Hola! Que tal?!

I love my new area.. It has been so great so far. I am in Raleigh 3rd ward so we technically cover the entire raleigh stake (english area) so it is again a large area, but we share it with 2 sets of elders as well. I was completely blown away yesterday when I went to church and there was an entire chapel full of people. and they were all Hispanic! It is the only Hispanic WARD here in our mission, and they are honestly amazing:)





My companion is so great too!! Hermana Evans. She is "from" Hawaiii.. But she is a military child so she has moved all over the place! She went to high school in Tucson but then now her family lives in Hawaii.. So it has been fun to talk all about the different places we both know and have been to! :) she is incredible though, she has such a strong testimony and such a great love for these people. She speaks good spanish already and she has only been out 2 transfers (this is her 3rd) so I am the senior comp but it doesnt always feel that way now haha. We are definitely working together and helping eachother a lot. It is great.



That I think has been the hardest part of this past week. Is just my Spanish abilities. I get really frustrated with myself because I wish I could say more.. or when I do talk, sometimes I say things I didn't want to say or I just feel like I sounded stupid when I said whatever it was I did. I have just been thinking a lot about that and I have realized that I if I really am just being lead by the spirit to say what the Lord wants me to say, I wont have to worry about it. I will say the right things.

Then, this morning I read a talk in the Liahona (Ensign.. actually it might be new era. it is combined in the Spanish one) about "Llegar a ser perfectos en Cristo" translation: "Becoming Perfected in Christ". I would invite you all to read it.. it is soooo good. It just really helped remind me that I dont have to be perfect.. and that being discouraged weakens faith. So there is no use or benefit of complaining about the things that are bad or discouraging. The Lord doesn't expect us to be perfect in general in all the things here on this Earth. That is why He gave us His son, to atone for us so that we COULD make mistakes and we COULD grow and learn. He doesn't want us to mess up or sin, but he DOES want us to grow and learn while we are here on the earth.


I have had some really good personal studies lately mostly focusing on the Atonement. and that is because in PMG it says "as your own knowledge of the atonement increases, your desire to share it with others will increase" (or something to that effect) so I have really been trying to understand all the different aspects of it and it has been great. I love the illuminating effect of the spirit! :)


I wish i had more time to be able to share with you all that i have learned about the atonement, but I just cant express it through a short email. I am just so grateful for it. I am so grateful for this time we have on the earth to learn and that we can feel the LOVE that God and Christ have for us through the Spirit. It is such a blessing too to be able to share that with other people here in Raleigh.. and even though it is hard-- in Spanish!:)



The leaders in our ward are a lot of americans that know spanish, and it is just exciting to think that in the future maybe I will get to go to a Hispanic branch and be apart of that because I will know Spanish woo! haha


so anyways. this week... We had good lessons with people! Hermana Evans introduced me to a lot of the members and we have a new investigator as well! He is the brother of a woman that just got baptized. (she actually got confirmed yesterday which was awesome too!) and he is very emotional about how great his family is and how much change they have had in their lives since they have joined the church. We are so excited for him! We have faith he is going to be baptized this transfer!! Other than that, nothing else to report.


I love you all so much and I am so glad to be here in Raleigh!!! Thanks for all your prayers and support. I can feel it:) I also cant believe it has been 7 months.. but i am one of the oldest Spanish sisters now... weird.


alright have a great week,


Besitos!!

-Hermana Weller

TRANSFERRED to Raleigh!!

Well folks,
After a great almost 6 months.. I am going to be leaving good old Wallace to go to the opposite way of life here in the mission... IM GOING TO RALEIGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am kind of freaking out actually right now. I have to speak Spanish full time now.. And I haven't been for the past like 3 months.. I am so nervous! But excited at the same time. Man. This is craziness.. I found out I was transferring after dinner on Friday night right before we went over to the _____'s. So you can imagine when we told her.. It was not super good haha. She was really really sad. But we are going to see them again tonight! The last appointment here in Wallace.


Anyways.. Thanks for the pictures of y'all on vacation, you look so great and look like it is so much fun!! I am totally jealous but it is okay. haha


Let me tell you about the rest of the week and I will get to these past few days:)..So we went Monday and taught another lesson to this great Hispanic family we found last week. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and the mom just started bawling.. She has a few relatives back in Honduras that are really sick and they don't know what is wrong with them.. so it was just perfect for us to teach that. :) we were supposed to see them again yesterday or something but they had to reschedule:/ But it is super exciting! They have 3 kids and are all of baptismal age:) the great thing too is I think Sister Cardenas (the one from Tucson who I had known a little but before my mission) is the one coming here to Wallace to take my place-- and she obviously can speak Spanish for real! hahaha.. So the Spanish work will move forward a lot better now:)


Then Thursday-- we got to go out to Fayetteville to hear from Elder Corbridge!!!!!!!!! I loved his talk in general conference so it was so neat to meet him in real life. He instructed us for like 2 hours too! It was soo good. Literally amazing.. I learned so much and we were able to come back and apply things right away in our area that he had talked about:) He told us we really need to help people understand 1. why 2. how 3. what with everything we teach. We need them to understand the GOSPEL of JESUS CHRIST because that really can answer those questions. Helping people know WHY they should do things we invite them to do!! then him and his wife also talked about not beating yourself up and being upset with your self. And it was just perfect. it was literally just what I needed right then.. And I was sitting right in the middle of the chapel-- and he was looking at me like the whole time. I literally felt like he was talking directly at me. It was amazing.

Then Friday we found out about transfers.. sad day haha but at the same time exciting! and then Saturday we went to a baptism with Lorena up in Jacksonville! It was so good:) the spirit was SO strong and I just started crying at the end when we had to sing the closing song "Lord, I would Follow Thee" (for some reason that is ALWAYS the song we have to sing when I am super emotional.. Its one of my fav's though:)) because ____ was there with us and I want so badly for her to be baptized!!! and i was sad I was leaving and all that.. but it was a good experience for sure!

We were at the Niebaur's to say goodbye...

                                                             Here I am with Lorena

Here's our last picture of our zone...

This is Rachel, Yami's mom

                                                                      Yami and I

                                                                    Sister Alvarez and I

Then yesterday at church it was just super unreal that everything was happening, I had to baer my testimony.. and Sister _____ and Sister ____ both were at church! It was so great:) and then we went and ate dinner with the ____'s one last time and saw _____ one last time.. and I didn't really get upset about going until today Brother ____ called us and told me that he is really going to miss me and that I have been one of his favorite "grand daughters" :) They are the BEST. I am going to miss them a ton.

Well wish me luck in my now totally Spanish adventures! I am off to the "promised land" of Raleigh! haha.. I can't believe it.
I love you so so so so so much. Thank you for your support and your emails. It helps so much each week.
I know this church is SO true. The Spirit is something un-deniable. I hope we all are able to recognize when He is speaking to us.. giving us that guidance and direction.. Have a wonderful week.


-Hermana Weller

My Mom Would Be So PROUD!!

This week was really good! The reason I titled this email what I did is because we did some service this week (cleaning) and afterwards I was like.. Wow, if my mom saw this she would be proud of me haha! Really, Mom. You would be proud of how well I clean and how good our house stays!


We helped Sister ____ clean out her car this week.. It was pretty grody (idk how to spell that) because when ___ was still here those kids tore up her back seat! But after we were done with it, it looked great.. and we were sweaty haha.


This week we got to meet yet another friend of ___'s and we are now teaching her:) She is really great! We taught her about the gospel of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, endure to the end) and then at the end she started just crying and crying and we were like.. What are you feeling right now? She said, "scared". And we said what are you afraid of? Basically she said she is scared of going full force into a church again because as a teenager she had a really bad experience:( But she felt the Spirit and she opened up to us and we think she has great potential. We are excited to keep teaching her.


We got to go see ___ with Sister ___ and teach her about prophets and why we listen to their counsel and about the Word of Wisdom. She has been reading the Book of Mormon just from the beginning and she is enjoying it! She said she doesnt really have any problems with the word of wisdom so we are still doing great with her! She came to church yesterday.. and wow. it was a good sacrament meeting!! She was crying, I was crying, it was just really good. We are having her pray about June 14th. (she has to be baptized by that day because June 16th is transfers and I don't know if I am staying or not!!!) haha:) It's not about me.. I just really would love to be able to see her take that step.





Then the other cleaning we did was for Sister ___. She is less active and we have been working with her forever! We went and helped her clean her house (deep clean it!) because her back is pretty bad and she can't do certain things that we have no problem doing. So that was good. It was nice to get dirty and clean and just talk with her and build that trust. She ordered pizza and we ate lunch with her whole family before we left and she said she was for sure going to come to church and then she didn't :( It is really hard to have that happen because they seem sincere and our less-actives we are working with really are changing and want to come. But then they don't. We are going to do what you said, Dad- and go knock on their door before church and make sure they are getting ready.. but some of them live really far away) :)


But yesterday was really just such a great day at church, I love fast Sundays. I always just feel the Spirit so strongly when I am fasting and it is crazy how much easier fasting has become even though I do it longer than I used to. Our lessons were all just so great and the spirit helped me learn some things and write down some things that I want to make sure and apply to my family when I get home and down the road when I start my own family.


I have been loving the Book of Mormon so much this time that I am reading it through.. I have been just trying to absorb it ALL because when I gave away my first book of Mormon experience book I feel like I lost a lot of my ability to just turn and find a scripture. So this time I am trying to just lock it in:)


I love you all so much. I know that the Lord loves us all very very much and He puts people in our lives so we can effect them and bring them closer to Him just through our example. I know fasting is powerful. It can help us to feel the Spirit so much.


Well. that is all for this week.. Nothing extremely exciting! Life is great as a missionary though:) so great.


-Hermana Weller