5 Months!

Hello! This week was a pretty great week. First I wanted to say congrats to Elder Roberto Gootee for being called as AP! You will do great!

Really not a ton happened this week. You will all be interested to know that I ate duck. Yes, that is the weirdest thing I've eaten that I've actually liked. Now that is not an invitation to cook duck for me when I come home.

This week we had Zone Conference! I love Zone Conference because we have trainings from the zone leaders and the assistants to the president and President and Sister Chesnut. This training was all focused on how to become the fourth missionary, which is really the best missionary there is. They are completely dedicated to the work and put aside everything from home so they can focus. It was a great conference and helped me think a lot more about how I can be better and how to be the most successful missionary I can be.

Sister Gali and I went to dinner with the STL's (sister training leaders), Sisters Hingano and Lawson. We went to Chili's and it was soo good! We each got a 2 for $20 and then we got this cookie cake thing with a scoop of ice cream on it. It was so good! We were waiting for the check when the waiter came and told us that someone had taken care of our bill and wished to remain anonymous. So that was a pretty amazing miracle that happened! Well I think it's a miracle at least because I'm poor.

Then we left Chili's and went to go to the church so I could put my leftovers in the fridge. What we didn't realize is that there was a Spanish ward party going on. So they all insisted on us coming and joining them so we stayed for a little bit and they fed us even more desserts and I about died. One of the miracles is that I'm not a Spanish sister because if I was I would have to eat sooo much food.

Sidenote: I just wanna say that if someone comes to your door and you don't want to talk to them, tell them politely that you're not interested. Treat those that come to your door the way that you would want Mormon missionaries to be treated (well as long as the people coming to your door are not sketchy). Now if they keep coming back then feel free to not answer the door. I know as missionaries we would much rather have someone tell us they are not interested than pretend to be interested and all of a sudden start being rude or not answering the door. Anyway...
Sister Gali got a package from her family this week with lava lavas and Samoan stuffs in it so I'm essentially Samoan now. Just kidding, she told me I looked like a tourist so I guess that illusion's over.

ALSO DON'T FORGET: my p-day next week is on Wednesday! If I do not email you on Monday, I have not died. It is no longer my fault if y'all stress for nothing.

Thanksgiving will be weird for me because we don't proselyte but we hang out with our zone for a majority of it. So I essentially have 2 p-days this week. So that should be fun! But I hope y'all have a great week and have a great Thanksgiving :)

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

P.S. Christmas ideas cuz y'all keep nagging me for those:

-Walmart gift cards
-Music...it has to be churchy music but Nashville Tribute (I think that's what it's called) is allowed and that's pretty great.

-Walmart gift cards

I'm going to wait off on telling you any other places for gift cards because transfer calls aren't until December 13th and who knows what will happen!

Hello!

This week was pretty great! Thanks for all of your prayers for Sister Johnson! We got to our transfer meeting and found out that they had decided to give her a car after all. Miracles do happen :)

I don't know if I mentioned this before or not, but Sister Gali is my new companion and she is from Western Samoa! This last week I've been helping her learn more English. Some of the words I taught her are: Thanksgiving, food baby, go with the flow, Black Friday, food coma, and sketchy. I'm super pumped because we'll be together for her first Thanksgiving!

Some of Sister Gali's likes: Mountain Dew, chocolate milk (that's kinda a problem because I drink a lot of chocolate milk on my own), fried chicken (I took her to KFC for her first time the other day. I may have gotten her addicted)

Some of Sister Gali's dislikes: ranch dressing, pasta

We had some crazy miracles happen this week! For the last month we've been trying to contact one of the people that we were teaching. This week we were leaving a message for him and he called us back! We've met with him twice and haven't exactly set a baptismal date because it's complicated, but we have set a baptismal interview goal date! We're pretty excited! We also met with another one of the people that we're teaching and had an amazing lesson with him. He's decided that he's going to come to church and we set a baptismal date for him!

Update...I still hate dogs. Ok you're caught up on that.

We have been talking with everyone that we see and teaching everyone! A lot of the problem is that we don't get a ton of new investigators because we have to give them to the Spanish hermanas. We had 3 lessons in Spanish on Saturday. I can definitely tell that the Spirit was helping me out because I definitely don't know enough Spanish to be able to carry on a conversation about the gospel with that many people.

Yesterday was the longest day ever. Dustin was right. The longest days are when your companion is sick and you have to stay home. I do have to say it was nice to take a nap and catch up on some sleep, but then you get to the point where you're not tired anymore. And then you just have a ton of time with not much to do. Yay for organizing the area book! I did get to read the Book of Mormon for a little while. I love reading the Book of Mormon! I read Helaman 5 and that is a pretty amazing chapter! If you've not read it recently, it's one you should read. There's so much that happens in it! And of course, it has my favorite scripture in it.

Before I forget, I should tell yall that my P-day is going to change FOR ONLY ONE WEEK in a couple weeks. A general authority is coming to speak to us on the 30th so we won't have P-day till December 2.

I can't really think of anything else that happened this week. I hope you all have a great week!

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

Another Transfer

Lots of stuff happened this week! I'll start with the most important.

Sister Johnson is leaving :( she is going to be training though! She's going to do awesome. I am so pumped for her because she is going to do amazing! She's also going to Elko and is going to be in one of the wards that I was in for a couple weeks so she will love it! Sister Gali is going to be my new companion! It's crazy because we're already in the same zone and we went on exchanges together and such.

We went to a hobbit house this weekend. It was THE coolest thing EVER. There's a family in the Lakeside ward that is a huge fan of Lord of the Rings so they decided to build a hobbit house into the hill in their backyard. I'm definitely attaching pictures of that.

We also went to Chili's this week. This member in our ward takes us out to dinner about once a month or so and he took us there. I may have overdosed on chips and salsa.

I also heard the best explanation ever for prayer this week. A 7 year old was helping us teach this guy how to pray and she said that you start by saying Dear Heavenly Father. Then you go wee wee wee and then you say in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. We're going to have to start using that when we teach.

In other news we had mini missions this week! We got a mini missionary for Saturday and it was so much fun! We got to be with Athena, a 17 year old from Carson City, and she is awesome! She treked through the bad smells of Reno and weird things that happened that day that usually don't happen...We'll just leave it at I still hate dogs, and this week I kicked a dog.
Satan is working hard. We keep having this Satanic spiders come and disrupt our personal studies and ruin the whole Spirit. Satan really knows how to get to us. I'm also pretty sure he sends dogs to me and has them come gross me out while I'm trying to bear my testimony.
On Sunday we had stake conference and part of it was a broadcast from Salt Lake City. It was so good! We were all encouraged by Elder Lynn G Robins to simplify our lives. He talked about how Satan may not have a ton of success in making you too wicked but he is pretty successful at making you too busy. He asked us all to consider what we could do to simplify our lives and reminded us that the antidote to complexity is contentment. I also liked Elder Dallin H Oaks' talk. He encouraged us to commit ourselves to put the Lord first in our lives. He also posed the important question to ask ourselves: Are we active in the gospel or active in the Church? While we should at least be attending our meetings and being considered active in the Church, it is so much more important to be active in the gospel. We can do this when we are being a 7 day member and being a member when no one is looking. I thought of the importance of daily prayer and scripture study and taking the sacrament with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Lots of interesting things to think about!

I can't really think of a ton of other stuff that happened this week. Just helping Sister Johnson get ready to move today :( pray for her, she's going to an all biking area in the winter! 😓

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

Almost 3 transfers!

Hello! This week was pretty fantastic!

We had exchanges again this week! I got to go with Sister Lawson to the Lakeside area and we had so much fun street contacting in the rain! For those of you who don't know, no one is outside when it's raining, so it's kinda hard to street contact...Anyway, we talked to quite a few people still and we went to Arby's, so what more can you ask for in life?

Halloween was so much fun! We got so much candy :) just kidding, we were on lock down starting at 6. We did our weekly planning session and had a party planning and eating the pizza that a member ordered us :) Heck, I'll take pizza over pretty much anything, so no complaints here.
We also had a specialized sisters' training on Friday! This mission has never done it before, but all 38 sisters from across the mission came to Sparks and we had an amazing training! We were at the Sparks building from about 10:30 until 9. So we were there a little while. It was great! I got to see Sister Hingano (my comp in Elko) and Sister Paul (my MTC comp) and Sister Anderson (my MTC roomie) and a ton of other sisters! We also had a clothes swap where everyone brought clothes that they didn't want and we had a free-for-all. So of course I got a ton of new clothes :) It was so much fun and so spiritual at the same time. It was based off the talk "Finish with your Torch Still Lit" by President Uchtdorf. We talked about putting everything that could distract us from our missions in a box and sending it home. So we wrote down a bunch of stuff and put it in a box and those boxes are now at the mission home. It was a great training! We also talked about how we are here to bring about a marvelous work among the people in our areas and within ourselves. I learned so much about how I can be a better missionary and how to let my mission be the best years FOR my life!

Here's an update on things sobre mi:
1. I drank an entire gallon of chocolate milk this week. I may be addicted...
2. I ate a ton of broccoli this week. I'm definitely not addicted...
3. A dog licked my mouth this week. Dogs are still the worst
4. An old man addressed me as "Precious" this week. All I could do was picture him as Smeagul
5. A dinner cancelled but they still ordered Papa John's for us. Yay for my new favorite member :)

Sorry this week's letter was short. I love being a missionary! It's so much fun :) We have met so many great people and are still looking for those that are ready for us! Prepare for a billion pictures!

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)