People you pray for, live for, and love

So hey!

I am already in love with the mission. This is seriously so amazing. My companion's name is Sister Reynolds, and she's awesome. She's been out for 5 months and is from Layton. We get along well, teach well together, and have a lot in common. Of those things in common, one is pretty amazing. Sister Reynolds has also had spinal fusion surgery, and it was at Primary Children's in June of 2012, just like me. She had a different doctor, but it's pretty incredible. She had a C-curve instead of an S-curve, but it has been really wonderful to have her as a trainer, because if she can do it, so can I. My back hasn't really hurt since the secondish day of the MTC, but still. It's so cool. We can relate with back stuff in a way that not very many other people can with us, and it's been awesome to talk about our experiences. It was super funny when we met on Tuesday night though, because right after we hugged and shook hands, President Henrie announced pretty proudly, "And you both have rods in your back!!" We just looked at each other like "really?" and it's true. Wow. The Lord is amazing.

Sister Reynolds and I do not have a car. That scared me at first because of the whole I-haven't-ridden-a-bike-in-probably-seven-years thing, but it hasn't been bad at all. I haven't even died yet. I seriously thought I might, but it's been good. It's kind of interesting in skirts: we wear cutoff leggings underneath so that we can tie them up out of the way when we ride. The past few days I've actually learned that I kind of really like riding a bike, at least when it's not hot. My opinion may change after I've crashed a few times or when it gets hot, but for now it's good. Also, the lock we got is a really good one, so hopefully I won't have to worry about it getting stolen. My bike light actually got stolen on the very first day of using my bike (haha. It was pretty funny to be honest.), but that's alright. I've just been tying a flashlight to the front and it works just fine. Biking and walking has also helped me to get to know the area pretty well already too, so it's really pretty great.

The work here is amazing. As English speaking missionaries, we are less successful than the Hermanas, but that's alright. I've noticed that a lot of Hispanic people are willing to listen to us even if they're not super interested, when most of the time white people just shut the door. But that's okay. I've already grown a lot from that, and the conversations I have gotten to have through tracting have helped me to learn the truths I'm most grateful for. We get to do language study for about half an hour each day, which doesn't work so great since we don't have study materials other than just reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish, but hopefully we'll be able to improve. We also do come across quite a few Hispanic people that speak English well enough to talk to us. And while knocking, we ran into a Hispanic Sister who is a member the other day who spoke a little more English than we did Spanish, and I actually got to bear my testimony to her in Spanish. I know that I didn't probably get all of the tenses and grammar right, but it was really cool because she bore her testimony right after and we all could feel the spirit even with the language barrier.

Even as English speaking missionaries, we have some pretty amazing investigators. I told Mom about Stephen and Naomi and she should share that with you because I don't have time, but on Saturday we got two brand new ones who are amazing. One's name is Jakee (like Jackie) and the other is Sam. Sam approached us while we were street contacting and asked if we were latter day saint missionaries because he had some questions. He had some pretty tough questions! But I do think it was out of a true desire to learn more and to figure out if this is something he should investigate, because he listened to what we had to say and agreed to come to church with us. Jakee was later that night, a member referral, who just seems so ready. She's been through a lot and has been a bit disillusioned with organized religion for a long time, but her member friend has been reading the Book of Mormon with her and she wants to know more. Both of them came to church yesterday! It was so awesome. The ward we were in was actually doing a Young Women's program for sacrament meeting (weird, I know), which at first I thought might be weird for them, but it turned out to be so good because they talked about the youth theme, ask of God. That was exactly what Jakee needed, and it sounds like Sam got a lot out of Elders Quorum with a couple of members who he hit it off with right away. They both are coming back and we have lessons set up with each of them. We also have Maria who is an amazing Hispanic woman with terrible anxiety, who basically bore her testimony for the first ten minutes of our lesson with her on Thursday. Holy crap. This is amazing. I love these people.

By the way, in this mission, we do what's called Knock Out, or KO, every day from 4-6. It's basically just tracting, but it's pretty cool since everyone is doing it at the same time. All of the companionships pray at 3:55, wherever they are, to get it started.

I know I missed a lot of stuff, but I'm running out of time. I love you all! You're so amazing. Be super happy and have faith!

Love,

Jessica

After posting last week, a member in her area sent me this picture:

This is what she wrote to me about the picture:

But the thing that's probably the coolest about that picture is that we actually had a lesson with an investigator at their house, not dinner. So that is a picture from the end of my very first lesson in the field. The investigator's name is Steven, and he's absolutely amazing. His fiance Naomi is from Belgium and was a less active member for a while, but when going to a family reunion with her family at a temple visitors center in Arizona I think, he decided he wanted to marry her in the temple and referred himself to the missionaries. Naomi is now active again and his baptism is set for November 25! And he's seriously a golden investigator. We get to go to the LA temple visitors center with them and a few members next Saturday. He is actually marrying Naomi in the morning of the 25th and then getting baptized in the evening. They are amazing. Seriously.

One more thing from a letter to dad:

I am in the Newhall Area, Valencia Zone, in Santa Clarita. It's one of the two valleys in the mission, apparently the nicer one. But I have been in the other valley too already because I got to go on exchanges with one of the STLs and she was heading to a baptism. I brought my GPS with us so that we could get there, but it died on the way back and I'd left the cord at the apartment. It was a real adventure trying to get back to our valley at 8 o'clock at night on the crazy California freeways! But we made it, and it was a pretty fun adventure. Fortunately, there were less crazy freeway exchanges on the way back than on the way there.

She also sent several pictures, but did not label them. I'm pretty sure they are of her district at the MTC at the temple together.