Rain Rain Go Away

Well, that's it folks. The last time I'll see the sun in Oregon for about 7 months! Good thing this rain is nothing to my Missouri thunderstorms! Woo, go MO!

Last week we had Zone p-day which consisted of soccer, basketball, ultimate frisbee, and....nerf-gun zombie. Gooooood times! (see picture attached!)

We also had a Sister's Conference, and all the sisters in the entire mission (about 46 of us) got together and listened to each and every one of the Sister Training Leaders, followed by President and Sister Samuelian. I absolutely loved seeing all the sister missionaries. It was incredible to me to see all these young girls who chose to serve not because of duty or responsibilty but just because they wanted to serve the Lord!

A message I'd like to share with you is:

If you can't think it, you can't do it!

"So much in life depends on our attitude. The way we choose to see things and respond to others makes all the difference." Thomas S. Monson

This week Sister Sorensen and I hit hard on the Spanish work this week. We even went on splits and visited a ton of Spanish formers (those who have taken lessons from the missionaries but stopped learning about the Church for whatever reason) and we have 5 return appointments this week! We also worked our tail off on getting our Spanish investigators to come to the fireside I mentioned last week (Sunday, the 22nd, at 7pm). All of them agreed to come.

President Aguiar, the second couselor from our mission presidency, had come to a meeting at 1pm on Sunday, the 22nd, to a meeting with the Coucil Creek Bishopric, AP Spanish Elders, and the missionaries. We were just planning on a stradegy on how to go about creating a branch. You have to start out with a "group" first, and we just barely started discussing everything when the Stake President interrupted and said he wanted to sit in on the meeting! After reviewing what the requirements are for a group and for a branch, the Stake President said that actually, everything was in order for to start a branch and skip over starting the group part! He said he already has a candidate to be the Spanish branch president, and knows of several members to perform all the leadership roles.

THE SPANISH BRANCH IS HAPPENING PEOPLE!!!! the goal is that it will be effective in about 3 weeks or so.

Later in the afternoon, President Aguiar and the two Spanish elders went with us to go visit some of our invesitgators to remind them about the fireside that night. None of them were home, and none of them would answer our phone calls. So, as we split up and President Aguiar and the two elders went tracting and Hermana Sorensen and I went trying to hunt down the invesitgators we haven't reminded about the fireseide yet. When we met up again for dinner, they came back with FOURTEEN referrals. 14! You'd be lucky to get 2 in a day! After dinner, we went to get ready for the fireside. The man who's house it was, Carlos, was a recent convert and was kinda nervous/excited to have the fireside at his house. He cleaned up the whole place, there was food and drinks waiting on the table, his tiny living room was filled with chairs and everything was ready to go. But -

None of them showed up.

7:15 rolled around, then 7:30....no one came.

But you know what? It all ended up being okay. President Aguiar was talking with Carlos and then using Carlos' phone, called Carlos' less active teenage sons to come home because he wanted to talk to them. And they came home! With a friend, too. For an hour and a half, President Aguiar spoke with them about their worth and their importance and their future. He had each of the missionaries in the room bare their testimonies, too. The Spirit was there, and everything was amazing. It all worked out!

Hermana Sorensen and I were so grateful for everything. All we week we just knew the fireside would be awesome. We were nervous about investigators not being sincere about accepting our invitation (and I suppose they weren't) but we shoved ALL doubts aside because we knew if we thought it wouldn't be successful, then it won't be. Was it exactly what we had planned? Heckkkk no! But it was a wonderful night, and I knew that if had we thought any differently about our expectations, if had any doubts, any dread, the little miracles that happened that night just wouldn't have happened. Bottom line.

Everything is within our power, but only if you want it to be!

Have a great week!

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Blanchard