Went through the Temple and found out I was expecting...

September 14th

This past week was the last week of transfers, and we ended the week watching the re-dedication of the Temple of Mexico. It was amazing!!! There is not a temple in our mission boundaries (its so sad...) so I thought I wouldn't be able to go through the temple for 18 months, but we had the opportunity to watch the Temple of Mexico city be dedicated. Meaning the chapel turned into a part of a temple for a few hours (closest I will ever get to enter a temple while I am here.) Haha, Elder Holland and President Eyring were there and well...their Spanish isn't very great haha...but they had translators and it was so cool to hear their words in both Spanish and English. Elder Holland ended up bearing his Testimony in Spanish when he ended his talk, it was so awesome!! 

Before we entered the dedication no one in my district knew if they would be transferred or not. When we entered the dedication and we were all sitting, my district leader came over to me and whispered

"Hermana Orison do you know your transfers?"

"No"

"well, your going to be a Trainer tomorrow"

"Seriously!?" haha It took a lot not to scream with happiness in that moment, I am so excited I have the opportunity to train!!! I picked up my daughter (the trainee) this morning and we are ready to ROCK OBREGON!!!!! I love you all!!! And I just want you to know that this is the best work in the world!!! XD

Photo: My Hija Hermana Puc =)

photos with my District =) (Fotos con mi distrito)

Triste Cambios!!

August 3rd

Wow, So this week was really happy and really sad.

First we had the Baptism of Natalie!! Whoow!!! It was a really happy day for all of us. We have worked a lot with her and her family, we reactivated them and prepared her for her baptism (Her brother got to baptize her!! =D) and now we are trying to help them enter the temple!! I love this family so much!!! I know they are one of the reasons that I was sent to this area =D

The sad part of this week,... we got transfer calls...I am happy to say that me and Hermana Ake are here in this area again (whoot!! She is my Favorite Companion =) But pretty much every Companionship in my District transferred =( In the mission you will have some transfers that you just don't feel anything at all and others that make you feel like your best friend just died. X( My mom Hermana Alfaro ended her mission and our district Leader (who only had 1 transfer here!) got transferred, everyone is really sad that he got transferred because he is the Best Leader and missionary ever!! We don't know how our district will Live without him =( But Good news Elder Yoo and Me are going to be in the same District again!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOWWWW!!!!!! It is going to be awesome to have Hermana Jackson, Elder Yoo and Me in the same district again, I am excited to work here for another Transfer, We have so much work to get done! We are drowning in work right now, it is awesome!! Thank you to everyone that are praying for me, I feel your prayers everyday =)

I love you all!!! Have an amazing week! =D

Awkward day =P

July 20th

HOOOOOOOOLA!!! MIS AMIGOS!!!!!!! Wow I cant believe it is P-day already! Time goes by so fast here =O

This week has been a little weird, first I will talk about the most funny/awkward day I have had in my entire mission:

1. We were eating lunch with family, and it was dead silence at the table. I tried asking questions to get them to talk and the family would just say "yes" or "no" or "grunt" and we sat there in silence the whole lunch XP and when we left my companion said "That has been our most awkward moment for today"

2.We went to visit a family of members (Part of our mission is to take care of the members too) and we went to teach them a lesson and me and my companion were not sure what to teach because we had not planned on visiting them. We settled in and started asking a few questions to figure out what we needed to teach, it went like this:

us:"How are your prayers going? Do you pray as a family?"

family:"yep, we pray every morning and night together."

us:"Oh wow! Felicidades! Are you reading the scriptures too?"

Family: "Yep! We read a chapter of the book of Mormon every morning together and a chapter individually in the night"

us:"Seriously? Wow! well, how are you family home evenings?"

Family: "We have them every Monday at 6:00"

us:"wow...well..." We could not think of anything to teach them! They were perfect and we were in a awkward silence for about 1 minute and I finally just yelled "Ah! You guys are perfect! We don't need to teach you anything!" they laughed and started being humble telling they had stuff to work on and yah.

and when we went to leave the house, I asked if they knew anyone we could visit and the dad pulled out his phone and gave me a name, address and phone number right there! Yep, I thought I was dreaming. The family was perfect, I am pretty sure if every family was like them we would not need missionaries haha.

We left the house and my companion said "nope, that was more awkward then lunch"

3. We were contacting people in the street and we contacted a woman and her husband in front of their house. We asked if we could share a message with her, and she said "of course! Come sit with us!" so we happily sat down at the table with them, excited to share a message with them. The lady told us that her husband had Alzheimer's, so don't be worried if he yells or something like that. 

So we explain to her about our purpose as missionaries and we pulled out our himnarios to sing a hymn when her husband lets one rip right there. Yes, he farted.

The lady elbows him and says "shhh, they are trying to share a message about Jesus to us!" me and my companion were trying so hard not to laugh. We began singing, and got about half way through and just bursted out laughing. We could not hold it in anymore, and then the lady starts laughing with us not knowing why we a laughing.

Yeah leaving the lesson my companion said "Okay! This is the most awkward moment for the day! Yah! No more!" hahahah

What else happened this week? 

I had to teach the district meeting Tuesday, And I accidentally went Elder Holland on my district and went 20 minutes over time,(time flies by when your receiving revelation) and when I finally ended and went to apologize to my district leader for going over time he said "That was awesome! I wanted you to keep talking! Im going to ask you to teach in the district meetings more often!" yay! 

Perla is now teaching lessons with us!!! Whoow!!! The best part about helping people be baptized is watching them grow after the Baptism =D I love working with converts they are the best!!! 

We have had so much fun teaching and learning about families this week. Honestly, if you put your family first and everything else after it, life is so much easier! I know as we think about eternal goals and what decisions will benefit us for the future instead of what we want "now", we will be more happy and have more peace in this life and for eternity. =) 

 I just got an email from my other companion in Mochis, Two of the families I was working with before just got Baptized!!!!! =D Whoow!!! I LOVE THE MISSION!!!! =D

Life in Obregon

So I am loving it here in Obregon! We have an awesome area and an awesome ward that is realllllllly huge, there our four pairs of missionaries working in this ward and we are the only sister missionaries here, WHOOW!!!

So Ill give you a few details of what its like here:

• To get out of our house every morning we have to jump over our neighbors huge pig, petunia, who lays at the bottom of our stairs everyday. My companion usually runs screaming when the pig starts following her haha (it likes to nip people, I think I am going to get Swine Flu hehe)

•  The buses here don't stop! haha I always have fun trying to jump on moving buses, I missed that part about Obregon, Love the adrenaline rushes you get here =D

• Church starts at 8 in the morning in this area...haha and I thought it was hard getting investigators to attend the 9 o'clock XP but we did have a miracle this Sunday. We had 3 investigators attend church, and 2 of them we contacted Saturday. I am so excited to teach them!!!! XD

• Funny Story: So at the beginning of my mission I went on swaps with another missionary and I worked a day in the area that I am in right now. So I know a few of the people here.

We went to share a message with a member Tuesday, and I realized I had taught her about 7 months ago, and Hermana Ake went to introduce me to her

Hna Ake: "Hermana this is my new companion hermana Oris-"

Member: "I know who she is! Ive met her before! I was hoping you would be transferred her!!"

Me: "uh what?"

Member: "When you taught us last time and left our house, my son (who isn't a member) was standing outside and watched you leave and came running into the house and said "Mom! Did the missionaries visit you? There is a new missionary and she is really beautiful!" and I have been hoping you would come back so you could teach him and motivate him to come to church"

Haha yeah it was awkward, I didn't know how to respond and my companion just laughed at me. People we teach are supposed to go to church to get closer to God, not me! XP

So I have a request of everyone who reads this email, one of our investigators is having a hard time identifying her answer of the Book of Mormon, and me and my companion have testified of allll of our experiences of the Book of Mormon, but I think our situations were different then hers is. I was wondering if you could each write me about one of your experiences with the Book of Mormon, how did you come to know that it is true? What was your answer? What did you feel when you prayed? This is your homework assignment! hehe =)

Love you all!!! Have an awesome week!!! =D

Hermana Orison

Ejercicio

Bueno!!!!

This past week has been a little fun, we had a meeting with the President this week and he made us do exercises!! Haha, I did not see that one coming. Imagine at least 30 missionaries the church doing squats and yoga (in suits and skirts!!). They are trying to give us more exercising routines to do in the morning haha, everyone walked out the church so sore =P, but pumped!!! 

 It made my week when I had the chance to see all the missionaries that were in the MTC with me!! We have not seen each other for so long, and it was so awesome talking to each other in spanish! 

I don't have to much time to write today, but I love you all! Please have a fantastic week! =D

Love,

Hermana Orison

My English Sucks! Whoow!

HOOOOOOOOOOLA!!!!! 

This week has been so long, but very good. We our finding a lot more people to teach that's actually progress, whoooooooow!!!! Miracle!!! Summary of my week:

• Our District had its first English class together (Our President has really been pushing on all the missionaries to learn at least one language in their mission) And we practiced giving the first lesson to each other in English, and I was the only English Speaker in my group, so I lead it off and helped my companion out, haha it was actually really difficult to teach in English because my brain has taught this lesson so many times in Spanish that It forgot all the words in English. When we got done the missionaries we were teaching told me that I sounded like a Mexican trying to speak English, WHOO!!! I have been waiting forever for that insult!! ;)

• I had to give a talk in our ward Sunday, and I didn't end up writing it until the night before (As a missionary in Mexico, you neeeever have free time, never!!) So I wrote my talk about the Holy Ghost because I thought we didn't have specific topics. When we went to sacrament meeting the Bishop announced that I would be talking about Obedience...yeah didn't get that memo...So I got up to the stand and said "Today I would like to talk about the blessing of Obedience, the Holy Ghost." and gave my talk and I am proud to say that people were crying during it (And not because my Spanish is bad!!) we could really feel the Spirit in that meeting =)

• Funny surprising moment: We contacted a women outside of her house and we started teaching her lesson one and I taught her about the Baptism of Jesus and started inviting her to be baptized when she cut me off and said "Where do I go to get baptized?" I stared at her shocked and explained where a church was, but told her she needed to pray about the things we were teaching first so she could receive an answer from God that they were true. (Because I don't want anymore less actives!) She stared at the pamphlet we gave her then looked at us and simply said "I believe it is true" and then her sister walked in and women asked her Sister if she wanted to listen to the Mormons with her and her sister said "ah, I was already baptized with them" by this time me and my companion were so confused and shocked, but invited her sister to come to church too. By the end of the lesson we had an investigator with a baptism date and another less active to work with, haha miracles do happen! I promise! =D

I hope You are all doing well! Have A great week! I love you all!!!

Love,

Hermana Orison

 

 Me cleaning the graveyard! Whoow! Sweeping up ashes and leaves =P

The last dinner of our last transfer (yeah didn't want my Zone leader in the photo...hehe)

 

 Our investigator has a turtle that wanders around her house and always comes out to greet us during our lessons =D

 

Grave Yard Shift (Litterally)

Hola mi amigos!!

 Wow, this week went by realllllllllllly fast, I cant believe it! I now have seven months in the mission, its so crazy!! I feel like I still only have 3 here =P So what is new this week?

For one, we had a service project this week with our Stake. And we got to clean a Graveyard!! Whoow!!! Actually kind of exciting, you definitely find and see some weird stuff in Mexico grave yards. Lots of pictures of The virgin Mary and Guadalupe =P Oh speaking of which, I finally bought some new Tennis Shoes because my other ones got "lost" ;( . And I have started running again in a park...around a Catholic Church. At times its a little awkward when you have Guadalupe or the Virgin Mary staring down at you haha and its always fun when they ring their huge bell right as you run by (ouch!). definitely still enjoy running =)
 

     Loving Mexico! Our area is getting a lot better, we are finding a lot more people to teach =) And we had four investigators come to church this past Sunday (whoow!!!) and you will never guess who came to church! The bread man!! haha! I talked with him in the street one day and invited him to church and he came!! haha it was awesome! =)

Hope you are all having a great time! I love you! Take care!! =D

 

 

Photos:

I found Silver Surfer!! (Gotta love it when you find Marvel or DC references here!!)

One of our Investigators was making an awesome Pinata out of eggs full of confetti!

And the big catholic church =)

 

 

Crazy RM!

     Ah don't have too much time! but my companion was a little sick this week. And our sister training leaders ordered her to stay home and rest for two days, meaning as her companion I had to stay home too.

     Let me tell you, I almost went crazy that first day staying in our house! It was the first time in five months that I had spare time. Time with no plans or scheduled things. I was freaking out because I didn't know what to do, so while my companion was sleeping, I cleaned the whole house, translated two chapters of the Book of Mormon from Spanish to English, read a bunch of conference talks that could help our investigators, studied Spanish, cooked dinner and on and on. 

Yeah, lets just say the second day I called our sister training leaders and asked them to do exchanges with me because I couldn't handle staying in the house "relaxing" for another day. There are souls that need saving dang it! haha

     Just warning all of you, I am probably going to be a really crazy RM. to my family, Please plan out a lot of things out for me to keep me busy when I get back or I might go insane lol =) Besides that I am loving my mission!! And we are getting a lot of work done here =) I love you all! Have a fantabulous week!!

Love

Hermana Orison

Mexico Is Never Boring

Whoow! It has been a long roller coaster ride this week. We had a lot of ups and downs, but its all good =) Some things that happened this week:

• I learned how to make tortillas last P-day! And they tasted amazing! (didn't look the best, but tasted awesome!) I can now make tortillas for a living if School doesn't work out! (haha jk Mom)

• Our District Leader is sick! And called us at 2 o'clock in the morning. (which freaked us out because we thought something happened to him and his companion) and when we answered the phone he said 

"Hermanas! do you know what happened!?"
"No Elder what!?"

"I just woke up with a Cockcroach in my Mouth!!" 

"That's just gross..." Why he called us at 2 in the morning to tell us this, I will never know. Elders are Elders.

• I cant pray in English! One of our Less actives asked me if I would say a prayer for him in English. So I started it out "Dear, pad-I mean heavenly father...Estamos...Thank thee..." yeah my brain was having the hardest time translating my Spanish prayers back to English haha, whoow! Success! I am probably going to have to join the Spanish Ward when I get home haha =P

• We had an Investigator come to church this week! WHOOT!!! This area was opened about 6 months ago, and has not had one investigator go to church. When I came into this area I had the goal having at least 1 go to church, we finally accomplished it! and I am pretty sure there will be a lot more investigators to come =) Whoow!!

• Really good news, we moved houses today! I am sooooooooo excited! Our other house was...well not the best...yeah. I am actually excited to live in this house =) Its pretty =) I got to wear jeans for the first time in my mission to move all our stuff out of the house. I have to say after wearing only skirts for about 6 months, it feels really weird but good to wear jeans! Yep, I miss them =) 

Well that is the summary of my week, I hope you are all doing well! And loving the snow (haha its like 70 degrees here right now =P). Have a good one everyone! 

Love,

Hermana Orison

Meet the Mormons

 So our mission President let us watch meet the Mormons this week! AHHHHHHHHHH it was amazing!!! (even more amazing was that we watched it in spanish and I understood it!!) It is full of awesomeness! Boxing, prosthetics, zip-lines, missionaries, Navy, Football, and all my favorite stuff =) It did make me really miss home (especially when the missionary is leaving for the MTC, I think all the missionaries watching it were crying, because we all knew how it felt) the spirit was really strong in the movie, it was amazing. Everybody, por favor if you have not seen it, go watch it! Its the best!! =D  

Work here is definitely getting better, we taught a less active family yesterday. Everyone in the family are members except for the dad. The dad is usually never home, but yesterday he was and we got him and his wife to listen to our message about the restoration and during it we were feeling the spirit so strong. We invited the Husband to baptism, and he said yes! The wife started crying and said "I have been waiting for so long to hear him say that" It was one of the best lessons I have ever been in! I know this family will be so happy when they are united together in the principles of the Gospel. The family is the primary ordinance of God, and a family the applys the principles of the Gospel in their lives will have a home full of the Spirit and happiness, I have seen it so many times here in the mission. I am in love with this gospel! It is the best! I have the best job ever! =D

I love you all! and miss you too! Have an amazing week! =D

Love,

Hermana Orison

The Less Active =P

                Well yesterday was my last day of training, I am now a full on missionary today, whoot! Kinda scary because my Spanish is still not the best haha (And my English is getting worse and worse as days pass haha). These 4 months have definitely flown by fast!

                This week was a really hard week, getting adjusted to a new area is never really fun. Especially this one, I found out that my job here is quite different, Me and my companion were sent to this area to focus on the less actives (this area has at least 200 less active familys just in this ward, because some elders, years ago, were baptizing and not teaching -__- ) So we have to cover three different missionaries areas (really huge area for us!) and find all the less actives and reactivate them. I found out that the past two transfers (3 months) no one had really worked in this area, so we are starting from bottom. 

But I am enjoying working with the Less actives, they all need a lot of help and I am glad that I have the opportunity to be here and teach and learn from them. =)

                 But I got some really good news =) Yesterday was "normal" transfers and me and Hermana Fisher are staying in Mochis (of course, since I just got here Friday =P) but my Best friend Hermana Capps is transferring from Ciudad Obregon to be our sister Training leader here. Whoot!! I pretty much screamed and jumped up and down in the middle of road with excitement when our district leader told us. I know Hermana Capps will make this area awesome and I finally have a friend here! Whoow!! Miracles do happen!! =D

Anyways, funny moment of the week,

                 In Mexico when you greet each other, you hug/shake hands and kiss the air by their cheek (I think its called a face...) and as Sister missionaries we only greet girls this way and have to tell the guys no, because of mission standards. 

                 We had just finished with a lesson and I was really tired and not thinking straight. I gave quick kisses to the sisters and then shook one of the guys hands and went in to give a face, mid way through my brain started working again and I quickly pulled away, apologizing and everyone started laughing. 

yep, I bet I was pretty red then. Gotta love different cultures haha =) 

Anyways, Love you all! Have a good week! 

Love, Hermana Orison

 I found turtles!!!! =)

Trial By Spanish

3 months! Ive been in the mission for 3 months! Ah! I cant believe it, time is flying by waaaay too fast! 

This week was a really trialing week for my Spanish. 2 weeks ago we had transfers and I new My mission President was going to do something with this transfer, that would really challenge me, but the transfer came and no one was transferred. The only change was that my Companion became Sister training leader (which is weird because the sister training leaders are supposed to be companions...). But I found out this week that her becoming a sister training leader was the challenge. As a leader she has to have one companion exchange a week, meaning so do I. And this week me and Hermana Jackson were put as companions for a day in my area.

Imagine, two girls from Utah with only 7 weeks in the mission (both of us still have trainers, haha I feel like a Pokemon! =P) and very little Spanish. Yeah, sounds a little scary. But we did it! In fact we did more work then we usually do with our normal companions! And it really surprised us how much Spanish we actually knew! We were able to teach all the lessons clearly, and contact 16 people in the street, And they all understood us, haha Gringa Power!!

And this Sunday I had the opportunity to speak in Sacrament meeting (yay...noooooooo) Definitely a nervous experience, I always thought Talks in English were scary haha wow was I wrong, giving talks in a different language is definitely scarier. But I used my humiliation to my advantage and told all our investigators and some less active members that they could come and laugh at me at church this Sunday. And it worked! we got 4 investigators and 4 less active to come to church, totally worth the humiliation! okay, so it was not too bad, people said they could understand it and they really felt the spirit, so all in all not too bad of a experience. I'm really happy to say, I only needed to use my dictionary twice to translate words while writing my talk =) whoot!

Best part of this week, we have a new District leader and he was asking what I like to do and I Mentioned that I liked running and that I really missed it and couldn't run here because my companion does not like to exercise (as in she got rid of her tennis shoes, because she hates exercising that much). So my district leader turned and told the whole District to make it a goal to run every morning. Whoot! My companion hates me, but I am happier then ever! Running again feels awesome! haha I run around a park now every morning while my companion sits on a swing starring at me (i'm trying to convince her to get some running shoes =P).

Entonces,

I hope everyone is doing amazing! Have a good week everyone!! =)

​

3 month mark for all of us!

Starting this new year with some White =)

              So this week has been amazing! Our investigator L. was baptized yesturday! She is amazing and her baptism was ahhhhh totally awesome! The spirit was so strong! Just being there testified to me that this church is soooo true, I have no doubt about it. Just seeing her glow after Baptism, has once again showed me that this is the Best Mission ever (sorry for you other missionaries But Mexico is the BEST!! =P)

                Entonces, Feliz Anos everybody!! Mexico is crazy on New Years, parties are in all the streets and fireworks are going everywhere (like in the trees, right over me head, down the streets....yeah everywhere). We were with an investigator for dinner on New Years and her Grandson (11 years old) had a firework explode in his hand, everyone was freaking out.

              But I checked it, and it looked like only a stove burn (thank goodness) so I got it quickly wrapped up for him (haha the grandma was applying a tomato to it, something they like to do in Mexico, don't know why...) and got them all calmed down haha, it was an exciting moment for the day.

 These are the best lights we have found so far.

Well I hope all is well for you guys! Have a good one!!

Love,

Hna. Orison