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 :)

4 months?!

Hello everyone! I hope that you've had a spectacular week!

This week was a little crazy but it was awesome!

Y'all should be extremely proud. On Monday for dinner I ate (well not all, but a lot) of a stuffed pepper. It's called chili relleno. I thought that I was going to die. Then on Thursday we filled in for the Spanish hermanas and went to their Spanish dinner. It was pretty fun! As an initiation type thing for new missionaries, they always make them eat this special pepper. It's about the size of my pinky nail and it's this hard, shriveled up red pepper. They told us to eat it and move it around our mouth. I was fine at first and then it got progressively hotter and hotter. With every breath it got hotter. Sister Johnson was crying. They couldn't believe how well I was handling it because I just acted all nonchalant and wasn't even crying. Some of them didn't even believe that I had eaten it because everyone cries when they eat it. #victory

On Thursday I went on an exchange that I will probably never again get the opportunity to do. Hermana Gatten was sick and the hermanas had a lesson that they were going to have to cancel. So we came up with this plan. Sister Johnson would stay with Hermana Gatten and I would go with Hermana Christensen to the lesson. So we watched Joseph Smith Prophet of the Restoration in Spanish. I've legit never prayed so hard for the Spirit in my life. I was praying so hard that I would know of how to help in this lesson. So after we watched part of the video we talked about it. Hermana Christensen was talking and then she stopped and looked at me. For those of you that don't know, that's missionary code for "I did my job, your turn!" So I bore my testimony in my broken Spanish to her about everything that Hermana was just talking about. Then Hermana talked some more and did it again. It was definitely an experience trying to depend on the Spirit so much so that I would be able to convey what I was thinking in Spanish!

Then we went on a more normal exchange on Friday. I went with Sister Gali who is awesome! She's from Western Samoa so Reno's a little different for her. We had some... interesting... experiences. 

So we were sitting at Taco Bell eating our lunch when this lady walked over and asked us what congregation we served in. I said Mt Rose and Lakeside and then she saw our name tags and realized that we weren't Jehovah Witnesses. She told us that she thought we were JW at first and then she told us that she's a preacher or whatever their leader is. She started asking us what we teach. Mwahahaha don't ask a missionary what they teach if you don't want a mini lesson in the middle of Taco Bell. So I told her that we teach about how Christ can bring us peace and happiness through all of the hard times that we go through in life. I then showed her a Restoration pamphlet and talked a little bit about that. She wasn't super interested but we had a good little chat about what we believe.

Then we went and saw this person that the sisters had met last week. He was a tad drunk. Like drunk enough that even I noticed (that's pretty drunk). He was going on and on with all this stuff, making weird faces, and he didn't break eye contact with me the entire time. So I'm struggle-busing trying not to laugh (because it's hard). Then he told Sister Gali not to change her eyebrows and that he liked her eyebrows. It turns out that apparently I look angry at him the way that my eyebrows are. It was probably my look of deep concentration as I struggled so hard to keep a straight face. So I guess that was his way of telling me that he wants me to change my eyebrows. Sorry guys, not changing.

That night we went to Lakeside's Chili Cookoff/Trunk or Treat. For those of you that missed last week, I just went to ours the week before. This time was great because I got candy and I ate a lot of snacks. Y'all would be proud because I recognized this guy's outfit. He was dressed up as the neighbor from Home Improvement. He was wearing a hat and was holding a little fence made of popsicle sticks in front of his face whenever he talked to anyone. #success

I just wanna say that blessings really do come after the trial of your faith. I was quite discouraged after about the 5th night in a row of pasta but then the miracle came...Pizza Hut! God answers prayers!

Heavenly Father really does protect His missionaries too. The other day we were walking through this heavily wooded area when suddenly out of nowhere acorns were falling from the sky! It was quite terrifying but neither one of us was hit by a single acorn. #blessings

The Church is true. The gospel is THE way to true happiness!

I hope you all have an excellent week! I'm going to call Rebecca Gootee out in front of everyone for not emailing me. So get on that.

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

Hola :)

Hello :) This week was pretty great! It went by super fast and I can't believe it's already been a whole week since I emailed last.

I'll start off with some quotes from this week:

We were out contacting and we both felt like we should go knock on this door. The lady came to the door and the conversation was something like this:

Sister Johnson: Hi, we're missionaries and we were wondering if there was anyone that you knew that might need some service.
Lady: Oh I knew it was Wednesday. No thank you. **walks away**

We spent the rest of the day confused and trying to figure out what the heck is so special about Wednesday. The only thing that we can think of is that she thought we were Jehovah Witnesses and that maybe they only come around once a week. We considered going back on Friday and trying again just to confuse her 

Later that day, we were in a lesson. The person we were teaching had gone in the other room for a minute and Sister Johnson saw a Mr. Potato Head hat sitting there next to us.

Sister Johnson: Every time I see this, I think of baptism.....Did I really just say that?
Me: It's a sign.
Sister Johnson: I meant Toy Story...

To make a longish story short, we committed her to baptism. #fiesta

We had a super fun Chili Cook-off/Trunk or Treat activity on Friday! There were close to 200 people that came to it. I love how much this ward gets involved in the ward activities and how friendly everyone is! We even got to hand out candy from the trunk of our car and we ended up running out of candy (partly because there were a ton more kids than we were expecting but mainly because we're poor missionaries but I digress). I'm so glad that we got to go and that I've been able to meet more people in the ward! 

On Sunday we got to go to the Air Force National Guard base. We held a sacrament meeting with them and it was super cool! There were only 4 people from the base that came but we had a great service! And it was awesome because the member of the stake presidency came forgot to bring bread. So we improvised and took the sacrament with donuts. I'm not complaining! :)

A lot of people speak Spanish here, so that's kinda a struggle because a) we have to give them to the Spanish hermanas to teach and 2) literally every time I speak in Spanish to people I forget how to say the name of the church. I can carry a conversation with them and get their basic info but apparently remembering the church's name is too much to ask. Anyway, we've been teaching A LOT lately. Like I've never had numbers this high before on my mission. In the last two weeks we have taught over 50 lessons. It's definitely a lot different being in Reno than in Spring Creek. If we would've taught 50 lessons in Spring Creek, we would've taught half the town (ok, not quite, but it'd be a lot). It's amazing how many people we have to teach here. It's also been great to get to work with the different members of the ward and see who they know. It definitely helps the missionaries out when you know people that they're trying to contact :) don't forget to help the missionaries however you can!

Love and miss you all!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)

P.S. New things sobre mi:

I hardly ever straighten my hair anymore...weird...
I drink more Coke than Mountain Dew now (be proud, you know you are :) )

I ate broccoli and cheese soup (twice) this week (again, be proud)

By the time 9:30 rolls around, I am so ready for bed!

I drank a whole half liter of chocolate milk this week...sad to call that a great improvement

I'm almost finished with Alma!!! #fiesta

#fiesta

Hello everyone! This week has been amazing! I'm going to split everything up by days cuz I'm OCD like that...

Monday

So it's pretty awesome because a lot of people in Reno speak Spanish. So we were out contacting less active members and we came to this apartment and asked if this one lady lived there. The lady told us she didn't speak English so I just started up a conversation in Spanish with her. She could definitely tell I was a gringo but whatever. I got her information and everything and asked her if Spanish missionaries could come by and see her and she said yes. So yay referrals for them!

Tuesday

First off, we had bacon cheeseburgers for dinner. It was delicious but sadly I didn't eat all of it. While that's enough of a miracle for one day, other cool stuff did happen. We were just walking through as missionaries do and this guy walked by us and we asked how he was. He said he was sad and we asked if we could pray with him. He asked us to come with him to his apartment, and then we had a lesson with him. He told us that he was pretty sure God sent us to him and that he thinks he's ready to learn more about what we believe. He knew enough English to have a conversation but we gave him to the Spanish sisters. So yay more referrals for them!

I also figured out that I like teaching math teachers. We got to the end of the lesson with this lady and I asked her to say the closing prayer. She said she's not good at praying. I said that if there was one thing I learned in math class it was that if you wanted to get good at math you do math. The words were barely out of my mouth before she started saying a prayer.

Wednesday

We went to the temple! It was amazing! The temple in Reno has a beautiful view. It's up in the mountains and it's so pretty! I loved being able to go in and feel so much peace and love :)

Later on that day we had some problems. This lady ended up having to give us a ride home from our dinner appointment. The problem was that she gave us so many leftovers and extra food that we couldn't possibly carry them home. So I guess that's a good problem to have :) Reno's really trying to make me fat...I mean, she gave us a ton of cheesecake. I'm gonna get sooo fat.

The good thing is that we started doing morning program as a zone on Wednesday. We have 12-14 of us that come every morning and play sports for about half an hour or so. It's super fun!

Thursday

We taught some awesome investigators on Thursday! But this letter is getting lengthy so I'll spare you on details.

Friday

We met a drunk guy on Friday! I need to get better at recognizing when people are drunk cuz I may or may not have had no idea...we had a pretty good lesson with him but I don't think he remembers it at this point.

We also taught English twice on Friday! #fiesta. We taught this lady from the Philippines and then this hispanic guy that's trying to learn English. The second time was more fun because I got to practice some Spanish at the same time :)

Saturday

WE ATE APPLEBEE'S!! Sorry, anyone that knows me knows I love Applebee's. A member took us out and it was quite tasty :)

Sunday

We had fast Sunday! Guess who accidentally ate a bagel Sunday morning :( Anyway, I got to meet my ward for the first time and well umm my ward is pretty much all elderly people. Anyway, we were nearing the end of fast and testimony meeting and Bishop got up and said that he forgot to announce that there was a new sister in the ward and that he'd like me to come up and introduce myself and bear my testimony. So for those of you wondering, that's the first time I've ever born my testimony in sacrament meeting before.

My ward is pretty awesome! I love Reno so much and Sister Johnson is amazing! Missions are so much fun and I'm enjoying it more and more each day! Also, thank you Sarah Egendoerfer for the package that I got! :) I realized last week that it was Rachel Weiss and Sarah that had sent that to me, so thanks a ton girls :) Have a fantastic week everybody!

Love and miss y'all! :)

Sister Ashley Gootee :)