August 24, 2015

iHola desde Milton Freewater!

    This week has gone by so fast! I feel like I just emailed! Well on Tuesday, we went on exchanges and I stayed in the area and the sister who came here with me didn't speak Spanish! SO it was pretty much up to me the majority of the time to teach in Spanish... so that was... fun... One time, we were sitting on this lady's lawn and out of nowhere this white guy pulls up and asks me to translate for him to the lady. He liked the colors of her house and wanted me to ask her the exact color and tints of the house so he can build his son's house those exact colors... how the heck am I suppose to know that kind of stuff? It was interesting haha exchanges are always amazing though! I love going on exchanges and learning from the sister trainer leader.

    A couple weeks ago we met a man named Carmelo and we had a super awesome lesson with him! He is recently divorced and sees the need for God more in his life. He said when he knows the Book of Mormon is true, he will be baptized, but wouldn't set a date. We went over to our next appointment, but he wasn't home. His son Eric was though! Eric is super cool as well! He is only 14, but loves Christ so much and always wants to learn more. We had a second lesson with him, taught him the restoration, and but him on date to be baptized on September 26th! We went back last night, but he wasn't home. His 16 year old brother, Ernesto, was! He was super solid too! We taught him about the Book of Mormon and put him on date to be baptized on the 26th as well! This family is so golden and prepared, they are just NEVER home at the same time! We will just baptize all of them on the 26th and they wont even know that the other members of the family are as well, haha.

     I have been thinking a lot lately about Christ's love. I grew up in the church, singing 'I'm a Child of God', but lately I have felt more and more of His love. I am so far away from perfect, it's ridiculous! And yet, He stills loves me. No idea why, but He does. He also loves the people in Milton Freewater and wants them to know that He loves them, and that's why He sent me. He loves every living thing and desires their salvation and return to Him, so He created the missionary program. I meet people who don't believe in life after death or even believe in God, and that just makes my heart break! That's just so sad! It's true, our finite minds cannot even fathom Christ's unconditional and infinite love for us. And I am so thankful for that!

  Hope you all have a fantabulous week!

Con Amor,

Hermana Rebekah Williams

August 17, 2015

iHola desde Milton Freewater!

   I can never really remember anything that happened during the week, haha. On Tuesday, we had to go to Tri-Cities to go to a meeting, we asked a lady from the English ward to take us. In exchange for the 3 hour ride there and back, she had us work in her garden. She is a math teacher, but not your average, boring math teacher, she had a motorcycle! Its called a 'Spyder', its one of those that has 2 wheels in the front. When we were done, she introduced us to her hispanic neighbors. The dad is in the hospital and asked her to take his kids to church so she decided to introduce us :)

     About a week ago, we were walking out of an apartment complex and we saw a lady swiping her porch, so we went to talk to her. She said she was busy but to come back this past Sunday. When we went over, we also met her husband. They had a lot of good questions and desired to know more. And now they are on date to be baptized on September 12th!!!!!! Whoo!!!!!!!!!! You will never guess their names... Jose and Maria haha. Its SSSOOO exciting!!!!!!!! 

     I love you all and hope you have a fantabulous week!

Con Amor,

Hermana Rebekah Williams

August 10, 2015

Hola desde Mormon Freewater!

   I am still determined that they are going to change the name of Milton Freewater to Mormon Freewater. There's going to be so many members that they are going to make a temple here and the main language will be in Spanish! Haha, Milton Freewater only has about 6,000 people. About half of them are hispanic though.

   This week, we made a kazillion cookies and delivered them to all the members of our branch! It really isn't that big haha like there was only 20 people who weren't missionaries at church yesterday. Usually there's like 30 so it wasn't that hard. We are really striving to have the members trust us more, and to ultimately go with us to lessons and give us referrals of their friends and family to teach. As you can probably guess with only about 30 members, it's hard to have people come out with us! The majority of them live in Walla Walla and the sisters don't drive so that makes it even harder! Members are so important because we aren't going to be here forever and they need friends in the ward! They aren't going to go to church if they don't know anyone or feel comfortable.

    In addition, my companion and I are looking into creating a scripture study class! Most hispanics work like all day, even on Sundays! So if we have a scripture study class about once a week, it's kinda like church! We will invite the members too to strengthen their testimonies (usually when we ask them if they have read, they say "I've already read it" so they don't read anymore, or they can't read at all) and so they can friend the nonmembers! MEMBERS ARE SSSOOO IMPORTANT IN MISSIONARY WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     It's crazy I only have about 4 months left!!!! I have to go home a little early for school so it's even sooner! AAAHHH!!!!! I just gotta give these last couple of months all I have left and then some! I love you all and hope you have a fantabulous week!

Con Amor,

Hermana Rebekah Williams

August 4, 2015

iHola desde Mormon Freewater!

    These past couple of days have been awesome! Remember Sandra and Jose from Walla Walla? THEY GOT BAPTIZEDON SATURDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND I WAS ABLE TO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sandra didn't remember me haha oh well! I pretty much only met her twice. But Jose was very appreciative about us finding them and not giving up on them. On top of it, I got to see lots of my Walla Walla ward!!! Walla Walla will always have a place in my heart. :) It makes me so happy! The sisters who were actually teaching them at the time, surprised me by having me help with the interlude thing and conduct the music. Oh well! I pretty much just shared how we found them. It made my day being able to go to their baptism. Makes me feel like I have actually accomplished something haha.

       Today, we got to go to the temple :) Temple p-days are always amazing and stressful. Amazing because its the house of the Lord! And we only get to go there once about every 3 months! And stressful, because it takes about 6-7 hours to get there and back and we still have a lot of stuff to do before pday is over, still worth it though! I have been very exhausted and fatigued the past couple of weeks, so a trip to the temple was definitely needed!

      Hard to believe it's already August!!! Where has the year gone?! And I go home at the end of this year!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Well, I just gotta make these last 5 months worth it and make every minute count!

Love you all!!

Con Amor,

Hermana Rebekah Williams

July 27, 2015

iHola desde Milton Freewater!

    Hey guess what! I'm NOT getting transferred!!! Apparently, the Walla Walla stake is the only place I can actually stay! I'm ok with that though, its my favorite :) and a couple that I found and taught when I was in Walla Walla are getting baptized on Saturday! And I get to go!!!... hopefully... their baptism has been post-poned like 3 times now.  Well, they have 6 more weeks to pull it off! I'm so happy I get to stay :)

     This week for service, the city decided to build a "community gathering place", so I got to do more construction! I put it in quotes because its not big enough for an entire community and it is literally right next to the high school, so it will probably be a hang out for high schoolers. Then again, it is Milton Freewater, so it might be big enough for the community. So my hands are super dry and I'm super sore from all of this, but hey! I love community service! And I got to wear jeans almost everyday :) That's just an added bonus ;)

     On Tuesday, we were literally on our feet for 3 hours! We had 4 lessons from talking to people and trying by people, but they were all on the door step so we were still on our feet. We were super exhausted and decided it was finally time to leave. 4 lessons in 3 hours in and of itself is a miracle! but, as we were walking to the car, we saw a man sitting on his porch, so we went to go talk to him. His name is Alvaro and he has like the deepest voice I have ever heard in my entire life! He is also very big for an hispanic. Anyway, we had a very awesome lesson with him. He believes Christ to be the Savior of the world, but he doesn't understand what that means to him on a personal level. We shared the Restoration and bore testimony of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ coming to Joseph Smith and restoring the same church that Christ established when he was here. Then we put him on date to be baptized on August 15th! :) 3 hours on the feet definitely pay off!

    Thousands and thousands of miracles happen everyday! We just have to open our eyes and hearts to see them. Today I was reading in the Book of Mormon when the Lord is prophesying the Americas to be the promise land and all the blessings and liberties that we have. It made me think of all the blessings that I have and I take for granted a lot of them. We have to open our eyes as well to our blessings and be grateful for them! Love you all!

Con Amor,

Hermana Rebekah Williams 

July 20, 2015

iHola desde Muddy Frogwater!

     Nothing really super exciting happened this week. We got to do a lot of community service. which was awesome! Twice a week we help out with the rehabilitation center and help the elderly with BINGO and stuff like that. Old people are so funny! There's this one old guy who has a horrible memory and hearing and this is pretty much how our conversation goes every single time:

Me: "Hey Lonny, how are you today?!"

Lonny: "I'm doing alright... hey... what's your name, again?"

Me: "Sister Williams!"

Lonny: "What?"

Me: "Sister Williams!!"

Lonny: "Ginger Lee?"

Me: "... Yes, Lonny..."

Lonny: "You'd think I would remember... but I will next time!"

... he never remembers... oh well! Once you get to a certain age, you can pretty much say and do whatever you want! Then there's always the ones who fall asleep or blurt out"Uno!" while playing BINGO... fun times!

    In Athena (A super small town kinda by me) they are restoring an old movie theater so we got to help a couple times this week! We did everything from sorting giant piles of bricks to making cement and filling holes in the wall. The head guy is super weird and crazy. He was explaining how to mix the cement then out of nowhere he looks up, stops, and says "I think that old guy in the scooter is a spy!" or he tells us how he met a lady who poisons animals and then tried to poison him because he found out... he was really weird.... funny though! So I have been super sore and tired like all week from doing construction stuff.

     Oh ya, guess what?! I hit my year mark! AAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm an oldie now :/ I don't want to be at my year mark! I'm still trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing! I don't want to go home... My year mark was nothing special. We did service in Athena, then after dinner, I felt nauseous so I spent the rest of the day feeling like I was going to hurl. So that was fun... It's weird to think I have been on my mission for a year, but it's also weird because being home seems like forever ago...

Well, I gotta go, peace!

Con Amor,

Hermana Rebekah Williams

July 13, 2015

iHola desde Milton Freewater!

    This week has been very weird... we have one investigator named Amador. We shared the restoration with him and after the first vision, it was dead silent for literally half an hour and the Spirit was super strong. He had Moroni 10 opened up and was reading it all be himself. He finally broke the silence and started talking about how much he loves his dad and started crying. 

     Remember our on-date, Zoila who is "supposively" in California? Well One day we were driving down the street past Zoila's house. SHE WAS SITTING OUTSIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So we slammed on the breaks to go talk to her. She came home the day before and was missing her family a lot. We had a super powerful lesson and she was crying... so we put her on date to be baptized again haha.

    One day we were having lunch at the church and I heard the door open, I turned around and guess who it was?! MY OLD BISHOP IN WALLA WALLA AND HIS WIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I threw my sandwich to go give his wife a giant hug! :) That made me so happy! And I also saw my old elder quorum president too! I love seeing people from Walla Walla!

    On Sunday, I gave a 20min talk in church all in Spanish... probably half of the conjugations were wrong... 20 minutes is a long time to talk about forgiveness. Oh ya! I may or may not of let my companion cut my hair... Surprise!

 Love you all!

Con Amor,

Hermana Rebekah Williams