Taller Tales

Cookies and Tortillas

2012-01-23T18:04:00.003-07:00

Hello All,

It has been a good week. Not necessarily an easy week, but looking back it has been good. We are making good progress in the area, and helping the work move forward. I'm not sure what all to write about. It feels like it all is passing by me so quickly. I find myself watching things happen and realizing just how short this time is. It makes me wish somehow I could put this on pause, but I guess that's not possible.

I think my favorite event of the week was teaching a family we work with how to make cut out sugar cookies. We've been working with the Jimenez family pretty much since I got here, and we're working on their 9 year old son, Nathan, to help him be ready to get baptized. He's a good kid, but is pretty quiet, which makes teaching him a little hard. We decided we needed to do something with him to get him to talk a little more, and decided that the best method was teaching him to make cookies. (We'd taken him cookies for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and they loved them!). It was a fun experience, and certainly got him talking a lot more. It's interesting, I never thought that as a missionary I would spend so much time working with children, but I realized that almost half of my baptisms have been children! I've learned a lot about working with them, and while I really didn't like teaching kids at the start of my mission, I enjoy it now. I don't know that I can say it's my favorite, but I do really enjoy working with them.

Speaking of children, we are still working with the Chavez family. Jessica got baptized last week, and now we are working on Mom. It was pretty funny, Jessica is all bent out of shape that she doesn't get her own lesson time with us like her mom does, so we are headed over this week for a lesson just with Jessica. She's rather set on the idea, and has told everyone that on Wednesday we are hers. Should be good. She's a lot of fun. We actually had a really cool miracle with her. When we started teaching her in December she could barely read. We knew though that she needed to start reading the Book of Mormon. In the lesson we felt really prompted to promise her that if she faithfully read her Book of Mormon that her reading problems would go away. Well, two weeks ago she took a reading test, and in less than a month had improved from a 17 to a 40. (I'm not sure what the scale is on, but I gathered that it was a huge improvement). Her teacher was amazed and asked her what she had been doing, she told her teacher she is reading the Book of Mormon. That's pretty cool.

We're also going to have an interesting experience with the Chavez family on Tuesday. Well mostly with Isabel... we're going to go help her give the dog a haircut. I'm less than excited, but Hna Harding loves dogs, so she's pretty thrilled. We've been doing random chores and yard work with Isabel for the last few weeks whenever we can, and it's provided a good time to just get to talk with her and get to know her better.

Mom asked what the most interesting thing that I have learned on my mission was... I'm not sure if it's the most interesting, but I've finally learned how to eat a taco like a Mexican. Growing up I thought that to eat a taco you got the tortilla, loaded it up with goodies, folded it and ate it. I learned pretty early that that was how the gringos ate their tacos. To properly eat a taco you rip the tortilla with your hands and use your hands, another piece of tortilla (or on rare occasion a spoon) and push some stuff into a small part of the shell and eat that. Depending on the food there are different ways of folding your little chunk of shell and eating with it. My personal favorite is making a little cone out of it, but that only works well for beans and rice and carefully cut meat. If it's a big chunk of meat you rip the meat with your hands and then put some in the tortilla. It was a little weird to get used to. Sometimes if it's a really nice meal the tortillas will come with the meat and salsas already in it, then you can just fold it and eat it, but the majority that I have eaten, have been a do-it-yourself sort of taco experience.

Does that count as interesting enough? The only thing I can't do with a tortilla is roll it like the Mexicans do when they eat soup. They place the corn tortilla flat on their hand and then run the other across it super fast and it comes out rolled up super tight and they use that to push the stuff onto their spoon for the soup and then to soak up the broth. I've also learned that a tortilla is the replacement for anything... they get used everywhere.

I think that is all for this week. I'm sure I probably forgot something or other, but at least this time the computer didn't eat my e-mail. I love you all lots! Thanks for your prayers and your support.

Love ya!

Hermana Okeson

The Computer ATE my e-mail!

2012-01-17T21:49:00.003-07:00

Hello All!

I had a lovely e-mail written for you, and then the computer ate it. grrrr. So now you get a very short e-mail update on my life.

1. Jessica's baptism was lovely. I played flute which was nice. We had a good chat with her mom about baptism after. We'll see when she decides to be baptized too. We also had a miracle with her 17 year old brother. He's now going to let us teach him. Yay!

2. The skirts for Michelle worked great. Some of them were a little big, so she's having them taken in, but she was really excited about them.

3. We are keeping super busy! Over the last week we got more referrals than I think any other week of my mission. So, we're teaching a lot right now. Hopefully it sticks. We'll just have to wait and see on that one.

4. Today we're headed to the temple with one of our investigators. That should be nice. I'm excited for the visit, and it'll be nice to be able to show Hna Harding around the visitors’ center.

5. Mom asked about what has helped the most, and I had a really good response to that one, but now you get the Readers Digest version. The thing that has helped me the most is knowing exactly why I am here. Missions aren't easy, and so it's good to know I am here because I know this is where God wants me to be right now and also to know that the message we are sharing really can and does change lives. It's pretty cool to get to be a small part of that.

Okay, I think that's all. Sorry this is really short. Love ya!
Hermana Okeson

Erlinda

2012-01-03T14:22:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone!

Happy New Year! We celebrated in typical missionary fashion... we went to bed. It looked like most of the people at church didn't do the same, as the congregation looked pretty wiped out Sunday. This round of the holidays has been a little more rough on the teaching and working. I have to keep reminding myself that last year I was covering two areas for the holidays, so that made it seem like there was lots of work. This year with just one area it's been a little harder. In our case it meant we were grounded when our appointments fell through new years eve, and also on new years day. Actually, the down time was nice. Not something I think I could get very used to as a missionary, because I would much rather be out working, but it was nice to have some down time for a day.

Honestly, the weeks are really starting to blur together again. It took me a lot longer to reach this point in my last area, but here the days just seem to run together into one big day. It's amazing how fast the time is going. I wish I could figure out how to put the breaks on, but each week seems to go by just a little bit faster.

I think the even of the last week that sticks out the most was meeting a woman named Erlinda. We met her on Friday. We were out on bikes with the goal of talking to lots of people and trying to set return appointments. I saw Erlinda from a distance and honestly dreaded approaching her. She was a little old lady, and usually if they are little old Hispanics they aren't much for talking about anything except the Virgin Guadalupe (the patron saint of Mexico). I'm a little ashamed to say I almost talked myself out of talking to her, but then as I passed her on my bike I felt like we needed to talk to her, so I turned the bike around and stopped. Talking with her will forever be one of my favorite memories from my mission. We didn't get a return appointment, we didn't get to give her any literature (she can't read), and we didn't even get her address. But, what we were able to do was to offer her a little comfort. Turns out her adult son was missing and she had taken the bus to come to his house and hopefully wait for his return. She was so sad and so alone. She just really needed someone to be there with her. We talked with her and waited with her for a while. She told us about her life and how she had come from Mexico. She told us a little about her family, and shared some of the trials she has experienced over the years. It was a really special experience to talk with her. I think that is really what we are here to do as missionaries. We say we're representatives of Jesus Christ, but I think we let ourselves fall short of that. She needed someone who cared enough to listen and to spend that time with her, and I'm grateful that we were in the position to help and serve.

I think I have a little writers block today... I can't think of much. We're keeping busy and working hard. Mom asked about our living situation... We live in some pretty ghetto apartments, but for being in Phoenix as missionaries it's not too bad. I know of other apartments where the smells that stick out usually are smells of illegal drugs and who knows what else, so ours is actually pretty good. We have plenty of room, it's a two bedroom apartment, and we have 2 bathrooms also. We have our beds in the smaller bedroom and them some desks and miscellaneous items in the larger room. We have an okay sized table in the kitchen and then in the "living room" we have one more desk, a chair that I refuse to sit in because it smells funny, and a couch. It's not too bad. This apartment has had missionaries in it for years, so it has tons of stuff. We have a closet that is just full of random things that Hna Wells and I found when we moved in. Every so often I think about going in there to clean it out, and then I think better of it and decide not to. Mom asked also about "smells of the mission" and the one that sticks out to me the most is the smell of the laundry detergent that I'm pretty sure all Mexicans use. I can pick out a Mexican home by the smell of that detergent. It tends to stick out no matter where we go, especially in some of the poorer neighborhoods.

I think that's all for this week!
Love you lots!
Hermana Okeson

Happy Wednesday

2011-12-28T14:24:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone!

Sorry I didn't get out a letter sooner. Monday the library was closed, and then on Tuesday we were on exchanges with the Aguila sisters... so here I am writing you all on a Wednesday. It's a little weird. I've really become accustomed to writing on a Monday, and so it seems a little odd to be writing in the middle of the week.

Christmas was really good. We were expected to be in our apartments at 6pm on Christmas eve, and then our Christmas day appointments were to be kept short. It worked out well. For Christmas eve Hna Harding and I ate tamales (a Mexican tradition... one of the Hna's in the ward gave us enough tamales to last a life time) and then after eating we made some cookies to take to the families that we work with. Christmas morning we were up bright an early and while my companion was rather chipper, I woke up with quite the headache, so as a Christmas gift to myself I showered as fast as I could and then went back to bed until studies started at 8. At church I was able to play flute. I really enjoyed it. I have really loved being able to play more this year. I'm a pretty rusty, but luckily for church stuff it's never anything difficult, so I do fine.

After church we ate dinner with the Bencomo family, and then started our visits. My favorite visit of the year was with the Texta family. If I had to pick a favorite family from my mission, the Texta's would be at the top of my list. I love them! They were baptized six months ago, and they are some of the best people I have ever met. They have three kids, and I just love every chance I have to be with them. We took the "Joy to the World" movie over to them with a plate of cookies. The kids polished off the cookies in a matter of minutes, and then we watched the movie. As it finished there was a beautiful spirit in their home, and we were able to talk with them about how the changes they have made in the last 6 months have blessed their family. We were then able to re commit them to work to become an eternal family. I really loved listening to them talk about how their family has been blessed and the way their lives have been changed in the last 6 months. It's moments like those where I really remember why I came on a mission, and I feel so grateful for the chance I have had to serve.

Our other exciting event of the week happened on Thursday. Thursday we got a flat tire, and when I say flat I mean, completely flat. Later we discovered that a huge screw had worked it's way into the tire... lucky us. Actually, it was Hno Texta and his 10 year old son, Manuel, who came to our rescue. The Hno was very pleased to be able to help us, and we were very pleased to have the help. In the process I learned my new favorite vocabulary word. "Gato". Those of you who may know a little Spanish might know that "gato" means "cat" (like the animal). What I discovered is that "gato" also means "jack" (like that thing you use to pick up the car). The funniest part of all of this was after learning this word, the Texta's showed up to help us, and Manuel turned to his father and said, in English, "Hey Dad, should I go get the cat?" I was left with the mental image of some poor cat being used as a lever to lift up the car. :)

As I hinted at the beginning of my e-mail, yesterday we had exchanges with the Aguila Hermanas. Much to my disappointment, I did not get to go back to Aguila. I would have loved to go back and work in that area for a day again, but I guess it was not to be. Instead I just sent Hna Harding with a list of people to give bear hugs to. I had a great time being with Hna Brown for the day. She came out not long after me, and I really enjoyed working with her. I love seeing how different missionaries work and how they serve. I learn so much each time I get to work with a different missionary, and I love that. It was also fun to pick her brains about all the people I remember from when I served in Aguila. It's great to hear how they are doing.

Mom asked about my favorite finding activity... I think it's just talking to people on the street. I love getting to know them, finding out a little about their lives and families and then looking for how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can help them. I've really seen how the world is full of so many good people. Every day I get to interact with them, and I love that.

My favorite teaching situation is with families, I don't know that I have a favorite thing to teach, but I love helping people. I love helping them see how their lives can be better, and helping them to achieve so much more. I guess my favorite single thing to teach is probably that there is a God and He loves us... a lot of people need to know that.

Have a wonderful week, and a happy new year!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

FELIZ NAVIDAD!

2011-12-19T15:38:00.001-07:00

Hello All,

This week has been the biggest rollercoaster week of my mission. I think God wants me to learn more about patience and faith and probably a lot more things. First, the downer parts, and then I'll share how it all worked out. As we started the week we had a good number of lessons with our new and progressing investigators. I was feeling pretty good about it all, as it had been a bit of a rough start in this area. Well, by Wednesday night all of our progressing investigators had dropped us or were impossible to get ahold of. The family we were teaching called and said they had changed their mind and were no longer interested, and a lot of other things like that happened right out of the blue. I was dying. When you train a new missionary you want things to go really well to build their confidence and to help them know they can be successful, and this was not going anything like how I had imagined. Thursday I was pretty down, and got a pretty bad migraine which didn't help anything. But that is where our miracles begin.

Thursday night we didn't have a lot of time left to work once I was finally feeling better, but we prayed and wanted to go find people to teach. We felt really good about a certain road, and like Trent, the very first house was interested. Turns out that the grandfather in this family had joined the church in California and just come here and wants to come to church and also to have his daughter and her family learn more. We're pretty excited. It's not every day you run into a part member family who are really interested and haven't met with missionaries before. Friday was the mission conference, which was so good. Sister Taylor pulled me aside and we were able to talk for a while which was super helpful. I really love working with the Taylors, and have really felt so blessed to serve with them. The rest of the conference was really good. I enjoyed seeing the other sisters, and then going to the temple as a mission was really good. I remember going last year and loving it, and this year was just as amazing. Saturday we ended up in the mission office to meet with President for some follow up on the training program. It was really helpful for me, and I was greatful for the advice I recieved. After that we came back down and went to work. We were able to set a baptismal date, which I'll tell you a little more about in a minute, and we had a really really needed lesson with a recent convert family that we have been working with. The end result of that one came on Sunday when the rest of the family who have never wanted to have anything to do with the church all came to church, and stayed for all three hours. Incredible.

Now for a little about the Chavez family. They are the family who we had a first lesson scheduled with for Monday night. Mike, their 21 year old son just got home from a mission in Texas, and is really excited about his family finally being interested in learning. We had a really really incredible lesson with his younger sister Jessica on Saturday night. We had planned to teach about the restoration of the gospel, but we got in there and within a few minutes invited and committed her to be baptized on January first. It was one of the most memorable moments of my mission. As she committed to be baptized she then turned to her older brother and asked him if he would baptize her. It was an incredible moment. Then Sunday night we came over to teach Mike's mom, Isabell. I'm pretty sure she taught us instead of us teaching her. She is one of the most spiritually intune people I have ever worked with. I learned so much in just an hour with her, and I am so excited to continue working with her. Dad is a little less interested, but we'll keep trying... some things just take time.

I thought I would end today sharing a few thoughts about Christmas and this past year. First, being a missionary is the best, but also the hardest thing I have ever done. As I chatted with President on Saturday we both agreed that when you set off on a mission you really don't know what you are getting into, and that honestly, it's probably better that way. There are a lot of things that you just don't expect or that don't work quite like you want them too. It's also so rewarding, because you get to watch lives change and you get to spend every day serving and helping people. I remember a few years ago Grandpa Okeson shared some thoughts in a testimony meeting at church about missions. He talked about how after serving his mission he came home with lots more grandkids, and that they weren't necesarily biological grandchildren, but that he loved them from the time that he had been able to spend serving them. Well, I've found the same thing on my mission. I've really come to love the people I've served. I've found people I love like family after just working with them for a few weeks, and I would do anything for them. I am amazed by how much I want to give and how much I want to help. This is really amazing. I love being a missionary!

Have a wonderful Christmas!
Love,
Hermana Okeson

Late Blogging, Sorry!

2011-12-18T05:00:00.002-07:00

Hello All,

Well, when I came to e-mailing today I thought I would have the winning "ouch" story of the week, but Morgan, you sure out did me. I hope you get better quickly! Any sort of fracture just doesn't sound fun. As for myself, I don't know if you all remember, but in late August/ early September I went in to have my toes looked at. I was having problems with my big toe nail and the long story short was that as the doctor was explaining to me what he would do to fix it, I passed out. Well, I had vowed never to go back, but by last week my toe was really hurting and so I decided maybe I should suck it up and go back. I have the most disgusting looking toe right now! I made it through the procedure, and I got home and was fine that day, but then the next day, Saturday morning, I had to take off the bandaging to clean my toe and re bandage it. I passed out on my poor companion. Right there in the middle of the floor. My toe looked pretty bad, and I wasn't quite ready for that. Whoops. The whole thing made me rather ill, and I was pretty sore, so Saturday was a bit of a slow day for us. I'm feeling pretty good today, and if all goes well, we'll be back on bikes tomorrow. I've attached a picture of my bandaged toe for all of you... mostly because the picture turned out pretty cool looking. :)

Yikes! I'm pretty much out of e-mail time. This week has been a crazy one. We've had a bit of a rough run of it, but it seems like all rough weeks are followed by really good weeks, so I'm not too worried. We have the Christmas Conference for the mission on Friday and I'm quite excited. I'm playing flute for it. It's been really fun having a flute, I've gotten many chances to play over the last few months since getting the flute, and it's nice because I just have one to use instead of having to hunt. We also get to go to the temple for the conference which will be nice. I'm really excited. Also, we have a new family that we are teaching, which I'm excited about. It's a part member family, their 21 year old son just got home from a mission, and now his family wants to learn more. I'm excited to see where this goes. We have a lesson with them tonight.
I think that's about all. I'm sorry this was really short. Hopefully next week I'll have more for you.
Love you!
Hermana Okeson

LA CUCARRACHA

2011-12-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

Happy December! As you know from my last e-mail last week was transfers. This starts my 10th transfer. CRAZY! I am now serving with Hermana Harding. She is from Orem Utah and just graduated from BYU with a degree in Spanish. It's so nice being with someone who really knows Spanish, and makes my job as her companion sooooooo much easier. We're having a good time together, and I am enjoying serving with her.

Life in La Joya is moving forward. We had a rough start this week with transfers throwing everything off, and then trying to get everything taken care of and settled, but by the end of the week things were going pretty good. Right now we are still in the process of finding, which is fun with a new missionary. I am remembering all of my nerves at the start of my mission and how much I hated contacting and just talking to people on the street. We've done lots of practice and it's getting better. I can't say I love just going up to people and talking to them, but you certainly do get more comfortable with it. I'm also enjoying doing the training program for the second time, I feel like I understand it a lot better this time around and like I know more what I am doing. That's always nice. Last time I was learning right along with Hna Graves, but this time I know a little more what to expect.

For my amusing story of the night I thought I would tell you about the "friend" I found in my bathroom my first night with Hna Harding. Let me preface this by saying we live in kind of ghetto apartments, but they aren't the worst ones in the mission. I walked into my bathroom and there sitting on my counter was the world’s biggest COCKROACH!!! GROSS! I was mildly displeased, and at 9:30 at night might have called the senior missionary over missionary housing and demanded that he come the next morning to de-roach our apartment. He found it rather funny, and I have offers from some of the Elders who heard about my cockroach friend that after we killed him they would mount him on a plaque for the mission office that would read "World's Biggest Cockroach, found by Hna Okeson". The Cockroach is now dead, but I decided to return him to his rightful home and flush him down the toilet. We have roach killer stuff all over, and we've not seen any evidence of any roaches since. *shudder*

Besides my roachy friend, it's been a pretty uneventful week. It's been freezing cold! I've worn under armor under my tights every day this week, and multiple other layers, and I'm still freezing. I guess being out in the sun all summer really has ruined me. We've also seen more rain in the last few days than I've seen in my whole time here... which means it's rained for about a total of 2 hours if you add it all up. None the less, it is cold, especially out on a bike.

Well, I think that is everything. Oh, I stuck a picture on of the advent calendar that you all sent. I've really enjoyed opening the different presents each day.

Love you lots!

Hermana Okeson

6 More Weeks in La Joya!

2011-11-29T16:53:00.005-07:00

Hello All,

As you can tell from the heading I'm going to be here in La Joya for 6 more weeks. I'm excited. I really love it here, and I'm enjoying the work. We had a little down turn last week as the cold that I fought off managed to find Hna Wells and really hit her hard as well. It took out some of our working time and left her as exhausted as it left me. Besides that things are going well. It's warmed up a little and so besides freezing to death on our morning run we've been okay. (I look rather ridiculous out running because I've crammed lots of layers on, but it works). It's amazing to see how much turn over we've seen in this area in the last 6 weeks. As this transfer came to a close I've done a lot of reflecting on all that has happened and it has been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. Hna Wells is another favorite companion. I will miss her. I still don't know who I will be serving with, so you'll all just have to wait until next week to find out. My options are Hna Garcia from Mesa AZ or an Hna H. from Orem Utah (she had a really long name and I didn't catch it all when President told me). I'm not really sure which I will be getting.

Now looking back over the week. Last Monday we played soccer as a zone. It was quite fun, the only down side was that I mildly sprained my ankle. OUCH! It left me limping for a few days, and biking was quite the experience. It's a little sore now when I run, but besides that I'm good. It was a fun Zone Activity none the less, and Hna Wells and I enjoyed being the handicap on each team (since neither of us actually knew what we were doing, we just sort of got in the way and tried to kick the ball... that was the best we had.... we're an art major and a music major...:-)

Tuesday and Wednesday were the days that we were down and out the most... between my ankle being soar and Hna Wells cold we were moving pretty slow. I guess it really just is that time of year right now. I'm just glad I got over it before transfers, because I want to work really hard with my new companion. We were really blessed to set a baptismal date this week. It's for a former investigator from the Elders who were here. He has a lot to work through but we're excited to work with him and to help him prepare. We have a few others where we've been working on getting them closer, some are progressing faster than others... but we'll see what happens.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. We were told that it was by appointment only... so we made cookies and took them to our investigators. It was pretty fun to drop by and surprise them, although we had to be quite insistent that we weren't there to stay long... Hispanics really are some of the most giving people I have ever met, and they just really don't want to let you leave without eating, chatting for a while, and spending time together. But, we did well. We only ate one Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving, which was our goal. Last year I ate 3 full dinners and wanted to die, so I vowed I would not do it again. I just got my Thanksgiving dinners for 3 days in a row, as every family we've eaten with this weekend fed us thanksgiving dinner.

I thought though I would note a few key differences about a Thanksgiving dinner with a Hispanic family. First, it doesn't have a designated starting time... we run on Mexican Standard Time... which means 30 minutes to an hour late at times. The ward thanksgiving started 45 minutes late, but our dinner on Thursday was actually pretty punctual. Second, you don't use a fork or spoon... you use tortillas. I've started to get really good at just eating with tortillas... I don't think I'll ever be able to eat tacos like a white person again:-). Third, there is no gravy. We use salsa. I didn't mind the salsa on the turkey or even the ham, but it was a little weird on mash potatoes, although it made for the spiciest mashed potatoes I've ever eaten. It was a fun Thanksgiving. I really enjoyed it. I really love the people I get to work with, and all day I remember thinking that I am so greatful that I am able to serve them and to be here in Phoenix. I know that Phoenix wasn't exactly where I wanted to come on a mission, but I love it here and most of all I love these people. They are wonderful.

Friday and Saturday were busy working days. We have been doing lots of visits, trying to meet all the members who live in our area. I'll be starting those again tomorrow with my new companion, but at least now I know everyone,

I've got to run I'm out of time.

Love you all.

Hna Okeson

Below some fun pictures of Nicole and Sis. Wells, Phoenix Arizona Mission's two Michigan Sisters!

Blessings and Miracles

2011-11-21T15:30:00.003-07:00

Hello All,

This has been a really good week despite some challenging set-backs that tried to get in the way. We had multiple events over the course of the week that really showed me just how much Heavenly Father is aware of us and how He is the one who is guiding this work. We had a really cool lesson Tuesday morning. We'd been pretty stressed about this lesson, it was with a Sister who was struggling and needed a lot of help. She wanted us to bring someone who had some very specific things in common with her to the lesson on Tuesday. We'd hunted and hunted and not found anyone who matched up. It really highlighted to me how new both of us are in this area, even after 5 weeks I feel like I'm still just barely starting to get a handle on things here. Then, Monday night as we were about to give up we thought of one last sister to call and ask. We had decided we were just going to try getting anyone at this point, and we weren't going to worry about all the things that were supposed to match up. Well, the sister said yes. We breathed a huge sigh of relief and started to prep for how we would explain to the sister that we hadn't found exactly who we were looking for. Well, in the car ride as we were talking to this sister it turned out she had had very, very similar life experiences to the lady we were going to visit. The lesson went so well, and as they were talking Hna Wells and I just sat in stunned silence as we watched everything unfold. It really showed me that God does know what is going on, and that He really wants to help us, we just have to do our part and then He will do the rest.

Wednesday we had a sisters' conference. It was soooooooo much fun. I've got to figure out how to get a hold of some pictures from it. Prior to leaving on my mission I brought two memory cards... my first memory card is full and I can't find my second one, so I've just been asking people to take ones for me. It's not like we take that many pictures, just at big events and such. I got to play flute for the sisters conference which was fun. I played an arrangement of "Did you think to pray?" that Dad and I often played and it was fun to get to use the flute and play a song that I really enjoy. There were some great talks and lessons and I really enjoyed being around the other Sisters. It's tricky sometimes being a Sister Missionary, because we are very much out numbered and often are the only sisters in our districts and zones (ie area that we serve in). So, being at the sisters' conference was really, really nice. President Taylor came and was in and out for the meeting and shared some really good thoughts. I've really enjoyed having 2 mission presidents and getting to learn from them both. They are both quite different, but equally inspired and both great leaders for the mission.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday were rough days. I managed to pick up a nasty cold somewhere and it really wiped me out. I've decided a year + of running straight has really taken a toll. I remember picking up little colds here and there when I first got to Arizona, and not really struggling but this time around I think I was just too exhausted to efficiently fight it off. I'm feeling much better now, but it took a lot of sleep and just being down. I feel much better now, and I've decided I'm done with being sick for the rest of my mission. We'll see how that one works.

We were really blessed to find a whole family this week. I'm super excited. We have a lesson with them tonight. It's pretty tricky to find a whole intact family around here. Some of the situations with various issues here in Arizona have split up a lot of families, and a lot of other families have fallen apart on their own. So, finding a full family was pretty exciting. We're really excited to get to work with them and get to know them better.

Sunday I also was really excited to get to go back for the baptism of Ariana Carrillo. I had worked with her dad, Oscar Carrillo, for the better portion of my time in Agua Fria. It was so cool to go back and to see her get baptized, she is such a cute little girl, and I was so happy to get to see her. It was also fun to get to see some of the other people I worked with during my time in Agua Fria. I really have some fond memories of being there and working with them. It was also interesting to go back because effective last week the mission is no longer really giving permission for missionaries to return for baptisms in old areas. I had to really beg for that one, and it was interesting to know that my visit on Sunday was the last time I would be in Agua Fria as a missionary. Weird.

I think that's all for now. I love you all. Have a great week.

Don't forget, transfers are next week, so I won't be writing until Tuesday.

Love ya!

Hermana Okeson

PS (a note from the mom) Okay, I find it really annoying the way this shows on Nicole's blog. I don't know why it is coming up as a white back. Any one out there in the cyber world know how to stop this? I want the green back ground back!

Mission Tour

2011-11-14T15:51:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

This week was a pretty busy one. We've been running pretty hard, and I'm quite excited for my nap today. P-day naps are easily one of my favorite parts of p-day. We spent most of our week running from one thing to the next. One of the interesting things about being dropped into an area is that you quickly find out who was committed to the missionaries and who was committed to the message. It can be a little discouraging at times, but we've been really blessed as we've worked on finding people to teach. We're finally starting to see results, and I'm excited to see what happens over this week.

The big event of the week was our mission tour. Elder Kevin R. Duncan of the Quorum of the 70 came to visit and work with us. He was fantastic. I really enjoyed his thoughts and the things I learned from him. As an interesting side note, he used to travel to Midland a lot... apparently during the time when our family lived there, and he says he would often go to church on Sunday's there... so who knows, our paths may have crossed before. I didn't remember or really recognize him, but you never know.

One of the things Elder Duncan focused heavily on was love, and how all of our actions should be motivated by love. That really hit me. I think I've been a pretty good missionary. I'm obedient, and I do what I'm supposed to when I'm supposed to. I go out and work during the day, and I try to get as much work done as I can... but I realized that I need to do a better job really focusing on why I am doing these things. I need to remember that I do these things because I love the people I am called to serve, and that I want the best for them. It's not too hard to remember in lessons, or at church... but when someone yells at you on the street or says all sorts of awful things, it's pretty hard to remember. So I'm working on that. It's given me lots to think about, and I'm trying to really tighten things up and really work on my focus being 100% towards those I am serving.

There's really not too much else to report. We're keeping busy, riding bikes all the time, talking to lots of cool people on the street, and eating Mexican food. This week we have a Sisters Conference. I'm pretty excited. It'll be fun to see all the other sisters. I got to see almost all of the other Spanish sisters at the mission tour. We all crammed onto one table for lunch together. There is a lot of over lap as most of us have served together, gone on exchanges together, or served in each others areas. So there was lots to talk about. There are now sisters in my first area, Aguila, and I had a good time asking them about all of the people I remember from serving there. It's always fun to hear how they are doing.

Okay, I think that's all for this week. Sorry it was short.

Love you all!

Hermana Okeson

Freezing in AZ

2011-11-07T16:19:00.001-07:00

Hello All,

Yes, you read the subject correctly... we've been FREEZING here in Arizona. I remember when I first started my mission, I used to tease my trainers for wearing so many layers in weather that I knew wasn't that cold. I used to get quite a laugh as I would see them pile layer after layer on, while I would just grab a jacket. Well, after a summer of riding a bike in 120 degree weather, I now understand. I AM SO COLD ALL OF THE TIME! It got down into the 60's this weekend and I thought I was going to freeze to my bike. I don't think I've ever felt this cold. It's pretty embarrassing. I don't really want to tell people I'm from Michigan any more, mostly because I don't think they'll believe me when they see me decked out in so many layers.

This week has been a good one. Monday was Halloween... and in true missionary fashion, it was super boring. We were grounded for the evening. However we made it interesting... Hna Wells had been wanting to dye her hair for a while, and she wanted to go for a strawberry blond color... so we decided Halloween was the perfect time to do it. So, as we went shopping we also picked up some hair dye. It was a pretty nice looking red. Well, as we mixed it up, and I started putting it on her hair, it got redder and redder. But that's okay, because the color of the dye isn't exactly the color that comes out. So no worries. By the end of Halloween Hna Wells could have passed for Strawberry Shortcake (the doll, not the dessert). We got a pretty good laugh. That's what happens when you put an art major and a music major together... some one's hair comes out in funky colors. Tuesday morning we rushed to the store and got a second dye to color over it... so now she's a dark brownish red. Not what we were going for, but it looks good. All in all it was quite the adventure.

Now for missionary work things. We've been so busy this week. I keep telling myself that we'll have this area figured out in the next week, and then new things come out of the wood work. This week we spent most of our time doing visits as assigned by the Bishop. It's actually been super helpful, because it's helped us get to know the members better. We ran all over the area trying to meet people... it translated into lots of biking. We also went on exchanges with the Encanto sisters. I went with Hna Jeanfreau (the sister Hna Wells trained) while Hna Wells went with Hna Graves (the sister I trained). It was cool because for the first time I got to do a repeat in an exchange. I went on exchanges with Hna Jeanfreau 3 transfers ago, so it was fun to see how she has grown and changed as a missionary.

The ward also had a baptism that was quite the event last night. We showed up at a meeting Sunday morning, and the Bishop asked one of the sets of Elders if they were ready for their baptism in the evening... they said no because this Hno was being baptized the next week... well, he was baptized last night. Turns out the Bishop had talked to this Hno and had got him to agree to be baptized on Sunday... and instead of telling the Elders the Hno had told them that he had a surprise for them on Sunday. Pretty comical. I got to play flute for the baptism for a special musical number. It was fun to get the flute out and play some. We played an arrangement that Dad and I have played many times of "Did you think to pray". It went well for zero practice time. There was a mix up and so I had to play it from memory... I was really glad we had chosen something I had played so many times because even though it's now been a year since I really have sat down and played, I could still play that one from memory.

Okay, I think that's all for this week. I'm out of time. Sorry it's a short letter.

Love you all!

Hermana Okeson

Biking and more biking!

2011-10-31T16:34:00.002-06:00

Hello All,

I remember during the summer saying that I couldn't wait for it to cool off, and that I hoped that when it did I would get sent to a bike area. Well, technically this isn't a bike area, but it might as well be. We bike everywhere! Pretty much the only time we use the car is to drive from our apartment and to park near our last appointment of the night. Then we pull the bikes of the bike rack and we ride everywhere all day. I think I have spent more time on the bike in the last week than I ever could have imagined. It's lots of fun! We get to meet a lot of people out on the street every day, and I'm really enjoying talking with everyone. It's also nice because this is a more Hispanic area, so well over half of the contacts we do on the street are in Spanish. I like feeling like I am speaking more Spanish, and I am enjoying the chance to dust off some of the Spanish vocab and skills I hadn't needed while I was up in Peoria.

Mom asked if we feel like we know the area better... that would be a yes and no. There are still people we have not met. We've met the majority of the people the previous missionaries were teaching, but there are still some that we cannot seem to get in contact with. It's pretty tricky. All we have with some of them is just an address. No phone number, no hints as to when they are home, no record of how much they were taught or if they were just contacts off of the street... so it makes for a lot of guess work on our part. We finally were able to meet with one family after one of the sisters in the ward gave us a suggestion as to when to find them home. That said, the members have been super helpful. There are a lot of people in the ward who are very involved in missionary work and we are never lacking for people offering to come out with us. That's really, really nice. We've had multiple members point out to us people who they know who might be interested, and we've also had lots of people who remember former investigators, and they've told us to go stop by. We are sitting on a pretty big list of people we're still trying to meet.

We've also had some entertaining moments as we've tried to chase down regular members of the ward. We were given a ward roster last Sunday, and set out to try and meet as many of the members who lived in our area as we could. We've discovered that some of the addresses need updating. My personal favorite was we went by one house for dinner with the family. We biked up and saw a kid playing out in the yard. We asked him if this was his house, and told him to tell his family we were here for dinner. Turns out the family who we were having dinner with had moved. Super awkward. We were already locking our bikes to the basketball net when this guy comes out and goes, "I think the people you are having dinner with moved..." We've now taken to checking addresses before our dinner appointments.

Being back in this area really does remind me of serving in Aguila. Once again you see cowboys out riding their horses down the street, and I've been chased a few times on my bike by dogs. One guy sicked his dogs on us as we were riding by, rude! We've also done some off roading through the cotton fields here, we just take the paths that the tractor would use. It saves us some biking distance, but sure makes for a bumpy ride.

I'll try to have pictures for next week. I keep forgetting to take my camera with me. I've got to work on that again. It's all that biking, you try to take as little stuff as possible, because you don't want to carry it all day.

Love you all lots!

Hermana Okeson

Somos las Hermanas de Michuacan!

2011-10-24T15:42:00.001-06:00

Hi All!!!

Well, here is the news you've all been waiting for. *drum roll* I've been transfered to La Joya, in South West Phoenix. We have part of our area in Tullison, and part of our area in what I think is Phoenix itself. I'm with Hermana Wells. I don't know if you remember but five months ago (or so) we went on exchanges out in Wickenburg together. We're the two sister missionaries in the mission both from Michigan. Hence the title of this e-mail. Michuacan is a state in Mexico, and it's always fun to joke and say I'm from there, so now we say we both are. Actually, we started of with me trying to tell people I was from China because we both didn't want to say we were from the same state, but when people find out I don't speak any Chinese they don't believe me. Now I've dropped back to saying that I'm from Michican... and sometimes I add that my family doesn't live there any more and see if anyone takes the bait.

Now for some news about the area, we're both new here... until Wednesday morning there were Elders serving in the area we cover. It's a pretty interesting experience getting moved into a new area. We've certainly been busy. The first big "project" of coming here was cleaning up where we live. I remember Mom talking about getting moved into an apartment at the end of her mission where Elder's had lived, and now I understand what she meant about all the cleaning they had to do. Thursday morning I was up at 5am (I couldn't sleep...) and cleaned from 5 am until about 2 in the afternoon. Friday we got up early again and cleaned for a few hours, and then this morning we finished the last of the deep cleaning by about 10 am. To say the least it way pretty gross. But, now it's all clean, and we quite like the apartment.

The area we work in reminds me a lot of my first area down in Aguila. I really am loving it here, and it's fun because the ward is super excited to have sister missionaries again. There were sisters here about a year ago, but they got pulled out to open a different area. That's pretty normal for the Spanish sisters areas, There's about 10 or so Spanish Wards across the mission (by my best count) and 6 companionships of Spanish sisters, so they tend to rotate us through the different areas every so often. We are teaching a lot of people here. We've been here for 5 days now and we're still trying to meet everyone. It's really going to keep us busy, and we're trying not to drop the ball anywhere.

Now for a little about my companion, it turns out we have a lot more in common than just being from the same state. We'll start at the begining... Our dad's have the same career (chemical engineer), we were born in the same hospital, we both went to the same university (BYU), we were both in the same college in the university (School of Fine Arts), we've both been on the mission for around a year, and when we get home we'll both go back to BYU to finish school. There are a few other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting, but it's pretty funny to see how much we have in common. Hna Wells served the first part of her mission in El Salvador, but had to come home because of health complications. So last December she came here to finish her mission. I was a little surprised when we got put together, mostly because we are some of the "oldest" sisters on the mission. But I'm super excited. She's a really good missionary, and I'm excited to serve with her.

I'm not sure what else to tell you all about. It's really just been a lot of trying to get ourselves pulled together and to figure out what is going on. We're really really busy and absolutly loving it. President told me at transfers what he is planning for my last 4 transfers and I'm pretty happy with what he is planning on. So I guess that means there are probably no more surprises in store for me, but I think I'll keep you all in the dark so that atleast someone is surprised. I will tell you though that Hna Wells will finish her mission here with me in La Joya (she goes home in January). We're super excited to spend all of the holidays together and to work like crazy here. This is one of the busiest areas for the Spanish work in this whole mission, so we've got a lot to do, and really big shoes to fill. We both love being out and working, so this should be fun. It's also fun because this is a bike area... except at night. We've been told to use our bikes until it gets really dark and then to use the car. I've done so much biking in the last few days and it is so fun. We run into so many people out on the street, and the majority of them speak Spanish! I've done more Spanish contacting in the last week than I think I did in my entire time in Agua Fria. I'm also back in an all Spanish district, so we get do to everything in Spanish... and my entire district all serves in La Joya. This is one of the wards in the mission that has 3 sets of missionaries. It's a lot of fun being with the other missionaries and working with them, and there's a lot of combined effort here between the different sets of missionaries.

I think that's about it for the exciting news of the week. There will probably be more next week as we get to know the people here in the area. We'll see what we find. This is going to be a super busy transfer!

Love you lots!

Hermana Okeson

TRANSFERRED!

2011-10-18T16:25:00.002-06:00

Hi All,

Well, as you guessed, I'm being transferred. 8 months here. That's a long time. I'm not surprised. I was pretty sure that I was going. Now the question is where I am going. Honestly, I have no clue. I'm excited to go start again in a new area. It's always hard but fun. I feel like in my time here I accomplished what I needed to do, and that the Lord is happy with me and my work. Especially with having Leonila's baptism, I feel like I finished the last of what I was sent here to do. I really feel like I was here for her.

Well, this week was long, but good. We did a lot of finding, especially because pretty much all of our apointments canceled on us. That is where you really learn the value of your back up plans. We had some that put us in the right place at the right time. The coolest happened on Friday. We had set an apointment to visit a family, and then they had to cancel on us last minute. We decided to go visit one of the less actives in the ward, Gloria. We showed up over there and didn't find her, but did find her sister and neice sitting outside. They were coming to stay while Gloria went to Mexico for the weekend. There had been a mix-up and the keys Gloria had left with a neighbor didn't get to her sister. The cool thing was that we showed up and were able to help get the keys, talk to them, and now she wants missionaries to come visit her at her home. I had worked with this sister just 4 months ago, and she wan't interested. But after that chance to serve her and help her out, she was more willing to listen and excited to have missionaries come to her home and share more with her family.

Sorry, I have a feeling this is going to be a pretty spacey letter... my mind is spinning wondering where I will be sent. The rumor is they are opening a new sisters area this transfer... I'm really hoping that I get to go there. I think opening an area would be really fun. But who knows. There are some other areas that are also options, I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out exactly where I'm going.

I thought I would look back on my time here in this area... This has certainly been a growing experience for me to serve here. I've learned a lot. Especially as I've worked with a lot of different people over a long period of time. I've also seen a lot of results and a lot of blessings here. I watched on Sunday as an Hermano who I've worked some with recieved his first calling in years... when I first came he never came to church, but slowly he's come back and I was so happy to see him finally reach this point. Also I've seen a lot of the same progress with Oscar Carrillo and his family. I'll be excited to come back for his daughter's baptism in a few weeks.

I've also learned a lot here about diligence. I'm not going to lie. It's been pretty hard at times. Missions aren't easy. I've had a lot of things that have not gone as I would have hoped, and I've had a lot of dissapointments, but I've also seen a lot of joy and happiness here. I can honestly say that I love the people I've worked with. Serving here has taken everything I have, but it's been worth it. I'm excited to go somewhere new and to do the same thing, and to really work hard and give all that I have.

I've also learned a lot from my current companion, Hna Alvarez. I'm really going to miss that girl. She's taught me a lot about how to work with people, and how to really love those we serve. She's so good at looking for those who are forgotten and reminding them that they are loved. I've learned a lot from her about the value of slowing down a little to take a little more time with someone, and that we don't have to run at 100mph all the time. I've learned that it is okay to take a few minutes for yourself when you are exhausted (I thought it was super funny that Trent mentioned the same thing in his letter... I think both of us have some of the same perfectionist and workaholic attitudes as missionaries). Anyhow, this has been a good area for me, and I know I'll miss it. But I'm also excited to see what the Lord has in store for me.

Thanks for the letters and all of the support. I really appreciate those of you who have taken the time to write me. I'll try to get a few letters out this week, but I have a feeling that I'll end up using most of my p-day time to pack. So, if you don't here from me this week, it's because I spent my p-day trying to cram 8 months worth of life into the back of our car... yikes!

I love you all!

Hermana Okeson

Lots and Lots of Biking

2011-10-10T16:53:00.002-06:00

Hello All,

Well, last week was one of the best of my mission, and so in true rollercoaster style, this was one of the not so good ones. That's okay though, that means this week will go better. The exciting news of the week was that I got the flute in the mail. I was pretty excited. I've had a chance to play a little since getting it, and am I ever rusty! That's okay though. No one here knows what I sounded like before, so they have nothing to compare to. Mostly it's just that everything moves a little slower than it used to, but I'm really not worried for when I get home. I played some this morning and just felt like when the time comes things will come back just fine. That was comforting. Now I'm working on finding a pianist, because I would love to play a musical number in the ward I've been serving in. I feel like I need to redeem myself here... they've only ever heard me play hymns on the piano in sacrament meeting, so I feel like a bit of a faker when I tell them that I studied music performance before the mission. (It comes up pretty quickly that I am studying the flute not the piano.)

This week was rough mostly because everything managed to fall through on us which meant we got to do a lot of finding. Finding is good. We have spent the better part of the last week on bike and riding through different parts of our area. On Thursday we actually found an area that I had never been to that seems fairly Hispanic. We're pretty excited to go back there and to do some finding. It's also been nice to be out on bike because the weather right now is perfect! We've sat at about 75 degrees every day, after a summer of 110+ only 75 degrees feels so good. The locals here also agree, and it's been evident by the fact that there are now people out on the streets. In the dead of summer the only people out on the streets were the crazies and the missionaries.

We're now gearing up for another baptism here at the end of the month. We're pretty excited. Her name is Yizelle and she's 14. Her family hasn't been to church in a long time but we're working at getting them back. They made it to church on Sunday which was a huge step forward. She's a whole lot of fun to work with. We're hoping that after she gets baptized her older brother will change his mind and decide to be baptized too. They're a fun family to work with, and we're enjoying getting to work with them. It's actually pretty funny... before I came to this area all of the baptisms were in the southern end of the area... since I've gotten here all the baptisms we have seen have been way in the northern part of our area. I'm not sure what that means... but it's been interesting to see how far north we work in comparison to all of the previous missionaries who have served in this area. It's actually nice... because the southern area is pretty burnt over... so it's good to go places where people are more willing to listen at least for a few minutes.

Mom asked about my goals for the last part of my mission... I really just want to work really hard. Multiple people in their e-mails commented on how they liked the conference talk by Elder Arden of the 70 about time management. I really liked it too... I think we Okesons are all the same... Anyhow, I really did enjoy it and thinking about how we use our time. It really does fly by, especially as the end of the mission comes faster and faster. Next week I start my 9th transfer (sisters serve for 12 transfers). Like Trent, I've become one of the decidedly "old" missionaries. Also like Trent said, it's nice to have been out for a long time because you get very comfortable with the routine of missionary work. You know how things go and how they are supposed to work. I like having the routine down, but getting caught in the routine can lead to time wasting. It's also interesting to work those sorts of things out with a companion. Everyone brings different things to this work... I've heard that my reputation in the mission is as a really, really hard working missionary, which I like... But like I said, we all bring different things. It's interesting to look back at the things I have learned from each of my companions. Hna Alvarez, my current companion, is really a social character... and so I've learned a lot about working with people from her. She loves being in the thick of things and talking to lots of people. I like being a grunt... I like doing the work but would pretty happily stay doing my work in my area off on the side somewhere. So, I've been pushed out of my element quite a bit over these last two transfers, which is probably good.

Other things for the end of my mission... I really want to figure out how to really polish my Spanish. It really makes a difference being able to really communicate with people on their own terms and in their own language. Most of the time I do pretty good, but every so often there are a few verb tenses that still manage to really trip me up. I can understand them and follow what is going on when they are used, but using them myself is still a little tricky. I'm also working on reading the entire Bible in Spanish. I'm trying to keep up with those reading for Seminary; only I'm on a little bit of a faster track because I have to finish the New Testament too. I think I will finish everything a little after Christmas if all goes well. It's really cool reading the scriptures in another language because different things stand out. I really like that. I have some favorite verses in Spanish that just aren't the same in English. I'm also looking forward to being able to tell some of the cranky people on the street who accuse me of having never read the Bible, that I in fact have... and I've done it in two languages. :-)

We have transfers next week; it'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm almost positive I'm staying here again... at this rate I think I could end up serving my entire mission here. I'm just hoping that if President wants to transfer me that he doesn't wait until the end of this next transfer, I think it would be hard to get transferred to a new area right before Christmas. But who knows. That does mean, that my letter next week will be sent on Tuesday, and not on Monday. There are no new sisters coming in who speak Spanish until January, so things should be fairly stable until then... I would expect a few small changes here or there, but that the really big move for Spanish sisters will probably come again right after Christmas.

Okay, I'm out of time. I love you all. Thanks for the letters and the support!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

A Really Good Week!

2011-10-03T16:56:00.001-06:00

Hello All,

This has easily been one of the best weeks of my mission. We'll see if I can fit everything in that I want to. We started off the week with exchanges. I've always quite liked exchanges, I enjoy the chance to get ideas from another missionary, and to work with someone new for a day. This time around I worked with Hna Overy, she is in her 2nd transfer and we spent the majority of the day working on Spanish. It really made me realize what a blessing it was to come out already speaking my mission language. I still had a lot to learn, but for the most part I could communicate and get a general grasp of what was going on. I was able to work with her a lot on methods for learning a language, and trying to help her progress with that. It also made me realize just how much I pull music habits into everything I do. I realized as I was walking her through some ideas of how to study Spanish, that I approach my daily Spanish studies like a practice session... I got a good laugh at that one. Some habits are pretty strong I guess.

Thursday and Friday zipped by, as we were working to get everything ready for Leonila's baptism, and also trying to get as many people to conference as we could. Leonila's baptism was incredible. It was easily the best moment of my mission thus far. I've spent 6 months working with her and watched her go through a lot, and so seeing her finally take this step was so cool. The Spirit in her baptism was incredible, and I loved being there. It was also fun because Mary, one of our other recent converts gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. When we told her earlier in the week that Leonila wanted her to speak, she was pretty nervous. We went over and spent some time helping her put together her talk, and it went really really well. It was so cool to see her progression and to listen to her talk about her conversion. Also, Hna Graves came to the baptism! I was so excited to see her. Unfortunatly, things were crazy and we really didn't get to talk too much. It was cool in the little time that I did get to see her to see how she has progressed as a missionary. She was a really good missionary when I had the chance to serve with her, and she has only improved.

General Conference was really good for me. I needed so many of the talks. Mom asked in her e-mail about changes that I have noticed as I have served, and it was interesting because I had reflected a lot on that over the course of this conference weekend. I thought a lot about how 1 year ago as I watched conference I was terrified. I had only been a missionary for a few weeks and I was so nervous about everything that was coming. I was nervous about the time commitment, my Spanish, my future companions and just about anything else I could think of. As I looked back over the last year, I was really hit by a huge sense of gratitude. I feel so incredibly blessed. I feel like here on my mission I have gained far more than I have been able to give. I think one of the biggest blessings from my mission is a love of the scriptures. I enjoyed studying the scriptures before my mission, but now I really love it. I've gained so much as I've studied daily, and I know it's a habit that will really bless me for the rest of my life. I've learned a lot about patience as a missionary. I thought I was a pretty patient person before my mission, but looking back I really wasn't. I've had a lot of experiences here as a missionary where I've had to learn a lot about being patient, both with myself and with others. I've also learned a lot about service and charity. One of the coolest things about being a missionary is that you feel the most incredible sense of love for the people you serve. I would do anything for these people. It's hard for me to imagine my life with out them, they've made such a huge impact on me. Even some of the people I've only met or worked with briefly have helped me grow. I feel a lot more committed to serving for the rest of my life. Before my mission I was willing to serve... in the right situations. Now I have learned that it really doesn't matter where or how we serve, but that we do it and we give all that we can. I've realized as a missionary just how blessed I am. There is nothing like seeing people who don't have the same oportunities and blessings as I do to remind me how much the Lord has blessed me in my life.

That leads me to one of the biggest things I learned at General Conference. I've been pretty worried of late about what will happen in 6 months when I go home. I'd not worried about that since the begining of my mission, but people are starting to ask me in the ward (because I've been here a really long time, and so they think I'm headed out pretty soon... no matter how often I remind them I've still got a while). As I watched conference and thought back on all of the blessings I have seen in my life, I realized that those blessings won't stop when I go home. I realized that I will be blessed for this time and service, and that all I have to do is give everything I can for these 6 months, and that God will take care of everything for me. There is an Elder I have served with who is a pianist hoping to study music when he goes home... I've watched as he's been less than obedient about piano and music on his mission... and I've thought a little about that. I may be pretty (okay, really, really) rusty on the flute when I get home, because even with a flute here I won't actually be able to really practice, but I'm glad that I will be able to turn to my Heavenly Father and tell Him that I did what was asked of me, and know that I will be blessed.

The last really good event was taking Oscar and Ariana to the temple Sunday evening. I have been working with Oscar for about 4 or 5 months now. When I first started working with him, he really wasn't interested in coming back to church. But we kept coming by, and working with him and trying to answer his questions. After conference he caught me and thanked me for the months of persistance. He told me he finally got his answer at General Conference and really felt like he was in the right place. He was really excited and a completely different person when we went to the Temple with him and his daughter. He was showing her stuff, and talking to her about how much he loved all of these things. We were able to have a good talk about the blessings of the temple, and it was cool to watch Ariana (she's 8) look around and say "I think Mom would have liked this". Her mother passed away from cancer 2 years ago, and while we were at the temple, I know she really felt her Mom's presence there. It was really special to be able to be there with her and her father, and to reflect on all of the blessings of the temple in my life and the life of my family. It's really an incredible thing to know that our families can be together forever, and that death isn't the end.

Well, this has been a pretty long letter. I've had a lot to reflect on, and you all managed to get some of it. I love you all. Thank you for your prayers, letters and support. I really appreciate that.

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Ps. For a funny moment of the week, I learned why Grandpa Okeson's #1 running goal is to not fall. I took my first really big fall while running this week. I was sprinting and hit a crack in the pavement and flew throught the air only to skid on the right side of my body across the pavement. I'm pretty beat up, but no worse for the wear. I do have an impressivly black and purple knee... it's huge and a little stiff. Sorry, no pictures of that one. It looked pretty impressive though, I caught some pretty good air before I hit the ground. :)

Slow start, fast finish.

2011-09-27T00:33:00.003-06:00

Hello Everyone!

This week started soooooooooo slow. We had a pretty rough start to the week. Most of our appointments fell through, and I think I spoke too soon about it cooling off, because it was really hot again. Luckily by the time we hit Thursday things picked up and the end of the week was both successful and speedy. That was nice. Our most exciting news is that Leonila is being baptized this Saturday! We are so excited for her, and she is so thrilled. I've spent six months working with her, and it's been an incredible experience. So, after the afternoon session of General Conference on Saturday, we'll be having a baptismal service. What a way to start October! I'm pretty thrilled.

Thursday we had interviews. Last time we had interviews it was the first time we got to meet the Taylors. It was a little weird to realize that they have been here for 3 months now. As I was thinking about it, I realized how grateful I am that I have been able to work with 2 different presidents. It is so cool to see how personalities may be different, and styles may be different, but this work goes on irregardless. Interviews went well, with the most exciting news being that I now have permission to get my hands on a flute. I'm pretty excited. I'm excited to be able to play flute for the holidays. Playing flute at Christmas is one of my favorite things, and so I'm excited to have that chance this year. I really missed that last year.

We've had some cool experiences this week where the Lord has really blessed us. Multiple times we've felt prompted to stop by people we wouldn't have normally visited and found people to teach through them. We've been focusing a lot on not only getting to know the Spanish speaking members in this area, but also some of the English speakers. That is quite the task, because there are a lot of English speaking members of the church in this area. Hna Alvarez and I decided that we have an advantage because we are sister missionaries. We're such a rare novelty that the members are just excited to meet us and see that we exist, so it's pretty easy to meet them and share a short message. We had one visit this week where we stopped by a family, and their five year old girl came up and asked us if we were really sister missionaries, we told her yes and she said something to the effect of, "Oh, I've never seen real live sister missionaries before". We got a good laugh from that one.

The other really memorable event from this week was going to the Relief Society session from General Conference. I'll admit, I've never been much for this session. I'd always looked at it and thought it was for the "old women" and that it was boring. I worked really hard before this Saturday to come with an open heart and be ready to learn. The talk that really stood out to me was by President Utchdorf. In part of his talk he made a comparison to the book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a book I loved as a kid. I think that was God's way of telling me to listen up. :) In his comparison he talked about how at the beginning of the book Mr. Wonka announced to the world that 5 chocolate bars would have a Golden Ticket- a ticket to a lifetime supply of chocolate and all sorts of wonderful things. The world then began to buy tons and tons of chocolate, only to open each on and throw the chocolate away when no Golden Ticket was found. President Utchdorf then talked about how often we spend too much time looking for a Golden Ticket, and forget to savor the chocolate along the way. That really stood out to me. As a missionary we work at a pretty fast pace, and the time really flies by. We spend a lot of time looking for "golden investigators" and "golden contacts" and "golden referrals" and golden this and golden that... and after listening to the talk I realized that in all this search for the "goldens" sometimes we forget to savor the chocolate along the way. A mission is really, really, really hard. You face a lot of challenges and discouragement on a daily and sometimes hourly level. Some days you come home and only have the energy to crawl into bed and pray that you can get up the next day and do it all again. That said, a mission is also the best experience of my life. Between all the hard events you get these amazing moments that make everything worth it. President Utchdorf reminded me that I need to work harder to savor these moments, because they are passing, oh so very quickly. The numbers, and the hours, and the miles traveled will all melt into the past, but the memories of the people served and met will be things I can keep forever. That's pretty cool. So, with 6 months left to serve, I want to savor more. I know the routine, I've done this for a year now. But I don't want to get caught in the routine and miss seeing and savoring the "chocolate" along the way.

This next week is going to be pretty busy. Wednesday we have exchanges. I'll be here in Agua Fria, and Hna Alvarez is headed out to Wickenburg. Saturday we have Leonila's baptism, and then Sunday we will be going down to Mesa to see the visitors center with another family we've been working with. It will be a very full, and exciting week.

I love you all, thanks for your prayers, and letters, and support!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Now for some pictures from Nicole. With nice weather, the two Hermanas decided to sleep out side. :)

I am sure that you all have wondered what Hermana does on her p-day. Wonder no longer. :)
Finally a trip to a sandwich joint. Hna Alvarez's dad runs some sandwich shops down in Florida. We found one in our area. This was my first visit. (Think Subway and your about on the right line. . . they're called Fire House Subs. It was pretty good.)

I'm a Mormon!

2011-09-19T16:28:00.002-06:00

Hello Everyone!

It's been an interesting week. For some reason this transfer has been dragging by. I'm hoping it will pick up near the end... we'll see. The exciting news is that this week we had the opportunity to go to a training meeting for the "I'm a Mormon" campaign starting here on the 3rd of October. I am sooooooooooo excited. It will run for exactly the last 6 months of my mission, and I feel like this is a huge blessing to be able to be a part of this for the last part of my time as a missionary. The meeting was lead by Brother Tracy Watson, the director of all proselyting efforts for the church. It was so cool to get to work with him. He spent the first hour and a half just helping us to be better missionaries. He was full of lots of good ideas, and I was taking notes like crazy. Then after a short break we started the training for the media campaign. For the next 6 months there will be short commercials on all the main TV channels, billboard adds, Internet adds, and lots more. This will be a huge help to the work in this area. The only thing I'm disappointed about is that they don't have everything up and running in Spanish. So, our focus is going to be the teenagers, because they all speak English. We're still expecting a lot of traffic in the Spanish work, and we're trying to get into as many homes as we can before October 3rd to help families understand what will be happening. We've done a few trainings over the last few days and they have all gone well. It will be exciting to see how things go starting in October.

For other exciting events this week, we had the opportunity to run a Tuesday night activity for the youth this week. It went really well. The focus was on helping them answer questions about the church and their beliefs. We split them up into teams and they had to race and take little 3 question multiple choice/ fill in the blank tests, and with each one they couldn't go on to the next station until they had all the answers right. That left them doing lots of searching in the scriptures, and some clever kids started pulling out cell phones and going to the Internet! I got a good laugh about that, as we saw some of them googling some of the harder questions. The goal was to be the fastest group to finish, and there were good prizes for the winners (movie tickets, Coldstone ice cream gift cards, and other goodies). They really got into the activity, and it proved to be a good kick off for working with the youth to help get them ready for the media campaign. This same campaign was run in 10 other cities across the US last year, and the results showed that about 50% of adult members of the church were asked by someone about the adds, but 100% of the youth were asked. So we've got lots to do to help them be as ready as possible to answer questions from friends.

Besides that the week has been a lot of finding and working with the members. We've had some really good experiences as we've spent more time working with member families, and getting to know them better. We had one really cool experience where one person walked with us over to meet his neighbors. That was super cool! Also, this week was nice because we had Stake Conference. It made me think back to last Stake Conference and where I was... It's amazing what can happen in 6 months. I've been pretty frustrated lately with this area and the work here, but then as I thought back over the last 6 months I could really see lots of progress and while things still aren't where I would like them to be, it was good to know that at least we have moved forward. I really enjoyed the meetings, and it was really good for some of the people we are working with. We're hoping and praying for some big miracles this week. We'll see what happens.

Well, I think that's about all. We're keeping busy here, and that is good. It's been a bit of a rough run, but I'm really hoping that this week will be a turning point for us here in Agua Fria. We'll see. Oh, and I almost forgot, I celebrated my year mark this week. That was weird. It doesn't feel that long, but I guess I really have been a missionary for a year now. I feel so blessed to have had this opportunity to serve. Last night Mary was asking me about why I chose serving a mission over some of my other options, and I was so glad that I could honestly tell her that coming here was the best decision I could have ever made. I have loved serving, even in some of the really hard times. A mission is a really big roller coaster, lots of ups and downs and it moves so fast that if you blink you might miss it, because it moves at 100 miles an hour.

I love you all lots! Thanks for all of your support!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Feliz Dia de Independencia

2011-09-12T15:25:00.002-06:00

Hello All,

It's been an interesting week. I've been promising to send pictures for a while, so this letter may be more pictures than actual writing. But I thought you all would enjoy them. The first, and most exciting event was the ward party on Saturday. It was to celebrate Mexican Independance Day. Everyone thinks about Mexicans and parties and they think of Cinco de Mayo. Well, from personal experience, Cinco de Mayo has nothing on Mexican Independance Day. Hna Alvarez surprised the ward and showed up in Mexican outfits. That was pretty fun. There was tons of food, music, and dancing. It was quite the party. We were excited because there were a lot of investigators there, which was really good. People enjoy these parties, and the ward is now looking at doing them more often, which is a great help to us here with the missionary work. The best part of the whole night though was the skit put on by the Elder's Quorum. If you all understood Spanish I would forward you the video we got of it. It was super funny. Besides a few different skits, there were also lots of traditional and not so traditional dances done. My favorite was watching the sisters in the Relief Society do the cool looking Mexican dance with the really long swirly skirts.

This week, a lot like Trent's week, has been one focused on finding. We've started changing our tactics though. Now we're going and visiting members in the English wards and asking them if they know their neighbors, and if any speak Spanish. Some give us really good suggestions, and others tell us that they think one of four houses on the other side of the street is a hispanic home. We'll take what we can get. It's working pretty well though. We've been meeting a lot more people, and so we're hoping that soon we will have more people to teach.

Some of the other exciting news of the week is that we are pretty sure fall is here! It's been under 100 degrees twice this past week, and the rest of the time it really didn't get much over 105. We spent lots of time out on bike, and it's been so nice! It's amazing how from this side of the summer 95 degrees feels amazing, while 4 months ago I thought I was going to die. I guess it's all about perspective.

One more thing before I end for today. The mail system for the mission has been changed. The office no longer forwards mail. My Mom has my home address, and so if you want to write me try to get the address from her. If you do choose to send me a letter through the mission office, it could take up to 3 weeks to make it from the office to me. That also means, if you are writing me to the home address that about a week before transfers you should hold off sending letters or just send those directly to the mission office. Our next transfer week is the week of October 17th.

Okay, I think that's all for this week. Sorry it's not been much. It was a pretty long week with not much out of the ordinary. Hopefully something exciting will happen over the next week so I have some fun stuff to write to all of you.

Love you lots!

Hermana Okeson

6 More Weeks

2011-09-06T16:26:00.002-06:00

Hi All!

As you may have guessed from the subject line, I'm staying here in Agua Fria for another transfer. I'm not particularly surprised. I didn't think I was leaving. I'm both happy and sad. I've really gotten attached to the people here in Agua Fria and I'm enjoying working with them, but I was partially looking forward to maybe having the chance to go start somewhere new. I guess it'll happen some other transfer. It'll be good to see some of the follow up on the work here in this area. I've got pretty high hopes for this next transfer, but we're going to need some miracles. This transfer has been a pretty rough run for the work. I've never seen quite so much turn over as I have this past six weeks. It's both good and bad. I enjoy finding and teaching new people, but it's hard when nothing seems to stick. We'll see where things go over the next transfer.

I thought I would share a funny story from the week. I've had some trouble for a little while with one of my toes... it's gross so don't worry about the details. But, I got permission to go in and see a podiatrist to get it looked at. As he was looking at my toe I started to feel a little warm and light headed, but I thought I would be okay... My next memory is as I'm lying down with my feet over my head and my companion telling me to breathe. I guess I was a little more light headed than I thought. I was out. And then I felt pretty sick for the rest of the day. Whoops. I've decided my toe doesn't hurt anymore. :)

Now for some exciting news. We found out a few weeks ago that Phoenix has been chosen as one of 9 cities across the US where the church will be doing a large media campaign. The whole campaign is focused towards the newly redesigned Mormon.org website. There will be TV adds, billboards, and all sorts of other adds all over the mission. All of this starts in October, and in two weeks as a mission we are going to be getting trained on exactly how everything will work. We're pretty excited. Now, I have an invitation for anyone who is interested. Go check out Mormon.org! I love using the new website, and for those of you who are LDS make a profile on there. I would love to be able to tell people to go look up people I know and read their thoughts. So, go check it out, and then if you can and would like to, make a profile! (I'm working on getting one together... as missionaries we've been asked to make one. Mine's not up yet.)

Okay, I think that's pretty much it for right now. Things are moving along slowly but surely. It's starting to get really nice here in Arizona and once again we are starting to see people out and about on the streets. All summer long the only people outside were the crazies and the missionaries... now there's some not so crazies out too. With the cooler weather Hna Alvarez and I have been on bikes a lot more, which has been really nice. I enjoy being out and meeting so many people.

Okay, I think that's about it for this week. Have a great week!

Love you all!

Hermana Okeson

PS. Nicole has a new mailing address. Let me know if you need the address. :) Effie

117 Degrees

2011-08-29T15:07:00.004-06:00

Hi All!

Okay, so I scratch everything I said last week about this being a cooler summer. This week was one of the hottest of my mission. We nearly roasted alive. Aaaaaaand it was my turn to get sick from the heat. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a water related problem since I have trouble sleeping at night because I'm making trips to the bathroom. Anyhow, we were out on bikes and I developed the first signs of heat stroke... it was 117 degrees, and I was FREEZING! It was the most bizzare feeling ever. We ended up calling the Zone Leaders and they came to get us and our bikes, and once again we were grounded. Hopefully though we really are at the end of the really bad heat and things will start to cool off atleast a little from here. I'd settle for staying around 100 if I had too. That's a huge improvement on 110+.

We're at an interesting point right now in this area, we're teaching but no one is going anywhere. It's been a frusterating transfer, but I'm hoping that any time now something will change and we'll start seeing progress again. The real improvements this transfer have come from the ward we're working in. At the very begining of the transfer a new ward Mission Leader was called. Talk about answers to prayers. He's been wonderful, we've really enjoyed working with him, and he's been such a help in getting the ward more motivated. Now we just have to get the people we're working with moving forward. I think it will come, sometimes these things just take time.

We did have some interesting experiences this week that really showed me why it can be a huge blessing to be in an area for a long time. There were two families I worked with in the begining of my time here that over the last week or so I've had on my mind. Any time we were near their homes I would think of them and wonder how they were and what would happen if we were to stop in. Well, this week we had appointments fall through when we were close to both of these families, and we stopped by. In both cases we caught them at home, and they let us in. We were able to teach lessons and schedule appointments for the coming week. Neither of these families were in our back-up plans (which also fell through) but becuase I've been here a while and already knew them I was able to just stop by and we were able to get in their homes again. I'd wondered for most of this transfer why I still need to be in the same area, and I think in part it was for these families. If I hadn't remembered them they may have had to wait a lot longer for missionaries to come by again.

And now for a fun story from this week. Saturday we had a really cool chance to go spend time in the mission home. Sister Taylor wants to learn how to cook Mexican food, and being the closest Spanish Sisters we were in charge of finding someone to come. So, Saturday evening we went to the mission home and we made salsa with Sister Taylor and one of the sisters from our ward, Hna Calderon. It was super fun, and we made tons of salsa. We came out with five different salsas and they were all amazing. I am never buying salsa again... it's pretty easy to make, and turns out way better when you do it yourself. I've attached a few pictures, but Sister Taylor took way more, so you'll have to go check out the mission blog to get the rest.

Sorry this weeks letter is short, I ran out of time...

Love ya'll lots!

Hermana Okeson

Feliz Cumpleanos!

2011-08-22T16:30:00.006-06:00

Hi All,

This week has been an interesting one. Monday right after I e-mailed we went with a group of missionaries to do a service project. We were out working in the sun for three hours and my companion got heat exhaustion. She passed out right in the middle of this old guys living room. Actually, we were quite lucky, no one saw her fall, and if she had fallen six inches in any direction she would have cracked her head open. Anyhow, we both got an up close look at what happens when you get dehydrated in this heat... it wipes you out. Monday we made it to one more meeting and then had to call it quits, and then Tuesday was a pretty light work day too. By Wednesday we were able to get moving again only to go tracting out in the sun for two hours and for Hna Alvarez to almost pass out again. We're now working on drinking more water. I guess our mission theme "living water to a thirsty land" can also be applied to the missionaries. Actually, according to the members in this area, this has been a very "cool" summer. We really only spent a week or two up by 120 and then the last two weeks we've been in the low triple digits. I'm not sure I believe that this was really a "cool" summer, but I'm counting my blessings.

Friday we had our first Zone Conference with President Taylor. Talk about turning everything upside down. A lot changed at this Zone Conference. A lot, a lot. I'm very excited though, and I think the changes are all good steps forward for the mission. It will just take a little adjusting. A lot of rules changed, with the most noticeable being about music. It has been moved to what the white handbook says, "anything that inspires, uplifts, and invites the spirit". I listened to Mozart for the first time in almost a year this past week. I was pretty thrilled. He gave us some more specific guidelines as far as what really fits within the definition, but besides that we have been asked to choose well. There were also some changes for how some of the inner workings of the mission will work, and so I'm interested to see how things continue to unfold. More and more I am seeing how President Taylor has been able to take all the things that have gone so well over the last 3 years and just continue to build on them.

Now for the birthday fun. The fun really started on Saturday. Saturday morning we got up at 3:00am to head down to the Temple in Mesa with some of the sisters from our ward. It was great to get to go down, and they are some of my favorite sisters, so I had a great time being with them. On our way home they took us to a Mexican bakery and we ate pastries for breakfast. I got a peach empanada, yum! (Think peach filled pastry and you're on the right lines).

We got back in time to help out at an activity at the church. They were doing a craft for making pictures of Christ to put up in homes, and one of our investigators couldn't come, so I made one for her. I was quite pleased with how it turned out. Hna Alvarez also made one for an Hermana who wasn't able to come last minute. After finishing the project (which took way way longer than we expected when we agreed to help) we went home and crashed. We were exhausted and figured if we didn't get some sleep made up we would be useless for the rest of the evening. Saturday night we ate dinner with the Waldo's and all of her grand kids came in to sing to me with an improv "cupcake and candle" (a little bowl of ice cream with a spoon stuck in the top). It was really cute. We made a few more visits and then called it a night.

Sunday started off with a bang. After I had gone to bed Hna Alvarez had decorated some of the house we live in, it was fun to wake up to. For church Hna Alvarez and I had been asked a few days before to speak in Sacrament meeting, and then right after that asked to teach Sunday school. What a birthday present. I shared some fun stories I had received in letters this week that applied to missionary work. One from Trent and then another that the Savilles had sent me about their time up in Tianjin. I thought the talk went well. I mostly focused on the members role in missionary work, and then how we need to have faith, patience, and open our mouths. The more I get comfortable with Spanish the more I enjoy speaking for things like that. After church we made a few visits, and then went over to Leonila's for my birthday dinner. It was quite the meal. I opened presents at her house and then we all went over to another families home for a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) and birthday party. Hna Ayala made a Salvadorean specialty, Papusas, and I got to learn how to make them. I didn't get pictures of that one so I guess I'll have to go over again for practice to get some. All in all it was a fun day.

I thought to end I would share a really interesting experience I had two weeks ago. I've hesitated about sharing it because in no way is it an example of where my language skills are... but instead I really look at how the Lord can make us so much more than we are when we are doing what He wants. Two weeks ago we had a visit with one of the families we work with. We were going to eat lunch and then were planning on watching a movie. We thought we had the movie in Spanish, but then that morning I felt like we only had it in English, but not to worry because everything would be okay. I didn't think much of it until we pulled up to their home and discovered that in fact the movie was only in English. We prayed and felt really strongly like we needed to show this movie, and that everything would be okay. As we were talking about it I suddenly felt like I should offer to translate. I felt really peaceful about it, and we made that our game plan. We would watch the movie and I would translate. As we ate lunch with this family I was pretty nervous. I've never translated much before, and this was an hour long movie. Most translators (from what I've seen here) switch on and off because it is exhausting trying to translate for long periods of time. As we sat at lunch again I felt really peaceful and knew everything would be okay. After lunch we told them we would be watching the movie, and I said I would translate. Translating for that hour was one of the most memorable experiences of my mission. I did it, and it really easy. The words just came, even words I don't remember learning. It didn't matter how fast the scene was going or how fast they were talking, I could keep up. Verb tenses and vocabulary I had struggled with just came, and for the entire hour I translated. We left that appointment and I was more drained that I had been in a long time. I was exhausted. Here is the interesting part of the story, the next day in language study I decided to try translating a few short video clips just to see if I could do it again. I couldn't. Not even close. I could get maybe every third or fourth sentence and that was all. I know I was helped out so much in that hour, and it was because that movie was what the family needed. Only because they needed it and the Spirit was present was I able to translate like that. This really is the Lord's work. He really does lead and guide it, and He really does make us into so much more than we can be on our own.

I love you all!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Ps. I hope you enjoy all of the pictures.

The Area Book

2011-08-15T19:18:00.003-06:00

Hello All,

It's been a pretty good week here in Agua Fria. We're working to keep busy, although it's been a rough run for the last few weeks. But, it's all about having faith, and the best will come. We did have some great moments this week. Our most exciting was meeting a fellow named Alex. For about a month I'd been feeling like we needed to go through the area book, because there was a baptism waiting in there. We'd set it as a back up plan for a while, and then finally we managed to go through and look for people to teach. (The Area Book, is a binder of records of all those who have been taught in the area. The records can date back years in some, although in this Area Book there are only a few that are that old.) I stopped at an older teaching record, and decided to pull it out. Often the turn over with Hispanics is pretty high, so if a record is over two or three years old the person no longer lives at the same address or has the same number. This record was one from 2007. We called, and the number worked! Alex said he would be happy to have us come by and share a little more with him, we set an appointment for the next day (Friday) and planned to go by and meet him. When we showed up he was so excited to see us. He told us he's been going through a hard time but has been reading the Book of Mormon. He then proceeded to walk us through all of his favorite chapters and the things that he had learned. After that he proceeded on to do the same with some of the things he had read from the Doctrine and Covenants. The best was when he got to Section 89 (The Word of Wisdom). He opened to that one and proudly told us that he stopped drinking two months ago, and that he hadn't smoked in over a year. We set a date with him for September, and we're really excited to work with him. He has teenage kids who seem pretty interested, so it'll be interesting to work with them some too. It was sooooo cool to get to teach him. I'm excited to keep working with him over the next month.

We've been out on bike a little more lately. The weather has started cooling down and so it's actually pretty nice. It's also become important as 6 months of being in Agua Fria has not done good things for the way my wardrobe fits. I'm half considering telling President he needs to transfer me to a ward that doesn't feed the missionaries so much because otherwise I may need to go shopping. So we're biking more. I actually prefer being out on bike. It's so much fun! When we're just in the car it feels like we're trapped in this little box. As we're out on bikes we get to talk to people, and it's fun to be out and about. By mid September we're hoping to be out on bikes a lot of the time. I've gotten pretty good on the bike, after feeling like I could never keep up with my companions at the beginning of my mission, I've been out long enough and biked enough that now I'm the speedy companion. Although I still don't think I could keep up with Hna Hoof. She was super speedy.

I got multiple comments about that locust in the car, so I thought I would clarify, It was about as long as my thumb and a little bit wider around. I've not really worried about seeing too many other bugs, although we see lots of lizards. I'm just grateful that I've not seen any snakes. Yuck!

We're still working with a few other main investigators, but most of our time right now is being focused towards finding. I like the finding process. It's fun getting out and meeting lots of people. This week is the meetings week of the transfer, which is not my favorite. I like being out working and I've determined that I don't sit still very well as a missionary. It'll be fun though to get to see what things are in store. This week is our first Zone Conference with President Taylor, and so I'm excited to see what he has planned. I've already seen quite a few changes in just the month and a half that he's been here, and I assume there are more coming.

I think that's all for this week. I love you all lots! Thanks for the letters and support, they've been a great help!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

p.s. (This is Effie) I received a letter from Nicole's new mission President and the invited everyone to view their blog. It is azphxmission.blogspot.com.

Also a reminder to those of you who might want to send Nicole a Birthday wish, her birthday is this coming Sunday.

Locust in the car!

2011-08-08T21:42:00.001-06:00

Hello All,

This week has been interesting. But the good news, is that interesting weeks are often followed by good weeks, so I have high hopes that this week will go better. That's the funny thing about being a missionary. You do everything you can, and then have to leave the rest to God. Sometimes it works out how you hoped, but often it works out better, the trick is that some times that time in between is a little more iffy. So we're in the in between time.

Dad commented about it being Typhoon season over in China. Here in Arizona it's Monsoon season. It's still pretty muggy. Hna Alvarez is from Florida, and assures me that this isn't too bad, but I'm pretty sure that this kind of heat with any humidity is a lot to take in. Luckily we're heading towards the end of summer, something I've been readily anticipating for months. I think the Elders are also pretty excited, because biking in this heat is a lot of work. We haven't spent too much time lately on bikes, something I miss. Trent talked in his e-mail about how he is happy that they get to go on the bus, because it's better for contacting people. For us bikes are a huge step up from spending all day in the car, although right now only the crazy people and the missionaries are outside. It makes for some interesting contacts. I think all of the sun sometimes messes with some of the people we run into. Hna Alvarez and I have set the goal to use bikes a little more. They're actually pretty efficient when we are out in the evening. Once it cools off to a more reasonable 100 degrees people seem more prone to come outside.

Okay, now for some interesting events from the week. Wednesday we were able to have Sister Taylor come out with us for the afternoon. It was really cool to have her, although once again it highlighted the differences between the Taylors and the Becks. Both are really good though, and I'm so greatful that I had the chance to work with two mission presidents and their wives. Sister Taylor was able to clear most of her afternoon, so we had her with us until 5pm. We made multiple visits, and were able to get a lot of work done. I've also been really impressed with the Taylors Spanish. It's cool to see how they both worked hard to be able to speak here with our members. (Both spoke Spanish previously, but had many many years with out using it much).

Thursday night Hna Alvarez and I had an interesting experience. As I was about to get in the car I felt some sort of bug zoom by my arm. I didn't think much of it, until Hna Alvarez and I shut the doors, and suddenly this huge winged bug flew in our faces. We shrieked and jumped out of the car as fast as we could. We then spent the next few minutes trying to find the bug to get it out of the car. Hna Gutierrez (the sister we had just finished visiting) came out to try and help us. We decided that it must have been the worlds biggest grasshopper and that it was now gone. We got in the car once again, and right as I put the car into drive, it came out again! The exact same chaos ensued and we both were now less than thrilled about the idea of carpooling with whatever bug it was that had made it in the car. Again we couldn't find the thing. So we set off on our way home. As we left Hna Alvarez looked down at the phone... somewhere in the midst of all the chaos we had accidentally dialed the Elders. They had heard everything. They thanked us for the evening amusement, and now everytime we see them we get comments about killer grasshoppers. In our defense, the next morning when we went out to the car we found the bug. It wasn't a grasshopper. It was a big nasty looking locust! Yuck! He was huge.

One of our huge blessings was finding a lot of people this week to start teaching. This is an area where traditionally it's hard to find people to teach. Hna Alvarez and I have been working really hard to figure out where the Mexicans are, and then to start teaching them. We had a huge miracle this week when we went to check up on a potential investigator and for once she was home. Visiting her is interesting. She has a huge dog that looks like he could eat you in one bite, and then three little dogs, que muerden (that bite). So going and knocking her door isn't much of an option. Instead what you have to do is stand outside of the gate and yell. You yell some, and then you take your key from the car, and bang it as hard as you can against the metal on the fence. Between the yelling and the clanking from the key on the fence and the dogs barking we were able to get her attention (she's hard of hearing and her TV is usually on pretty loud when she is home). I'm pretty sure the whole neighborhood knows everytime the missionaries come. We were excited to start teaching her, and her daughter and 5 grandkids were also around, so we had a great visit with all of them.

This week we also got to teach primary for church. It went pretty well. The kids were excited to have us there. Hna Alvarez loved it, she loves working with kids. I like working with kids, but not on that large of a scale and in another language. It was quite fun though. We had a short lesson and then helped them write letters to the missionaries serving from the Agua Fria ward.

I think that's about all for this week. We're working hard and keeping busy. I love you all lots. Thanks for the support and prayers!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Pachanga!

2011-08-01T22:25:00.004-06:00

Hi All,

This has been another good week. It was a little weird with transfers being on Wednesday instead of Tuesday, but it all worked out well in the end. Now for what you all have been waiting for... My new companion is Hna Alvarez. Yes, her last name is Hispanic, no she is not a native Spanish speaker. Her dad is Cuban and her mom is Irish. What a combo! But, she didn't grow up speaking Spanish so she's learning it here on the mission. She's been out about 6 months, and served the whole time down in South Phoenix in Montana del Sur. She reminds me very much of serving with Hna Ayala, so this should be a very fun transfer. Her mom sent a package this week that included two flying monkeys... they are sling shot type stuffed animals... and we have spent a good deal of time pelting them at each other. Mine is named Charlie the Chango (chango is the Mexican slang word for monkey) he has a cape and a mask so he looks like some sort of masked flying monkey bandit... hence the monkey bandit type name. If you are lucky next week we'll send pictures with our monkeys.

This week has been interesting... it's always an interesting experience changing companions. You spend so much time with a companion that you get very comfortable with them. You become very comfortable teaching with them and fall into a routine of how you like things. Then you switch companions and all that goes out the window. We've been doing a lot of practice teaching to get comfortable teaching together. It always takes a little time, but one of our goals is to teach comfortably together by the end of this week. We'll see how we do. It's also tricky because you have to teach them the area... A lot of weight switches to the missionary who stayed, because suddenly your companion who knew the area and the people is no longer there to jog your memory or help you not forget people or things that need to happen. But all that said, Hna Alvarez is picking up everything really fast, and we have some great ideas to keep the work in this area moving forward. We have some great goals that we have set for things that we want to accomplish to get the work here up to the level that the other Spanish areas are. Right now the work is about par for an English area, but for a Spanish area it's still way below the mark, so we've still got a long way to go.

Mom asked in her letter about changes that were made in the mission with the new mission president. There have been huge changes, and most of them happened at Transfer meeting. It was cool to be there to hear all the changes. The change that has had the most responses was that President moved back to having Junior and Senior companions. With President Beck, after you had been out 6 months you became a co-senior. There have been some interesting comments and some very bent out of shape missionaries. That said, from the way President talked about it, to me it doesn't seem like it really should change that much... just that one person has the ultimate responsibility for the work in the area. Also, President split and re-aligned areas like crazy. For us here in Agua Fria it was a pretty big downer, because we are now the only Spanish missionaries in our Zone... English missionaries just are not quite as much fun as the Spanish missionaries. Both Hna Alvarez and I were pretty bummed. Also, the mission now only has one set of Assistants to the President. Previously there were two Spanish AP's and two English AP's. Before the reasoning was that this is technically a Spanish mission (meaning that we get the same focus towards the Spanish members and work as you would in Mexico or South America). But President decided that he just wants the two AP's, so two it is. Honestly, not too much of it affects me. He also talked about tightening up the rules and being more obedient, which was no surprise. And, all of the Spanish sisters were at transfer meeting. He really moved us around a lot! No companionship stayed the same.

Okay, now for a few more updates. Raphael's baptism was really lovely. He was so much fun to work with. I really love their whole family, and it was one of my best experiences as a missionary. I'll never forget how happy and excited he looked, those are the moments that make everything worth it as a missionary. Some times missionary work really is hard and long and exhausting. Then you have moments like that and suddenly all of the hours sweating like crazy in the Arizona sun don't matter.

The work here right now is interesting. Hna Graves and I had looked at the list of people we were working with going into the last week of the transfer, decided the majority really weren't progressing, and felt inspired to drop the vast majority. As a missionary that is both hard and terrifying. It's hard because you really love these people, but if they really aren't doing much or putting in their part, we need to move on. It's also terrifying because suddenly you are faced with a lot of time to try and find, and in this area that's hard, because there really aren't many Hispanics here. But, we're moving forward, and I'm excited to see what is waiting for us.

I think that's about all from Arizona. Love you all lots!

Hermana Okeson

Phoenix Rains Mud

2011-07-27T09:14:00.003-06:00

Hello All!

Happy P-day! First to get out the news you are all curious about... Transfers. The transfer news came as a complete shock. Hna Graves is being moved and I am staying. Not what either of us expected. I'm excited to have another six weeks here in Agua Fria but nervous about who I will get to serve with. This transfer has been such an easy one that it makes me wonder what is in store for the next 6 weeks. Tomorrow we'll go to transfer meeting and see where Hna Graves is headed and then who is coming here with me. I guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what happens. I'm excited to get to stay here and see the ward continue to progress. We've had some good changes happen in the last week and I'm excited to see how they will effect the work.

Okay, now for all of the fun things from this week. This week ranks as one of the busiest of my entire mission. The craziness started on Monday. As we were leaving in the evening for our appointments we got a call from the member who was coming with us saying she couldn't come because there was a really bad storm. I was somewhat skeptical as from leaving our house it was sunny and 110 degrees. Well, with the pictures attached as evidence, it was stormy. I really think here in Phoenix it just rains mud. Our nicely washed white car turned brown. It was disgusting. YUCK! By not Arizona standards it was a pretty lame excuse for a storm... no really wind... not that much rain... no thunder... no lightning, but what impressed me was that the raindrops literally were brown, it was raining mud! Gross!

The week really was busy with getting ready for one wedding and two baptisms. I think we had something related to at least one of the events each day. Between that and trying to keep up with our normal investigators we were running around like crazy all week. It was fun, but I think I reached a whole new level of exhaustion. Okay, so the wedding was beautiful. The ward really went all out, it was quite the party. When we left at nine the fun was only starting, I hear the party lasted until late in the evening, and I believed it from the tired looks on peoples faces in church on Sunday. It was also cool because President and Sister Taylor came. It was fun to get to introduce them to the members of the ward. The whole ward was really touched that they came. I also realized at the dinner after the wedding that I had reached a new bench mark of sorts for my Spanish. I realized I no longer really had to pay attention to understand the lyrics of the music that was playing in the background. It didn't matter what was on, I was understanding it. But back to the wedding, the bride and groom looked excited and happy and it all came off really well. This Saturday Raphael will be baptized, which we are also really really excited about.

Sunday was Kassandra and Vanessia's baptism. We had taught both of them because of various extenuating circumstances. It was fun to see them baptized, and I think they were quite happy to get baptized together since they are really good friends. It was a very different experience working with children. I've taught more children than I expected here on my mission... I think God keeps putting me in this position because he knows how much I don't like it. I like playing with kids and being around kids, but teaching kids is a whole different issue. If I ever even remotely thought I wanted a career working with children, I am now sure I don't. That said, I really did enjoy working with both girls, and I had a good time with them... but those teaching situations were really a stretch for me.

I forgot my journal this week, so I have nothing to jog my memory... so I think that may be all for the really exciting news of the week, although I am sure there are things I am forgetting. This transfer has been the best transfer of my mission. Our numbers this transfer were better than I've ever seen, and I am loving how much we are working. I love being this busy and being able to work like this. I'm hoping that with the start of this new transfer we will be able to keep things moving forward. I want to keep things progressing here. I think the thing I have loved the most this transfer is just feeling so satisfied and exhausted at the end of each day. We have worked so incredibly hard. Some of our days as we are out on bike we end up looking pretty scary, but that's okay... We're about half way through the worst of the heat... and I'm told that when September hits, it stays hot, but not quite as hot. By the end of this transfer we are starting I will have spent 7 months here in Agua Fria. That's crazy to me. The time here has really flown, and I am impressed ever week with how it manages to go faster than the week before.

I'm working hard here, drinking lots of water, and absolutely loving every minute!

Love you all!

Hermana Okeson

Nicole's Birthday

2011-07-26T14:34:00.002-06:00

Hello All,

Nicole's letter has not come through this week but I thought I would send out a Birthday invitation. This is one of a different sort. I thought it would be fun for Nicole to receive a bunch of birthday cards for her birthday. Her birthday is Aug. 21. Here is the mailing address:
Sister Nicole Okeson
Arizona Phoenix Mission
18001 N 79th Ave Ste C50
Glendale, AZ 85309-8394

Thanks for following Nicole's Blog and for your love and support also.
Thanks, Effie (Nicole's Mom)

Running Like Crazy

2011-07-18T21:49:00.001-06:00

Hello All!

It has been an incredibly busy week yet again. This week I set a personal record for my mission for number of lessons taught in a week... and that was after lots of others fell through. We are running like crazy. Hna Graves and I have been wondering lately if this is a sign that they will be splitting our area next week at transfers. It wouldn't surprise me. In some areas our numbers are almost that of what two companionship's would be expected to do in a week. Needless to say, it's exhausting. I don't think I've ever been this tired in my life, we run and run all day, and then come home with just enough time to plan and go to bed to start doing it all again the next day. It's exciting and I'm loving every minute.

I thought for a change in my letters, and to maybe give you all an idea of what a missionary day is like, I would write about one day exclusively... I'm pulling mostly from my journal entry and then adding a few things here and there. This is from Saturday... as a side note, Saturdays are usually one of our busiest days, and this Saturday was no exception. So if it sounds like we were really busy and did a lot, it's because we were and we did.

6:30 am ~ get up... I can't say I exactly pop out of bed... On Saturday morning what gets me out of bed is the knowledge that in 2 days on p-day I can take a nap. Usually by about 6:45 or so Hna Graves and I are gathered up and we run to the park where we like to exercise. We usually run laps around the park. We tried running together but we run at different speeds, so we settled for the park. It works pretty well, our only complaint is it's sooooo hot at 6:30... most mornings it's already 100 degrees. Yuck!

7:20 am ~ shower, get ready and eat breakfast.

8:00 am ~ Normally personal study, but Saturday mornings we have an investigator who lives a pretty good difference from us who likes to meet at 9, so unlike most days, on Saturday we pull snacks together to leave by 8:15 to make the 45 minute drive to visit Veronica.

9:00 am ~ Veronica wasn't home. Yuck-o. Especially because we had driven the 45 minutes to visit with her. We called a few times and heard her phone ringing in the house. She ended up calling an hour later and telling us she left for the store and completely forgot we were coming. Since we were already out and about we decided to run by the Velasquez family. Kassandra is getting baptized on Sunday, and it was Kimberly's birthday. They were a little surprised to see us so early in the morning but Kimberly was excited to have us stop by. We sang her happy birthday and I graced her with happy birthday in Welsh and Chinese (at least what I remember from hearing "Happy Birthday" in Chinese a few times). I'm sure I butchered them both because everything now comes out with a Spanish accent, but there were no complaints from the audience. When we left we drove another half hour to a cita (appointment) way south of where we were... Not there again. Yuck!

10:00 am ~ We decided to cut our losses and go to the library and try and get some study time in. It was a little weird studying at the library, but beggars can't be choosers. Luckily it was quiet and we were able to get some good studying in.

11:00 am ~ When we finished we ran over to the Castro's to knock doors in their apartment complex. We talked with Hna Castro and she suggested some neighbors for us to stop by. We did so (and talked with anyone else who would open the door on the way), and had a really good lesson with a woman named Miriam. She's very Catholic, but has lots of questions about what we believe. We'll see what happens.

2:00 pm ~ We ran all the way back to the north end of our area for some appointments we had later that day. We had just under two hours for finishing our studies and so we did so. As we were studying a lady saw us and came over to talk to us. Turns out she's a member and just wanted to say hi. I don't know if the Elders get that a lot, but as sisters, we are somewhat of a rare species, and so we have people stop us all the time. While we were studying we got a call from Raphael saying he got called suddenly to go into work and would have to cancel for the evening. We adjusted some of our plans and headed to our next appointment.

4:30 pm~ Another descent drive to get over to the Ayala's. We were invited over to share a message before Bryan (the 15 year old) had his birthday party. We showed up and things were pretty crazy, so instead of a formal lesson we helped clean, set up chairs, make punch, and carry out food for the party. We got a short message in, not quite what we had hoped for, but it was still a good visit.

5:30 pm ~ Since Raphael had canceled we decided to run over and try to catch the Gutierrez family at home. We almost never catch them at home, but lucky for us, they were home! What a huge blessing! We were able to teach a lesson and then at the end Hno Gutierrez gave us a ton of Gatorade... like everyone else, they worry about us out in the heat. Hno Gutierrez is a miner, and I guess they give him packs and packs of Gatorade and he has more than enough, so he gave us some. I think we have enough Gatorade for an army of missionaries.

7:00 pm ~ We had a little time before our appointment at eight so we drove over to make a quick stop by Leonila. We've been teaching her for a long time, and she's really going through a rough patch right now, so we wanted to see how she was doing and maybe share a thought with her. We talked about the power of prayer and having faith through hard times. It was a good, and much needed visit.

8:00 pm ~ One last cita for the evening. We went to visit with Mary (the sister who was baptized in May). She made fruit salad (she makes the best fruit salad I've ever eaten) and we were finally able to meet her husband. He owns a company in Mexico, and she has her own business here, so they travel back and forth a lot... we were excited to finally get to meet him. We had a great lesson on missionary work, and I enjoyed getting to visit with them, especially because Mary is headed back out of town and won't be back until August.

9:30 pm ~ We arrived home in time to plan, update our records, and get ready for bed.

10:30 pm ~ after another super busy day two completely exhausted missionaries finally got to go to bed.

There you all go! That is a day in the life as a missionary. No day is ever the same, but I thought this would give you all a fun picture of how things normally are for us. The biggest difference from the "norm" for Saturdays is that we move our study time around and do it in the afternoon because we have people who like to meet with us Saturday morning. Normally we study all in one chunk and around noon.

Other news from the week was that we had exchanges again on Friday. I went out to Wickenburg for the day. It was fun to go out there, I had a good time with Hna Jaunfrea (she was Hna Graves' companion in the MTC). It was also fun because I had been on exchanges there before and got to see some of the same people again. I liked that, it left me feeling a little less lost than I normally do on exchanges. It's a little hard being the missionary who goes to a new area for an exchange because you don't know anyone and you have to really rely on the Spirit to know what to share and how to teach.

I think that's all the fun for this week.

Have a great week! I love you all lots!

Hna Okeson

Monsoon Season

2011-07-11T15:54:00.003-06:00

Hello All!

It's been another busy week here in Phoenix. We have been running from one thing to another all week. I'm actually starting to hope that our area will get split in two weeks, just because we really can't keep up with everything anymore. Having another set of missionaries here in Agua Fria would be a huge help. We'll see what happens. Main events from this week would include meeting President Taylor, getting caught out in the dust storm, and going to Mesa with the Valencia family. We'll see what all I can get in this week.

Thursday we had interviews, which was our first chance to meet and interact with President Taylor. He will be a very good mission president, but he is certainly a huge change from President Beck. Where President Beck was very formal and business oriented, President Taylor is a little more laid back. I am curious to see how things will be over the next few months. There were no huge changes starting off, but I figure they will come. For a little more background. President Taylor was an editor at the Deseret News, he had covered stories from all over the world, and most recently had spent the last year or so covering church affairs. His wife, who I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with runs a preschool in Provo that has a waiting list already for when she gets home in 3 years. We promptly invited her to come with us to our many lessons with children. We're teaching a lot of young families, and Hna Graves and I are fast running out of ideas. They came with their 16 year old son Braeden (I have no clue how to spell his name). He seemed like a good kid, and really enjoyed being with the Elders. I think this will be a good but interesting change. I didn't expect it to be hard, but I've struggled more than I expected. I think I fit more comfortably with President Becks way of doing things. President Taylor likes to chat a little more and the meeting was a lot more laid back. Where President Beck had an agenda timed down to the minute, President Taylor had a loose agenda of things that needed to get done. Both ways are good, it's just making the transition. I am excited though to keep working with him and see where the mission will go.

Dad mentioned in his letter about seeing in the news about a huge dust storm. There was a lot of dust. I felt like you could feel it in your teeth and like all you were breathing was dust. Luckily we were in the car that night, but I feel for all of the Elders who were out on bikes. The dust was thick enough as we drove home I could barely see the tail lights of the cars in front of me... it was like driving through a blizzard. The dust storm was also significant, or so I'm told, because it marks the beginning of the Monsoon season. No one told me it would get humid here! Shame on all of you! Dry heat when it's really hot is pretty miserable, but wet heat when it's really hot is awful. Luckily we're doing the best thing in the world, so it doesn't matter how miserable it gets, we're still happy about life. It just means we smell worse and worse every day. Oh well.

Saturday night we went with the Valencia's down to Mesa to the visitors center. I'd send pictures, but none of them turned out... something was up with the camera setting, and the battery was dying so I didn't have much time to mess with it. It was a really good visit. The best part was getting to talk with Raphael and Berenice about having a goal of coming back to the temple in a year to be sealed as a family. They looked so excited. Both of their faces just lit up as we talked to them. They are getting married on the 23rd, and I'm getting quite excited.

Besides all of that excitement things are going pretty much the same as ever. We are working hard, and seeing great results. I've seen so much progress here in Agua Fria, and I am loving every minute. It's really amazing how fast this time goes by. It's starting to really make me nervous. Thursday at interviews when I was talking to Sister Taylor she asked me how long I'd been out, when I told her she responded with "Oh, you're half way done! Bummer, we won't get you for very long then." Yuck. Each week goes a little faster and I am amazed at all that I am learning here. This really is the experience of a life time, you learn and see so much.

I love you all! Have a great week!

Hermana Okeson

Gatorade and Sunflower Seeds

2011-07-08T13:33:00.000-06:00

Hi All,

It is HOT here in Phoenix. And as of the last three days it's decided to be humid. We spend most of our time looking like drowned rats... and we've started keeping perfume with us to try and mask the sweaty smell. It's always a little interesting when we show up in homes and the sisters want to give us a kiss on the cheek (that's the very very standard Mexican greeting). The increased heat has also turned most conversations to ones about what to do in the heat. Sunday we had a member give us four huge packets of Gatorade. I think we now have enough to last for at least the next month. He also told us to eat salty foods... so Hna Graves and I picked up a huge bag of sunflower seeds.

This week has been a really good week. Monday morning we got quite a fun phone call. Our Zone leaders were calling us to congratulate us for leading the Stake in numbers for the past week. We were pretty excited. I was especially, because I have seen so much growth here in my time here. Our "regular" numbers were numbers I could barely imagine for this area when I got here. This area was a historically "dead" area. I had heard about what it was like here before I got here, and to be honest, I was terrified. I remember spending my first few weeks here back in February feeling so over whelmed. It's really cool to see what a lot of hard work and prayer can do. We are so busy right now. By the time I get home at night I'm so exhausted. We spend all day every day working and working and working and I love it. Now I'm scared that in a few weeks at transfers they'll split the area. That's good news, but it would mean that one way or another we would loose some of the people we are working with. That would be really hard.

Our biggest news right now is that we are working towards wedding plans for Raphael and Berenice. Everything is starting to come together and it should be a really nice wedding. I'm so excited for them, and they look so happy. The Saturday of the wedding will probably be one of the busiest days of my mission, since that morning we will also have a baptism. I'm trying not to think of how we are going to fit everything in, or how tired we'll be. It should be a really really good day. We're also headed to Mesa with Raphael and Berenice to go to the visitors center with them. It's one more thing to be really really excited about. I'm pretty happy.

Mom asked about what work is like in the summer. Work in the summer is hard. We have a lot of people going to Mexico and very few people want to risk the heat to open their doors. It's also tricky to talk to lots of people, because so few people are on the street. I'm told that this is just what we should expect until the middle of September. Luckily at the beginning of August school starts, so the kids and their families will have to be back from vacation to start school. In some ways though, having some of our investigators gone has given us a little more time to focus on others who need a little more of our attention. We'll see what we come up with over the next month.

Tuesday we got to go on exchanges. I went back down to South Phoenix for a day. I loved it! I have such a love for those people and for that area. It reminded me a lot of the beginning of my mission, and it was fun to spend a day completely on bike without biking miles on end. It was also interesting because I was the decided Sr. companion in this exchange. I've done exchanges other times but for those I felt more like the Sr. companion by technicality... but this time I had been out longer than both of the other sisters (I was back in a trio for a day). It was fun to see the difference in work techniques and to get new ideas. I think that is one of my favorite things about exchanges is that you get some new ideas to mix things up a bit.

For anyone who was wondering... the Fourth of July is a fairly lame holiday as a missionary. That's okay. We were still able to get some appointments, while I think most of the English missionaries were grounded for the night. The rule was we could go to appointments if a member drove us there. None of our members had plans for the fourth, so we were good to go. It was cool though because we got to ask some of them what Mexican Independence Day is like. Let's just say I'm already getting excited for the 15th of September. True to form Mexicans like to party, and their Independence Day is no different. Ward parties are always good for us, because it's often the first time we can get some of our investigators to come to church and check things out. I also got a good laugh as I was looking through some old teaching records. The Elders who had served in this area a year ago added one more box to check on their teaching records. That box read "Invited to fiestas". Hermana Graves and I got a good laugh out of that.

I think that's all the fun for this week.

Love you all lots!

Hermana Okeson

Hot and Hotter

2011-06-27T16:14:00.002-06:00

Hello all!

It's really heating up. Apparently the last few days have set heat records. Our "cooler" spring is sure trying to catch up for lost time. And, to my dismay, I discovered there is a huge difference between 110 degrees and 118. At 110 (for anyone who wants to know) the poor missionaries on bikes feel pretty hot and sweaty, but can still stand it. At 118 the poor missionaries on bikes want to die and even the wind feels like it is burning you. While you are out knocking doors you feel like you are baking in an oven. It's certainly turning into quite the experience.

Luckily we have really been blessed this week, although until we totaled up our numbers we sure didn't feel like it. This week was a week for canceled lessons. Each day almost every lesson (and some days every lesson) called to cancel, or just wasn't there. A few canceled lessons a week is pretty normal, but we had over 15 cancel or not show. That is a huge number. Hermana Graves and I were super dissapointed with each cancellation, but like President Beck always says, when it's hard you have to "POGO!" So that's what we did. Every time a lesson canceled or fell through we made the best of it and tried to figure out where we were supposed to be instead. It worked out really well, because after over a month of having no new investigators we found a new family to teach and an older lady. It was really really cool to see how even though everything fell through we were still able to get a lot done. We also ended up teaching a lot of impromptu lessons and visiting other people who don't usually get as much attention from us.

Like Trent, we also had out last Zone Conference with the Becks. I was really amazed to see some of the things that President brought to this mission. I'm also quite excited to meet and work with President Taylor. I think the coolest changes was that in 3 years this mission doubled the number of baptisms. That's so cool. It was also interesting to see how the work really will move on. Besides President and Sister Beck's final testimonies and a short presentation by President on "change" it was a completely normal Zone Conference. Both of their final testimonies were really good, and definitely showed their personalities. Sister Beck cried, President pounded the pulpit (although he did look a little more choked up than I've ever seen him). I've really enjoyed working with them so much, and I feel like I have learned so much. I think the most interesting thing will be to see how President Taylor chooses to move forward. I'm pretty curious.

I also have thought a lot this week about when President wrote me last August and told me that I would have to leave my flute at home. I didn't realize it then, but I think that was the best thing he could have ever done for me. It's been hard, but I've learned a lot about how to sacrifice for something better. I know I focus so much better without the flute here, and that because of that I have become a far better missionary. The most interesting thing that I learned interestingly only partially relates to the flute itself. The most interesting thing I learned was to be completely obedient. Back in August when I got the e-mail I had to decide whether or not I knew President was called of God, and whether or not I was going to be completely obedient. It wasn't easy. But making that decision before coming out has made my mission so much easier. From that point on anything I was asked to do paled in comparison to how hard it was to leave the flute behind, and so it was easy to remind myself that I knew President was called of God, and that I had already decided to be obedient. I also learned about attitude. I could leave the flute and be miserable for 18 months, or I could leave the flute and work hard and be happy. The time or sacrifice wouldn't change, but the way I felt about it would. Again, that made a huge difference for me as I have been in interesting and sometimes very challenging moments over my mission. I spent a good deal of time thinking about all of this yesterday, and really was shocked by just how much of a blessing this has been. That's certainly something I never expected 9 months ago! I guess missions really do change you.

Tomorrow I'm going on splits back down to South Phoenix. Sadly, I won't be going back to where I served, but I'll be more or less in the same area. I'm pretty excited to have a day of speaking all Spanish again... there are so many Mexicans in South Phoenix, and while I love it here, I miss feeling like I'm in Mexico. I should be a good exchange. We had a little trouble getting it to go through because when we go on exchanges we have to have members drive us.

That's normally not a problem, but the Sister I'm trading places with for the day is tiny... and there is no way I could use her bike or she could use mine. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be able to reach the pedals, and I would look like a clown. Luckily this morning we finally found someone with a truck to take us down... so the bike dilemma is solved. Later in July I'm going on exchanges again out to Wickenburg (for the second time).

We've got to run. I love you all! Thanks for the letters. Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Fun in the Sun

2011-06-25T17:35:00.002-06:00

Hello All!

This has been yet another busy, busy week here in Phoenix. The exciting news of the week is that Raphael is on date for baptism! He's going to be baptized on the 30th of July. It's a little later than we would like, but he and his girlfriend have to get married, and that's not much time to plan a wedding. We're pretty excited and he is too. We're going over on Wednesday night to start wedding planning with them. It should be lots of fun, and a little work too. I've not been able to help with wedding plans before on my mission, so this should be an interesting experience.

Trent commented on having a last interview with his Mission President. It made me a little jealous. For various reasons we aren't doing final interviews before the Becks go home, but we do have Zone Conference this week. I'm excited to see what they have planned. I've heard from one of the Elders who has been helping with planning this Zone Conference that it will be really, really good. I'm excited to see what we have planned. And to answer Mom's question, I believe all Mission Presidents come to their new missions on June 30th. In our case that puts us in week 3 of this transfer, which I think is nice. It gives President a good chance to try to start getting to know the missionaries before transfers come again. So for my e-mail on the 11th I will have met the new mission president and then can tell you at least a little. I don't know how much interaction we'll actually get with him right at the start. Because of some of the things that happened at the beginning of my mission I had a little higher interaction with President and so from that I got to know him a little better faster, but really we don't see much of him. I'm assuming it will probably be the same with President Taylor.

As far as the heat goes, we're surviving. You know it's really getting warm as you can feel the sweat drip down your back. It's a pretty common feeling. It's also been interesting because Hna Graves and I have tried to go out on bike more. We smell pretty bad a lot of the time. I always feel bad when we come into people’s homes and they want to kiss you on the cheek, and I'm really hot and gross. I've gotten a few comments like, "wow, you sisters are really warm" or, "it must really be hot out there, make sure you are drinking enough water", although, it has its advantages. That's how Hna Graves and I got the biggest slice of watermelon I've ever seen. I attached the picture because I thought you all would enjoy it.

I also almost passed out for the first time on my mission. Don't worry, it wasn't from dehydration. My weak stomach kicked in as we were contacting a fellow who went into very, very graphic detail about the Crucifixion of Christ. I blacked out, but wasn't out cold. He felt pretty bad, and my companion was a little nervous. I felt sick for the next hour or so, but was fine after a little bit, quite the experience. Hna Graves was just glad she didn't have to call into Sister Beck and explain that her companion with a weak stomach was passed out on some guy’s doorstep.

Wednesday we had an interesting experience. As we were at home doing our planning for the week, one by one all of our appointments for the afternoon canceled. We were pretty bummed, until Mary, the Sister who was baptized last month called us out of nowhere and asked us to come by, have dinner with her and answer some questions. It worked out perfectly, the exact amount of time from our appointments canceling was used getting up to Mary's house (she lives really far away) eating dinner, and teaching a lesson. It was also really good because she left for San Diego for a month on Friday morning, so it was good to get to see her.

Friday night was the ward party. They were celebrating Fathers Day, and it was quite the party. English wards just hand out candy, Mexicans throw a huge party with tons of food, music and dancing. The Sisters from the Relief Society put together one of those cool Mexican skirt dances. It was so cool to watch. I attached a picture of Hna Gutierrez all dressed up for the dance so you can have an idea of what the outfits looked like. Then the next day in a visit I got Hna Gutierrez to let me put on her skirt and try spinning it around, it was quite fun. The primary girls also put together a dance that was quite impressive. I think Mexicans just have dancing in their blood, because they are really, really good at it. The food was also incredible, and after Hna Graves and I decided that if we're going to keep going to ward functions we may need to ride bikes there and back. We did have a really good turnout of investigators, and so that was good (because what Mexican will turn down a party?).

Saturday we got to go to the Mesa Temple visitor’s center with Leonila. It was a really, really good visit, although we felt a little like the blind leading the blind since neither Sister Graves nor I had been to the visitors center here before. It turned out really good, and I think Leonila really enjoyed the trip. I hadn't realized just how small that visitor’s center was until we went into it. With having gone a few times over the last few years in Provo to the Visitors Center in Salt Lake, I've forgotten that it's far bigger than any other visitors center would be. It was still really good, and I loved being there.

Sunday I got to give my first talk (in Spanish) in Sacrament meeting. I felt like it went well, and I was pretty happy about it. Giving a whole talk in Spanish really made me work hard, but also was a good gage for how much Spanish I have learned over the last 9 months. It's really quite impressive. I've reached a point where it's only a few words here and there that I don't understand, and when I'm talking I feel like I can pretty comfortably say what I want. Especially in the last few months I've finally really started to hear all of the different verb tenses and be able to use them comfortably, which is nice.

I think that is about all the fun I have to tell you about for a week. I love you all. Thanks for all of your support!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Day 1, Transfer 6

2011-06-13T16:49:00.003-06:00

Hi All,

Today began my sixth transfer... weird. I've officially become one of the "old" sisters in the mission. We've had a lot of new sisters come in since I got here, and now well over half of the sisters who were here when I got here have gone home. It's crazy how fast time flies. This week has been a pretty good one. I now understand why we don't get transfer news until the day before, when you know you are leaving far too much time gets waisted saying goodbye. It did get us back in with some people we've not been able to see in a while, so I guess we're going to count our blessings.

Monday night we had a really fun lesson with a family in the ward, and a friend who is investigating the church. We taught about testimonies, and coming closer to Christ and made pizza. Dad, your testimony pizza lesson has been a hit every time I've used it. Monday night was no exception. It's especially fun with Mexican families who have never made "homemade" pizza before. Everyone was very very excited and the results were quite yummy. I've attached a picture for you all. The lighting isn't so great, but we did manage to get a picture which was a small victory.

I think I'm in the opposite position from Trent, we're trying to squeeze in time for finding between all of our appointments. To try and do that this week we're going to be using our bikes as much as we can. We are able to talk to way more people on bikes as we go by bus stops than we do when we knock doors. I just wish we had had this problem before it got so hot. Hna Graves and I went out on bike a few days ago, and by the end we were completely drenched. I'm starting to understand when I've heard people talk about how sister missionaries here often go home half way through the day and shower. I'm not sure that we can do that, because we live a good distance from the areas where we usually work... but there may be days where we have to, because we get pretty gross pretty fast. We're hoping that with it getting hotter we'll be able to somehow move more of our appointments to the hotter hours of the day so we don't have to spend as much time outside. The sun is brutal! You can just feel it roasting you right there and then. It's certainly an interesting experience.

We've had some interesting experiences this week. I can only write about a few of them in part... but this week because of some things that have happened we've seen some of the uglier side of the immigration issues here in Arizona. Most of the time here as missionaries we work very very hard to stay oblivious. We never ask, and if anyone tells us anything we try hard to forget. Most of the time we really don't have to deal much with the political issues here, but this week was definitely an exception. It was a little stressful. Luckily things always manage to work out, and we always manage to feel incredibly blessed.

Friday was interesting, we had the Trainer/Trainee meeting. It was at that meeting at the beginning of my mission where Hermana Hoof received her flight plans to go home. It was weird to think about that and to realized that I was at the same point where Hermana Graves is when I had to take things over for Aguila. It made me really realize once again how blessed I was during that time, and how the Lord really helps us. It also made me really evaluate myself as a trainer, and wonder if I would be able to let Hermana Graves take over the area and feel comfortable that I had taught her enough and been a good example to her so that she would know what is required of us as missionaries.

The Trainer/Trainee meeting was also interesting because we had a chance to evaluate the new training program and to also swap ideas as to how to do better. This new training program is going world wide in August, and so we have been monitored very very closely over the last month or so for feedback. I honestly have nothing bad to say about the program, and I have loved it. It walks you though all the different things we do as missionaries week by week, so one week we will focus on just a few skills, and then the next move on to others. It really helps me as a trainer know how to help Hermana Graves, and I feel like I am learning so much as well. I really hope I get to train again, because I am really loving it. It was also nice to hear the other trainers talk about the challenges associated with training. Training is so demanding because you have such an impact on the kind of missionary your companion will be. I know both of my trainers impacted me a lot and that I learned so much from them. I think the hardest thing is just making sure that you are doing everything by the book and that we are really living up to our potential. As missionaries we do a lot of things very repetitively and it is so easy to get caught in ruts... I guess it's like that for everything in life, but I think it really applies here. So as a trainer I feel like I've really had to stretch to try to avoid those ruts. It's been amazing to see how I've progressed and how blessed I have felt as I've really given all that I have to work and serve.

I think that is about it for this week. If I haven't melted by next Monday I should have lots of fun things to share with all of you. Feel free to send questions, sometimes it's hard to know what to write about as a missionary, so I always love getting questions. Also, the other picture I attached is of one of my favorite two-year-olds. As a missionary I do quite well with the two-year-olds, and I even have one who comes and looks for me and sits with me in sacrament meeting. My companions think it's quite funny. This one likes to steal my name tag, and in this picture she wanted to wear my shoes... Oh, and here is one of my district. I hope you like that one too. Aaand one more, one of the families we work with has puppies, so we got to play with them... I think they are maybe a month old... I guess I'm just full of pictures today.

Anyhow, have a wonderful week. I love you all lots!

Hermana Okeson

110 Degrees

2011-06-06T16:18:00.002-06:00

Hello All!

This week has been another fast week. We are so busy, and spend most of our time running from one appointment to the next. I love it, especially because when I first got here we had absolutly nothing, and spent all day out contacting. Now we're on the other end and frantically trying to contact even a few people each day. It's pretty satisfying to see what happens when you really give all that you have and work hard. In my time here in Agua Fria I've worked like crazy, and I am pretty sure this is only the beginning. I'm pretty hopeful that I will spend the better portion of my mission here. I absolutly love this area and the people I am working with.

This week was full of a lot of little miracles mixed with some minor frustrations. We've really been pushing and trying to give everything we have and we've seen some great success. One of the hardest things as missionaries is to get the members to trust and be willing to work with you. One of the benefits of having a little more time in an area is that the members do become more comfortable with you and you can really start working with them.

That brings us to our first miracle of the week. On Tuesday night we were at the church for a meeting and one of the sisters came up and started talking to me. She has a son who just left on a mission, and I've enjoyed talking with her and asking her how her son is doing. Well, as we were talking she asked if we could come over to teach her husband. She has been a member for over 20 years, and her husband has never really wanted anything to do with the church, but apparently with having a son on a mission things have changed. We were able to teach him on Friday, and we are looking for him to be baptized the end of this month. We are soooo incredibly excited, as is his family. There are a few hiccups to work out (which counts as some of the minor frustrations of the week) but these things always manage to work themselves out.

Now for my favorite story of this week. I've talked a little (I think) about Concepcion and her family. They are the neighbors of some recent converts and we've been teaching them for a little over a month. About a week ago we had a small miracle when her husband came home from work early and sat in on the lesson and we were able to meet with him. Well, we were over there on Friday (Friday was just a really really good day for us here in Phoenix) and we asked Concepcion about how giving up coffee is going. When we first taugh her the Word of Wisdom she flat out refused. Well, she told us that for the last week or two "se me quito las ganas de tomar cafe" in other words she lost the desire to drink coffee. Then she looked at the member who we had brought with us and told her that she thinks it's because "las hermanas estan orando" (the sisters are praying). That made my night. Darn right the Hermanas are praying.

Also, for anyone who was wondering, we hit 110 this week. I've actually decided that after 100 it's just hot, and it really doesn't matter too much. We'll see about what I think when we pass 115. There is so much more I would love to write about, but my time is out, so have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Goodbye May

2011-06-01T01:12:00.002-06:00

Hello All,

This week has been F.A.S.T! We have had a lot of work this week and the days have really flown by. We are now in week five of this transfer, and things have become interesting as Hna Aydelotte is winding down and preparing to go home in two weeks. I certainly don't envy her. Missions are an amazing time, and as missionaries we love and miss you all, but we wouldn't trade being here for anything. Mom asked about transfers and really for me not much will change. With the new training program being called as a trainer is an official 2 transfer call, so Hermana Graves and I will stay together here in Agua Fria for 6 more weeks. I'm excited and really enjoying having more time in one area. It's really only after being in an area for a while that you feel like you can really work, because then you know the people you are working with better and you also know the area. I'm hoping that things work out such that I can spend a long time here, but we'll see where I'm needed.

With this new transfer starting in two weeks we also come to an interesting point in the mission, because on June 30th President Beck leaves and President Taylor arrives. I'm both nervous and excited about the change. I have loved working with President Beck, and really appreciate his leadership of the mission, he's done so much good and he is a wonderful mission president. I'm also excited though for what President Taylor will bring. The first thing that President Taylor wants to work on is obedience, which I'm excited about. I never cease to be amazed when missionaries decide to only be obedient when it is convenient, and I'm excited to have a renewed focus on being exactly obedient. It'll be interesting though to see the difference in personality, and just what will change. I guess in a month I will know.

Mom also asked in her letter about tracting, and so I thought I'd write some about that. I have a love hate relationship with tracting. I serve in an area that has very few Spanish speakers, and so often when we go out tracting we rarely run into anyone who speaks Spanish. Often we find people for the Elders, but I've not seen a single return appointment in my four months here from tracting. In this mission there is an expectation that we are talking to 140 people each week. That's a lot of people, especially to find them tracting, we can knock doors for 2 hours and only actually talk to 8 or 9 people. We've come up pretty short of late on the number of people we are talking to because of various circumstances, but I am really hoping that soon we will be able to be out and meeting more people. One of my favorite places to talk to people is just out on the streets, especially at bus stops. Often they have time, and are more than willing to chat and listen a little. I've also learned over time that if I'm careful and really interested in what they have to say instead of just feeling like I'm trying to get out as much information as I can in 3 minutes that the time I have talking to these people goes so much better. People are so interesting, and I'm surprised at how willing they are to talk about the things they hope for in their lives and for their families. All it takes is just asking the right questions and really looking for how in that brief moment in time I can share something that might help them a little, and give them a desire to learn more.

Mom commented a little in her letter to me on just how odd it is that we are comming up on June (tomorrow!). I have to agree. June marks the "half way" point for both Trent and I. Before my mission this time seemed so long to me, it seemed like this huge abyss of time. I had no clue what to expect, and I was pretty nervous. I remember having to think about a mission in weeks because it seemed shorter to me that way. Now I'm coming up on my half way point I realize how short this time is. Each week really does go a little faster. I feel like I blink at it is Sunday again and we are calling in our numbers from the week. I am so tired all the time, which is good, because it means we are working hard, but am I ever tired. Some mornings and nights I have to pray standing up so I don't fall asleep (it's happened a few times, much to the amusement of my companions). We start each day with a huge list of people to see and things to do, and then we just work until we have to call it a night. I'm loving it. Training has also been a really good experience for me. I never really wanted to train. I'm not sure why, but I just didn't. Now I almost hope to train for the rest of my mission. I love the energy that a new missionary brings, and I love working with someone who is willing to really work hard, and is ready to try anything. A lot of missionary work is trial and error. We try something and when it doesn't work we move on and try something new. We are constantly trying to be better and to squeeze every minute out of every day, and so it's fun to have someone to work with who isn't as jaded by some of the happenings in mission life.

I thought this week I'd take the rest of my time to share a little about a family we are working with. I've never felt quite so much like my life experiences have helped me to be a good missionary than I have with this family. We are working with a family who are all members, but the adult children are working on coming back to church. We've had a lot of really good visits, and last week when we were over for dinner we invited the oldest son who is in his 30's to start meeting with us again, to try and answer his questions and help him go back to church. Now I need to preface this with some more information to help this make sense. We had an appointment fall through about 2 months ago, and ended up feeling like we needed to go by only one of the daughters was home, but we visited with her. She told us that she felt like our visit was for her, and that she had been praying for help and answers. This has happened a few times now with each of the children in the family. Well, two weeks ago this happened again and this time we went over and ran into the son. We talked to him in the door for a long time, and it came out that he was a musician. We started comparing music that we liked (mostly hispanic music) and found that we liked a lot of the same groups.

Okay, now jumping forward. We had our first actual lesson with him last night. As we started he asked us each to share why we came on a mission. It was really cool to have the oportunity to share why I decided to serve and also to hear my companions share their stories. Then he started talking about a lot of things in his life that had happened especially surrounding the time he was baptized. He told us how he struggles with some aspects of religion, and then felt like he couldn't be a normal person any more. And then he said "it was when you all came over and we talked about normal things, and I found out that you listened to spanish singers I like, and I learned that you gave up music to be here that I realized that you all are normal people". I was so touched. More so by the fact that the Lord really knows us and knows how to help people. The spanish groups are ones I remember listening to in highschool for homework. It was so cool to me that that was what he needed to hear, a little bizarre maybe, but that was what helped him be ready to think about coming back to church again. (Also I'm having a great time working with a musician... I heard a music theory rant last night and it wasn't coming out of my own mouth *grin*)

I think that's about it for the excitement here in Agua Fria. We're working hard, drinking lots of water, and sweating even more. Life is good!

Love you all,

Hermana Okeson

Another Busy Week

2011-05-23T16:22:00.003-06:00

Hello All,

What a week! This week was stressful because I can now say I have pulled off a less than a week baptism. The circumstances of this baptism were a little odd, so that's why it happened so fast, but boy did it add to the stress. The baptism was for a 13 year old whose records had been lost. This happens a lot among hispanic wards... I honestly have no clue why, but it does. When someones records are lost then two things have to happen, first, if there are three preisthood holders who were at the persons baptism they can come together and say they were all there, or the person can be baptized again. In the case of this 13 year old there weren't enough witnesses, and the brother who baptized her the first time announced fairly suddenly that he was moving back to Mexico. So, we had 6 days to pull everything together. Talk about stress. Luckily it all came together really beautifully, and we've decided that it may have been a miracle in disguise, becuase her father, who is a 10 year investigator, might be getting baptized soon. Watching his daughters baptism really moved him, so who knows, maybe her record needed to be lost so he could have a final push to be baptized.

Reyna and her family with the Bishop and the Hermano who baptized her.
Reyna, her family, and us (the missionaries).

Friday we had a Specialized Training. It was really really good. I have a love/hate relationship with all the meetings we go to. I get frusterated because it feels like we spend so much time in meetings some times and too little time being able to work, but then I have to remind myself that what we learn in the meetings should help us to work more effectively. That was certainly true of this last meeting. We talked about organization and then President had some really good comments on teaching the Plan of Salvation. I really enjoyed the whole training. I also got to play flute at the conference, which was interesting. I feel so incredibly out of shape. It probably doesn't help that the flutes I usually end up playing on are not such great instruments. It's always an adventure.

The hardest thing for me about playing is that it makes it really hard for me to focus on what I am here to do. I noticed it more this time than I did when I played at Christmas. I've really learned in the last months that I have to stay focused on the work here, I can't let myself worry about things I can't control. I can't control anything to do with flute here, and honestly, it's a lot easier for me to work and teach well when I'm not worried about it or thinking about it. The trick for me was when I played on Friday it opened up the flood gates again, and I had a hard time re-focusing for a little while. I was pretty surprised, but I think next time I play I'll be better prepared and be able to re-focus faster. The whole experience was a surprise for me, and actually made me greatful that I am serving somewhere where I don't have access to the flute or much classical music, because it really does make it easier to focus on what I am doing here and now. Who would have thought I would ever feel like that?!

This week was full of some amusing experiences that I thought you would all enjoy. I heard before being a missionary that you have to watch out sometimes for those who like to flirt with missionaries. Apparently yours truly does well with the 2 year old boys. We had dinner last Sunday with a family who have the cutest little two-year-old. At dinner he spent the entire time trying to share his food with me, and when we tried to leave he did his best to stop us. We all got a good laugh and his dad had a good time telling him to say by to his "novia" (girlfriend). We got a pretty good laugh about it too and didn't think much of it. Sunday I ended up sitting fairly near this family. About 10 minutes into sacrament meeting he made his way over and proceeded to share his puppets, books, and cookies with me for the rest of the hour. I found it pretty funny, and so did his family. Now I know who to go visit if I ever want a snack in church. :-)

I think that is about all this week. We've been working lots, and I am absolutely loving it. I hope all is well with everyone, and have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Chicharron, Baptisms and Sun Screen

2011-05-16T16:25:00.001-06:00

Hello All!

This has been quite the week. I feel like each week moves a little faster and that p-day comes a little sooner. It makes it tricky when I sit down to write because it's hard to pick out exactly what I want to talk about in such a short time. This week has been incredible. I am learning so much right now. I think being a trainer for a new missionary is so interesting. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, and hope to have the opportunity again. I'm able to see how much I've learned in my time here in Arizona, and it's also so fun to have the energy that a new missionary brings. It also is interesting because working with a new missionary helps you cut back down to the basics. I'm re-learning so many things that I had forgotten and we have really worked hard to do everything exactly as it should be done.

It's also really interesting because I see so much of myself in Hermana Graves. Being a new missionary is frusterating and exhausting. You have so much that you have to do and take in very quickly, and you feel like you will never catch up. I remember looking at both of my trainers and wondering how I would ever be able to keep up with them, or be as comfortable teaching as they were. The language is also really tough when you first come out. Mexican is not like the Spanish you learn at school. Not even close. There are a lot of words and phrases that only Mexicans use, and as a new missionary I remember really struggling with the accents and also all of the slang. I remember coming out of lessons and looking at my companion and asking what just happened, because I had only caught maybe half of what had been said. It's cool though, because in 6 months in Arizona I feel like I've become so much more comfortable. I understand what is going on, and I'm able to keep up in the conversations and usually say things how I want to. I've still got a long ways to go, but I am certainly able to see where all the hard work has gotten me to.

Now for some of the events of the week. First, Mary's baptism! It was a really wonderful baptism, and I have loved working with her. She is an incredible example to me, and I feel like she taught me far more that I ever was able to teach her. She's had an interesting life, and has loved having the opportunity to start over. Her baptism mostly went off with out any problems, although we had a mix up about the location which resulted in her going out to a chapel that was over a half hour away. Whoops. The baptism started almost a half hour late, which really just means it started on Mexican standard time. The baptism from that point on came together beautifully, and was really lovely.

The weather has also added an interesting twist to everything as now we are over 100 degrees most days atleast for a little while. I'm expecting by the end of May to be consistantly over 100 degrees. Yikes! I've started quite the sunscreen ritual, and it's helping some, although you can see quite the tan line on my feet in the picture from Mary's baptism. The members always comment on my feet, and ask if we are out biking. We actually spend a lot of time in the car and in appointments right now, so the tan line at this point is just from the small amount of time I'm spending in the sun. I'd like to get out on bike again soon, as all this food we keep getting fed, needs some way to be worked off. And speaking of food, that brings me to the next highlight of the week.

This week we were fed chicharron. *gag*. We didn't know what it was until it was too late, and then we had to eat it. The minute it ended up on my plate I had a bad feeling. It was green and slimy and looked like something from Calvin and Hobbes. We managed to get it down, but were pretty queasy for the rest of the evening. We got home and went straight to the dictionary to find out what we had eaten. Boiled residue of hog fat. 'Nuff said. Also, Hermana Graves got her first round of what really spicy Mexican food is like on Sunday. We ate with a member who knows that I can eat like a Mexican (as far as spicy food goes) so I eat what she eats, and then she makes a more tame salsa for my companions. Hna Graves looked at the salsa and decided it couldn't be that hot. She took a sip, and right as she said "oh, it's not that bad" her eyes bugged out and she turned bright red. Whoops.

This Friday we have a big conference (sometimes I feel like all we do is go to meeting, then I remind myself that it's just that the weeks keep moving by really fast). I'm pretty excited because they've asked me to play flute. I'm on the hunt right now for one, and hoping that because I'm in a richer area that I might be able to find one that is in pretty good shape. We'll see. I'm a little scared to see where my playing is at, but I just keep reminding myself that noone who has heard what I really sound like will be there. I picked up some straws on Saturday and have been blowing through straws in the car for the last few days (much to the amusement of my companions). They've been making all sorts of comments, but I'm fairly worried I might pass out from lack of air when I play. I think my lungs have shriveled up. Oh well.

I think that's about all the excitement for one week. I'm sure there is more, but it's always hard to remember things right off when I'm e-mailing. We're happy here and loving the work. I just about fall asleep every night as I'm writing in my journal, so I guess that means we're working hard.

Love you all lots!

Hermana Okeson

Texan Training

2011-05-09T16:38:00.002-06:00

Hello all!

It has been quite the week. I guess I will start with talking about my new companion. Her name is Hermana Graves, she's from Denton Texas (she put up her Texas flag before she unpacked... what is with these Texans?), but her family is living in Guatemala. Yes, we're already having fun telling people where our families live. Before her mission she was going to school at BYU Idaho studying to be a physical therapist. I am having such a good time with her! She is a wonderful missionary, and it is so fun to feel the excitement of being with someone who is brand-new to the mission. They certainly bring a very special energy and excitement to an area. I'm enjoying working with her, and although training in a trio provides some interesting moments, we're making it work.

The most interesting thing about training is that a brand new training program has just been launched world wide. Our mission is the third one to implement it, so we are being tracked very very closely. This may mean that my weekly letters for the next 12 weeks may be a little shorter as I have more things I need to be writing to President Beck. Boiled down the new training program is built to make sure that you are covering everything in a very specific order. There is a descent sized packet that we work with, that outlines the focus for each of the 12 weeks of training. Each week has study focuses and teaching focuses. For instance, this past week the focus was to let the new missionary take the leading in all finding situations and in extending baptismal invitations. This week we will be focusing heavily on the first missionary lesson (the restoration) and also on techniques on how to begin teaching. Also we have an extra hour of studying each day. That has probably been the most interesting part. For the 12 weeks of training you have the normal one hour of personal and language study, but then also we have 2 hours of companion study. I really like it because it provides a chance to practice a lot of things each day before we leave the apartment. I remember when I was trained always feeling a little hesatant because I didn't quite know what to expect, but with the extra study time we've been able to try to practice through a lot of the situations that we will run into each day. It'll be interesting to see how the program works as we get farther into it.

This week has also been crazy because we have had lots and lots of work here in Peoria. Right now we have 3 people preparing for baptism so that keeps us quite busy. The first one is Mary, she's being baptized this Saturday. We're so incredibly excited for her. She actually found us, and we only started working with her a week or so ago. She's had some interesting experiences in her life that have prepared her very well to take this step. Right now we're hoping her husband (who is currently living and working in Mexico) will be able to get things pulled together fast enough that he can come too. That's the goal anyways. The second two who are preparing for baptism are Leonila and Erik. Leonila is a single mom, and Erik is her 13 year old son. We absolutly love working with them. Leonila is just fascinating to teach, although sometimes she keeps us on our toes, because she comes up with really really good questions. They are preparing to be baptized on the 21st.

I thought I would end by telling about our sleeping arrangement fiasco. It actually turned out fairly comical, but at the time didn't seem that way. Monday when we got the phone call that we would be recieving another sister we were told that some Elders would bring over bunkbeds and get them set up for us. Tuesday at the transfer meeting we were then informed of the same thing, and told that we would have everything dropped of, and when we got home we would have beautiful new bunkbeds waiting for us. Tuesday night we got home, walked in the garage, and saw mattresses and bunkbed parts galore. It was about 9:30pm and so we knew that there was no way we were getting bunkbeds that night. We scoped out the couches, and slept on those. We went by height, and so I got the longest couch, which was still quite a short couch. I don't think anyone really slept much. Wednesday we had some Elders come by to put the couch together, but they discovered they were short on parts. Whoops. Again, we were told when we got home, we'd have bunkbeds. This time though I was smarter (or so I thought) I called those Elders at about 7pm to check that they had put them together. they told me no, because they couldn't find the parts they needed, then they told me what we needed to put it together and to call around and ask some people in the area. So, I got to test out my mechanical Spanish skills. Huge flop. I barely knew what I was asking for in English, and "that twisty whatzamajiger that fits on the srewy thing inside the wood" doesn't really translate over so well. I think I confused the better part of the ward. We were smarter on Wednesday though, and pulled the mattresses into our room and slept on those. It worked farily well, although I was far less than pleased when I woke up and found Molly (the dog) sleeping on top of me. I don't think she will try that again. I think I scared her as much as she scared me. Well, finally, Thursday morning we ended up with bunkbeds. We were so happy to get them.

I think that is about all for this week. Have a wonderful week. Thanks all for writing me!

Love you lots,

Hermana Okeson

Ps. the picture is from dinner Wednesday night, one of the sisters made really yummy homemade pizza, this is from just before it was cooked.

Transfers

2011-05-02T15:41:00.001-06:00

Hi All,

Well here is the news you've all been waiting for. Okay maybe not, but we've sure had a week of lots of speculation. Everyone knew there were 4 Spanish sisters coming in this transfer so there were a lot of people wondering what would happen. At about 9am this morning we got a phone call from President Beck. On transfer Monday, President only calls for one reason. He only calls if someone has been called to be a trainer. I've been called to train a missionary straight out of the MTC. I'm super nervous, but also really really excited. We'll be in a trio here in Agua Fria which will be interesting, but I think is actually a huge blessing. The work here has really really picked up and we've been needing a way to go on splits, and this makes it easy since we'll only need one more sister who can come with us. Both Hermana Aydelotte and I were very happy to hear that we would be staying here in Agua Fria. It's always really hard leaving an area, and I know I wasn't ready to leave, and Hna Aydelotte only has 6 weeks left, so she didn't want to go anywhere either. Tomorrow at 1pm I have to go to a trainers meeting, and then tomorrow evening I will meet the hermana that I get to train. I guess you'll all have to wait until next week to hear anything about her.

This week was a really good week. We've spent a lot of time teaching. We spend almost all of our days running from one appointment to the next, which has made getting out and contacting quite interesting, because we simply don't have time for it. We're working on that though, and hopefully we'll start making things work a little better. I think the thing that has been most interesting here in Agua Fria is how much time we've spent working with couples with marital problems. Of the people we visit the most about 3/4 are really struggling. Sometimes as we're over working with them I feel like the blind leading the blind. We've had some really cool experiences though, and it's been so amazing to see the changes in lives. We have one couple who we are working with where she was making plans to leave him and go back to Mexico. After a lot of work, and a whole lot of prayer things are doing better with them. And, the exciting part is that they're getting married. We're pretty excited, although the wedding won't be until at least July at this rate, which Hna Aydelotte is pretty bummed about, because she really would have loved to be there. Oh well.

(I forgot my journal and in the craziness of this morning didn't think to put a list of things to write about together like normal, so sorry if this letter is all over the place)

Friday we had a mission conference. Well, a half mission conference. There are 200 missionaries here in Phoenix, and that's just too many to cram into one conference effectively, so they split us in half, and all those outside of the valley meet in the morning and then those of us here in the valley meet in the afternoon. It was a very exciting conference. We're at count down time right now, because in 2 months we will be getting a new mission president. President Beck is determined to have the mission in the best shape it has ever been before President Taylor gets here. He's been talking to him on the phone regularly and they've decided what things we're going to focus on in the next 2 months. A lot of what is happening is President is trying to make sure everything is clean and very orderly. We got a lot of instruction about being organized in our work. We also got instruction on a new baptismal calendar we are using, which was really cool. I guess a mission down in Texas has been using it to great success, and so they are starting it here. We've not had much time to try it out, but from what I've seen I really really like it.

Saturday was also a really good day. Hna Aydelotte and I got permission to go to the temple down in Mesa. Unlike Trent, we don't have a temple in our mission (although it's only about 40 minutes outside of the mission) and so we have to get special permission to go, and then we can only go every 3 months. We had a lovely trip down with one of the sisters from the ward. I thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent there, and to my great excitement Hna Ayala and her companions had also recieved permission to go at the exact same time. I was so excited to get to see her again. She goes home tomorrow, so I probably won't see her again until after my mission. Also, I ran into two friends from college. That was a little bizzare. One lived near me my freshman year, and the other was a vocal performance major who I had taken classes with. It was like two worlds were colliding. But it was cool to see them, and I really enjoyed telling them that I am a missionary. I think that was the best part, was telling them I'm a missionary and just how much I love this.

I think that's about all for this week. Sorry I'm a little frazzled. I'm sure I'll have lots and lots to tell you about next week.

Have a wonderful week all!

Hermana Okeson

Pictures

2011-04-27T20:17:00.002-06:00

Promised Pictures: Spanish Speaking Sisters and a few English SistersPacking Day
Sister Wells of Michigan
Molly the dog.

Crazy Week

2011-04-25T17:04:00.002-06:00

Hello All!

Well, this past week makes for the craziest week of my mission. Easily. Everything will make more sense if I start at the beginning. About two weeks ago we got a phone call warning us that we would be moving apartments, we figured it would happen at transfers the first week of May, and so we didn't think too much of it. Monday we had a normal p-day that was mainly me sleeping a lot, as I was still trying to fight off a cold. When we got home from running errands I slept until we had to leave again for lessons in the evening. It helped a lot and I felt much better.

Tuesday we had the Sisters meeting, which was wonderful. There are about 30 sister missionaries here in the mission, and it was fun to have everyone together. Well, it was fun to see all the Spanish sisters... there's not much mixing between languages, especially because we have a few Spanish sisters who are far more comfortable in Spanish than English, and we really don't see much of the English sisters as most of them serve outside of Phoenix, and most of us serve here in Phoenix. It was a really good meeting and both President and Sister Beck spoke and I enjoyed listening to them.

After the meeting is when the fun really started for the week. We got a phone call right after the meeting from Elder Cherry, the housing coordinator for the mission. He told us that a new home had been located for us and that we needed to get over there as soon as possible because we would need to move in before the 30th. We were told we were moving in with an older sister, who lives at the very bottom corner of our area. Minus the location (now we drive a good half hour every day to get to anywhere) we were very excited and scheduled to go meet her on Wednesday morning. The rest of Tuesday was pretty normal, with lots of appointments and such. The work in this area has really really picked up and so we are teaching a lot, which I love.

Wednesday rolled around and at 10:00am as we were starting to study Spanish we got another phone call from Elder Cherry, telling us that we now needed to be moved in my Sunday night at the latest. That left us just a little stressed, as we had exchanges scheduled for Friday and so it meant we would probably have to move on Thursday. We canceled everything for two days (well, almost everything, we made it to two appointments on Wednesday), and after meeting the sister we would be living with we went back to the apartment to pack. The Elders in our area were going to move into our old apartment, and they are English Elders, so everything Spanish had to go. Spanish missionaries had lived in our apartment for years and years and years. We had to go through everything, especially because our new living arrangement is very very small. We spent all day going through documents and supplies and packing and cleaning. I attached a picture to show my handiwork and to give you all an idea of how much stuff we were working with... and what's in the picture is only part of it.

Thursday we had meetings we couldn't move and so after the meetings the Zone Leaders followed us home, we packed everything in their truck and drove the 20 minutes to our new home. Then at 4pm we frantically began to unpack, because by 6pm we had to leave to go on exchanges, because the area that I was going to was over an hour away. We got mostly unpacked before we left, but there were still some loose ends to finish up when I got back Friday night.

Friday I spent the day working in Wickenburg. Wickenburg is a town right out of the Old West cowboy movies. I think I saw more people in cowboy hats and boots than ever in my life, and there was cactus and tumbleweed everywhere. It was quite the change as I've spent my whole time here in Arizona in the city.

Friday I also made an interesting discovery. I discovered that somewhere in all the moving and packing and unpacking and everything else, that I had somehow managed to hurt my foot. More specifically my second toe on my left foot. I never realized just how much one uses their second toe. I have no clue what I did or how it happened, all I know is it hurts a lot to walk, and running, jumping or anything else is completely out of the question. I feel completely ridiculous. Who hurts their second toe on their left foot? And more specifically, what do you do for a hurt toe? I suspect I would just get told to stay off of it and so I've decided to just tough it out and see what happens. It was feeling better yesterday and so I tried to test my luck this morning for morning exercise and discovered that in fact it still hurts quite a lot. Oh well.

Besides the random hurt toe, I had a marvelous time in Wickenburg. I spent the day working with Hna Wells, the other Spanish sister missionary here from Michigan. She's from the Ann Arbour area, and also went to BYU. She's a studio art major, and about as far along as me in her program, so we decided that we've probably run into each other somewhere in the HFAC since we both were hermits there in our pre-mission lives. Small world. She's been here in Arizona for 4 months but has 6 months before that. She started her mission in El Salvador, got sick, came home to get better, and got sent here to finish her mission. It was fun to meet the people she is teaching out in Wickenburg, and we had some really lovely lessons.

Saturday, all things considered, was actually a fairly normal day. We finished getting settled in and unpacked and finally got everything organized. We also got to have lunch with the Sister we are living with and got to know her a little better, which was nice. Also, we got to know our new roommate. I attached a picture. Her name is Molly, and she is quite thrilled to have more people to pet her. Are you jealous Morgan?

Sunday was also more or less normal. We spent a good deal of time calling everyone and their dog on Saturday to invite them to church. We figured with it being Easter and all more people would want to come. Silly us, we forgot that in Mexican culture any excuse to party is a good excuse to party, and I got many replies of "We can't make it tomorrow, it's Easter." ??? The first time it happened both Hna Aydelotte and I were a little stunned.

We managed to have lots of people in church anyways, most of whom were there for the first time, which we were very very excited about. It meant that I spent most of church running like crazy (who ever said Sunday is always a day of rest never had a Sunday as a missionary) especially because Hna Aydelotte was playing piano for most of church, and also got pulled into the Primary to help out with the music. That meant that I spent most of the time running between people trying to make sure everyone had someone to sit with, and that I had talked to everyone we needed to. Hna Aydelotte and I have the goal to greet everyone every Sunday, so that alone keeps us busy, but then add anything else, and I come out of church feeling completely exhausted.

Trent talked in his letter about transfers, and so I thought I would comment on them as they are coming next week. We have a lot of Spanish sisters going home, and so there are all sorts of rumors about what will happen to the Spanish sisters next week. Everyone is convinced that a new area will be opened, and also that some sister will go there to flush-train (meaning go into an area that she's never served in with a companion who is fresh from the MTC and needs to be shown how everything goes). The current rumor is that we are getting 4 new sisters, which would be awesome, but means that there will be a lot of changes. Now you can all sit on the edge of your seats for another week and wonder what will happen. Of course at most next week I can tell you if I'm staying or going, because I won't know anything else until Tuesday after I've already written... but surprises are good, right?

Also, with the move there was a little mix up with the mail, so if anyone got mail returned to them, don't worry, keep writing to the same address you've written to. I think most of it made it to us, but someone may have slipped through.

I think that's just about all for this week. It was a crazy week, but also a good week. There are a lot of really really good things happening here in Agua Fria, and with transfers coming both Hna Aydelotte and I are nervous that one of us won't get to be here to see everything fall together. We'll see what happens next week.

Have a wonderful week. I love you all lots!
Hermana Okeson

PS. I will post the pictures Nicole sent next week when I am back on my own computer.

100 Degrees in April

2011-04-18T16:37:00.001-06:00

Hello All!

This week has been quite an interesting one. On Wednesday I started feeling like I was losing my voice, and by Thursday morning I was in the middle of quite the head cold. This makes for the first (and hopefully last) time I've ever been sick in 100 degree weather. I think Arizona has ruined me. Apparently this is the time to get sick though, as many of the people we work with have told me that right now there are lots of people who have colds... I'm still a little surprised by the idea of having a cold when it's over 90 degrees every day. It really just means we are keeping our visits very, very short right now, I'm taking lots of cold medicine, and trying to stay away from people.

Besides being sick it's been a pretty good week. Friday we had Zone conference, which was very fun. I always enjoy the extra instruction and the chance to learn, although often it is hard not to come out of those meetings feeling like there are a million things I need to do better. Each meeting has a theme, and this one focused on church attendance. I really enjoyed learning about the purpose of church attendance and how it really can bless out investigators. Each time we have Zone conference (about every 90 days, or every other transfer) it runs all morning and into the afternoon, and so a ward is asked to prepare lunch. This time my ward, Agua Fria, was asked to prepare lunch for the missionaries. Personally I think they should always ask the Mexican wards to prepare lunch for us. Lunch was really, really, really good. It was also fun, because the night before Hna Aydelotte and I were able to help with some of the prep work. We spent a little over an hour over at a member’s home rolling flautas (little tacos) with their family. It was quite the party. All the kids and grandkids were there and everyone was helping with something. When we showed up to help we were surprised to see cars lining the street, and wondered where the party was... turns out it was just that everyone was there to help with preparing the food.

Saturday was also really cool. All of this past week, and all of this week there is a huge Easter pageant going on in Mesa. It depicts the life and ministry of Christ from the New Testament, and it's incredible. This past Friday and Saturday were the two performances in Spanish. As missionaries we can go so long as we take and investigator with us. Some things had fallen through and it looked like we weren't going to be able to go, and then on Friday everything slid into place, and someone was able to pull some strings for us, and we got last minute permission. The pageant was incredible. I really, really enjoyed it. This pageant is the oldest of the church pageants, and from what it looked like to me, the biggest (although I'm not completely sure about that one). There were hundreds of performers on the stage, and the whole performance was really very impressive.

Saturday afternoon we also had a rather comical experience. As we were out tracting, we knocked into an old folks’ home. They invited us in and we were able to share a short Easter message, which was quite nice. At the end though, they requested that we sing a song for them. We sing a fair amount, and so that wasn't the hard part, the hard part was that they all spoke English. I've not sung in English in 7 months. We picked a fairly easy song that we both thought we would remember in English... not so. We didn't even make it all the way through the first verse. Afterwards as we were walking back to our car I decided to try and see what songs I do remember in English. I can't sing a single church song all the way through in English. That said, I can't sing a single church song all the way through in Spanish either, but I was still pretty surprised to see that I've switched so much over into Spanish.

Tomorrow we have a huge training for all of the sister missionaries in the mission. I'm really, really excited. It's only a two hour training, but it'll be the first time I'll actually be able to meet many of the English sisters in the mission. Almost all of the Spanish speaking sisters are in Phoenix, so I've met all of them. But most of the English sisters are outside of Phoenix, so I've not run into many of them. It should be a really good conference.

That's about it for this week. We've officially been around 100 degrees multiple days this week. Even the locals think it is a really, really warm "spring" (to me anything over 85 degrees doesn't count as spring...). We've been drinking lots and lots of water, and I'm starting to understand why my companion is glad that if she has to go home, it'll be in the beginning of June, and before it gets too much hotter. Luckily people are pretty understanding and we get lots and lots of offers for water and such, which is always a life saver.

Have a wonderful week!

Hermana Okeson

Busy Week

2011-04-11T16:33:00.006-06:00

Hello All,

This week has flown by. This morning as I was starting to think about what I would put in my letter this week I was amazed by how much had happened. First, and probably the most trivial, I learned how to make tamale's on Saturday. We had an appointment fall through and decided to stop by a less active member who lived near the appointment. We showed up in time to eat tamale's from the first batch and to learn how to make them for the second batch. Hna Gutierrez has a friend who is going through some rough times and so they decided to make and sell tamale's every weekend to try and help raise some money. We're going back this upcoming Saturday to help make the masa (the dough part) and to learn how to make the salsa for the meat. I'm pretty excited because her tamale's are the best I've had my whole mission. YUM! (I attached pictures from the tamale's, I hope you enjoy them!)

Okay, on to more things that don't involve food. Our most memorable event this week was a lesson we had Thursday night. We've been teaching a family where all but the husband are members. There are a few things holding him up, even though he's been going to church regularly for six months, and most people think he is a member. We decided to take Presidente Lopez over for our appointment on Thursday. Saturday at Rossy's baptism I talked with him and asked him to come and he was excited to come help us out. Presidente Lopez is amazing. I love working with him, he's only been a member of the church for 14 years, but he really loves the gospel and he loves helping people out. It was really cool to have him at the lesson, he was able to relate really well to this family and to their particular difficulties. There is still a lot to work out but after being at a standstill with this family for 3 months we're finally moving forward again.

The lesson with Presidente Lopez was also interesting because to me it highlighted something that I really struggle with in Mexican culture. Mexicans talk over each other. Conversations between Mexicans can involve both talking at the same time and, as far as I can tell, it's who ever out lasts the other wins and then is able to direct the conversation for 5 more minutes. I'd known that I struggled with that part of the culture, but didn't realize how much until we took Presidente Lopez. He was really able to direct the lesson in ways we never can, because I always feel super rude talking over my investigators. I'm not exactly sure how to work on improving that one, because I feel like I need to listen to everything they have to say, but when we do that often our visits end up being far too long and also far too off topic. I'm sure I'll come home talking over everyone and have to learn how to wait my turn again...

Other news, we're still working with a whole lot of kids. They're all from families who have not been to church in a long time for various reasons. It's interesting because while we are teaching the kids, it is the parents who need the most help. That always makes for interesting lessons. In the case of one family, they are afraid to come back to church because I guess there was some huge argument before they left, and then in the case of the other the Mom keeps going back and forth on whether she thinks her son is ready to be baptized. In the case of the second we had a really good visit with Mom on Saturday night, and hopefully we can start moving forward again. Our other family we are working with has middle school and high school age kids, which is also interesting, but far easier for me to teach. I do a lot better with older kids than with the 9 year olds. Teenagers have a lot more things to work through, and often have more questions, but I have an easier time keeping their attention that I do with the younger kids we work with.

We also had a huge miracle on Saturday. I had written about a month ago about having to drop an investigator named Carmensa. Both Hna Aydelotte and I really have prayed a lot for her over the last month, with no apparent success. We stopped by again on Friday and as usual no one answered the door. I'm not sure if no one was home or what. Well, Saturday afternoon we got a phone call from the sister in our ward who we had taken to the lesson with Carmensa over a month ago (the one where we had to pray over and over again to figure out who to take). Turns out Carmensa had had some rough times and just needed a break from us. Carmensa called this Sister in our ward on Saturday and they ended up talking for a really long time and she was able to answer a lot of her questions. Long story short, Carmensa came to sacrament meeting on Sunday, and we are starting to teach her again.

I had an interesting experience on Saturday that I thought I would share. We were over meeting with a less active Sister and some how it came up that I play flute. When she asked if I had it and I explained that I had been asked not to bring it she was very vocal in her opinions of that decision and that I couldn't have my flute. What surprised me was that as she was listing off why she thought I needed it, I realized that I am really happy that I don't have it here. That was a shock. I love that I can completely focus on being a missionary and working hard. I really have nothing to distract me here, and I love that. I still struggle some times, but not nearly as much as at the beginning, and mostly I just feel peace that everything will be fine when I get home. I am loving my time here. Each day goes by so quickly, I'm always amazed as I find myself writing you all again each p-day, because it really only feels like it's been a day or two, not a whole week. I love the people we work with, and I am so happy each day. Missionary work is really, really cool.

Have a wonderful week!

Love you all,

Hermana Okeson

The Errand of Angels

2011-04-04T16:49:00.005-06:00

Dear Friends and Family,

This week has been incredible. It has been full of really cool experiences. We've had multiple experiences where we've shown up at just the right time to help out. The first one happened on Thursday night. When we were planning on Wednesday night we felt like we needed to go by a family we've been teaching at 8pm. It was a little weird because we'd just gone over to visit them, but we decided we'd go anyways. We drove over Thursday night at 8 and knocked on the door. When they let us in the wife explained that 15 minutes earlier they had recieved a phone call from Mexico that her husbands youngest sister had just passed away from Leukemia. She was 23 and has a little boy who is 4 years old. We spent the rest of the evening with them and as we were leaving they told us that they wanted to call us when they got the call from Mexico, but didn't want to bother us becuase they figured we would be at other visits. It was so cool to see how the Lord already knew that they were going to need extra support, and I was very humbled to be able to help.

We had another similar experience Friday morning, where all of our plans for the morning fell through and we felt impressed that we needed to go check on a Sister who lives in our area. She has a lot on her plate, and we ended up being there at the perfect time to help her with some rather pressing problems. We ended up being with her for almost 3 hours that morning, and it was a huge learning experience for me. I think in those 3 hours I learned more about the importance of making wise decisions than in any other three hours of my life. I also learned about how our decisions affect others, becuase the problem we dealt with Friday morning was a result of someone else's poor choices, but it was affecting many other people, including, and especially, this Sister.

The last big experience like that happened last night. It's cool to see how as missionaries we are often the first ones to get calls when people are in need. We got a call from a young sister in the ward who had had a really really rough weekend and she asked us to come by. We moved some things around and told her that we would come by in the evening around 7:30. When we got there we were surprised when this young sisters mother answered the door looking pretty shaken up. Her daughter had left, but it was readily apparent that the weekend had been rough on her too. We stayed and chatted with her, and at the end of the visit she told us that she thought that our visit was actually for her, and not her daughter, and that she had really been needing support that day.

Experiences like these are some of the things I have grown to love as a missionary. Friday morning's was rough, and I would never choose to be in that situation again, but in each situation I was very greatful that the Lord had sent us to help. It's moments like those that I know I will always treasure, especially when we hear the people we work with say "I knew you would come". We get that a lot, and each time it makes me realize how carefully Heavenly Father is watching over each of his children.

The other really cool experience this week was on Saturday. Saturday afternoon I was able to go back to South Phoenix for Rossy Romero's baptism. To date I think that was the happiest moment of my mission. I can't begin to describe how much time and energy my companions and I poured into Rossy and her family. She was the only one to be baptized on Saturday, but I am confident that more will follow. The changes I saw on Saturday were incredible. I was so happy to be able to be there to support her. It was also fun to be able to see some of the members from the ward and also to see Hermana Ayala. I sure miss her. She's going home in four weeks, and I expect that Saturday was the last time I'll see her on my mission.

We've also had some really cool experiences with some of the families we are teaching that are progressing to baptism. We're working with a lot of families who have not been to church in a while and want to come back. Each family has kids that are over 8 and want to be baptized and so we are working to help get them ready. The Lopez family have two sons ages 9 and 13 who we are working with, and as of last Thursday are now preparing to be baptized on May 4th. We're very excited for them, and I've had a good time working with their family. The other family, the Gutierrez family, is a family we just started teaching this past week. They have a son that is 15 and reminds me a lot of Todd, and I've had a good time getting to know him. They also have a daughter who is 13. She's quite shy, so I don't know her as well yet, but we're going over on Friday for a girls night while Hno Gutierrez and Caleb are out on a camping/fishing trip. I'm pretty excited.

Okay, I think that's about all for this week. I love you all!

Hermana Okeson

Happy Monday

2011-03-28T16:48:00.000-06:00

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been an interesting week. We've had a lot of hard things happen and lost a lot of our investigators. The hardest one for me was loosing Carmenza, she and I really liked each other from the start, and I miss teaching her. I'm hoping that if we give her some time we can start going over again. It was an interesting week because while we had a lot of hard things happen in Agua Fria, I got amazing news this weekend from Aguila. One investigator who I had taught for my whole time there got baptized last Saturday, something I was not expecting at all. When I left we thought it would be months and months before she would be ready. The other exciting news from Aguila was that Rossy and Reuben got married, and if all goes well with getting permission, I will be at Rossy's baptism on Saturday. I am so incredibly excited. It really helped put things in perspective for me after this week. We can't choose the timing. As a missionary it's amazing to me how fast I love the people I work with. After just the first visit I would do anything to help them. But sometimes they just need time. So, while it was really hard to see some of our investigators leave, I'm confident that with time we'll be able to start working with them again.

I've gotten some questions about the weather so I thought I'd answer, yeah, it's getting warm, but my companion constantly reminds me that this is nothing. Whenever I start to moan about it being warm she reminds me that I will be here this August when it hits 120. Yikes! I'm working on a pretty awesome farmers tan. I wear the same pair of shoes every day becuase the tan line is so dark that all my other shoes look funny. I also have quite the watch tan line on my wrist. For now though the heat really hasn't been that bad. We've actually cooled off a little in the last week, and I had to laugh when it was 65 one morning and I ran back into our appartment to grab a jacket. I think I may be ruined.

Mom asked a good question, and since I struggled coming up with things to write about I thought I would try and answer it.

"What is the best thing about serving at this time?"

I feel like I'm finally really getting used to being a missionary. When you first start a mission you are really excited and full of lots of energy, but you spend a lot of time not knowing what you are doing. I still don't know what I'm doing, but I've gotten more comfortable with that. I've learned that doing missionary work is a lot like Nephi going for the brass plates. He had a plan, get the plates from Laban and he started heading into Jerusalem but then he says he was "lead by the spirit not knowing before hand the things which [he] should do". Missionary work is a lot like that. We often go into appointments with a plan to teach a certain lesson and we know what we want to help our investigators do, but often we have no clue how to make it all come together. In so many lessons something will come up, a doubt or concern and then we have to be quick on our feet to answer and to follow the spirit. I've been amazed to see that as I've really worked to trust that often I find that the words aren't mine. I see that especially in my Spanish. I've been amazed over the last few weeks in particular by how much I understand. When I first started my mission I was constantly writing down words and phrases that I didn't know, I still do that now, but not nearly as much. I've seen in a few lessons in particular where my Spanish was far better than it is on it's own. There have been many times where I feel like I'm speaking English and I understand like I'm speaking English, but I know it's all in Spanish. It actually leaves me scared for after my mission. I'm scared to see how my Spanish really is when I'm not a missionary.

Other things of interest... I sang in the ward choir this past week. That was an interesting experience. It reminded me just how impatient I am about music things. I guess I still have room to grow there. Even after being away from music for 6 months I'm still just as picky as ever. :-)

I think that's about it. There's not much to write about from this week. Hopefully next week I'll have more. We're going to a museum today with some of the other Sisters, and I'm pretty excited. I'm not sure how they'll deal with my need to read everything, but we'll see how it goes.

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

6 more weeks in Agua Fria

2011-03-21T16:43:00.000-06:00

Hello all!

Well, the first order of business is transfer news. President didn't move any of the Spanish Sisters. We're all staying put. We have one new sister coming in this transfer and she is headed down to South Phoenix (the area where I started) and she will be part of a trio. I'm excited to have another 6 weeks to be here in Agua Fria. After the first 6 weeks in an area you start to finally get names down and know who people are, so I didn't really want to have to go start over again. Also Hna Aydelotte have gotten a lot more used to working with each other. We have very different work styles, and so the first few weeks were really rough. We've made progress though, and it'll be good to keep moving forward.

Work is starting to move forward here in Agua Fria, slowly but surely. We're working on trying to help investigators keep commitments and also to get the members more involved. We've really seen the blessings as we've tried to have members in our lessons, as they are able to support the investigators, and the members also feel better as they are able to be more actively involved in missionary work. We also finally have an investigator on date for baptism. We've been teaching Tristan, a nine year old whose mother recently came back to church for the first time in many many years, and he told us at our last visit that he wants to be baptized on his birthday, May 4th. We're pretty excited and his mom is too. We've got some things to work out, but we're glad to be moving forward with him. Our other investigators are also moving forward and we've found some new people to teach in the last week. It's also been interesting as both Hna Aydelotte and I felt that we needed to start working in an area where neither of us had worked before. It's at the northern most end of our area (we drive 6-8 miles just to get to where we start working when we work up there) and because of the distance no Spanish missionaries had worked up there in at least the last year or so. Besides running up the miles on our car, we're excited to be working in a new area and we're excited to see who we find up there.

I've shared previously that we often eat dinner with the members. My years of eating Indian curries and such have paid off, as all the Mexicans are amazed at how hot I like my food. I've eaten all sorts of salsas, and now that the members catch on that I can eat spicy they are feeding me more "normal" Mexican food. It's only come back to bite me once, and that was when I sneezed while eating something with Habenera peppers. That hurt. Most of the food they feed us usually is a variation of meat, tortillas, beans and rice. So when I eat lunch at home I've been eating lots and lots of salads to try and still get some veggies. We've also got members lined up for the next few p-days to teach us how to make different foods. One sister is going to teach us how to make tortillas, another is going to teach us how to make Postole (my favorite Mexican soup) and the Bishop's wife is going to teach us how to make empenadas (a Chilean specialty). I'm pretty excited.

Lets see, other points of interest... I'm making progress on my Chilean accent. At least while I'm with Chileans. I do a pretty good job trying to mimic the Chileans while I'm with them, but the minute I leave and start talking with Mexicans again I sound like a Mexican. Yesterday we had dinner with the Bishop's family and they are all from Chile, so I had plenty of time to practice. Also, it was fun to listen to them talk, because the Bishop is one of the oldest members of the church from Chile. He joined when he was a young man, and was a member of the first branch in Chile. I hadn't realized how young the church was down there. He also told us that now Chile has a higher percentage of LDS than any other country, with about 20 percent of the population being LDS.

Saturday night we went to the mission farewell for one of the young men in the ward. It was quite the party. The family went all out, and cooked Barbakoa, a specialty from the part of Mexico they are from. It's grilled lamb, and it was really really good. At the dinner I talked to a member of the ward who told us about his experience joining the church. The missionaries taught him for a long time, and he would mostly argue with them until one Elder finally just asked him if he just wanted to argue or if he believed any of it was true. That Elder baptized him the next Saturday.

The final cool experience from this week happened last Friday. All of our plans fell through. Our back up plans for our back up plans fell through. Nothing at all was working out, and it had been a long frustrating day. At 8 pm both Hna Aydelotte and I were tired and not sure what to do since everything we had planned had fallen through. We prayed and decided to go check on a former investigator. We went over and no one was home. Then we remembered a sister from the English ward who lives in the same area. We felt like we needed to go over. Angie is 22 and often comes out to help the missionaries. We stopped by, and as we got there she told us that her Bishop had just told her she should think about going on a mission. We spent an hour with her answering her questions. It made me think of the Sister Missionaries on Temple Square who stopped and talked to me over a year ago when I first decided to go on a mission. It was cool to feel like in some way I was giving back, I feel so incredibly grateful for those Sister Missionaries who talked to me, and it was cool to be able to offer the same help that they had offered me. (I think I wrote about it on my blog, it should show up around thanksgiving of 2009).

I love you all, have a wonderful week!

Hermana Okeson

Happy 6 Months!

2011-03-14T16:33:00.000-06:00

Dear Friends and Family,

This week was really really cool. Well, in all but temperature. We've started hitting 90 degrees, and I'm starting to wonder exactly how I will survive this summer. I'm drinking more water each day, and have started figuring out ways to try and keep my water cold longer. We still have almost 30 more degrees to go, which to me is a little terrifying, but I'm sure I'll survive. Somehow. Also, tomorrow I hit my 6 month mark. I can't believe how fast these first six months have flown. I wasn't really paying attention until my companion made a comment last week, and then I realized that I really was coming up on 6 months.

I thought I would share a few cool experiences from this week. The first one happened last Wednesday. Each week when we do our weekly planning we do something called "windows of heaven". Effectively we set times and places where we are going to be, and then we trust that the Lord will put someone in our path who needs us. I've seen a lot of really cool things happen as we've done windows of heaven, but the coolest was this last Wednesday. My companion and I had both felt very strongly that we needed to go to a certain street and we would be there for two hours. We cover a very large area and so often we don't know what we are signing up for. That was the case this time. We ended up in an over 65 community. Usually seniors are not to happy when we knock on their doors, and have no problem letting us know. In about 20 minutes we'd covered half of the area we had decided to visit, and both Hna Aydelotte and I were really confused. We started making back up plans to go visit the near by streets, because at the rate we were going we would have finished that whole road in about 45 minutes. At about that point we knocked on the door, and not only was the person who answered the door nice to us, but she invited us in! It turns out she was a house bound member from one of the English wards, and was just thrilled that we were in her area. We chatted with her for a while and then as we were getting ready to leave she asked if we had talked to her neighbor. We told her no one was home. She then told us that her neighbor was an older Hispanic lady, who didn't speak any English. Then she told us that the children and grandchildren of this lady were member of the church, but to the best of her knowledge this woman wasn't. We're now working on finding this woman, and hopefully we'll get the chance to teach her. By the time we finished visiting with the Sister and knocking the doors on the street it was exactly two hours. That really taught me that the Lord takes care of everything, down to the amount of time we are in an area.

The other cool experience happened on Friday and Saturday. On Friday while we were planning we felt like we needed to find a member to take with us to an appointment with one of our investigators. We'd tried multiple times to take members, but for one reason or another things always fell through. As we were talking we decided that maybe it was that we were trying to take the wrong members. So we prayed. I think we prayed over 15 names. Each time we never felt right. As we had started praying I thought of a sister in the ward who I had only met a few times and didn't know very well. I didn't really pay attention because it was a sister who, as far as we knew, never went out with the missionaries. Eventually after going through what felt like every name in our ward both my companion and I started talking about this particular sister. We prayed and knew we had to invite her, even though we both were a little nervous. We called Friday night and this Sister moved everything to come with us. Not only that but she ended up having so many things in common with our investigator. She was able to help more than we've ever been able to, and it was incredible to see how the Lord really knows each of his children. It was also a bit of humble pie for Hna Aydelotte and I, as we had both thought of this sister, but chosen to ignore the prompting at first.

I've commented before on the fiesta atmosphere in the Hispanic community, and I thought I would share about the Relief Society dinner we went to on Thursday. This past week was the 155th anniversary of the organization of the Relief Society. Anything is a good reason for a party in Latino culture, and this was no different. There was a massive dinner, party games, and a pinata. It was quite the party. I've attached pictures as proof that I wasn't exaggerating. And the Relief Society got a kick out of watching the "grandota missionera" trying to hit the pinata. They do it a little differently, and instead of having so many swings or anything like that, everyone sings a song and you have until the song finishes to try and hit the pinata. This Saturday the ward is also throwing a huge pachanga (the word in Spanish/Mexican for a fiesta that is too big to be a fiesta) for an Elder who is leaving on his mission next Wednesday. I'm expecting a lot of food, two or more pinatas (one for the kids and one for the adults), and a bouncy castle... because every single event with Mexicans has to have a brinca brinca (bouncy castle). There's even one family here who owns one and keeps it in their back yard where it gets very very regular use.

Transfers are coming next week (crazy!) but I think we'll probably stay put. I'm not really expecting any changes. President likes leaving missionaries in the same area for a really long time (6-9 months for Sisters and 12-15 months for Elders) even though you probably wouldn't be able to guess that from my first few transfers. This next transfer should be a good one, and I'm quite excited. We've found a lot of really wonderful people in the last six weeks, and I'm really starting to love it here in Agua Fria.

I think that's about all for now. I appreciate all the letters and prayers.

Love you all,

Hermana Okeson

Spring in Pheonix

2011-03-07T15:19:00.002-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, after moaning last week about it still being winter, I think spring has finally arrived. We've been sitting in the mid 70's to 80's all week and it's been really really nice. Hermana Aydelotte keeps reminding me not to be too excited because it means that in the next month or so we'll start breaking 100. Yikes! It's been an interesting week. As I said in my last letter we had a mission conference this past Wednesday. It focused on the Book of Mormon, since by that point everyone had finished their 60 day read of the Book of Mormon. It was very fascinating to listen to the different experiences and things people learned. The focus was on the fact that each person can have a very personal experience with the Book of Mormon. There were many wonderful examples given, but I thought I would share a very humorous one. President asked people to give example of key things they learned from this reading of the Book of Mormon. About half way through an Elder raised his hand and told about how one morning he was reading in 2 Nephi 27. He said he was really tired that morning, and after reading verse 4 of the chapter he fell asleep. He then said when he woke up he read verse five which reads:

"For behold, the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep. For behold, ye have closed your eyes, and ye have rejected the prophets; and your rulers, and the seers hath he covered because of your iniquity." The Book of Mormon certainly has something for every moment.

This week has been a series of missed appointments. We found lots of new investigators in the last week, and this week we had lots of lessons set up, unfortunately not all new investigators are created equal, and so many appointments fell through. This week will probably be a lot of finding and then looking for those whose appointments we missed. We did have one very cool experience this past week with a missed appointment. We showed up and no one was home, so we decided to go knock the doors on the street near by that we hadn't finished last time we were in the area. We ran into a lovely older Mexican lady who let us in and we had a really really good lesson with her. We have more set up and we'll see what happens. It's always so interesting as a missionary to see how things don't always work out how we had planned, but they do always work out for the best.

I thought I would write some cultural things for you all. It's interesting being in a bilingual mission. Trent probably also has some insights on this. There are mission wide rules that everyone is to follow, but I've begun to notice there are small changes to make allowances for cultural traditions. One example would be the parties. In the English wards they have been asked not to have parties after baptisms... in the Spanish wards we've been asked to just try to get the party moved to some one's house. Mexicans LOVE their fiestas. Just about anything is an excuse for a fiesta. The ward I'm in now loves to do group family home evenings. I got to go to my first one this past Monday. Well part of it. It started at seven and from what I heard they didn't finish until midnight. We left at 9 when the party was really getting going. It started out like a regular family home evening: prayer, songs, lesson, closing prayer, but then it was after that the party started. The family who hosted made Postole (which is my all time favorite Mexican food, it's a soup with pork, some Mexican grain that I don't know what it is in English, and then lots of Salsa with cabbage, onions, and cilantro on top) and then they all had a Karaoke in the living room. What skills they don't have in tonality they make up for in enthusiasm.

Another fun cultural thing is the dinners. Across the mission there is a rule that missionaries can't eat at a members home unless they have invited a friend. That rule is more or less ignored in the Spanish wards. Hispanics LOVE to feed you. And they love to feed you a lot or food. It's been quite fun to go over to their homes and get to know the families and spend time with them as we've enjoyed all sorts of different meals. It took some time to get used to though, because by and large the families eat before we come over and then they all just sit around the table and watch us eat. It left me feeling a little like Marie Antoinette at first, but I think I dealt better than she did. Now I've learned to just get them talking and telling stories while we eat so I don't feel so awkward. Once I figured that out I've started to really enjoy our dinner appointments. I've learned all about life in Mexico, conversion stories, and gotten tons of help picking up new words. I'm not sure how useful some of the words will be after my mission because I'm now starting to learn words that only work in certain parts of Mexico, or even better, spanglish that is widely accepted here but probably not anywhere else.

Love you all lots and have a wonderful week!

Hermana Okeson

Winter in Phoenix

2011-02-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Hi All!

This week has been a pretty good week. We've been really blessed and found a lot more Spanish speakers who want us to come back and teach them. After the first 2 weeks of not really seeing much of anything here, it is nice to see things moving forward again. We spend our afternoons out meeting people and then our evenings running from one appointment to another. I like it that way, but I have a feeling that once it warms up here we'll try to move things around so we aren't out in the middle of the day. Most of our visits are to families in the ward who need extra support.

One of my favorites is visiting Hna Gutierrez and her son. She's out of work and barely scraping by. We usually stop by to talk to her a few times a week and to share an uplifting thought. Her son is 13 and very autistic. From what I've seen he functions more at about a 6 year old level. I've been working pretty hard since we first went by to get him to be comfortable enough with me to talk some. Finally last Friday when we went by he talked to me for a few minutes. It was a huge breakthrough. I've discovered he likes to play games, so today when we go shopping I'm going to buy a cheap game of some sort that is for 5-8 year olds and see if he'll play some with me next time we go by. He really just needs a lot of attention, and isn't getting it, so it's nice to be able to give that service even for such a short amount of time.

Another family we stop by a lot is the Valenzuela family. They have been through some really rough times recently and need lots of support. The husband has become fairly antagonistic about religion and so we usually go over and try to share a very mellow message. When it works we get to stick around, when it doesn't we usually end up leaving pretty quickly and then try to come back another day when he's in a better mood. Last night we stopped by and he was doing better and so we had a really nice discusion about how being obedient blesses our families... not sure if any of it stuck, but it was a nice visit... the first nice one we'd had in a while.

As far as the people we're teaching goes, most of them are either really new, or have been investigating the church for years... but we do have one sister who we've just started teaching who we are really excited about. She had us over for a Columbian dinner last Saturday night and we had a really good visit with her. She also came to church for the first time on Sunday which we were really excited about. She's really really busy, so she's hard to get ahold of, but she's always excited when we come over and has really good questions.

I thought I would share an interesting experience from this past week. We had a Zone Conference last week on "finding" aka how to find people who want to listen to us. We've had some really cool experiences this past week as we've put it all into practice. In just one week we went from finding about 4 new people a week to this week where we found 16! The coolest one happened last Friday. We'd felt like we needed to go tract in a trailer park near the chapel. After being there for about an hour we got chewed out by a cranky security guard and he told us to leave. When this happens we usually leave, and then come back and talk to people another day. So, we left. We still had another hour planned to contact people in that area and we decided we needed to stick as close as we could to that area. As we were out contacting people near by we ran into an older gentleman. He lives in an area of town we don't normally go to, but that day he was over watching a grandson who was sick. He had talked to missionaries in... Mexico (I think)... but when he came here he lost contact. He was really excited for us to come by and teach him.

Other points of interest from the week... I ate at my first taquero stand this week... there's a family in our ward who have a stand where they let the missionaries eat for free. We decided to go try it out. I enjoyed it a lot and we'll probably go back when we're in that area around dinner time. Also I'm back on medication for migraines. It's made for some interesting moments. It makes me really really sleepy all of the time. Hopefully in the next week or so it will stop doing that, but for now I'm always feeling half asleep. I do pretty good, but it's doing funny things to my Spanish. I feel like I have to think twice as long to say half as much, or I just mix up my words and say things I don't really mean. Hopefully in the next week I'll aclimate some and be able to speak and not have headaches. :)

That's about it for life here in Agua Fria. This week we have a huge mission conference that no one knows exactly what is going to happen, so we're all pretty curious. I'll be interested to see what is happening. It's gotten cold here again, which has also been interesting after having a very warm early February, Phoenix has again decided it should be "winter" so I've not been able to put away my coat... maybe this week.

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Accent Shopping

2011-02-22T15:39:00.001-07:00

Hi Friends and Family,

This week has been an interesting one. My time here in Agua Fria is turning out to be very different from my time in Aguila. The adjustment has been a little tricky, but I'm starting to get there. I've really really missed my previous companion, Hna Ayala. She and I worked very very comfortably together from the first day. We had similar work ethics and both really just loved to be out and working with the members and our investigators. Hna Aydelotte is a good missionary, but does things very differently and isn't very comfortable with change. So we've spent a lot of time trying to get used to each other. I'm learning a lot of patience... a lot a lot of patience.

The ward here in Agua Fria is made up of Mexicans and Chileans. It's about 2/3 Mexicans and then the rest are from Chili, minus one or two other families from various parts of Latin America. It's here that I've finally found the accent I want to pick up. I LOVE the Chilean accent! Every time we're in church and our Bishop gets up to speak (he's from Chili and has an incredible accent) I spend my time muttering very quietly under my breath trying to mimic his accent. I'm slowly picking it up. I figure if I can spend 3 or 4 months here I can really start to get a good Chilean accent going... we'll see what happens. The Chilean members of the ward all get a kick out of my attempt at their accent... so I guess I'm winning brownie points too.

Dad asked about the area... this area is very very white. There are very few Hispanics here and so we spend most of our time working referrals only. When we knock we can knock for 2 or 3 hours and only find one family who speaks Spanish. So it's not a very good use of our time. Tonight we're meeting with the bishop to see what we can do to try and get things moving more.

The main investigator we're working with right now is a woman named Carmenza. She's from Colombia (and also has a really cool accent) and has lived in the US for 16 years. She moved here 16 years ago to marry an American. Previously she was a lawyer in Colombia and worked for the government. We had a really interesting conversation the other night about being in a foreign country and trying to adjust to a different culture. You can tell she really misses Colombia and probably would go back if she hadn't been in the US for so long. She told us she is going to come to church this Sunday, and we're really excited. I hope she makes it.

Okay now questions from Mom:

What is the most effective thing that you do in your scripture study that you feel makes a difference in your testimony?

Well, right now I'm almost done with reading the Book of Mormon in 60 days. So that's been my big focus. Although, what we've been working on as a mission is really studying for our investigators and the people we come into contact with. President is really pushing that all of our study time should be 100% focused on our investigators. It's been very fun to see how as I am reading and thinking about the needs of the people I am teaching often things will jump out that can help them. I find myself teaching more and more from the scriptures and it's amazing to see how every question can always be answered by them.

How are the language studies going?

Language studies are going well. There's always room for improvement. When I was with Hna Ayala we would spend language study time with me telling her stories and she would help me with the vocab I didn't know and correct me when I said something funny. That really really helped my Spanish. Often when we are out and about she couldn't point out when I was saying something funny, but at home for that hour she would help me say things right. I've had to make a switch here in Agua Fria to studying more from books. I don't like it as much, but I'm making it work. It's a little tricky because I'm the Junior companion, but I'm far more comfortable with the language. Hna Aydelotte speaks very clean Spanish (probably more clean than mine) but I have a larger vocab from years with Sra. Blanchard and I'm also more comfortable just speaking. Most of the members think I'm at the end of my mission not the beginning. It's also nice because I'm able to really start picking up more and more vocab. I love it. The members here are really good about helping us out and they are more than happy to define words for us when we ask them.

Yes, I am still in the greater Phoenix area. All the Spanish speakers mostly stay in Phoenix. There are usually a few in other areas but not many. Actually, this area only has 5 of the 35 companion ships in the areas speaking Spanish. That's quite the contrast from my last area where in just one Stake (9 wards) we had 3 sets of English speaking missionaries and 12 sets of Spanish Speaking missionaries. Like I said, it's a pretty white area. As for getting warmer, earlier in the week it did hit 80 but then it cooled off again. Now we're sitting in the 60's which is nice. Actually, it's showing me how Phoenix is ruining me. It was in the upper 40's lower 50's last night and I was wearing my heavy coat and scarf and I was still cold... I felt pretty pathetic.

I think that's about all for this week. Have a wonderful week everyone!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Scorpion Slayer!

2011-02-14T16:26:00.003-07:00

Hi Everyone!

This has been quite the week. As you all know, Monday morning I got transfer calls and so I spent Monday and Tuesday packing up and saying goodbye. It was tricky to get to everyone, but I just about saw the people I wanted. I just missed one or two families who I had wanted to stop by. Oh well. I am now serving in a ward named Agua Fria. It's in Peoria. So I've gone from working in the ghetto to working in one of the richest areas of the mission. That's certainly made for an interesting change. We cover all of Peoria, parts of Glendale and parts of Phoenix. There aren't a whole lot of Spanish speakers here so the work is a little different. I've missed Aguila a lot this week, but I'm getting used to being here. My companion is Hna Aydelotte. She's from Boise Idaho and has been out a little over a year. Before coming out on her mission she graduated from BYU-I with a degree in highschool education focusing on Math and History. We live in an apartment off of the back of an older couple's home. I'm pretty sure it used to be a garage that was converted into an apartment. I've met Brother and Sister Anders once, but not really seen much of them. It's a nice little apartment, although I've missed having a washer/dryer in the apartment like we did in Aguila. The house is off in a nicer neighborhood so we actually have a back yard with grass and real trees. I love it. The Anders have a huge number of roosters and chickens back off of the side of the house, meaning our early mornings are punctuated by roosters crowing and me thinking about rooster soup.

Okay, now for some stories.

First, last Monday I taught a flute lesson. It was way fun. I had a really good time, and I think Sariah did too. She's 13 and we worked a lot with their family, and so it was fun to get to go over and help her out. It actually helped make me miss flute less, because it really showed me that I can do flute forever, but I can't be a missionary forever. I sound a little rusty, but I still know how everything works.

Second, Monday night was Brian's birthday party. It was so much fun. I've attached some pictures from the party. It was cool because Hna Perea wasn't expecting it at all, but we had found out that they didn't have money to celebrate, so we decided to throw the party for them. Brian was so excited. I will never forget the look on his face as we all sang "Happy Birthday" to him. That was probably one of my best moments in Aguila.

Tuesday was Transfer meeting. I spent Tuesday morning packing up and then running out to visit a few more people. Then we had to drive into Glendale for the meeting. There really weren't a whole lot of surprises. There are only 12 Spanish sisters in the whole mission, so it gets pretty easy to guess who is going with whom and where. Usually by Monday night everyone from the Spanish Sisters has talked and we all know whats happening, we just have to wait for President to announce it and make it official. This was actually a pretty big transfer for the Spanish sisters, because with Hermana Barker going home Aguila was closed and Elders were put in, and then a lot of Hermanas had to be shuffeled around. All but one companionship of Sisters came to transfer meeting.

Wednesday I got to go out and get to know the area and the other missionaries here. It's incredibly different from Aguila and being in South Phoenix, but change always makes for some good learning. The exciting news from Wednesday is that I killed my first scorpion. YUCK! I was reading Wednesday morning when I saw him coming across the floor. I was really, really, really irked. Hna Aydelotte would probably say that was an understatement. Luckily I won, and the scorpion died and noone got stung.

Here in Agua Fria we get fed a lot by the members. Last August, President sent out a letter to all the different wards asking them to no longer invite the missionaries over for dinner, since dinner appointments encroach on our best working hours. Aguila was pretty good about it... but from what I understand a lot of areas are still struggling, and Agua Fria is one of them. It's cool because it's a nice way to get to know the members, but it really just weirds me out. The good news is I've gotten to try a lot more Mexican food in the last week. Most of what I've had has been pretty good, although last night I had to think fast to avoid getting to eat Menudo... aka Cow Stomach Soup. Gross.

It's also been fun starting out again because I'm able to really see how my Spanish has improved. Most of the members when they first talk to me ask me if I'm going home soon, becuase they assume because I've gotten pretty comfortable with the language that I must be at the end of my mission. I still get that I have a South American accent, and I still don't know where that comes from, but we have a lot of Chileans here in Agua Fria, so they are enjoying my accent.

Well, that's about all the news from here. Things are going well, I'm learning to work with my new companion and in the new area. There's been a lot to get used to, because things here are very very different from my previous experience but I'm adapting.

Have a wonderful week!

Hermana Okeson

Ps. The first two pictures are with Rossy, and then with the Madruenos, my adopted family in Aguila. I'll work on sending pictures form Agua Fria next week.

Saying Goodbye

2011-02-13T01:20:00.001-07:00

Nicole sent this Feb 8 but I was enjoying the Philippines and didn't get it sent out. Hope that you will forgive me. :)

Hi All!

Transfers are probably one of the most miserable parts of being a missionary. I got the phone call this morning and was told to pack up and that tomorrow afternoon I will be in a new area with a new companion. I have truly loved my time here in Aguila and I am so sad to be leaving. Especially because for various reasons they will be closing the area that I worked in. Atleast partially closing it. I'm really curious to see what happens tomorrow at transfers. Hermana Ayala is staying here with Hermana Kigueta and they will be working in Montana del Sur. I am so bummed to be leaving them both. I absolutely love being with them. Hermana Ayala has been an amazing companion and I wish I would have gotten more than just one transfer with her. I'm still hoping to get more than just one transfer with Hermana Kigueta since she's only been out one transfer longer than me. I guess we'll just have to wait and see on that one. I have so many options of where I could end up. President is moving one sister from all but one Spanish companionship in the mission. So really I could go anywhere. This will be really interesting.

This week has been quite the week. Working in two wards was an experience. I'm glad I had such great companions for it, or this could have been really tricky to hold everything together for two weeks. Some highlights from this week include:

Winter finally showed up! That's right, I spent three days wearing a coat, and it was freezing! The fountain outside of our apartment complex froze! I think Arizona might have ruined me. Also on one of those super cold days we had splits and Hermana Kigueta and I went out on bikes. It was so windy I thought I was going to get blown over.
ROSSY AND REUBEN ARE GETTING MARRIED!!!! That was one of the huge exciting things of the week. I am so excited for them, and for them to be one step closer to being baptized. I can't believe it. I feel like part of why I was sent to Aguila was to be here with Rossy and Reuben and to work with them.
We taught possibly the most interesting lesson of my life this week. It was just one of those lessons that felt like you were watching a car crash, you could see where it was going and what was happening but you could seem to get out. But these are the things interesting journal entries are made of, and you laugh about many many years later.
Alma's dog finally decided to be friends with me. This may not seem like a big deal, but it was. Every time we'd gone over for the past three months he would sit and bark and growl, but yesterday he decided we could be friends... just in time for me to leave. Yeesh.
Today I'm teaching a flute lesson! I am so so so so so so so so so excited for it. There's a girl in our ward who has asked me flute questions before, and so finally I decided I might as well just teach her a lesson. I can't wait. I'm not sure which of us will have more fun.
Tonight we're going over to the Perea's and throwing a party for Brian, the youngest Perea boy. He turned 5 on Sunday and we found out that they don't have money for a party, so we're making him a cake and we're going to go do Testimony Pizza (a lesson about how building our faith in God is like building a pizza) with them. I am way excited for the lesson and it will be fun to surprise them with a party for Brian.

There's not much else to tell. You'll all have to hold your breath to see where I go after this. I'll write and tell you all about it next time. Where ever it is I know it's where I am needed. I am really really sad to be leaving Aguila, but I feel like I've done what I needed to here. I've worked hard and I'm happy with that. Now I get to go work somewhere else and really get to love the people there just like I've loved the people here in Aguila. Missions really are just so incredible. In just 3 months of being here I've found so many people who I just love and I have enjoyed serving.

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermanita Okeson

TRIO

2011-01-31T16:43:00.000-07:00

Hi Family and Friends,

It seems that my mission will be punctuated by being in a trio ever transfer. That's right, I'm now serving in two areas again and there are three of us again. One of the other Hermanas in our apartment went home to take care of things for school and so I am back with Hermana Kigueta again (just like at the end of last transfer) and so the three of us are covering Aguila and Montana del Sur areas. Serving with Hermanas Ayala and Kigueta is so much fun. We are having a blast, and we are so incredibly swamped. It's pretty fun and a little stressful sometimes as we are trying to hold everything together. We spend most of our day in the car running from appointment to appointment. Aguila for the most part is a nicer area, there are some sketchy areas. Montana is one big sketchy area. It's pretty much Mexico. I love it. We visit all these little houses and wonderful families, and there are some really really great people in that area.

For investigators in Aguila we are still working a lot with Rossy and Reuben, they are making progress, and it is very cool to see the change in their lives, especially in Reuben's life. When I first met him he was your very very typical macho Mexican man, now he's softening up and really willing to talk with us and learn. We also had quite the surprise as an investigator we had written off and dropped showed up out of nowhere at church on Sunday. Both Hermana Ayala and I were incredibly surprised.

As far as stories for this week goes, I ate the most terrifying meal of my whole mission on Saturday. I knew it was bad news when I first saw it, but as a missionary sometimes you just have to have a whole lot of confidence that being protected by God includes being protected from bacteria. With every bite I was praying we wouldn't die during the night. We were all pretty miserable after the meal, and I spent a good part of the evening feel way sick but no one died. The impressive thing was that it made Hna Ayala sick, because she is Mexican and so usually she can eat anything, but not this time.

Sunday night we went over to Bishop Galvis' for a birthday dinner. There were tons of families there and it was quite the party. They made "carne asada" which ranks as my all time favorite meal of my entire mission (it made for a convenient follow up to the worst meal of my entire mission). Carne asada is grilled beef with all sorts of delicious spices on it, and then you eat it with tortillas, beans, avocado, rice and salsa. So good. It was also pretty fun because I was able to see how my Spanish is getting better. When I first came out I really really struggled understanding Spanish when there were lots of people talking and lots of noise. Yesterday I was able to keep up pretty well and I wasn't just laughing because everyone else was laughing. (It's pretty sad, but often as missionaries when we are learning the language you just watch for when everyone else laughs and laugh with them and then ask your companion later about what the joke was about.) It was quite the party. The Galvis' house was full of people and it was all people I've loved working with.

I'm getting a little nervous, transfers are next week, and there's going to be a lot of change in the sisters areas. I'll probably be included one way or another because there are so many changes that are going to happen. I've absolutely loved serving in Aguila and I'm really nervous, I don't really want to get moved yet. I feel like I have so much more I want to do, and so I'm crossing my fingers that President lets me stay for another 6 weeks and that Hna Ayala gets to stay too. I've had such a good time serving with her.

Today was quite the fun p-day. We got up and all the missionaries in our area got together to play "death ball" think dodge ball but far more crazy. I actually lasted quite a long time, but none of that was of my own doing, the Elders are just afraid to chuck the ball at the Sisters, so we tend to last a little longer. We also played soccer and then we went to a mexican restaurant with Hermanas Jensen and Wells. Hermana Jensen was Hermana Ayala's companion before me and she is going home next Tuesday. So we all went out and got lunch together. Way fun. Tonight we have some really awesome lessons set up and I'm quite excited for them.

We've got to get going. Next week when I e-mail you'll all get to hear if I'm staying in Aguila or if I'm getting moved. Who knows.

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Goodbye EFY

2011-01-25T00:51:00.001-07:00

Hello All!

This has been another interesting week. Mostly because of all of the long meetings we had this week so there really wasn't much time for working. Tuesday we had Zone Conference. It was awesome. The big announcement from Zone conference was from President Beck. He got up and banned EFY music. (For those who don't know, EFY or Especially For Youth, is a summer program for teenagers.) He banned it for different reasons than I would have... apparently being musically tacky isn't reason enough to ban something... and I think I am probably the only missionary in the mission celebrating. All in all it was a really really fun conference, and it was very fun to see the other missionaries. Also it was fun to go see some of the other sisters. As sister missionaries sometimes we feel a little like an island, and it was fun to see some of the sisters from the other areas. We even got up early and had breakfast at the apartment of the sisters who were catching a ride with us to the conference. That was way fun.

Wednesday we had an enormous district meeting. This month as a mission we are focusing on planning better. So, Wednesday we all got together and had a massive weekly planning session. It was actually pretty fun. One of the Elders had been sent a Little Ceasars gift card and so he used it to buy pizza for everyone. Then we all spread out across the building and did our weekly planning. It's way easier to stay focused when you aren't in your apartment. Hna Ayala and I have decided we're never doing weekly planning at home again.

Wednesday we ended up driving into Peoria to trade companions for exchanges for Thursday. Exchanges were interesting. They certainly helped me see that I'm not exactly the easiest person to work with. Especially since I was working in my own area with a companion who was just here for the day. I was very excited to get Hna Ayala back at the end of the day. That said, we did have some really good visits on Thursday and found some people who were willing to have us come back, so I can't complain.

Friday we spent the day going through our records trying to find people who had previously met with missionaries and might be interested in meeting with us again. Knocking doors has been less than fruitful lately, so we thought we'd try a different approach. It's been slightly more successful, and now at least we are coming into this week with a good number of appointments.

Saturday was a weird day. We had an early morning appointment at 9am so we had to get up and get out pretty fast. Especially because it was on the other end of our area, so we had a good 20 minute car drive to get out there. We met up with Maria, a woman who we had tracted into and we had a pretty good appointment with her. We'll have to see how next Saturday goes with her. She's traditionally Catholic, as opposed to religiously Catholic. You see that a lot with Mexicans. They're Catholic more out of tradition than conviction, but it still makes for some interesting conversations... especially about the Virgin Guadeloupe (the Mexican version of the Virgin Mary). I'm still a little sketchy on exactly what makes Guadeloupe different from the Virgin Mary, I've heard all sorts of descriptions ranging from that she is the mother of all Mexicans to that she is no different than the traditional Virgin Mary. Maybe one of these days I'll get that one figured out.

After visiting Maria we went and stopped by Alma and had breakfast with her and her mom, Petra. It was so much fun, and it was the first time Petra was really willing to just sit and talk with us. She is hilarious! I had a blast listening to her tell stories, and she's quite the sassy Mexican. I also learned what Mexicans eat for breakfast... scrambled eggs with onions and jalapeños, beans, and tortillas. It was pretty good. I'm still working on learning to eat like they do with their tortillas... no one uses utensils much, you just grab and scoop with the tortillas... I use utensils because I hate having beans or random other foods running down my arms. After Alma's we spent the rest of the day driving around just visiting lots of people.

We ended our night over at Rossy and Reuben's. That was an interesting visit. As a missionary it's frustrating to see how little we can do to get people to make changes in their lives. We can encourage, we can promise blessings, we can bring over members who made the same changes but none of it matters unless the individual wants to make those changes for themselves. That's kind of where we are at with Reuben. We've got to get him to a point where he sees that his choices aren't good ones and then get him ready to make those changes. When we stopped by Saturday it became very very apparent that he isn't even trying to make those changes. Yuck. We were really really bummed after that visit. That might be an understatement. It's amazing after just two months of knowing people your heart can break for them and you really really hurt for them.

Sunday was a pretty typical day. The hardest thing for me about Sundays is we have meetings we have to be at at 7am. Not fun. I really have no idea of how I survived seminary, because one meeting a week at 7am is killing me. I think the difference is that as a missionary I feel like I have to look presentable for those meetings, I never really felt that way about seminary.

Today for p-day we went over to Hermana Lopez's and she taught us how to make earrings. Hermana Lopez is the wife of Presidente Lopez, one of the counselors in the mission presidency. I absolutely love them both. We joke that Presidente Lopez is the muscle in the mission presidency, he was a rough and tough Mexican fighter until he found the church just over 10 years ago. Now he just looks rough and tough, but he is absolutely amazing. We love working with him and bringing him to lessons, and his wife loves to come out with the Sisters, which we also love. She invited us over a few weeks ago to come make jewelry with her on p-day and today we finally worked everything out to be able to do so. It was way fun, and I got a new pair of earrings out of the deal. Awesome! Next p-day we're going over to Hna Madrueno's so that she can teach me how to make true Mexican salsa. I'm pretty excited.

We have to run. I love you all lots and am so grateful for your prayers and support. Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Okeson

Ghetto Bird

2011-01-18T01:57:00.006-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been a week for missed appointments. Sort of frustrating, but it shows us pretty fast who is interested and who is not. Now we just have to figure out where the interested people are. Most of our missed appointments were from people standing us up, but the memorable one this week was when we got chased out of an area by the Ghetto Bird. The Ghetto Bird is the police helicopter that tends to show up when something is going on. It spent a lot of time in Hna Ayala's last area, and we'd see it a little here but not very often. Well, Thursday we were in an area for an appointment and we saw the Ghetto Bird out and about and didn't think too much of it, it's not like we were planning on knocking doors in that area, just visiting someone. After being there a few minutes trying to find the house, suddenly the Ghetto Bird got really really close, and we saw a lot of police hanging out, and then another Ghetto Bird showed up. We left pretty quick after seeing the second helicopter. Still not sure what went on that afternoon, but we didn't see anything...

Most of our area is actually the nicest and safest of the two wards in our district. Most of the homes we go into a pretty nice and upscale, but we have one stretch of housing that we call "little Mexico" and that's where we were when the Ghetto Bird came. We try to stick to only being there during daylight hours, because it's a little creepy at night. But it's also a fun area to be in. It's almost completely Spanish speaking, and hispanics are far nicer than the white people we run into. They're way happy to sit out and talk and get to know you. White neighborhoods aren't nearly as fun. No one is every outside and they don't really want to sit and talk. So while Little Mexico can get a little sketchy, I absolutely love it there.

We've done a lot of just going out and visiting the members this week, trying to help them get involved in missionary work. It's been really fun to get to know the members in our area. It's pretty hard sometimes to get to know them because we aren't allowed to do dinner appointments. So instead we just schedule and drop by and share a quick message and have to leave. We've been trying to visit at least one family a day, and this week we will have gone by every family in our area. After that we'll start going back and seeing how they've done on the assignments we left with them.

In visiting the members we pick up some pretty cool stories. My favorite for this week was learning how Mexican men go fishing. They catch fish with their bare hands. Big fish. They grab them by the gills and yank them out of the water. We stopped by to visit a member of the bishopric last night and as we were talking he was telling us about how he learned to fish with his brother. It was hilarious. I guess when you grab a big fish by the gills it puts up a bit of a fight, and Hno Madrueno was acting it all out for us.

One of my other favorite stories from this week was stopping by and dropping of a birthday present for one of our favorite ward members/ families. This family has kids roughly the same ages (but not genders) as in our family and a few younger. Hno Carrillo is a real joker and loves to mess with people, so we decided for his birthday we'd get him back. For Christmas Grandma Okeson sent me a fake snow kit (just add water!) we decided to make a full jar of snow and drop it off. It was quite a hit. He couldn't believe it was "snow" but by the time we left he was having to defend his "snow" from all of his kids.

Okay, so I'm struggling with a little writers block (I really should start bringing my journal down when I write so I can remember things better) so today you all get a few pictures.

I thought I would show a funny picture that gave an idea of the height disparity in the areas where I serve. Friday night we went to a baptism for someone Hna Ayala had taught before coming here. She had me stand in on one of the pictures and I thought the results were hilarious. Hna Ayala and I make quite a pair, and we get tons of comments about our difference in height.

These pictures are from after the baptism Friday. The family that took us to the baptism also took us to one of their favorite restaurants. They said it was just like being back in Mexico. I certainly got stared at. Especially as I was keeping up in Spanish. After dinner right before we got off of the free way the car started making funny noises... we had a flat tire!!! Hno Daugherty changed the tire while Hna Ayala and I took pictures by the road.

I think for me I'm learning a lot about patience. Apparently when I started my mission God knew I had no concept of what patience was... now I know enough to know I don't have much of it. Mexican culture is very very laid back. "Lo que sea" is a pretty common thing I hear here, which translates roughly into a very non committal version of whatever/whenever etc. I'm used to things happening at a certain time and starting and ending and go in, get the job done, and get on. I'm learning that's not how it works here. Things are a little slower. I'm also having to learn to be far more social than I've ever been in my life. Mexicans love to PARTY! That was something I was super uncomfortable with at the beginning of my mission. I'm still not great at just getting in and talking to everyone and getting to know everyone but I'm getting better. My Spanish is also really getting better, now I just struggle with jokes and particularly with sarcasm. I can't follow hispanic humor yet. I usually just try to laugh with everyone else and then I quiz Hna Ayala after on what everything actually meant.

These 4 pictures are more pictures of a family in our ward. Today for p-day we went over to their house and helped the kids make scripture cases. It's a family of five boys 15 and under and then a single mom. We cut our pictures for them and then brought everything over with some treats. I was way excited about how much they liked the activity and they all seemed pretty excited with the results. Even Hna Perea wanted to make her own!

Well, I've got to run. Thanks for all your prayers and support! I try to write back for the letters I get, and I'm really really sorry for those of you who I've been slow getting to. P-day just seems to slip away, but I'm trying to do better and get more letters out.

I love you all!

Hermana Okeson

The Chihuahua and the Giant

2011-01-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

This week has been another packed week. The biggest thing this week is that we have made amazing progress with Reuben. He is the esposo of one of our long term investigators, Rossy, and until Christmas he had been completely uninterested in our message. Well, after lots and lots and lots of prayer he decided to meet with us. This Sunday he came to church for the first time in his whole entire life. Crazy! If someone had told me the first time I met him that he would be sitting with us in Church this last Sunday I would have laughed at them. It's amazing the changes that can happen.

I thought I would regale you all with an amusing story from this past week. The other Hermanas in our apartment had to go into the mission office earlier last week to pick up some supplies. While they were there they heard the office Elders talking about this really cute new companionship. After eaves dropping a little more they heard them say it was that tall one and the Mexican one. That's right. Who's part of the most attractive companionship in the Arizona Phoenix Mission... Hermana Ayala and I have gotten quite a laugh at that one, and now we use it as our excuse when creeps follow us.

Also, these past two weeks have been pretty cold by Arizona standards. Hna Ayala and I got to tract in the rain not long after she got here, and I've actually had to wear a coat in the evenings. I guess I've been pretty spoiled, but I'm sure starting to get nervous about the summer.

Right now here in Aguila we're really working on building up our teaching pool. We have some long term investigators, but we are trying to get new ones, especially because we will be dropping one of our longer term investigators this week. As a quick definition for those who don't know, when we say we "dropped" an investigator, we mean that we aren't teaching them anymore because for one reason or another they are not progressing. I'm not looking forward to stopping with this particular investigator, she knows our message is true, and she's supposed to be baptized at the end of the month, but we've not had much of any contact with her for 2 weeks and she keeps standing us up. She was supposed to get baptized when I first came here and the same thing happened, a few weeks before the baptism she just disappeared. We talked with the Bishop on Sunday and he was really supportive, but I really don't look forward to talking to her and telling her that her actions say she isn't ready to be baptized.

Working with a native companion is helping my Spanish in ways I never expected. I blame eating all the Mexican cheese and salsa. I'm picking up interesting habits including pointing with my head (it's a bizarre thing Hispanics do, I don't know when I started, but it's gotten pretty noticeable in the last week) and saying Mande (the equivalent of what in Spanish/Mexican) whenever I miss what someone said. It's also cool serving with her because she is way up on the slang and so she is helping me know what people are saying. It's been super helpful. The most recent thing she taught me was a series of words that as you change one letter it goes from little girl (chamaca), to little boy (chamaco), and finally the devil (chamuco). I've not worked up the nerve to use any of those yet since I'm terrified of mixing them up.

Have a wonderful week everyone! Things are wonderful down here in Aguila, and I'm really enjoying the work. We're meeting some really amazing people, and missionary work is really the best thing ever!

Love you all!

Hermana Okeson

La Morenita y la Grandota!

2011-01-03T16:43:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone!

So, the news you've all been waiting for, my new companion. I am serving with Hermana Ayala (she's the short Mexican one in the pictures Hna Beck put up on her Blog from the transfer meeting...) She's from California but her parents are from Mexico. That means she's a native speaker, so I'm excited to be able to work on my Spanish with her. We are having a blast. I absolutely love serving with Hna Ayala, she told me from the start that she likes to work hard and play hard, which sounded great to me.

This week was actually a pretty weird one. We had transfers on Tuesday, and then Wednesday and Thursday were regular working days, but on Friday because of New Years we had to be in at 6pm and then Saturday was by appointment only. Our Saturday appointments fell through so that left us hanging out at the apartment all day. Not really my idea of what to do with a Saturday, but obedience brings blessings, right? If nothing else we got some things done around the apartment and I got to know Hna Ayala better which was fun.

Hna Ayala has been out for about a year, and like I said, we've been having a blast. We had way too much time on our hands as we were stuck at home on Saturday, and you can only update the area book so much, so we decided to call the Elders who live near by and see what happens. Long story short, Hna Ayala convinced them to not only fix her bike (it has a flat) but also to get us a bunch of yummy Mexican juices and different candies. Those Elders moved into our apartment complex during the last transfer and they've had to fix our bikes three times already. I guess they've learned what it means to live near Sisters.

I thought I ought to explain the title for this letter. Grandota, effectively means really really tall, and Morenita means little brown one. Hna Ayala is 5'2'' on a good day. We make quite a pair out talking to people. She's super loud and full of tons of energy. I absolutely love that. Also, somehow she is always up on everything that is happening across the mission, so now I think in one week I've learned more about the mission and what's happening where than most other missionaries know. She takes the whole "Sisters know everything" to a whole new level.

This past week we've spent a lot of time out door knocking, with little door answering because everyone is still in Mexico, so to make things more entertaining we took to rating all of the wreaths on a scale of 1 to 10. I feel like if music doesn't work out I have a future in wreath critiquing.

We also had a really interesting experience this week as we were out checking on people who had been taught by missionaries before, but for one reason or another had not continued meeting with them anymore. Serving in the area that we do often we get stopped from going to houses by guard dogs. In my last companionship Hna Hoof was by far the faster runner so I was somewhat loath to go into those yards with "Beware of Dog" signs as I knew which of the two of us would turn into a puppy snack... I think I could take Hna Ayala in a race, but we have an agreement about avoiding doggy houses. This past week however was the first week I have been thwarted by a guard horse. That's right, horse. We pulled up to this house and there right in the front yard was three dogs and a big beautiful white horse. We were more concerned about the dogs than the horse, but as we walked up to the house we learned we had placed our concern in the wrong area. That horse followed us up and down the front of the gate as we tried to distract it enough to get to the house. Next time we go by I'm taking carrots. I'll have to send pictures as well, we decided to cut our losses and took some pretty fun pictures by that horse before moving on.

Other news, mostly we're just really trying to get out and find people to teach. We're trying to work more with our ward, and we've had some pretty good success with that. We're also trying to help Karla feel ready for her baptism on the 29th, she's a little nervous still, but I'm super excited for her. It's so cool being a missionary. I really love every day so much, I just wake up smiling because I'm so happy to be here and to be serving.

Have an awesome week. I love you all!

Hermana Okeson

Pictures as Promised

2010-12-29T04:12:00.003-07:00

1. Hiking Last P-day
2. Hiking again with all of the Sisters in our Zone

3. Hna Hoof and the Perea Family, a family we love to stop by and teach. Those boys keep us on our toes every time we go.
4. The Daugherty Family, one of our favorite families in the ward.

5. Our Christmas stockings we made with the Daugherties

6. Our cut our Christmas tree, stockings, and most importantly, your favorite sister missionaries.

Life in Aguila

2010-12-28T00:46:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We had quite the event full Christmas here as we were covering two wards, so we had lots of people to stop by. It was so fun, and I think I have tried more variations on tamales in the last few days than I ever expected to try in a lifetime. Yum. We also got our share of other dishes with the winner being dinner with Alma, the sister who got baptized in early December. She made a really really yummy Postole (beef and corn soup... ish...) for us for Christmas Eve and it was fun to stop by and visit her. On Christmas morning we read the Christmas story as a companionship and then opened our presents by our cardboard Christmas tree. After we made sugar cookies to take by families. It was fun to get to make and decorate cookies and made me think of years of doing it at home.

The not so surprising news is that I am getting a new companion, but I am staying here in Aguila. We'd suspected that I would stay, but you never know with transfers. There are a good bunch of sisters getting transferred this time, so I'm really curious to find out who I will be serving with. I guess you'll have to wait until next week to find out.

I set what I hope to be a once-in-a-mission record of 7 straight hours of church this past Sunday. I went to 3 different wards and by the end of the last one (Aguila) I was exhausted. I got to put my piano skills to use in Aguila though because the Sister who normally plays was in Mexico. Then, not only did I get to play for Sacrament Meeting (and sightread Christmas hymns I'd never really looked at before) but I also got hauled into Primary to play for them. That was the exciting one, because a lot of the songs are almost the same, but since Spanish words are way longer there are all sorts of extra notes thrown in all over the place. At this rate I'm going to be one heck of a sightreader on the piano by the time I get home. I'm already way way more comfortable with sightreading on the piano than I ever was before, and I keep getting asked to play for all sorts of things.

I thought I'd send some more pictures home in this e-mail, so I hope you enjoy these. A lot of these are pictures that we took before Hna Hoof went home, so these are partially for her, but I think you all will enjoy them. (to be added soon, just a letter for now)

1. Hiking last P-day
2. Hiking again with all of the Sisters in our Zone
3. Hna Hoof and the Perea Family, a family we love to stop by and teach. Those boys keep us on our toes every time we go.
4. The Daugherty Family, one of our favorite families in the ward.
5. Our Christmas stockings we made with the Daugherties
6. Our cut our Christmas tree, stockings, and most importantly, your favorite sister missionaries.

As for other news, hmmm... I feel like this past week was really quite a blur, we really kept super busy trying to cover both areas and I think we tried to make a huge dent in the allotted car miles that we are given... whoops. I guess that's what you get when you cover two areas that aren't particularly close to each other.

I think one of my favorite happenings from Christmas was that evening when all the missionaries from my district got together for a party at the church. Some missionaries are just so typical. It turned into a favorite door knocking story party, followed by watching the Joseph Smith movie and everyone chipping in on their own random hearsay about church history. We have a really nice district of 2 companionships of Sisters and 3 companionships of Elders. I also got to learn how to make Abuelita, the mexican form of hot chocolate, although I decided to avoid it in favor of not having headache problems, but at least I know how to make it now. It's actually pretty yummy.

Well, I think that is about it for the last week. I look forward to being able to tell you next week about my companion and how things are going here in Aguila. Have a wonderful week!

Love,
Hermana Okeson

Ps. We're only allowed to open e-mails from immediate family, so for you clever friends who figured out what my e-mail is, I wish I could read it and write you back but I can't. Send me a letter some time, I'd love to see more than just your name in my inbox! All of my contact info should be on facebook. If you can't find it, leave a comment and I'm sure my Mom would be happy to send you my info.

Lesson Learned

2010-12-18T17:48:00.001-07:00

Hi Family and Friends,

I learned a valuable lesson, just because you end p-day early to write another day doesn't mean it's going to be easy to find time to get a letter in. So, here's a really short and quick letter, and hopefully things will go better this next p-day so I can write a better letter.

I was intrigued in one of Trent's recent letters where he wrote about going by an unspoken rule of "if your English is better than my Chinese, then we speak English." So, I decided to watch and see how that affects what we do. For us, primarily it's if you are under 30 and you've lived in the states for the last 5 or more years, we speak in English, after that then it's almost completely in Spanish. Little kids tend towards wanting to speak English, but I love hearing them speak Spanish, so I try to keep speaking to them in Spanish to see if they'll switch over. The Bishop in the ward I serve in is very adamant about trying to get families to stick to their heritage and speak Spanish at home, so often the kids in these families speak very good Spanish, which I'm told is not always the case.

We finally managed to get a Christmas tree, which my companion and I are very excited about. It's a cardboard cut out of a tree that was left over from a preschool program that was held in the church last Thursday, and it works perfectly, we've taped it up on the wall and we're pretty happy to have it and our apartment looks quite festive.

Christmas is such a fun time to be a missionary, I'm really enjoying getting out and working with people and being with the ward members and our investigators. People seem to stop and listen just a little longer to our message and to find out a little more about what we have to say. It's nice, and we're teaching some really wonderful people. The weather here feels like summer, and so it doesn't really feel like Christmas, and I always laugh seeing light up snowmen here because they look so out of place. We had the great opportunity to go caroling with the Youth this week, and it was so fun to pass by and visit some of the people we are teaching and sing carols for them.

Well, we've got to run. Hopefully this p-day we'll work everything out and the place we normally go for e-mailing will be open so we don't run into problems.

Lots of love!

Hermana Okeson

A picture is worth a 1,000 words!

2010-12-16T00:12:00.004-07:00

Hi Family,
We're short on e-mail time today becuase we had other things to take care of today, so you'll get an actual letter when we stop back by tomorrow. Instead in the few minutes I have I thought I'd send some pictures. I've heard some mention from the Peanut Gallery that they would likesome, so here you go!
1. At the Mesa Temple with my companion and the other sisters we live with.
2. My handlebars after my biking fiasco the first week.
3. Hna Hoof and I at the temple.
4. Half of the sister missionaries in the mission and Sister Beck.
5. MTC District with our teachers.
6. All the Sisters from my BYU ward who were at the MTC together. We took this picture to send to our Bishop. :-)
7. Alma's Baptism. The blonde sister is Hna Ochosinski, the sister I replaced. She got special permision to be able to come to the baptism.

Okay. I'll write a real letter tomorrow, but I thought you would all enjoy these pictures. I wish I had time to send more, but I was worried that the computer wouldn't like it. Maybe next time.

Okay, a short amusing story before I go. The ward members have informed me I speak Spanish with a South American accent. They're pretty convinced on that one, which I find funny, since I've never been to South America, nor have I really talked with a lot of peole from there. But there you go, I speak like I learned Spanish down in South America. I'll take it, atleast I'm not too gringo :)

Have a great day, and I'll send out a real letter tomorrow!
Love you all!
Hermana Okeson

First Baptism

2010-12-07T00:57:00.001-07:00

Hi Family and Friends!

So, we're a little short on time today, and this week was absolutely jam packed, so we'll see what I can fit in. I wanted to upload pictures for you, but we're using computers that I don't particularly trust, so I guess it will have to wait until next week. The big news is that we got a building, and everything came together perfectly and Alma was baptized on Saturday. It was incredible. I absolutely love her, and then on Sunday when she shared her testimony I finally heard a little more about how she got interested in the church. It turns out that she had driven by our building for months and wanted to come check out the "new church" (our building is almost a year old). She just showed up 4 weeks ago. She'd been searching because she had a dream one night that she was walking and saw a tree with fruit that she knew she needed in her life, but she didn't know how to get there (sound familiar?) Four weeks after she first walked into our church building she was being confirmed a member. She has had so much support from members, and it's really shown me how desperately as missionaries we need them in our work. We just can't do this alone. Almost all of the baptisms we see here in Phoenix are ones from member referrals, or they are ones where the person getting baptized knows tons of members who really swoop in and help once they start meeting with missionaries (Alma). The baptism was so beautiful, and we had a huge miracle because her family came and supported her. Originally her mother and son were not going to come because they didn't agree with her decision. Then about a week before her son came out and said he would support her, and Saturday morning her mom told her that she was going to support her decision to be baptized.

Friday was also an incredible day. We had our Christmas Zone Conference. Half of the mission met together and we had a conference where President and Sister Beck spoke and then also President Lopez (the first counselor in the mission presidency) shared his conversion story. I was asked to play flute, and so I had to do some scrambling to find a flute, but I did and it sounded okay. Definitely not up to my usual par for playing, but I figure for not playing for three months (CRAZY!) I sounded pretty good. I have to say I absolutely love my mission president and his wife. Thursday we ended up at the mission office to take care of some things and I got to know them both a little better and am really enjoying them. At the Christmas Zone Conference their talks were both so good, and I loved listening to them. President Beck announced the New Year's mission goal, and I thought I would share it for those family members who might be interested. It is not something that he personally extended to families, but I'd like to invite anyone who is interested to join in. The invitation is to read the Book of Mormon in 60 days (the amount of time it took Joseph to translate it) and while reading it to highlight in 5 different colors the 5 parts of the doctrine of Christ, faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. We will be beginning as an entire mission on the 1st of January and finishing 60 days later. That means you read roughly 9-11 pages a day. Another wonderful part of the Christmas Conference is that they take all of the missionaries to the temple. It was so beautiful, and as we came out later in the evening we were able to see the temple all lit up and we got to listen to the Christmas music. It was such a beautiful evening. Hopefully I can attach pictures some time soon so you can all see.

A little more about my living situation and such. I am living with 2 other sisters, one is from Canada (interestingly enough she is also half native American, but I don't remember which tribe, but she does have a linguistics degree in Native American languages, which makes her incredibly cool) and the other sister is from Georgia. She's just celebrated her 5 year baptismal mark this past week, which was quite fun. We have a washer and dryer in our apartment which I have decided is a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because we live in a very poor area and who knows where we would find to wash our clothes, but it's a curse because with 4 sisters, the odds of actually doing a single load of wash on p-day are not good. Usually I end up doing laundry when every I have a minute to throw it in and then I call it good.

I'm starting to eat more Mexican food, but we really don't get fed that much. There is a rule in our mission that we are not allowed to eat at members houses unless they invite friends or we can bring an investigator. We're working on getting them to invite friends, and things are getting a little better. In the few meals I have eaten here I think I've eaten a life supply of beans. They eat them with everything, and I mean everything. That and corn tortillas, they don't really use forks, you just grab what you want with the tortilla and eat away. It's pretty fun. I think the favorite thing I've eaten here was today. A member fed us lunch and fed us a soup called "Postole" it's a pulled pork soup with a spicy broth. It has corn, and chilies and who knows what else and then a ton of cilantro. So yummy. I've got to learn how to make that one.

We're working like crazy here. I'm learning so much and I'm working really hard and getting so much each day. Keep us in your prayers and especially pray that the windows of heaven will open for us and that we can find those who are really ready for the gospel.

Love you lots!

Hermana Okeson

Happy Thanksgiving!!!! (Belated)

2010-11-29T22:43:00.001-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend, I know I sure did. Thanksgiving as a missionary is a very fun experience, especially when you are serving in a Hispanic Barrio (ward), because they love Fiestas! We started off last week with out a single dinner appointment, but by Wednesday night had turned down 4 because we just had too many. I ate 2 dinners, and had far too many deserts. We stopped by many members houses and got to see them and say hello. It was fun to go see the members and it also helped me to start putting families together. I've tried placing families together at church but all adults refer to anyone under 18 as "mi hijo" or "mi hija" (my son/my daughter). It's quite endearing, and often the older members will call Sister Hoof and I "Mi hija" as well. While it's very endearing, it makes for a very confused Sister Okeson as she tries to put families together.

On Thanksgiving morning the Zone got together and played Soccer. Trent referenced that European Football and American Soccer are not the same sport, so I guess I have the other end of the sports arena for "soccer" in whatever form it may be. It was fun to get together with the Zone (there are 6 sisters total in my zone, and we live with 2 of the other sisters, so it was fun to meet the last 2.) It was also fun because one of the Elders from my MTC district is in my Zone so we got to say hi and see how we've done in our first 2 weeks.

The really cool part of my Thanksgiving was visiting a single sister who was spending her Thanksgiving alone. She's in the process of moving, and had planned to move before the holidays but ended up not being quite done. Sister Hoof has been dropping by for months giving service and offering short spiritual messages, but to date she'd never really been interested. Well, when we showed up around 6:30 on Thanksgiving we were the first people she'd seen. We sat and talked with her and then shared President Monson's talk on Gratitude with her. The spirit in the room was incredible and it was amazing to see how touched she was by his message. That's what I'm really going to remember about this Thanksgiving, sharing that message and watching the change in her as we read.

Okay, here's a quick thought on virtue. Virtue as a missionary is interesting because you are out with your companion and it's just the two of you making decisions and deciding what to do and where to go and how to reach the most people. Virtue as a missionary is working hard and long, it's only taking that hour for lunch or dinner even when you are tired. It's talking to one more person, or knocking on one more door. It's saying "yes I'll help" after you've had a long day and don't really want to give more service, and you know that your Mission President will never know, or any other leadership, but you keep going because you know that it is what you came here to do. Virtue, like Mom said, is what we do when no one is watching.

Okay, now for my saga of the week. Remember the Sister we committed to baptism last week? Well, her baptismal date is on Saturday, and we still don't have anywhere to do the service. Who'd have thought that in a city full of LDS chapels we wouldn't be able to get a single one that will let us come do a baptism. We're moving forward with faith (and appealing to higher powers to help us make this baptism happen) and with any luck this Saturday Alma will be getting baptized. We're so excited for her, and I've just loved working with her.

Other points of interest, I feel that I have now officially become a missionary as I got chased down the road on my bike by a dog. Not really a highlight of the week, but certainly worth mentioning. It gave me my work out, and certainly got the adrenalin going.

I think that's about it for this week. Thanks to those of you who sent me letters, I really enjoyed getting them. Have a marvelous week!

Love you all,

Hermana Okeson

Nicole's Mission President's wife does a blog if any one wants to check it out.

http://calledtoservephoenix.blogspot.com/