Influenza (Week 12)

 Hey everybody! I hope your all doing well and staying healthy! 

My week has been crazy! On Christmas we had a zone activity where we built gingerbread houses and it was so fun! We cane in 3rd place (out of 3...) for the competition because we maybe cheated a little bit by buying a premade house The rest of the day was pday, and then we had dinner with our branch President!

Thursday was pretty busy! We stared the day with a zone wide service project helping a family move their garden. It was a 

lot of work, but a lot of fun too! My car story of the week (because, for some reason I always have one) happened today. We got stuck in some sand after I missed a turn and Google maps rerouted us down a dirt road (the road was a dead end by the way). Thanks to my grandpa's training, we were able to unstick the car and we made it to English class only 15 minutes late!

Friday we had emergency exchanges with the english sisters because one of them was SUPER sick with the flu. It was fun trying to combine both of our schedules, but it all worked out! 

On Saturday our friend Esteban got baptize which was amazing! Also really stressful because we had to through a whole baptism together in a day (he was supposed to get baptized Sunday, but he had to move it) 

On Sunday there were more emergency exchanges! It was a pretty boring day, I stayed with the sick Sister all day. The exciting part of the day was when we went to the emergency room! It was so busy and we were there for 4 hours...turns out she has the flu. Not the best news...

Today we had our last zone activity (transfers happen on Thursday) and more exchanges! I went with one of the english sisters to the activity and to the store while my companion (who is now sick) stayed with the other sick missionary. And now I'm back at the emergency room with my companion so she can get tested and get medicine for the flu. So far I'm not showing any symptoms and I hope it stays that way, but it looks like this week is going to be interesting too! 

Love you all! Write to me if you have the time! 

Happy New Year

ER Visits

Esteban's Baptism!

The zone activity 

Our gingerbread house

Stuck in the sand

A nice sunset

Feliz Navidad (Week 11)

 Merry Christmas everyone!! I hope you all have a wonderful day filled with family, food, fun, and every other good thing! 

With it being Christmas, I'm going to share a little spiritual thought: 

One of my favorite name for Jesus Christ is "the Light of the World" because I think it's a very happy and hopeful title. Last year, the symbolism of this name and the time at which we celebrate Christmas was pointed out to me. For the northern hemisphere of the world, December is the darkest time of the year, where we see the sun and feel it's warmth the least. Because of this, a lot of people struggle to feel joy and happiness. How fitting is it that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Light and hope of the world, during the darkest (for some the most hopeless) time of our year? Just like Christmas makes our winter better and more exciting, having a focus on Jesus Christ can make our entire life more hopeful and filled with Light. 

I would like to invite you all to find a way you can share your Light and joy with someone else today. Give someone a compliment, tell them you're grateful for them, do an act service, really anything that will brighten their day

I love you all and hope your Christmas is absolutely amazing 

- Hna. Erickson 

What a Week! (Week 10)

 This week was pretty good! It was crazy though, we had 2 exchanges, right after each other and we had a missionwide conference. It was pretty awesome! 

For one of the exchanges I went to a different area and we were driving out in the middle of nowhere, like dirt road middle of nowhere and as we were driving we noticed a strange statue/art work thing in the distance. 

So, that was a cool find. We did go up and read the sign, but it didn't really explain what's going on there, so it's up to your own interpretation I guess. 

 

We did a lot of tracting (when we go find people to teach) this week, and we actually found a lot of people who are interested, or at least, who said they're interested in our message! One night while we were tracting, towards the end of the night, we found an old chair/ couch thing on the side of the road. And we live in the same apartment complex as two other sets of missionaries and one of the companionships drive a truck. So, we decided to take the chair with us, with the plan to leave it in their truck bed. So we did!

Let me just say, it was a great moment when they realized there was a couch in the back of their car

And then the high point of this week was Elder Renlund (one of the leaders in our church) came and had a devotional with our whole mission! It was really cool, we took a missionwide picture with him and everyone got to shake his hand! I got to be a part of a musical number that our mission president's wife put together for him and it was awesome, it also meant I got to sit in the front row! AND because I was in the front row, I was picked on to go up to be used in an example! It was so cool! He and Sister Renlund talked a lot about how it's our mindset and focus that matters most, not our circumstances. Because God loves us and wants us to be happy, we can feel joy no matter the circumstances. Missionary work is hard, it's always going to be hard, but if we have a focus on God we'll be happy through the hardships and disappointments. If you want to hear this more eloquently explained, you should read the talk Joy and Spiritual Survival:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2016/10/joy-and-spiritual-survival?lang=eng

It's really a great talk and I invite all of you to read/listen to it when you have the time!

I love you all and would love to hear from you! 

Hna. Erickson 

Other pictures from this week:

1. A nice sunset 

2. Hna. Dean and I filling up our tire since it was at 15  (for reference, it should be above 30)

3. Refilling the tire a second time (yes we're getting that checked out) 

*Facebook Post* Dec 15, 2024

 We were blessed today to have a special Mission Conference with Elder Dale G Renlund and his wonderful wife Sister Ruth Renlund. They spent 2 hours teaching and sharing great lessons with the whole mission family. It was a day not to be forgotten! Special thanks to all that sang, help set up and worked hard preparing to make it the special Christmas conference it was. Thank you!

A God of Miracles (Week 9)

 Hey everyone! This week was a little crazy, so I'll try to get everything in

First of all, one of our friends was baptized yesterday!! It was pretty great, he was so excited and so ready. He's from Guatemala and went to the church there for a while but never got the opportunity to be baptized and wanted to basically since he started meeting with us! 

On Wednesday, I had my first zone conference, and it lasted pretty much the whole day.  It was basically a message from the mission president and a couple of other people and then some trainings. But, because it's Christmas time they had a talent show too! After the conference, we made cookies with the women in our congregation for a Christmas activity on Saturday.

Thursday we had exchanges again, but this time I stayed in my area which meant I was leading out the area! Not a ton happened, but I got to practice a lot of Spanish which was nice.

And then Saturday. It started out really good, and we went to a stake activity and our branch choir sang and it was great. And then on the way to a members house for dinner, we got in a car accident...yeah, not the best way to end the night. But there were so many miracles we saw because of this. 

1. Everyone was fine, no one was injured at all. And we don't think either of the cars were totaled either 

2. The zone leaders (the missionaries who are in charge of leading out area) were able to come help us sort everything out and our STLs (the sister missionaries in charge of our area) were able to drive us back to our apartment.

3. They towed our car, but we accidentally left the gate key to our apartment in the car. So we had to drive to the (closed) car lot and we got there right as the driver was about to leave.

4. The Spanish elders were able to bring us food from the dinner that we missed.

5. Our mission has had no extra cars for the past couple of weeks, and they literally got a car the day we got in an accident AND the aps (mission assistants) were able to drive the car down to us so we didn't have to worry about how we were going to get to church and all our lessons and everything!

So anyways, God is a God of miracles and he knows what's going on in your life and that was my week!

I'd love to hear from you all, so send me an email when you have the time!

Love you all!

Hna Erickson 

*Facebook Post* Dec 7, 2024

 Day 2 of Christmas Zone Conferences was Redlands, San Bernardino, Yucapia,Yucca and Palm Desert.

Week 8

 Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! I hope you all had a great time!

This week was busy, we had Thanksgiving and companion exchanges on top of everything else that was already happening. Thanksgiving was kind of slow, we weren't allowed to tract or anything, so we made cookies and delivered them to some members of our congregation! We weren't allowed to stop by people's houses unless we had a previous appointment, so we compromised by ding dong ditching the members and it was pretty fun! We had Thanksgiving dinner with a member of our branch and we ate so much food. My Spanish is...a work in progress and I didn't really know how to politely decline more food, so that was fun. I was not at all hungry on Friday and most of Saturday. 

Companion exchanges were fun! We're the only Spanish sisters in our zone, so I was in an english area for the day. Honestly, there wasn't much of a difference since we really only Spanish during lessons. Occasionally we use our Spanish during tracting, but mostly it's English. 

It's kind of crazy that it's December. It's pretty warm here so it doesn't feel like Christmas time that much, which is probably a good thing for me. 

Anyways, that's my week. We did a lot of tracting and we taught some lessons. I don't really understand a ton of what's going on with some of the people we're teaching, but it's all good, my Spanish will get there...one day.

Anyways, I hope you all have a great week!