CHECK MY TURTLES!!

‏

   Monday we went to the SL Bees game(the minor league baseball team) with the entire mission. It was super hot. We were sitting right behind home plate, really good seats, but the sun was just pounding down on us. Unbearable. We opted to move up to the nosebleeds to be protected by the shade. My companions and I didn't stay for the entire game because we still had to go home and clean, etc. It was really fun though and we got a souvenir bees mini baseball bat. 

     That night we had an awesome FHE  (Family Home Evening) with this family we are working with. The wife's name is Johana and the husband's name is Fabian and they have a 5 yr old son. Johana is a member but Fabian is not. We have been working really hard with them but Fabian just won't budge. We decided about a week ago that this FHE would make it or break it. We decided to teach them the 10 commandments with the fabulous finger signs and we assigned every one a little job. Fabian got the spiritual thought.  We thought for sure he'd say something like "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" but no...he opened up D&C 136:32 which talks about being humble so that our hearts and ears are opened. We asked him why he chose that and he said because he feels like it describes him perfectly. He said he needs to be humble and listen to our message. We didn't catch half of what he said because we were just in shock that he was being so open and humble. We are super stoked to see where this goes. We love this family and we know that it's Johana's biggest desire to see him become a member of the church. We shall see what happens. 

On to check my turtles...we went to an appt that the elders set up for us and we knocked on the door...no answer. The kids sitting on the step told us the guy in the Mexico jersey lived there and so did this other little kid in a Mexican jersey. The little kid heard them and said"I dont live there!" and they started arguing back and forth about whether he lived there or not. Finally, the kid in the Mexico jersey said "DUDE go in my house...go in my room and CHECK MY TURTLES...they ain't gonna be there cuz I don't live here anymore!!" We were laughing so hard..of all the things to check in his room ... he says his turtles. So we have been saying that every since. CHECK MY TURTLES! also that same day this little Hispanic girl about 4 years old comes walking towards us so we say hi and try and ask her how she is. She doesn't say a word and just keeps walking towards us but as she passes us she just books it. Runs so fast. We just said all she was thinking in her mind the whole time was STRANGER DANGER like we were a huge bear or something...she needed to act calm in front of us but once she got passed us it was all over.

Princesa Grandota

Linnea with her Cuban friends

So first off...let me explain my subject of this email. To give a little background information...never in my life have i been identified as the "Tongan".  Never.  BUT everyone we talk to thinks I'm Hispanic(mostly Mexican) so I often get the.."What part of Mexico are you from?"  I then explain that my mom is American and my dad is Tongan...and then from there on out I'm know as la tongana. I better embrace it while I can because its never going to happen again. Anyway since there are tons of Tongans here everyone knows that generally Tongans are a large built people that eat a lot. And since I'm always starving for some reason, I eat a lot, which just helps identify me more as la tongana. So the other day we were talking to our Cuban friends Angelica and Maria Elena and we get up to leave and Angelica gives Sister Corrales a hug. She then gets to me and says 'y mira que grande es ella! eres mi grandota princessa' (which translates to...look how big she is! you are my great big princess) I cant tell you how many times people have told you how large I am. I have not gained weight ps...i think its just cuz everyone I talk to is Hspanic and tiny and so anyone over 5'3" and 120 lbs is gigantic. It makes me laugh every time. and it definitely makes Hna Corrales laugh..she won't let me live it down. I should start writing down how many times people call me big. Its great. I love tiny Hispanic people who feed me mountains of food. This week I suffered a lot because we ate with an English ward and I kid you not we had chicken casserole like 4 times. My body is yearning for some beans and rice and tortillas. This week we are eating 5 out of the 6 days with Mexican families. Its gonna be a great week.

Pioneer Day...July 24th

Pioneer Day... July 24th

In Utah, Pioneer Day is an important day since it was pioneers who settled the state.  Each town has a parade and everyone in the town comes out to be a part of the celebration.  Linnea got to experience her first Pioneer Day by going to the big parade downtown in Salt Lake City.

A parade float made by the
Polynesian Cultural Center (Hawaii, near Tess).

Linnea said the float was followed by
at least 100 Polynesian dancers.

Elder L. Tom Perry (one of the 12 apostles of the church)
  was watching the parade nearby

Snow, finally!

February Snow

Since Linnea has been in Salt Lake City the only extreme weather has been the heat.  This summer has been an unseasonable hot one in Utah but the winter was mild.  There was a little snow and here are the photos to prove it!

Linnea with her companion, Hna. Magdaleno, enjoying the snow.

After their appointment, they ran into some elders
who  had left a message on their car.

Here's the message!

A little snow covered tree!

Celebrating a Birthday on a Mission

Linnea Celebrates a Birthday (February 27, 2012)

I just received the photo disk with all photos from February to July of 2012.  That is the reason that this post is being put up now.

One of the families made her a cake.  When she went to blow out the candles
 the kids pushed her face into the cake!

The cake makers.

There were balloons,

pinatas,

birthday hats

and what is a birthday without gelatina!

I guess instead of birthday spankings there are birthday punches.

Here she is with her birthday balloons and pinata.

Her cousins, Juli and Shane and family
sent her a giant cookie

She shared it with her zone at one of
their favorite (not her favorite) eating establishments.

Vaminos!


Sister Guerra told me the other night at around 3AM...I started moving and mumbling in my sleep and then I said in a nice loud voice VAMINOS!! Haha! Yesssss, I guess I was dreaming in Spanish. So awesome. I think the first time I talked in my sleep it was in Spanish. Reminds me of the good ole days when one of my former companions, Sister Marshall, would have full on conversations in her sleep. I hope you all have a good week. You all are always in my prayers. Please keep my investigators and the investigators of all the missionaries in your prayers. We appreciate it!

Linnea with some of her favorite people!

Faith...
We had a training about faith by the mission secretary Bro Soulier. He talked about how we teach faith as a principle of action but we need to use it as a principle of power. We need to use our faith to show our power and authority and help people grow in their faith. It was a really good training and he talked about the importance of the gift of discernment as missionaries. If we can pray and have the gift of discernment we can eliminate all the fluff from our teachings and get to the heart of the matter. We were also trained by one of the counselors in the mission presidency, President Atkinson. This man is a legend. Every time you get a training from him you just want to go conquer the world. He's super animated and very direct. He taught us how we need to help people RECOGNIZE the spirit as opposed to feeling it. He always tells us that if the investigators don't know what they are feeling is the Holy Ghost its our job to tell them. He shared some crazy stories and basically had everyone...even elders paralyzed by the spirit/in tears. Sister Winn also trained us about mormon.org. Now every week we will be spending an hour each week on mormon.org We will be creating profiles and everything so you all should make profiles as well! One of the new missionaries in our mission...Sister Gomez has a video that will be coming out on mormon.org very soon so be on the look out! President Winn had invited us to pray for mountains to climb to build our faith and he left us with an assignment on Wednesday so we could see the power of our faith (since most of us had over come our mountains). There is an elder in the mission who has been suffering from severe migraines every day. And the mission dept wants him to go home but he doesn't want to. So President Winn invited us all to fast as a mission from Saturday-Sunday so that we could heal him with our faith. Pretty crazy stuff. So as a mission we fasted this weekend for this elder and in every prayer we were mentioning his name. We will see what the outcome is but I know there is no faith/power stronger than 200 missionaries fasting and praying at the same time.

 May 28th email...A DRY MONTH

We have 2 investigators who we need some prayers for..Her name is Noemi and she is great. She has been investigating the church for like 2 years now and she would have been baptized 2 years ago if she wasnt waiting on divorce papers to come in so she could get married. She comes to church EVERY week with her 4 kids and hasn't lost hope of getting baptized. Her divorce papers should be coming in soon so please pray so that they come this month so her and her 8 year old son Brian can be baptized. She is so dead set on getting baptized and last Friday she asked us to remind her how to fast so that she could fast and pray for her papers to come in. She's legit. She fasted the next day...and she broke her fast with us by inviting us over for sopes! Sooo good.

    We have also been working with some less-actives and they are great! The Toledo family was attending an English ward and then all of a sudden stopped going. The Ward mission leader in that ward gave us their name to go visit because they also speak Spanish. We went over and talked with them and they have been coming to church at Lucero for the last 3 weeks! They are awesome. We also got a referral of a guy named David who was less-active. Hes from Honduras and turns out he grew up in the same place Sister Guerra grew up. They went to the same church building. He's so cool. He lives with a woman named Zuly(also from Honduras) and EVERYtime we go to their house...they always have prepared some delicious food for us! So goood. We have an appt on Thursday and they are making chile rellenos.  And David came to church on Sunday!! Zuly works at LDS hospital and works most Sundays but at LDS hospital they go around giving the sacrament to employees...pretty cool huh?

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.