fun. SO SO SO much food. But oh my gosh Hermana Andrus and I were in heaven because last week we didn't eat like anything because we felt so sick and so we went all out at Fiestas Patrias. A crazy lady in our ward (who I love) named Udi got up on stage with a gun and shouted "VIVA MEXICO" so that was freaky but other than that it was great!

 

LOVE YOU ALL!!!

 

Hermana San Juan

Sick Week

wad up!

So this was a SICK week. Not sick as in cool but sick as in Hermana Andrus and I have felt pretty terrible all this week. Although I am pretty lucky because this is like the first time I have been sick my whole mission. I think we must have eaten something weird pero quien sabe. Hopefully we will be feeling better pretty soon here!

On Tuesday we had MLC which is a leadership meeting that they do once a month. It was really great because I got to see alot of my old mission friends and we were able to set some new "standards of excellence" for the mission. It was also really cool because president Drake told us that we surpassed our mission record for baptisms for the month!! We got 57 baptisms and our record was 50. Then he said something that I really loved "all records are meant to be broken". So we were all really pumped up and are shooting for 60 this next month.

We taught Rolando and his family again this week. They were having a really stressful week because the managers of the apartment complex that they are living in told then that they had to be out by Sunday. So as you can imagine he was in full on survivor mode trying to find a place to take him and his 6 kids. We contacted some members and found a trailer that was for sale. That was a huge relief for him. He couldn't come to church yesterday because he was moving into the trailer but he is really excited about our message.  He feels like we couldn't have come to his house at a more perfect time. We feel the same way.

Here is a quote that I really loved this week: 

"What you are becoming is alot more important than what you are doing" (Elder Nelson).

I know that this is the true church and that God has a plan for each of us. I know that with the help of the atonement we can become who God wants us to become. I love you all!

Love,

Hermana San Juan

German Is Baptized

Howdy!

Okay so sorry this is going to be a short e-mail! 

GREAT GREAT WEEK. 

Hermana Andrus and Katelyn at German's Baptism 

So German was baptized yesterday! Everything went so so well. One of my
favorite things is seeing the person who is about to be baptized in all
white for the first time. It is for sure one of the most beautiful things I
have seen here in Texas. Almost everyone from the ward came to support him
and his girlfriend gave a talk about baptism that was straight from the
heart. Her name is Gloria and she has been a member for about 25 years now
and has been through some really hard things in her life. As we have been
teaching German for these past weeks we have also been getting to know her
better and that has been such a blessing for me. It is always amazing to me
when people go through trials harder than you can imagine and come out
stronger than they were before. I am lucky to have so many great examples
of that in my life. It helps me to be strong in times of trial.

I was also very humbled this week. We recieved a referral from Salt Lake a
couple of weeks ago for a man named Rolando. We have been trying to contact
him for the last couple weeks now and had been having no success. We were
about to give up on the referral when something told us to go try it one
more time. So we did and someone finally answered the door! A little
adorable girl about 9 years old. We asked if her dad was home and she said
yes and went to go get him but then came back out and said that he was busy
and couldn't talk to us. So we started to walk away a little disappointed
and then the little girl came running back out and said "Hermanas wait!"
She told us that her dad wants to talk to us. So we went back and Rolando
apologized and said he felt ashamed and didn't want to let us in because
his house isn't very nice and its messy but that something told him to call
us back. He let us in and we found out that he is a single dad raising 6
kids under the age of 14. He talked to missionaries in the past and has
been praying that we would find him. It was such a blessing for us to meet
him and to teach him about eternal families and how in a world that is dark
he can find hope.

I know that this Church is true. I love y'all so much I can't even describe
in words. Thank you for everything!

Love,
Hermana San Juan

Rio Rio Chio

Hermanas Andrus and San Juan

It was pouring on Sunday so we walked people into the church with our umbrellas.

Another great week people!

We have been working a lot with German this week. He is the boyfriend of a member in our ward. He has been investigating the church for about a year now and he called us the other week and told us that he wants to be baptized on September 7th!! So This Sunday he will be getting baptized. He really is so ready.

We are seeing lots of blessings here in Channelview!!

The Martinez family was confirmed this Sunday! I seriously love that family so much. We had a lesson with them at a members house after church and talked about the priesthood. Gabriel is so excited about getting it and becoming a priesthood holder for his family. We are planning on going and doing baptisms for the dead with them in the coming weeks.:)

So on Sunday night I got the call from President Drake. He asked me to be sister training leader. SO nervous but happy to be able to have more of an opportunity to serve others.

SO REALLY FUNNY. Hermana Andrus is a dancer and loves dancing and obviously I can't dance at all but this Saturday our stake held fiestas patrias which is a party that hispanics throw every year to celebrate their different cultures. So Hna Andrus really wanted to choreograph a dance for it so she did! It was a puerta rican folk dance. She coreographed it all in like an hour then we practiced it like 4 times then we preformed it Saturday night! haha Hermana Salcido and Perez did it with us, it was a blast.   

Here is the DANCE!

Yeah, it happened.

Then the next day we gave talks in sacrament meeting on missionary work (claro). I don't think anyone could take us seriously haha. But two members did come up to us after and give us referrals so that was a blessing!

Well I love you all so much thank you for all your support and prayers!

Con Amor,
Hermana San Juan

P.S. Also we went to the Lake yesterday for P-day with the elders, Martinez family, Kevin, and Jassos IT WAS A BLAST. 

Familia Martinez Baptized

Hola Hola!

Hermana Katelyn St. John and Familia Martinez

I know I ALWAYS say this but this week really was one of the best of my mission! For many reason but there are two main ones.

#1 Elder Cook came to our mission to speak to us Saturday morning! Right when he walked into the room you could just feel of the spirit that he has and that he truly is an apostle of God. He told us that he didn't come with anything specific prepared to talk about so he would just go off of what he felt we needed to hear. He talked about how they assign mission calls. How they really are specifically just for us and how they look at each of our pictures and sometimes they feel we need to go to a certain mission president, or sometimes it's a certain language that we need to be speaking, or a certain group of people. At the end of his talk he left a special apostalic blessing on us. That was SO beautiful and so specific to our mission and our individual needs. I truly gained a stronger testimony that day of the apostles and prophet. It was an experience I will never forget! We also got to go up to him before the meeting started and shake his and his wife's hand one by one :)

#2 THE MARTINEZ FAMILY WAS BAPTIZED. Okay I haven't really been that big of a crier on my mission but yesterday the tears came easy. Especially because for the musical number we sang "Families Can Be Together Forever" and I look over at Perla and Gabriel and they have tears streaming down their cheeks. We have talked a lot about eternal families with them and I know that they know they can truly be together forever and that this is not the end. I couldn't help but picture them at the temple (which was a terrible idea because that made the tears come hard). I also pictured Katy and Michelle being married in the temple someday and Jr leaving on a mission and it just made my heart so happy I could hardly stand it. I will be forever grateful to my Heavenly Father for letting me be a part of their conversion.  

Unknown Hermana, Hermana Andrus, Martinez Familia, Katelyn, Hermana Williams

My GURLZ!

Hermanas Shannon, San Juan, McCormick

Hermana Andrus and Hermana San Juan

The mission life is good! I am so happy. Thank you for everything I love you con todo mi corazon!!

Con Amor,
Hermana San Juan

We helped Perla make tamales for the baptism.

We made lots!

We organized our formers this week....mission fun.

 Oh Texas, you melt my heart.

 

Most adorable kids ever award!

We went fishing again!

She caught a catfish!

Cien Dias

Hola Familia y amigos,

Oh man this week was a winner!!

So on Tuesday I went on exchanges with Hermana Salcido!! She came to Channelview and Hermana Andrus went with Hermana Perez to their area. It was so cool being with Hermana Salcido again! We were companions about a year ago. It was fun to see how much we have both grown. I love her so much.

Yesterday was a SWEET day because: 

#1 Bryan and Pepo got the priesthood
#2 Jaime was confirmed
 #3 Perla and her whole family came to church
#4 German (one of our investigators) told us that he wants to be baptized on August 31st
#5 We had a great noche de hogar at Perlas house with La familia Jasso (a family in the ward).
#6 Gabriel (Perla's husband) had his baptismal interview and passed with flying colors

So yeah yesterday was pretty rocking.

Also we are soooooo excited for this coming Sunday because Perla, Gabriel, Jr, Katy, and Michelle are all getting baptized! We are so happy for this amazing family. We have been talking to them alot about temples lately and how they can be an eternal family. They are planning on getting sealed in a year from now. It has been such a beautiful experience teaching them. Perla is SO excited. She asked us to help her make some tamales on Friday for after the Baptism on Sunday :)

This morning (about 3 hours ago) we went fishing with Perlas family and the Jassos! They told us we would see alligators though and we didn't see any soI guess we will have to go again. We got some really great pics though. I guess Texas is pretty pretty. I love this state. And guess what...I caughta FISH.

Perla and Family

I caught a Fishhhh.

Livin the Life

Hiking! (Told you Texas is pretty)

Also Guess What?! So this Saturday Elder Cook is coming to the mission and we are having a huge mission conference. I am for sure going to take good notes so next week I will let ya'll know how it went!

I know this Church is true and I love ya'll so much.

Con Amor,

Hermana San Juan

We are models, right.

Hna Andrus and me at New Missionary Training that we had this past Tuesday.

Selfie pic with President Drake hahaha