2 months?!

 

Maybe I coulda been a little clearer in my last email, so I'll try to clear some things up. Sister Torres and I did this object lesson on faith that is usually pretty cool. I hold this tea bag standing up in my hand and Sister Torres takes a lighter and lights the top of it. The bag burns and gets insanely close to my hand and gets really hot and then it flies away. Well, ideally that's what happens. This time it just kinda fell over in my hand and burned there until I dropped it on the floor. Sorry if yall were hoping I ran across a crazy person's house :)

This week I started biking. It's not as terrible of an experience as it seems and it is better than walking. And let me tell ya, that bike helmet really completes the outfit. I'll definitely have to bike in a skirt with my helmet more often when I'm home!

This week we had the most amazing miracle ever! I GOT TO EAT PIZZA! Can we just all take a moment to appreciate pizza? I'm sorry, I've not had it since the MTC and I don't think anyone understands how excited I was to eat pizza even if it was the most overpriced pizza ever. I also got some ice cream cake at one of our dinners this week (which was delicious!) and even went through some oreos and mountain dew.

Man I was so tired this week. I'm pretty sure I dozed off a couple times during one lesson this week. Oops. This is why we shouldn't leave the lights really dim and sit on a super comfy couch.

I'm pretty sure I'm getting old. I keep forgetting things all the time. Like not mission related things, but stuff like I can't remember what all 3 of the unforgivable curses are!? Like seriously, who forgets that?! It also took me 10 minutes the other day to remember one of my friend's names.

It's been a little foggy here lately. Apparently there are a ton of fires in Washington and Idaho and maybe Nevada..? I'm not sure exactly but sometimes we can't see the mountains because of the smog.

Update: last week I ate zuchini and squash and this week I ate some cabbage. My review: I imagine that to be what nail polish remover tastes like.

Also, if you haven't seen Elder Holland's Mormon Message "Testimony of the Book of Mormon" then you need to repent and watch it. Ok, maybe that's a little extreme but really you need to watch it cuz it's a pretty awesome video!
I'm probably the only one that noticed, but today's my birthday! Well, my mission birthday. I've now been on my mission for 2 months! Crazy right? I bought myself a cupcake in celebration. Any excuse to eat cupcakes is a good excuse.

Here is my address for those of you that were looking for it:
233 Croydon Ct

Spring Creek, NV 89815

And here's my phone number:

317-446-5688 ;) ya that'll totally work



The helmet really does look great, doesn't it?

 

 Here's a picture from last Monday when President Chesnut came by and surprised us! It was for sure a surprise because the mission office is about 5 hours from Spring Creek.

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

1 Transfer Down

Hello all! Not as much happened this week, but I feel we can all be grateful for that. I'm always glad when car accidents and food poisoning are not involved :)

Well tomorrow is transfer day. I'm being transferred to downtown Reno. I've heard it's pretty sketchy. JK, missions don't send sisters there :) I'll be in Spring Creek for another transfer at least! This little town is kinda growing on me. Who woulda thought that I could live in a town that doesn't even have a stoplight?

Sister Torres and I are doing great. It's awesome because you can see our different strengths. Before her mission she was vegan so at dinners I always let her know what kind of meat we are eating because she usually doesn't know. Before my mission, I was definitely 100% not vegan, so Sister Torres lets me know what kind of disgusting..I mean delicious..veggies we are eating. I had squash and zuchini last week. That may have been the first time I've eaten those before.

This week we had a lesson with this one family we've been teaching again. We related Harry Potter to the gospel and the son at the end asked us if it connected in any other ways. Challenge accepted.

We got to go to the ward campout the other night! Well, we went to the dinner and fireside and then left after I entirely pigged out on s'mores. They were so delicious! It was a super pretty area that they were camping out in. There were legit trees everywhere and real grass and everything! There were so many trees that you couldn't see the mountains #blessings

Speaking of foilage and such, people here mow their weeds. During relief society the teacher was talking about how she remembers mowing the weeds with her dad when she was younger. The things people say in Nevada...

An amazing miracle we had this week is we taught this girl named Daisy for the first time this week. Her family is active but they want to help her work toward baptism. The miracle, however, is they gave me cookies n cream ice cream. You can pretty much say they are my favorite family now.

Something that I've learned on my mission is how important prayer is. I knew it was important before my mission, but I never really realized that it is a commandment to pray often. As I was thinking about why it would be so important I thought of an analogy. It's like when we were 2 or 3 and thought we were super independent and could do everything ourselves. However, our mom knew better and would always advise us to ask her for help so that we wouldn't make a mess of things and so that we could do things the way she wants us to have it done. It's a lot like Heavenly Father and us because we are a lot less experienced and like to think out of pride that we can do things on our own and don't need His help. However, Heavenly Father wants everything to go well in our lives so He wants us to pray and ask for help.

Well, I got through a transfer of my mission. I survived waking up at 6 or 6:30 every morning and I survived so many dinner appointments (which, for those of you who don't know me, is pretty impressive to me at least). I survived a car accident and food poisoning and getting lit on fire (oh I guess I never told y'all about that. Oh well).

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

Not Dead Yet

Wow this was a pretty slow week! I'll try to come up with some interesting things as not much happened.

Well, Sister Torres and I got into a car accident on Thursday. No worries, we are absolutely fine! Someone ran a stop sign and hit the front right side of our car, so our car is kinda sorta totalled. The amazing thing is that if we were going a little bit faster or if he pulled out a little bit later then he would have hit me instead of just getting the car. It's definitely a miracle that there wasn't even a scratch on me!

Sister Torres and I were a little slap happy afterwards. We kept joking around on the side of the road and it was actually pretty fun. I really wanted to ask the other guy if he'd ever run into missionaries before but I didn't think I could say it with a straight face.

There were a lot of people freaking out after because they just heard that we were in an accident but didn't know details. We called Elder Zappe, the vehicle coordinator, as soon as it happened and then President Chesnut called us that night. The sister training leaders and district leader were also making sure we were ok. So no worries, we're pretty well taken care of!

As I said earlier, our car, Bertha, died. However, as we are sister missionaries, Elder Zappe drove the 5 hour drive to Spring Creek to give us our new truck! Well, new to us. We named it Bell, after the Baileys' little chihuaha. And it was super nice because we only had to go one day without a car.

Other than the car accident, not much else happened this week. I mean, I guess I got food poisoning. Apparently people aren't supposed to feed you undercooked chicken. Who knew? So ya, I was sick for a whole day after and every time I would eat I would get sick. I came to the realization that if I didn't eat, then I wouldn't get sick :) Unfortunately, I've heard food is a necessity for life. So that night I got a blessing so that I'd be able to keep food down. It was awesome because when I got home I ate some food (fried chicken, cuz I was starving and fried chicken is delicious) and didn't get sick at all! So that was definitely a miracle!

As I mentioned last time, I tutored a girl in math last week. She passed her test so that's pretty awesome!

We also got 4 or 5 new investigators this week! To give some perspective, we got 2 new ones in the first month of my mission. So that's pretty awesome!

I'm also going to be sending a picture of one of the girls that is in a family that we've been teaching. Her name is Lizzie and she's pretty awesome!

Also, my hatred for dogs is growing. The other day we went to a house and their dog licked and bit my legs for half an hour. I literally put hand sanitizer all over my legs when we got in the car. Another time a dog wiped it's nose on my skirt. So disgusting. I can't handle dogs

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee