crank that soulja boy

Olá Olá!! como estão todos?! essa semana foi LOUCA!! seattle is as green and rainy as ever, but we actually had a few solid hours of sunshine so that was fantastic hahaha

 

small plates:

-invited 2 of our "catholic" friends to baptism and didn't get the usual response of "i was baptized catholic so i'm gucci" but instead a "I was baptized catholic, but could I get baptized again the same way Jesus Christ was baptized?" woo woo baptism by the proper authority is the way to go!!!

-ZONE CONFERENCE!!! and it was suuuch a good one!! we have started a 'faith challenge' in the mission where we study stories of faith in the scriptures and then apply what we learn in our missionary work. my companions and I have been praying for opportunities to act in faith and it has been an awesome week full of growth... we have definitely been pushed out of our comfort zone by chasing down people in the streets and being bold in our lessons which is awesooome

-had a bomb lesson with our on date Miguel about baptism and he is so excited to continue to work towards his own baptism. i was thinking about it a lot this week and how it really was no coincidence that we found him when we did and how it was the consequence of an act of faith that we bumped into him. mirAcLes!!!!!

-Bible study. we have these buddies that are trying to start up a bible study group so we innocently agree to come thinking that they could share a passage in the bible and that we could share something in the book of mormon, but boy oh boy was it oh so much more hahaha. we show up and the Elders had already been getting a little toasted for about an hour and we just jumped right into a lowkey war zone. somebody invited a jewish dude who just toasted us about the sabbath day being on Saturday for too long, and we even threw some good bible verses in there to fight our cause, but we were kind of spinning in circles for un momentito until Thee hermana mather did what she does best and she just said "okay can i share my testimony" which shut everyone up. she just bore her testimony of God's love and how it doesn't matter what day the sabbath day is as long as we take time to worship God and then our friend Hector said that we all need to treat eachother as Jesus would. the hardcore fighting stopped at that point and just turned into passive agressive comments about how some people choose to not live all the commandments to their exactness, but overall it turned out to be a good little 2.5 hour discussion about our similarities. it's sometimes really good to meet with a Jewish mexican and some christians to just talk about God and see their point of view

-GIFT OF TONGUES MOMENT OF THE WEEK: so for some odd reason, there are 10000 brazilians here, and 0 brazilian wards/branches/groups within 100 miles soooooooooo that means they get handed to us because spanish is the closest language (which lemme tell you that is not the truth in my opinion lol) but we had 2 BOMB lessons yesterday with 2 different portuguese families who both really want to come to church and one really wants to read the book of mormon and were so stoked when we had O Livro de Mormon with us. i felt like i was back in the MTC again trying to pick out words i understood and build the main idea of what was going on, but towards the end of the night i was understanding a tooon and we were able to have some good little visits with them. pray that our duolingo portuguese comes in clutch this week

 

large plates:

-we went on a wild goose chase last p day to track down a violin string (long story) but we found this member that builds guitars and he fixed the broken neck on my guitar :,) blessings

-accidentally looked like i was asleep during zone conference and got called out by President

-walked up to some people cooking some food and i was like "heeEEY y'all having a BARBEQUE????" and they were like no our grandpa just died. AWKWARD

-tried to play deaf karoake in the companionship, but it's a little rough when your music library is limited to Lauren Daigle and MoTab

 

i don't have a ton else to compartir esta semana except the fact that i realized tomorrow i hit 8 months in the mission and I can proudly say that i have gotten super good at eating a ton of mexican food and knocking on people's car windows and chasing people down to talk about Jesus. i also only speak in spanish now and half the time i'll switch back and forth without realizing so hopefully this means FLUENCY!!! (that's a joke i'm far from fluent haha) 

 

but in all seriousness, I have come a long ways in 8 months in the spiritual sense. I have come to know my savior for who he truly is and what he has done for me, and I am proud that I wear his name on my chest every second of every day. I have come to absolutely love the scriptures and can't imagine my life without them. I love sharing my testimony with anyone who will listen and I love this gospel with a deep deep love... I don't know why it took me this long to realize how truly incredible this gospel is. 

 

les quierooooooo y les extranooooooooo

 

have a fantastic week!!!!!!!

 

con amor, 

hermana hess

 

fotos:

meme of the week

pretty Washington

generations of compañeras

no caption lol

Thomas the Cat

weekly occurance of hermana Powell cleaning out the vacuum during weekly planning hahah