Tender mercies, taco bell, and Tina!

 Hi everyone! I hope you are all having an amazing week! My week was pretty good! We had transfers except I didn't have to go anywhere because now I'm companions with Sister Fife! 

The transition from spanish work to english work has been a little weird. It's like everything I've ever known has been changed. Just kidding that's literally so dramatic but like the culture is so different and also I'm not used to actually understanding everything that people tell me. It's been fun though! I'm genuinely enjoying english work so far! I still hope that I'll still get to go back to spanish work someday but I like it! It's been so cool to get to know all the members and help reactivate some of them! 

Ok so I learned a new skill this week! I learned how to prune a tree! Sister Fife and I had never done that before in our lives and we got to do it twice so now we're basically pros at pruning trees! Just kidding but like the yard looked better than we found it so I guess that's good??

Oh also we went to taco bell and that place still HITS even after several months of eating authentic mexican food!

We also had some really great spiritual experiences too! So at least once a transfer in Stockton we have a breakfast with the stake president and he gives a devotional to go along with it. The things that we talked about were so touching and the spirit was so strong. I was reminded about the healing power of Christ's atonement and that he can heal wrong ideas, our weaknesses, loneliness, loss, can help us to forgive, and every other pain or affliction that we'll ever go through. All we need to do is turn to him in prayer. We don't need to wait for or try to fix our weaknesses before we come to him but we just need to have the faith to come to him and let him heal us. 

So then another spiritual experience we had was that we saw Tina yesterday! She is someone that the other sisters and I helped with service projects last transfer and she was finally able to move into a new home. She is now going to be taught by the elders that are over her area but Sister Fife and I had the chance to go say goodbye to her. I'll admit that sometimes it's hard to look at the positive things in life and it's easy to compare and wish you had certain blessings or you get impatient with God's timing or you're feeling like you're not enough and then you're hard on yourself. Yesterday Tina reminded me though that there is no reason not to praise Jesus like all the time! He is literally so good! Even though her situation isn't ideal she was telling us every single blessing she had seen this week and she was just filled with so much joy! Her example inspired me and even though it's not easy to count all your blessings, looking at the things you're grateful for in life rather than what you lack or what you wish you had does wonders. 

So then today's been pretty fun too! We went to this one crepe place downtown and it's actually pretty famous because it was on diners, drive ins, and dives and it was pretty cool! It was such a fun time to get to know the other sisters and the crepes there were SO GOOD!  I know that God loves me because when we went to that crepe shop all too well by taylor swift came on AND it was the re-recorded version and that's how I knew that God loved me in in moment. I'm just kidding but seriously I've learned so much about Heavenly Father's love this week and that he cares about every single little tiny detail about our lives! He gives us everything we need from the people he surrounds us with, to the world he's created for us to live in, and even all the small things. He knows all of our worries, all of our wants, all of our needs and all we need to do is turn to him. He wants to hear from us and through him and through Christ's atonement we can be truly healed. 

Anyways I hope that you all have an amazing week! I love you all! I will update you all soon! 

Pictures:

1: Tina <3

2-3: carwash

4: crepes

5: taco bell

6: chickfila with the sisters