Santuario De Chimayo

Hey Mom and Dad! 

How’s it going? 
I may miss you, but today was pretty awesome. In fact this week has been really amazing.

We had a few really awesome lessons this week with a few different people. We taught a boy named Tom for the first time this week. He is a junior and has been going to Seminary for the past month and is in Mosiah in the Book of Mormon. So we started to teach him and he already knew almost everything.... Crazy.  Of course there are some things we need to go over and technically we do have to teach all of the points, but he is so ready.  He said he might choose to wait a year because that is what his dad told him would be wise to do. We were a little sad, but hopefully we can help him to choose to do it sooner.

We had the greatest family ever come to church! One of the members is leaving on a mission in a week, so he was giving his farewell, and invited them to church.  We have taught them once, and they are so so so awesome.  They have one little boy and they are amazing.  We love them!  We have dinner with the family on Sunday and we are going to try and teach them after dinner with the boy who is leaving.  It should be great.

Yesterday was temple day :)  It was nice.  I had a headache the whole time, but still nice.  We had to ride with a member and they drove us two hours down to Albuquerque. They said they are planning a trip to Orlando this summer for Disney World. 

Then today we went to this world-famous place called Chimyo.  It’s a Navajo Sanctuario (Catholic). Every Easter weekend thousands of people make a pilgrimage to get “Holy Healing” dirt. Last week the Elders who work in that area both got about 100 contacts because they decided to walk along and do the pilgrimage. 

Santuario de Chimayo

Santuario De Chimayo

It was really interesting. Then we ate at possibly the best Mexican restaurant EVER! I have decided that we will go back :)

Love you!
Love the pics of Warnie!

I have some birthday presents for Warnie and Mina, but they haven’t been mailed yet..... Might not get there until I have a present for Jess as well.

Dad, Peru?  That sounds amazing!  Sounds like there will be a lot of fun touristy things to do :)
Hope you have fun on your trip! 

P-Day with the Zone

Tonight we have bible study, then teaching young women’s on Sunday then also teaching our MTC class... It’s crazy tiring, but it’s amazing to be able to see people change and learn!
Tonight in bible study we are playing cops and robbers....Still not sure what the Christ like attribute we are going to pull out is.....Any ideas on fun group games for future bible studies?  Any ideas for a young women’s lesson on gratitude?

Love you!
Em

Happy Easter!

Hi Mom and Dad!

Happy Easter!

I did get the Easter package! Thank you so much!!! I loved it!  The cardigan matched perfectly with the brown pocka-dotty one that you sent me at Christmas.

Spring Time In Santa Fe

Poor Jess.  Too much drama.  You would think as a missionary, I could get away from it, but not really. That is what makes a missionaries life so stressful. You meet crazy people and suddenly their craziness is your craziness. 

I saw the pictures of the Temple! So pretty!  It sounds like it was fun there!  I absolutely love those pictures in front of the temple! So pretty! It looks so warm and moist there! :)
I wish I could have been there but our temple day is next week, so I’m really excited for that!

We have been using those church videos about Chris’s life a lot.  They are really good!

Teaching is going really good! We have several people that we've been working with and its going really amazing.  We are so excited and grateful for the opportunities to see all these amazing people making the decision to learn more and change their lives!

It has been a very strange few weeks here.  It has been a rollercoaster of craziness.  We've had some amazing things happen, like Teryn got baptized on Saturday! It was so amazing!  We are so happy! It was so spiritual. :)
Even if the Ward Mission leader did call us at 3 the day before and tell us the boy scouts fell through on the musical number and asked if we could do it :) Well, luckily my comp is really good at harmonies.  So we sang the primary song I'll follow him in faith.  It was fine.  Sunday night was the amazing one though!

But some other crazy things have happened as well, and it has just continued all happening at once.  But it is all good.  Even with all the strange things that keep happening, there is just a feeling of peace.  I know that the Lord is in charge and it will all be fine. :) 

The work is going really well.  We are teaching quite a few teenagers, and they are so ready and willing to listen!  It is so exciting! :)

The youth from the ward are amazing at missionary work, and their friends are also more interested and willing to listen than most adults.  We have had a lot of success and interest from the youth. It also helps that my companion is really good with teenagers. We have been doing a bible study on Tuesday nights that has been going really well. And the youth are really excited and love coming.  So that helps.  On average we have about 2-4 non-members there every week.

The biggest hold back we have with the youth is getting the parents’ permission.  Most of them are completely supportive though.  There is one boy who has been going to seminary for 3 weeks and has been to church for 2 weeks and want to be baptized by his friend (who is leaving on a mission in July). 
We just have to start teaching him the lessons! :)
It’s so amazing!

The great thing is, this whole ward is like this.  It’s really awesome to be able to serve in a ward like this . And it all started with a challenge to give out a Book of Mormon.

This week, well really the past few weeks, have just been packed with ups and downs and craziness and just odd occurrences, but it has been awesome and we are seeing the people here do amazing things! 
It’s been great!

Love you! 
Em

Santa Fe Trip For P-day

Hi Mom and Dad!

Sorry it will be a shorter letter today, we went to Santa Fe today for P-day and had an early dinner with a member so we have no time for emails.

It sounds like it’s been a crazy week!  It’s been a bit crazy here too!  We have had a lot going on, so the week has flown by.  It has been a very interesting and busy week.  We have had a lot of things going on this week. Which is great but it is also chaotic.  On your mission, did you ever find that sometimes things just tend to explode around you?  That was this week.

We had a really early dinner today with a member (which is why we are emailing so late) and she took some pictures and is going to send them to our moms.  :)  So she should be getting a text from Mary Luster.

Dinner with Mary Luster - Sister Mangum and Sister Grigg - White Rock NM  April 2014

I got the cds! They are awesome I love them! Thank you! :)

That is really funny about Jess's prom dress. A least it got done in time :)

Poor Warnie and Mina and FCAT.  its getting pretty close to the end of the school year, isn’t it? 
I hope Jess does well tomorrow at State Tennis, it will be awesome!  Good Luck Jess!!!!

The Fort Lauderdale Temple open house should be amazing! I’ve seen pictures of it and it is so beautiful on the outside, I bet it’s even more beautiful on the inside.

Today we went to Santa Fe.  It was so fun.  I got a present for Mina’s birthday and we got to tour around to a few places.  There are lots of really old cathedrals and such. It’s a really cool city :)

We had a few really good lessons, but this week should be packed with good things, so that’s exciting. Tomorrow is exchanges with the training sisters. Oh joy.  It will at least be something new and exciting to do.  I get to work with one of the Sisters in Santa Fe.  Hopefully we will get to do some contacting :) There is really no opportunity to do contacting in White Rock.

Love you!
Em

General Conference

Hi Mom and Dad!

Yes, General Conference was absolutely amazing! I really loved it and I got so much out of it!
I wish that they were up and available to read, Hopefully they will be up by the end of this week, especially because we are teaching several classes on it :/

I absolutely loved Elder Holland’s talk and the one by Elder Ballard.  Really there wasn’t one that I didn’t like.  Especially as a missionary.  I have found that as a missionary things like conference have so much more meaning.  Not only are you listening for yourself (Which is hugely important as a missionary) but you are also listening for all of your investigators and less-actives and you are listening for all of the classes you will be teaching in the next forever.

It seemed like everything that we needed to hear happened. It was so great. We had been joking that we just needed someone to do a Joseph smith throw-down in one of the talks.  I don’t remember who it was, but we definitely got it. :) And so many other great things!  

Then later that night we had an amazing miracle.
It has been interesting being in Los Alamos County.  
We have been teaching several classes and just recently they have started to pick up like crazy!!!! At bible study last week we had 16 youth! More than they get to come to mutual! Plus Paz!
Then we are teaching a Member Training Class (MTC haha) where we teach concepts of sharing the gospel.(we had been getting on average 6 people to those, combined with all 3 wards) 
On Sunday we held a movie night that they could bring their non-member friends to for the MTC and we had 26 people and 10 non-members!!! AHHH! It was sooo great!
All 4 missionaries were running around in circles because we were so excited!
We may have a couple new investigators! Which is so awesome!
CRAZY!!!!

Not really hot here. We are at one of the highest altitudes in the US.  It actually feels really good. Although they didn’t get any snow this year, which means the forest fires could be really bad. :/ 
So we will see how things are going in a couple months.

Tonight we are studying Kindness in bible study.  We are going to play murderer in the Dark and have doughnuts :) It should be fun, hopefully we will get through to them about something...

That’s so exciting about the Fort Lauderdale Temple! The Gilbert Arizona temple dedication just happened here, and tons of people went to it... wish we could.  Although temple day is coming up in a few weeks! YAY!

You are right just going through the motions is the way we feel as missionaries a lot :( 
But it’s alright. The good things are really good.  Seminary is a really really good use of time :)

Warnie told me you only have 9 weeks of school left until summer... That’s crazy, time flies so fast!
It sounds like Jess is doing really really well!  Warnie and mina sound about the same :)

Did you know there are giant Volcanoes up and down New Mexico?
This is the side of one.  We want to go hike it one p-day :)

Love you!
Em