Week 37 - Memorial Day

No real letter from Riley today but here are some snippets from her email to Mom:

My memorial day is going to be a lot of moving people and furniture because another sister is coming to be our companion for the last two weeks of the transfer. It'll be great! We just have to figure out how to shove all of her stuff into our pad but it'll be a party.

I kid you not I've moved more stuff this transfer than I have in my whole entire life. I hope I never have to move ever again.

I'm glad that Jonah is so pumped for Pennsylvania. Its going to be so cool. Plus, when he gets to the mtc and he gets to leave after three weeks and everyone else learning a language has to stay, he'll be glad to be speaking English. Hopefully there's more English speaking people there than there is here because holy smokes I'm pretty sure I'm in a cross between China and Mexico. I've totally left America.

Pictures from last Monday's trip to a Buddhist temple:

Week 36 - Wild!

ALRIGHTY KIDDOS THIS EMAIL IS GOING TO BE LONG BUT YOU SHOULD READ IT BECAUSE LOTS OF THINGS HAPPENED. so the week before last, sister bullock and I had a crazy week. we yanked out this big old bush from a members yard and she told us that the Elders before had tried to do it but gave up. So I'll just let you all figure that one out. and then we were walking around after we had showered and such, and we ran into Eric. He's a barber and he was sitting outside this barber shop with a couple of his friends and he was smoking a cigarette. They were all tattooed and pierced and stuff, so we went up and we started talking to them! We ended up teaching Eric, Angel (the guy getting his hair cut by Eric), and Carlos ( the guy learning how to cut hair from Eric. We taught all three of them the Plan of Salvation and it was awesome. We went back for our return appointment and there were FIVE OF THESE GUYS and we taught all five of them the plan of salvation again. it was crazy and they had all sorts of questions and it was awesome. Eric is the only one that actually wants to do any thing with it though so hopefully that works. We're referring him and a few other people that we're teaching over to the Young Single Adult ward missionaries so they can go to a ward with people their own age. 

Taking out the big bush

On Friday we moved again. this is the third apartment in 3 weeks and it's a party and a half to be a missionary, let me tell you. I did not think that I would spend so much of my time packing. All is well though because our new pad is fantastic. It's 2 miles out of our area, but you get used to biking it really quick.

We did a service activity at a park in our area on Saturday. We were going to paint tables and pick up trash and re stain this big arch thing and it started raining. So we only ended up painting three tables and picking up trash and some older guys started staining the arch thing in between the little bursts of rain. it was a good time. I ended up with paint all over me because I always get messier than everyone else no matter what and it was great!

On Sunday we had miracles. Our ward, although fantastic and wonderful, does not invite their friends to things/to let us teach them BUT on Sunday a wonderful family in the ward brought someone named Frank to church. He's so cool. He said he had wanted to be baptized eleven years ago but decided not to, he had been making some not so good choices for all of those 11 years and he decided two years ago that he needed to clean up his act and he quit doing all of the things that he shouldn't and decided on Sunday that he needed to come to church and he wanted to learn more. it was the greatest thing ever. plus, Hayro, a guy we've been working with came to church on Sunday too! It was a magical day! The only thing that sorta puts a damper on it is that we referred them both to the young single adult (YSA) missionaries. But God is going to bless us for allowing them to flourish in a ward that they feel comfortable!

AND HE BLESSED US ON MONDAY. We met Sienah. She's a referral we received from mormon.org and she had been living in Provo for a year and a half to finish High school and she just got back to California and SHE WANTS TO BE BAPTIZED. so we met her for the first time last Monday and she's going to get baptized on June 9th!!!!! it's a beautiful day when people want to make heavenly covenants. 

This last Thursday was crazy. we had a zone meeting (Not to be confused with zone conference which was on Friday) and that was a thing but then we had lesson after lesson! it was Awesome! except we didn't have the car that day so we bused and walked around our area all day and it was hotter than Hades, but we had some fantastic lessons and we invited Alejandro to be baptized and he said, "sure, why not?" so hopefully we can set a date for that soon. again, Heavenly covenants make for a beautiful day! then we were walking on this walking trail on the way to the bus stop and we talked to some cool cats. it was awesome, let me tell you about it. 

We were just walking down this sidewalk and there are two levels to this path and one of them is sidewalk and then there's one right next to it but on the hill a little bit so bikers and walkers can go on their merry way because its a busy street. so we were walking on the sidewalk part and there was this man that was walking on the dirt part and he stops and he starts trying to talk to us. He's trying really hard, but he doesn't speak a lick of English and its a busy street so we couldn't hear him if he could. So we had to climb up this little hill in our skirts to try and talk to him because everyone needs to hear about the gospel and we couldn't understand a single thing he was saying and he kept asking if we spoke spanish but he said something about Portuguese and he was dripping sweat and he just handed us some mexican candy and tried to tell us something about how expensive his beer is and then ran away. it was bizarre. 

So we kept walking. and we ran into James. James is a funny guy. We've seen him around because he walks his dog in the same place but we hadn't ever talked to him. So we go up and talk to him and long story short, He works at the First Marijuana Church and they smoke to "Get higher to God" so we gave him a pamphlet and maybe we'll see him again, but he didn't seem super interested anyway.....

We also met a few other people that just started talking to us out of the blue and it was really weird because no one in Southern California is that friendly and we gave out so many pamphlets.

Friday we had Zone conference and President and Sister Wells came and we got to eat authentic Chinese food and it was great. oh, and we learned how to work with the members better and how to help them share the gospel. for all of you members at home who have made it this far, TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THE GOSPEL BECAUSE THEY NEED SALVATION TOO. and that's all i have to say about that. 

On Saturday we had an appointment with this older man named Enrique and it literally made my entire week. I kid you not. we were talking to him and honestly i don't think i could actually do this story justice, but we're going to help him cut down a tree on Wednesday and he wants to send his grandson to us when we're done with our mission because "He needs to get married so i don't have to see him around as much" so we might have a summer wedding next year!! please know i'm joking. i think his grandson is around 17. 

okay. that's it i think. Today we're going to a Buddhist

temple so i'll report back next week. 

dont forget to read your scriptures!

-Sister Dorrance

Week 35 - I love being a missionary

Short part of Riley's email to me:

Hi! It was really good to talk yesterday! I'm probably not going to write a group email today because we had a zone activity for most of the day and then we had to shop and we're going to a lesson right now even though pday doesn't end until 6. But I'm really happy. I really really love being a missionary.

Week 34 - The one where we moved lots of stuff

Hellooooooooo!

This week was pretty great! On Monday we packed. We didn't move areas, We moved apartments! (Sneak peek into a future email: we're going to move again because our mission presidents wife doesn't want sisters living in this pad because it's so gross. Too bad for all the elders that have lived here ) So we moved on Tuesday! We lifted so many things and we live on the second floor in both apartments so it's a whole thing to go up and down all those stairs. But we did it! We got a text from a lady in our ward on Tuesday night asking if we could come by the next morning to help her with some things in her backyard so we said "Yes! Of course that'll be no problem!" We thought we would be gardening or something. Nope. She had a literal mountain of furniture under her back deck and it was up to Sister Bullock to do it. So we did and my arms felt all noodly but it was some good, solid, service. 

The rest of Wednesday was crazy. We had a ton of appointments and we didn't have the car, so we bused and walked and it was great! We had an appointment with this guy named Alejandro, and he is the sweetest man ever. He had never thought of the concept that God could answer his prayers and he was so excited that we had this message that was changing his whole view on who Jesus Christ is and what everything means. It was AWESOME. Then we met with Socorro, and she's this sweet Hispanic lady who said we could come by any time and talk to her about God, so we went over and we started into the restoration of the Gospel, and she didn't really want to. Talk about that so she just started making us sandwiches. These sandwiches were huge though. She used Texas toast and put so much stuff on there we had to eat one slice of bread at a time. We invited her to church and everything, and she didn't want to do that. I guess when she said we could come and talk about God, she meant in general. She's still a sweetheart though. 

On Friday we met with Eric. He's such an interesting fellow. He sings Christian music in front of Vons (grocery store) for a living and lives with his parents, but he's super cool. He was baptized three times already into different religions but so many of his religious leaders have ended up being pretty hypocritical and he's not about that. So we talked about how fantastic President Nelson is and Eric is game to read the Book of Mormon with us! He's read the whole bible a few times and what were working through now is that he takes every single thing in the bible completely literally. But we'll see what happens. 

Yesterday was awesome. We got to lead singing time in primary and it was seriously the greatest thing ever. Don't tell the ladies in my ward, but primary is about 10000 times better than relief society. Plus, the sweetest spirit comes into a room when a group of kids start singing about how much Jesus loves them. It's the best and I'm not sure it would be the same outcome if the ladies in relief society tried to sing Head Shoulders Knees and Toes.  

That's all I've got for you!

Don't forget to read your scriptures! 

- Sister Dorrance 

our apartment before we moved

even though Socorro made us monster sandwiches, she still made us leave with bananas "in case we got hungry"

 the pile of stuff that sister Bullock and I moved

 the lid had to close for the company to take all of the garbage away and it wouldn't fit so I had to take one for the team. Gotta protect that face though

 we document when we have to climb hills of any sort and it was a steep driveway and the view was pretty