Ryan got baptized and I got a greenie!!

Hello everyone! Hope you had the best Father's Day! It's been quite the time here in the 'Burg!

Mis amigos Maria and Oscar called us last week and told us they were heading to Mexico. Maria's dad (Oscar's grandpa) is sick so they left to go visit him. We've texted since and everything seems to be getting better, Oscar will be coming back later this week, but we're not sure when Maria's planning on returning. 

Transfers were this week, we packed up Hermana Coca (which took a lot more effort than it should of) and I sent her and her 300 pounds of luggage of to Eugene. :) She will be missed, I had to wait another day for my greenie to fly in; so I was companions with Sister Bushman for a little over 24 hours. 

Hermana Peterson, my trainee- not to be confused with my trainer Sister Peterson- arrived on Wednesday...and she's fluent. So all is well in the 'Burg once again. Her dad works for the DEA so she's lived a lot of places, and picked up Spanish in a few of them. YAY! She's pretty epic, and says "Que padre." At least 50 times a day. Which I've learned is slang in Mexico for "How cool". She's also assigned to España, but the lesser mission of Barcelona! :( So close to perfection, but so far!

The low point of our week was definitely when Hermana Peterson and I were a little to confident in the capabilities of our kitchen and tried to use our toaster oven, hot pad, and microwave at the same time...naturally we lost power in the kitchen. Which unfortunately lost power to our AC as well, and I was sweating bullets. We went and flipped the breaker like 10 times too and nothing happened, I thought that was surely how I would die; but we said a prayer and flipped it for the 11th time, and everything turned back on. Funny how that works. :)

This week our mission had a devotional with THEE David A. Bednar. I had known about this for weeks, and had been reading the talks sent out to prepare for a WHILE; but I guess it didn't sink in. Because, as soon as David A. Bednar walked into the room, I got so excited I hit my comp and whispered, "That's David A. Bednar." It was so weird, it was David A. Bednar talking with President and calling out familiar names as we called on people to share their thoughts! It was so cool! He didn't like prepare a talk of anything, he just had us share our thoughts from four of his past conference talks, then did a Q&A! We talked a lot about acting in faith, and how faith isn't an abstract thing, it's what you do. Apparently is was 3 hours long, but I'm 98% sure I was only there for 30 minutes.

Also Ryan got baptized this week. We met him at the church and went over the paper-work together...which is were I learned he has been married twice and has two kids. Who knew? Also apparently they are all members? Wild. His story just gets more and more interesting!

Aside from the shocking revelation as we filled out his paperwork everything went really well! We kept things VERY small and simple (his younger brother was performing the baptism, confirming him, and playing the piano), just like he asked. His mom, dad and two of his brothers got baptized in the 80s; so this has been a long time coming. It felt kind of weird knowing that this conversion story takes place over decades and I was only in a little fragment of it these last 7 weeks; but that did not stop his mom from thanking me- and my comp who was on her fifth day of the mission- profusely. I have no doubt this is an answer to decades of her prayers.

Here's a funny little embarrassing story for y'all. We taught José the ten commandments Thursday. It went pretty well. I had to have Hermana Peterson help a little with the Spanish but all was well, until the end. During which, I asked "Guardará los dos mandamientos." Which means "will you keep the two commandments". So that was sad. Can't believe I conjugated in future tense correctly only to mix up ten and two! Jose thought it was pretty funny though, and said he could definitely keep two but he'd try for all ten.

It's always a good time when serving the Lord, have a great week everybody!

Hermana Shelton

Fotos:

1 - new Roseburg sisters!!

2 - ran into Hawkins @ the transfer spot! 

3 - low quality picture of Coca and I twinning

4 - us sweating it out post breaker incident 

5 - José gave us a lot of cherries!

6 - pictures of baptism to come, haven't been sent them from my WML yet!