New Photos Have Arrived!

Linnea sent some new photos!

Christmas at Temple Square.  Linnea is taking the photo
of her two companions.

With one of the many children she has grown very fond of.

Linnea and her companion bought some white underwear for a woman who was going to be baptized.  When the sister opened the package she was surprised that the undies were soooo big.  Linnea and her companion were also surprised.
They are not too aware of underwear sizes.

Linnea is developing quite a taste for Mexican, Salvadorian, Cuban and other Hispanic foods.  Here are some of her condiments of choice.

Linnea's companion is Samoan and a visa waiter...headed to Argentina.

 A little bit from April 30th email...

This week was pretty crazy actually. We met with our investigator Nivin from Iraq this week. Her story is gnarly and so cool(unfortunately I can't share too much about it, but trust me she's awesome) We had a lesson with her and she told us she loves LDS people. She loves the church and every time the other sisters(where she used to live) visited her she felt so good. She asked us if we were going to pray with her because she loved how she felt with the other sisters when she prayed. She told us she wanted to be baptized but had to move all of the sudden so didn't get the chance to. We asked her to pray about what date the Lord had prepared for her to be baptized and she said the most simple humble prayer. Then she looked down at the calendar and said...May 26! So she will be baptized May 26 and we are stoked about it. We met with her again last week to teach her a real lesson(the first time was more of a get to know her lesson) and there was a lot of google translate going on. She speaks English pretty well, but the doctrinal words she's never heard in English before. So for words like prophet, apostasy, etc. we would type the word into the computer and it would translate it into Arabic. We also gave her an Arabic Book of Mormon and she was in heaven. She's so cute.

Linnea sings in church...

      Also, this Sunday Sister Lomiga and I sang in the Forestdale branch.  We don't sing terribly together but who would have ever thought I would be singing in a Sacrament meeting. Everyone told us we sounded great but I'm sure they were just flattering us

One of these sisters' mom sent these hats for them to give to some of the children in their area.
They decided to model them first.  

Some excerpts from her May 7th email:

 Probably the most interesting news would be to know about transfers right? Well, lets start with Monday. Monday night I got a phone call from President Winn saying that I would be training one of the 28! Yes, 28 new missionaries coming in on Thursday. How appropriate...this week I hit 9 months, I get a daughter(the mission lingo for training a new missionary). I was pretty excited yet nervous all at the same time. Big responsibility and I still feel like a little baby missionary...not yet capable of doing big girl missionary things but we shall see. Since I got a call about training I figured I was staying in my area and Tuesday we got a phone call confirming that news BUT to our surprise Sister Lomiga found out she was getting transferred. We thought she would for sure be staying until she left for Argentina but not the case. Tuesday our whole zone got together for a fabulous lunch at Chuck-a-rama to discuss transfer info and who was training etc.

Her new companion...

My new companion/daughter is Hna Guerra. She is from Georgia and is a boss. She's a way good missionary already. WAY better than I was when I started.  She's super cool and has a belly laugh like Tess. Love it! Her mom is from Honduras and her dad from El Salvador. She lived in El Salvador for 2 years and Honduras for 6.

A cool experience...

We went looking for an investigator the last sisters were teaching who we can never find at home. We went to try and find them and again they weren't home, but Hna Lomiga saw a guy laying on the grass in this alley behind the house. We decided to see if he needed any help. As we got closer we noticed he was shaking and we started thinking we were getting in a little over our heads...like it was more serious than we thought. We get closer and realize its a hispanic man so we ask if he needs help and he tells us yes. He was riding his bike and didn't notice the gravel and fell off. He was shaking pretty bad and he told us he also had Parkinsons disease. We helped him up and walked with him to his house. We shared a little about the gospel and he asked us when we could come back and tell him more. We have an appt tonight and we are pretty excited. We were so grateful we saw him because if we hadn't he would have been there forever. I know we were there for a reason. 

We were able to visit with Nivin, the Iraqi woman we have on date. She is so special. The spirit felt when you are with her is outstanding. Its crazy. When she prays its incredible. Its so simple because her English is pretty broken but its so powerful. I love her and her excitement about the gospel. Even though like every other word we have to put into google translate the message still gets across.