Serving in San Antonio Texas: Happy 4th! .... July 8, 2019

Hello family and friends!! I hope you all had the best week and really enjoyed the 4th of July! Our week was super fun and eventful! Holidays in the mission are so different than when I was home, but nonetheless it was still fun!

On Monday I was able to eat with my family again, and wow I just love family so much, and I am so so grateful for this gospel and that families are the central part of it! Family truly does make everything better! After eating with my family, we were able to have a lesson with Judy and David, and talked about how we can use the Atonement in our lives! It was such an amazing and powerful lesson, and the spirit was SO STRONG. Judy is still wanting to be baptized so bad, but has stuff to overcome so we are just visiting with her twice a week to help her until she can overcome what she needs to!

We were able to go to service this last week again at the food pantry, and it was so fun because we have the elders in our district coming and doing it with us from now on as well! I just love being around other people and other missionaries, it makes me so incredibly happy! We also had the same lady that we are going to dinner with this week (nonmember from service) invite us to an activity in Liberty Hill to celebrate the fourth! After service, we thought we had a really good day planned but then absolutely everything cancelled! Luckily we were able to contact somebody we have been trying to contact and have lessons with, and her name is Katie, and we were able to have a lesson with her! So it was a good thing everything cancelled so we could visit with her!

On the 3rd, we were able to go to the Liberty Hill festival with the ladies that we do service with! It was so fun, and I kind of felt like a "normal person" for once and it was actually super weird haha. We had to park at the high school and ride school buses to the park, and then met with our friends! There were tents and a lot of bouncy houses, some food trucks and some water things for kids to play in as well! There was also a band from Austin singing old music from the 80s, but I was actually really surprised with how much I still knew (even though I tried really hard to not listen).

We were able to celebrate on the 4th as well! Right before we went to dinner, we did have a little tragic accident though haha. We were trying to find a referral we had been given earlier that day, and we got caught in a corner of an apartment complex, so we were backing out like a 10 point turn and we backed into another car.. yeah it was rough hahh thankfully I was backing out and obviously not going very fast.. The funnier thing is that my companion was out of the car backing me up (like we are supposed to do) and even with her backing me up, we still ran into the car! It only scratched off like a dime sized piece of paint, so all is well! It was super embarrassing but nobody was around at all and we waited to see if the owner of the car would come out, but after 10 minutes we just left a note! We went to the Leander city festival as well, and it was on the block right behind our apartment! We walked there, and it was pretty much the same as the Liberty Hill Festival! We got some really good ice cream, and talked to some people! We met an amazing member as well and she took pictures of us and sent them to our parents! Then we went home when we were supposed to (9pm) and we had the PERFECT view for the fireworks! Our patio was on the right side of the building so we could go out and watch them, and so it was so fun! The firework show lasted for about 20 minutes, and then we went to bed! It was fun to still be able to celebrate the holiday even on a mission!

I hit 5 months on Friday! It has been quite the crazy 5 months and it is so fun to look back and realize how far I have come! and it makes me so excited for how much more I will grow in the next 13 months, but even more excited for all of the more people I will be able to meet and help before next August! We went to Bahama Bucks to celebrate 5 months in the mission, and ironically we ran into the same member that we met at the Leander Festival, and she was so kind she bought our smoothies! Members are so amazing to missionaries here, and we just love and cherish our amazing members!

Yesterday we had quite the experience at church as well! We were about to leave, and one of the brothers in our ward walked up to us and introduced us to a family that was out on the street of our church holding up a sign for money. They only spoke spanish, so it was so good for us as well! Come to find out, they were from Austin and we had no idea why they had come all the way up here. But he didn't have a job for 3 more weeks and needed to find a church to pay their rent for this month, and so we helped them contact the bishop in their area! And another amazing member in our ward took the family and filled their car with gas, and then bought them groceries at HEB! People are just so Christ-like here and it is so admirable! The family was from Romania, and it was just cool to see the joy on their face after we were able to help them. Right after church we went on a visit with one of the members of our stake presidency and visited a lady in our ward who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer :( It was so extremely sad to see how down she was, but we brought a message of peace and comfort and it really seemed to help her out! We also had dinner with our bishop and he told me about the World Cup!! I am so extremely pumped that the US won! I still somewhat wish I could have watched it, but I know I am doing what I need to be doing right now, and I will be able to watch the next one!

We don't have many exciting plans for this week other than today we are going to hangout with the other sisters! We are going out to lunch and then going to hangout at Ikea for an hour or so!

Last but not least, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE SISTER MAKELL (on the 12th) I hope everybody will make an effort and wish her a happy birthday (and stay off the roads ;))
Makell, I love you so very much and I am so proud of the woman you are becoming! I am so grateful for you and the best friend I have come to find in you, I hope you have the best 16th ever!!

I love you all and am forever grateful for all of you and the love and support I receive from all of you! Have another wonderful week!