IS THE CHURCH TRUE?? YES!!

Hey all! This week was the best week of the mission by far. SO many things happened, that have been so fun, and make me so genuinely excited to be a missionary every day. First off, I have a confession. I lied to all of you. Remember how I said in my last email that my best companion was going to be the one I never met? Yeahhhh well, on Monday Hermana Utley said "hey what are you doing this weekend?" (as if I ever have any plans besides the MTC) and now as I'm typing this she's sitting across the room from me. Which is pretty dope and the coolest thing to happen during the MTC so far. She's just as much of a party in real life and now we can hang out 24 hours a day, until tomorrow when she goes back home. In addition, another missionary, Elder Riches from California, flew out to Utah too, and 6 missionaries live in Utah, so we all met up on Saturday. Seriously the best day of the mission, we hung out all day long, 7am to 9pm. SO weird to see the Elders in person and see how tall they are. My first guesses on height were very inaccurate haha. Anyway lets get into the highlights:

Things that made me laugh:

• First off, our afternoon teacher was telling us about his dog named coqueta. Which translates to flirtatious. His dog's name. Is flirtatious. I got a kick out of that one. 

• One Thursday it was Juan's birthday. He told us, and we all immediately got on the group chat to figure out what we could do to celebrate his birthday. He got disappointed at us halfway through class, because we weren't paying attention, but it was because we were planning a birthday surprise. We changed our background to a drawing I made really quick that said Happy Birthday Hermano Solis! And we sang to him in spanish over zoom. Chaos, however he was so happy it made my whole life. 

• The meetup with my distrito. I was laughing every three seconds with all of them. I'd also like to let everyone to know that I beat all 7 other missionaries in our bowling game, which I'm pretty proud of. We had morning class together, and played ping pong on our breaks, then went bowling and then to In-N-Out, then on to Elder Bott's house for afternoon class, and then to temple square and city creek. It was more than I've walked in 5 weeks and my feet hurt. 

• During the morning class, when we were all together, Juan was VERY annoyed with us. I don't think he approved of all of us meeting, which was odd, but he was a little disappointed in us for having fun even though we were participating and paying attention. Whoops. Poor guy. 

• Hermano Martinez however thought it was the funniest thing of his life that we were all hanging out. We invited him to come up to Utah to meet us, and he told us he didn't have the money to fly up to see kids he barely knows. So I told him we would start a GoFundMe for him, which he didn't know what that was, so I had to explain IN SPANISH what a GoFundMe is, and why everyone would donate to the "Fly Martinez out to Utah" fund, and I have rarely seen him laugh that hard. So if anyone wants to donate, tips are appreciated. 

• Elder Buhler has a dumb dog, and he also climbed out a window. Meanwhile Elder Bott saved a runaway trash can. And Elder Pratt got his wisdom teeth out. Important moments.

• When we were touring around Temple Square, we stopped at city creek for dinner, and Elder Bray was carrying around his shoulder bag, and then accidentally left it at the food court. We were walking out the door when a security guard stops us and asks if any of us lost a bag, and so we start walking to the lost and found to get it back, when another guard stops and asks if it's one of our bags. Funny how they all knew it was one of us, because it's not like anyone else is carrying around that kind of bag. Let alone with spanish scriptures in them. Also we got 10% off our dinner because we were missionaries. Utah is pretty cool.

Milagritos (mini miracles):

• On monday I got to hear from Elder Gardner (Brev), Sister Fuller (Gabbie), and Sister Anderson (Elle). It was a good day full of a whole lot of missionary talk. 

• On Wednesday for P-day, I was able to go to the temple with my mom, Katherine, her mom, and her sister. It was amazing to be back at the temple. Highly recommend going. 

• Also on Wednesday, Hermano Martinez had another blackout, so we had class by ourselves with no teacher. He didn't send us with the other district again (that's a milagrito in and of itself) so we had to have a lesson ourselves. Elder Bray taught a great lesson, and my favorite part was when we were all participating and throwing spiritual insights around. So many people shared their thoughts, and it really was one big spiritual discussion. Granted it was all in english, but I think it was nice to have one english discussion, because sometimes it's hard to feel the spirit super strong when your brain is working overtime to translate in your head, even though we sure do feel the spirit, but this discussion left me some really good insights and a whole lot of spirit. Super grateful for my district. 7C to the grave!!

• The fact that 8/12 of the district were able to meet in Utah is such a miracle. So many things had to happen for it to work, and somehow we made it happen. I'm so grateful for the chance to meet them, I think it was a pick me up we all needed.

• HERMANA UTLEY. IS IN MY ROOM RIGHT NOW. (aaand she's asleep) HOW FUN IS THAT?? Yeah that's a pretty cool milagrito. And it's a good thing she's even better in real life. Would have been awkward if not. 

• My friend Syd took the train all the way to Farmington from Orem, just so she could hang out with me and drive all the way back to Salt Lake to pick up Hermana Utley with me. Love that girl.

• When there were just five of us missionaries walking over to city creek, it was homecoming night, so there were groups of kids going to dances just EVERYWHERE. In Salt Lake we were pretty much famous, everyone smiled and waved and said hi and were super kind. But my favorite interaction was some random kid walking past us with his date, and as he walked past, he practically yells at us, "IS THE CHURCH TRUE??" and without a second of hesitation, every single one of us turn to him and yell "YES!!!" in unison. It was a little wholesome interaction, but I think I'll think about that my whole mission. Here we have 5 kids who stayed up till like 3 am every night up until a month ago, hanging out with friends and having fun, and now we're making crazy hard faith filled decisions to be here. In any other life we'd be partying it up at college right now. But the fact that some random teenager can walk past us and ask us if our church is true, and without a second hesitation we can give him a resounding YES! is so cool to me. Because the church IS true. This gospel is so true and so real. Jesus Christ lives. It blesses billions of lives whether people are aware of those blessings or not. It's a place of security and peace and hope. Joseph Smith was a prophet called of God, and so is Russell M. Nelson. The Book of Mormon is the truest book on this earth, with story after story (the non-fiction kind of story) of faith filled people, changing eternities for themselves and others. And we get to follow in their footsteps. I so hope that for the rest of eternity, if any teenager walks past me and asks if the church is true, I can give him a confident yes, with a smile on my face, backed up by every other missionary and member of this church. 

• I was able to go the the farewell of one of my best friends Katherine! She will be going to Uruguay with me, and I am so excited. She is going to be, and already is, one of the best missionaries this world has seen. She is truly incredible and inspires me every day to be better, and I wish the whole world could have heard her farewell talk.

• I also got to watch one of the elders in my district's farewell talk. Shoutout to Elder Memmott for a stellar talk. He's such a great missionary. 

• My sweet aunt and uncle gave me and Hermana Utley the opportunity to teach their cute family a gospel lesson. Those kids are incredible, and it was so fun to teach a lesson in english (much easier), to kids who were receptive and love the gospel. You are raising some pretty incredible kids Angela and Justin! 

Anyway, that was pretty long, but this week was just plain good. I have ONE WEEK before I leave for Washington DC, so if you want to come say goodbye, email me or text me, and I'd love to see you! 

Love you all! Hermana Allen