week 56

September 2, 2009

I hope you are all doing well. It has been a great week for me. There are some challenges that I can already see but I have complete faith that Heavenly Father will help me through it. Sister Lauchner is so great! She is very outgoing and isn't scared of anything but bugs. It's pretty entertaining to be quite honest. She is from Virginia and is the 2nd of 4 girls. She is great at spanish and we are both excited that we can practice speaking together. I know that one of the reasons that we were put together was to help each other in our spanish. When I was with someone that could speak spanish I was too scared to talk out of fear. Now I know I can do more than I give myself credit for. It's not perfect but it is sure better than my gringa accent a year ago. We are teaching some great families. We have a baptism on Sunday! I am super excited! Brandy is so great! She is a young woman and has a great desire to live the gospel. She has a strong testimony and knows that the gospel will help her and her family. We are also teaching another family of 5. There are 3 daughters and they all ask great questions. I am always amazed at how deep their thoughts are. Even the youngest asks big questions. Some of them are things that I have never asked myself. We have taught them twice this week and they will be at church on Sunday. They have had the missionaries before but they say that this time it feels different. I feel good about it. We are also teaching some part member families. There is a lot of potential here in this ward and I am very excited. There is a very good spirit here and I love it! I am not too lost and I am remembering where people live. We have 4 different cities and 2 different counties here in Los Alamitos. It is fun. We are also teaching a recent convert. Kelly was baptized a few weeks before Sister Hart left. She is amazing! She has twin 4 year olds. Little Mikey has curly red hair. I haven't met them yet but I have heard a lot about them. I am just amazed by the spirit in recent converts. They truly have a glow and they just love the gospel. I am in awe that my loving Heavenly Father has allowed me to witness the changes that occur in the hearts of His children. There are times when I am sitting in home teaching someone and I am just amazed that I am a part of it. Are you ready for a funny story? Dad you will be so proud! So Saturday night we pulled into the driveway and started to do our mileage. Lucky for me the new car has tire pressure sensors. I had a warning light and it said one of the tires was really low. I thought it was a little weird because the car is only a couple of months old. And no I didn't run into any curbs. I looked and it didn't look super low but I told Sister Lauchner that we needed to go and put air in it because the next day was Sunday. So we filled it up and then went back home. The next morning we woke up and it was low again. We had somewhere we needed to be so we just left. When we got to our destination we discovered that we had a huge nail/screw in the tread. So we got a ride to church and then had to find a ride back to our car. Kelly took us to our car after church and we changed the tire. We were by a member but he wasn't there because he is in the stake presidency. So Sister Lauchner and I changed the tire ourselves and didn't have any problems. We were so proud! Sister Hiatt said that we were awesome and that any other sister missionary wouldn't have done it. So anyway it was a little unexpected but we did it and now I can say that I have changed a tire with no problems. The hardest part was figuring out the jack and how to get it to work. We went and got it fixed and all is well. President came over to our house yesterday for interviews. It was weird to see him in a home besides his own. We have a mission tour in a couple of weeks so he did our interviews at home instead of at zone conference. We are having our mission tour with Craig C. Christiansen and it will be combined with some of the other zones. I will get to see Sister Haycock! I am super excited! Last week when we did transfers I didn't get to say goodbye and I was so sad! We had to leave and they were in a meeting. It broke my heart. She called to ask a question and I got tears in my eyes. President told me that there would be a lot of change going on with the sisters. I am super excited that there are so many new sisters coming! It will be so great for the mission! I love my mission with all my heart! I can never thank my Heavenly Father enough for the great blessings He has given me. I don't even remember what my life was like before my mission and I know that it will be a part of me for the rest of my life! I love you all and hope that you have an amazing week! Have fun at the wedding! Krissy Jo I am so excited for you! Love Sister Mickelsen