Monday, August 3, 2009

greetings from RENTON!!

hey family! well i've been transferred to the maplewood heights ward in renton, and my new companion is sister yura from mongolia! first some pics and then i'll tell you the happenings:

the first pic is me and 5 of the elders i came out with. the 2nd is sis bush and i with our zone leaders from maple valley. the 3rd and 4th are from mine and sis yura's first full day together (notice the coordinating outfits)






so yeah, here i am in renton! i'll be honest, it was a hard few days when i first got here. my first experience having to leave an area! i'd grown to love it so much. plus sister bush and i were like best friends . . . we just got along SO well. everything we did was a BLAST but we worked SO hard and were always looking for ways to improve. . . .

sis yura is 22 and from mongolia. she's taught me a bit of mongolian which is way fun. her family converted about 10 years ago, but she was pretty inactive until a couple years ago when a couple missionaries kept chasing her down to come to church. now she has a wonderful testimony and her english is getting better and better. she is way fun and is just gorgeous. her favorite phrase is "yeah boy!" haha she kills me.

so the big news here is [J]! she's AMAZING! came to church on her own last week and sis yura and sis lauchner put her on date for baptism Aug 22. she's 25 and lived with an LDS fam for the past 2 months, saw the joseph smith movie on temple square and went to the oquirrh mountain temple open house. she felt the spirit SO strong and knew she needed to learn more. her dad died 3 months ago and she's looking for answers. when she moved back up here where her family is, she was praying to know what to do with her life when she kept running into missionaries! she decided God was trying to tell her something and so she came to church. now we're teaching her and she's GREAT! already has a strong testimony and is just accepting everything. she has lots of questions but everything makes sense to her. it was so fun to teach her the plan of salvation last night. she got pretty teary when we talked about life after death with her dad's recent passing and everything. we teach her at the jenkins' home and they're great. anyway this has been such a blessing to be a part of . . . i feel like the Lord did all the work and i get to do the fun part: teach :)

ok other fun happenings:

the elders up at UW found a mongolian girl and so sis yura and i get to drive up their a few times a week to teach her! i don't really do much but it's fun to see it :) our first time up there we got a little lost . . . in rush hour traffic . . . near down town seattle. good times haha.

we live in a mother-in-law apt connected to a members' home: the allans! they are the best. i just feel like they're my grandparents! bro allan used to be the bishop here and is just a champ. he got it all set up for us to wash our car today. when the ward mission leader didn’t find us a dinner appointment for fast sunday, sis allan made us a big meal. just know i'm well taken care of here :)

it has been SO HOT here! the other day we set a record for the seattle area. everyone is lethargic because hardly anyone has air conditioning. our apt doesn't have air conditioning but the allans have a window one in their front room so we slept there for a couple of nights.

well that's most of the news. i've gotta get going. we have mission wide olympics in about an hour! it'll be way fun. i feel so good about my new area and i'm excited to see the work that will get done :) i love you all very much!!!!!!!!!!

lizzie

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