11 Months?

Hi everyone! This was a really good week! Unfortunately I forgot my planner (again...) so I don't really know what happened this week. That's what happens when you turn 20 I guess...

Monday night was sad :( one of my favorite families in the ward moved out of state this last week and we had dinner with them for the last time Monday night. This is the family with the adorable kids that we took a road trip with out to Jessie's confirmation last month. So sad!

Anyways we had to give another training this week...it was not as terrifying as last time and it wasn't as bad as last time either so that's good! 

Then on Wednesday we had Zone Conference which was soo much fun! We were combined with Reno North zone so I got to see a lot of my friends serving in that zone :) I got to see Sister Johnson for the first time since we were companions so long ago! We took a Mt Rose sister picture that I'll send y'all :) besides Sister Finch and Gali, those are all the sisters that have served in that ward that are still on their missions. But asides having tons of fun seeing all my friends and such, we had some great trainings! We learned a ton about how to be better missionaries and how to use the Book of Mormon more in our teaching.

Saturday was a great day! We had 8 set appointments for that day, and even though some of them cancelled we were still pretty busy! We had an amazing church tour with Alton, one of our investigators that we're preparing to be baptized. He had never been to the church before so we were super excited to get him some solid fellowshippers and show him around!

Yesterday was a miracle! Three of the people that we have been working with came to church yesterday! Two of them are members that haven't come in years and the third is Alton! :)

Update: No sign of Maria :)

Missions are the best! I've been learning lots and having tons of fun :)

This week we'll be going on exchanges twice! It should be tons of fun and it'll also make the week go way fast!

Anyways to make up for the lack of news from this week I'll send a bunch of pictures :)

Love you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

Fun times . . .

This week was an interesting week. So I'll fill you in on the soap opera that is my life.

So Tuesday was like any other day, well besides the fact that it was Sister Anderson's birthday of course! We decided to walk around and talk to people on Neil Rd. We started talking to this lady and she started going off on how crazy Mormons are, somehow not realizing we are Mormon. That was awkward but we just continued talking to her and testifying of Christ, not bringing up the fact that we were Mormon. Then I asked if I could share a scripture with her. I read Helaman 5:12 but didn't tell her it was from the Book of Mormon. Here's how the conversation after went:

Maria: I love that scripture! Where is that from? I don't remember seeing that in my Bible.
Me: It's actually from the Book of Mormon.

**awkward pause**

Maria: Well..uh..God really does have a sense of humor. Can you bring me a Book of Mormon?

So the Spirit's pretty awesome at helping us handle awkward situations!
Anyways, we then went on our way and had an amazing night filled with fattening food! I may or may not have told the waitress at Texas Roadhouse that it was Sister Anderson's birthday haha. Then we went and got frozen yogurt after too. So I basically gained 50 pounds this week.
We felt weird two days later about bringing Maria a Book of Mormon and then we understood why. Now we better understand the importance of following the Spirit. Our visit was interesting to say the least. After an hour and a half of us standing outside her apartment as she went off on God, told us how Christ doesn't understand her because she's suffered more than he has, how we are uneducated, how she could see my devil's horns and tail lol...anyways it went on for an hour and a half. It ended with me telling her that we would get the prophet in contact with her to answer her questions. I know I'm not supposed to lie but I'm pretty sure the Spirit prompted me to say that so we could finally able to leave. Anyways, we finally escaped.

The next day (Friday) we had MLC and it was life changing! Not so life changing that we got iPads but almost as great I guess. We had a couple brothers from the mission department come and gave us some amazing trainings! We learned so much about how to change our approach to missionary work and how to better follow the Spirit in all that we do.

That night we had an amazing lesson with one of our investigators Ed. We sat at this picnic bench in his apartment complex with him and a member and taught him the restoration. He told us all about how he read the pamphlet and how much he loved the picture of the First Vision. We had such a powerful lesson with him. We shared the First Vision and the Spirit was at it's peak and then **cue horror film music** we saw Maria walking toward us. I legit felt like I was in some scary movie. Then she started yelling at us about how we didn't come see her and how we were uneducated and yada yada yada. Anyways the Spirit has never run away so quickly before. After the lesson we talked about it though and we're pretty sure that was meant to happen. The Spirit was so amazingly strong and so clearly not there within 30 seconds that we think that needed to happen so Ed would be able to recognize the Spirit.

The next morning we had another amazing Spirit-filled lesson! We taught this lady named Cynthia. I should back up to better explain this miracle...I met this lady back in February with Sister Wright. We taught her the restoration and the plan of salvation and didn't see her for forever. Then the other day we were walking and I saw her in her front yard and we set up a time to meet! I was sooo excited! Saturday morning we had an amazing lesson! The Spirit was super strong and the member that came with us was a perfect fellowshipper! We invited her to be baptized and she accepted. After she accepted she paused and asked us if we believed in the Holy Spirit. We said of course! She then told us that when we said baptism she was completely overwhelmed with the Holy Spirit. It was so amazing to see her recognize the Spirit that was so strong!

Wow sorry this is truly turning into a novel. Anyways...

Sunday morning we got to teach at the air base again! We go about once a month and I love it! It is seriously the coolest experience being able to see a small group of servicemen gathered together in uniform for a sacrament meeting. It's even cooler to watch them kneel down in uniform and bless the sacrament. The church is soo true.

Right after church that day we were out walking around and then decided to go back to use the bathroom. I then remembered that we forgot to grab our dinner calendar from the primary president and so we went to check in the primary room for it. As we walked we saw a member of the ward talking to some woman but we could only see part of her around this man. I took 2 steps and realized it was Maria and lemme tell ya, it may have been Sister Anderson and I have ever run into the primary room to hide from someone before. Turns out our Bishop had just met with Maria and had come to the same conclusion we had. When Maria finally left we were finally able to come out of hiding and drive to our dinner appointment. I should add, this was Bishop Ford's first day as Bishop. Talk about an interesting first day as Bishop haha.

Anyways, basically to sum up this week, the Spirit is amazing. If the Spirit didn't guide us as missionaries, we would have never taught Ed and Cynthia. We would've never been prompted to invite the member we would to come see Cynthia and we would've never and we would've never had the amazing lessons we had with each of them. If the Spirit wouldn't have prompted us to check for our dinner calendar, we would've run into Maria outside of the church instead of barely avoiding her inside the church. The Church is true.

Anyways that's the novel of my week. Hope y'all have an amazing week! Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

Another Transfer and Hello Family!

From 5/9/16 (Yoohoo! Hello Family!):

Hello everyone! So I just talked to a lot of you yesterday but there were some pretty great things that happened this week that I didn't talk about.

On Monday night we were doing our daily planning and were trying to figure out what to teach Kimberly, one of our investigators, the next day. All of a sudden I felt that we should read Alma 32 with her and when I told Sister Anderson she started freaking out. That morning during personal study she had studied Alma 32 and felt really strongly as she read it that we should read that with Kimberly but then she forgot to tell me and forgot about the experience. So it was awesome to recognize that prompting!

On Tuesday we picked up a new sister and she spent the night with us. After we picked her up we learned that not only was she new to the mission field, she was new to the mission! Turns out, she didn't go to the MTC. Her call letter told her to report directly to the mission office. So it was fun getting to be with her on her very first day!

On Wednesday we had sopes again. Sopes are basically the best thing ever!

On Thursday we went to the food bank and got to volunteer there! When we got there I realized it was the same food bank that I went to the first day in this area and that I haven't been back since. So that was really fun! While we were there it suddenly started down pouring! It was raining so hard and the parking lot we were standing in started to flood a little bit. So it got to the point where 10 of us were crowded under this tent, standing on these crates that held peppers and cherries. Nevada weather is pretty crazy! Luckily our car wasn't too far away :)

Yesterday we had a family that we just started teaching come to church!!! We were so excited! They only could stay for the first hour, but hey, that's a miracle enough for me!

Also I've been in the field for 10 months now..? Super weird! And I've spent 7 months of that in this area haha.

Welp this week we have MLC and the mission department will be there to train us! It should be super cool but I'm also super nervous to be trained by a general authority!

Sister Anderson's birthday is tomorrow :) she's turning 20! She's so old.. haha. But I'm super excited because a member is taking us to dinner at Texas Roadhouse!! :) I haven't had that since before the mission so I'm very excited! (Also, from that comment you may think that's what I want the day I get home from my mission, but it's not. I really need some Chick fil A. Nevada is so sad :( anyways...)

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

P.S. Sorry I have pictures but I forgot my cord...so you'll have to wait for pictures til next week :)

From 5/2/16 (Another Transfer):

Hello! This week was pretty great! And it all topped off with some crazy transfer news...I'm staying!? It's super weird. We all expected this time that I'd be leaving. President even told me that he stood there with the transfer cards in his hands trying to decide where to send me and who to replace me with and he felt prompted that I needed to stay here another transfer. So Sister Anderson and I will be staying together again :D

So update on our crazy guy. We passed him off to the elders on Tuesday and they set up a lesson with him. Within 5 minutes though he called them back and said he didn't want to meet. Turns out he's not interested in the gospel. Who knew?!

So I'm going to be honest, we never bike. Biking is the worst. This week, however, we were incredibly desperate because of our lack of miles, and we ended up biking. For 20 miles. In one day. Needless to say, it was a little difficult to walk the next morning. The good thing is I only kinda ruined my skirt, I didn't get a tan line from my helmet, and it waited to rain until after we got back to our car.

On Saturday we spent the end of our dinner at the ward cake auction. While we were sitting there someone shared some cookies with us and then a member of the ward bought us a cake #victory...This is why sisters gain so much weight on the mission...

In other news, Sister Anderson told God to plug his nose this week. What happened is she had the tiniest burp ever while she was saying the prayer and said "ooh plug your nose," which led me to die laughing for a few minutes :)

On Sunday we had to make brownies for Why I Believe and while we were sitting in Relief Society we both got super excited about getting to lick the bowl as we made them. Wow y'all are going to think we're so fat. I promise I've not gained that much weight on the mission.

This lady in our ward recently went through the temple to receive her endowments. During testimony meeting she was talking about all of the work she's been able to do for her family recently. She said that she told her husband the other day that she's just waiting for him to kick the bucket so she can do his work too.

Welp sorry not a lot happened this week. Well, other than lots of changes to missionaries that none of you would really care about but change things up here a ton! Have a great week! :)

Love y'all! Talk to you Sunday :)

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

10 Months :)

Hello! This week was a great week! There were some crazy miracles! We were out walking around after a lesson and this lady pulled up next to us. Turns out it was a lady that Sister Anderson had taught in Lakeside ward that recently moved here. She asked us to come by and teach her son sometime, and he's not a member. The lady drove away and as Sister Anderson was explaining to me who that was we had another miracle! I saw this lady walk by a little ways ahead of us and she was one of our solid investigators that disappeared a few weeks ago. So I kinda chased her down and scared her to death but then we started talking and set up a time to go see her.

We had exchanges again this week! This was our last exchange. The last couple weeks have been so crazy since we decided to do all of our exchanges within basically a week. This week I stayed in our area with Sister Meyer. She was in the trio with me and Sister Anderson last transfer :) it was a pretty great day! We ended up helping people move out of their apartment for a couple hours and that was fun!

We also met with our solid investigator a couple times this week. He's so accepting of everything we teach and is set to be baptized here in a month or so :) or so we thought...so since we started teaching him we've noticed that he may like Sister Anderson. We prayed about it and felt like we should continue teaching him, which is weird because of Sunday. Sunday he came to church and sat by us (we made sure that I was between them) and then he stayed for the second hour as well. Partway through that class he asked us to come in the hall with him (well, he asked Sister Anderson and I followed) and he talked to us for a minute. He basically suggested that they go on a date, which was weird, but the weirdest part was when we got a text during Relief Society asking us if Sister Anderson is married. So we called the zone leaders cuz, ya know, we're not looking to date 35 year old men while we're on our missions (or ever for that matter).

Oh we also prayed over someone's dying sister this week. So that was basically one of the saddest moments of my life. I made Sister Anderson say the prayer since she made me say it last time.

Anyways, aside from the interesting things of this week, I thought I'd mention some of my recent life accomplishments:
1. I ate pasta 4 times last week. When we ate spaghetti I got seconds (so basically I ate everyone else's normal portion or spaghetti).

2. I really like tamales and sope. I'm just waiting for the day that I become an hermana.

3. One day last week 6 of our 7 appointments cancelled, we walked in the rain the entire day, our dinner fed us pasta and we still had fun.

4. I didn't drink any soda yesterday.

5. I pet at least 2 dogs last week and only kicked 1. If that's not an accomplishment, I don't know what is.

I hope y'all have a great week :) have fun picking up Elder Gootee :)

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)