THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH FOR MY WONDERFUL PACKAGE!!!! ahhhhhh you're the best!!! all the food and stuff, amaaaaazing, those are the perrrrrfect pens!! and that origami paper is awesome hahahhaha it's intense cause it's so thick, but I can make some craaaazy stuff now with my origami master skills :) and mom, THATS THE BOOK!!!!! yessssss!!! I was sooooo freeeeeking excited when I saw that you have noooooo idea how much I love that book hahahha its the best! BEST! it has pretty much every word, plus pictures...awesome, and I got all those pictures you sent me and stuff in that folder with Chase and Dallin. The picture is in the front of my scriptures cause whenever I see it, it makes me so happy and puts a huge smile on my face :) This week was awesome, but loooooong. I LOOOOOOOOVE all my cousins soooooo much!!! I got letters or dear elders from all of them and they were just the best, and Kendall's letter was hilarious and Anne's letter was AMAZINGLY colorful and wonderful as usual, their the besssssssssst cousins ever :)))) I went on exchanges this week with Elder Page who is a spanish elder so obviously we spoke a lil essssspanol, but we had to go get the car cleaned, then we went to in n out, then we profiled houses as we drove by streets to find mexicans hahaha its kinda funny how much profiling goes on to try to find mexican homes in this zone cause there are like NONE!!! But we drove around a lot trying to find streets and knocked this one and it's just all kinnnnnnda redneck, but we did talk to this one black lady who was super nice, but not interested. Elder Harris and I knocked this one street this week, and ended up finding this kid who was one of those people who believes all things and pretty much believes nothing, its kinda hard to explain, but we talked to him forevvvvver, like an hour and it was pretty awesome. We both bore our testimonies and then I read with him Moroni's promise cause he said he would be interested in reading the Book of Mormon just to see what he can learn from it..so that went super well...oh and his dog BIT my finger, but it didn't really hurt...but it STILL bit me haha. We also saw a big dead tarantula on this guys doorstep, thaaaat was weird. Oh, but back to splits with Page, we had a blast and ate at this guys house and had beans and rice and meat...which I'm really learning to love, WAYYYYYY more than the other stuff that some people feed us, the English wards give us the weirdest stuff, like we had seaweed the other night with some of this Korean stuff and we wrapped it in the seaweed....it was super nasty...suuuuuper nasty. It was at the guys house who is 6'11"...biggest guy in the world, his hands are HUGE! Hes awesome :) I had to give a blessing to some lady at the hospital this week, that was pretty SWEEEET!!! and I made her a flower out of origami too, she loved that :) Elder Johnson of the 70's came and did a training this week. We had to wake up at 5:30 to meet the others in the zone then drive there for the 7:00 meeting for the leaders then 8:00 for us, then we were siting there till around 4! SOOOO LONG!!! but I saw allll my boyyyys from the Spanish zone, and even though i was only with them for like a week and a half I know them super well and we're all friends and I love seeing them and I just talked with them the whole time while Harris was in the first meeting. Johnson's training was SUPER good!! He talked about spiritual learning, and the difference between that and other forms of learning...like how we can't just read all the rules of basketball and watch movies about it to get good, we have to get out and play and practice, and its the same with spiritual learning, we can't just read the Book of Mormon and go online and research it a bunch, but we have to actually apply what we've learned and ACT upon what it says, like GO to church, and KEEP the commandments and stuff....obviously he explained it way better. He was great, and he talked about a bunch of other great stuff to help us as missionaries and I took tonnnnnns of notes mom...you'd be proud :) and he said that "spiritual learning requires obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel". We had this cool sacrament meeting yesterday! People would come up and choose a song from the hymn book and say why it was important to them, and bear a little testimony on it then we would sing one verse of the song, and we did that the whole time! and sang like 30 songs hahah it was awesome, suuuch a good idea :) In the other ward this return missionary gave a talk about taking on the name of Christ, and seriously, it was my favorite talk I've ever heard. It was incredible. He had the most powerful testimony it was just amazing...like my favorite talk, even better than some of the ones from general conference hahah it was THAT good! Marta our investigator is doing so great. We've been going over and reading chapters with her at night that can help her out... I don't know if I've already said this, but Marta lives with her mom and her daughter and her daughters two daughters, 4 generations, it's crazy, and they all live in this 2 room appartment, and Marta just wants her daughter to move out cause shes kinnnnnnda crazy and stuff and we used to teach her but she kinda dropped off :/ but so we read with her mosiah 27 or 28 which talks about Alma the Younger, and applied it to her and how that story could help her out and then read Alma 24 with her one night cause that's just an awesoem chapter and so much can be learned from it...it's so cool how we can find stories in the Book of Mormon that can be directly applied in our lives and help us out during hard times. There is a story for everything! The Book of Mormon is just incredible and amazing and i LOVE it! I've been reading through 2 Nephi, which is just an amazing section, and I pretty much hightlight everything, so I can't tell you EVERYTHING I've hightlighted, but I'll share some...9:45,49,52 (27... i wrote them kinda messy so this might be the verse or chaper as a whole)...11:7..10:25 .. the end of 13 is like crazy hahah its sweet though...2 Nephi 4 I LOVE and I've got that all marked up...there is just so much we can learn from the scriptures and I learn so much every time I read them. I love love looove it! I'm gonna be readin and prayin alot this week too casue Marta wants me to confirm her at church on Sunday!!! infront of like a million people!! I'm so scared, but I know that the Lord will help me if I ask him :) aaaaand I did something super awesome to Elder Harris this week...so we were at Martas and Harris went to go say hi to her mom or go to the bathroom or something, and I gave Marta this BRILLIANT idea that she should have Elder Harris SING at her baptism cause "he's an ammmazing singer, he sings to me all the time in the car.." and so she was like reeeeeally!? and I was like YAAA, you should ask him to, so she did!! hahahahahha and tonight we're going over to Brother Calls house so he can practice hahahah :))))) it was wonderful :) but Brother Call is making me sing with him now :/ karma....not at the baptism but just when he practices... haha but Harris really does have a pretty good voice, so it should be good... our exchange last night was with this guy Briggs and he was SO awesome and I learned a TON!! The Sister Missionaries are KILLINGGGGG it in our zone right now, and probably are up there in the mission, they have 9 progressing investigators with baptism dates and 3 baptisms this week, they are awesome! Thanks for the packages and the letters and stuff, mail is the bessssst :) I love you cousins and family and friends who get these emails :) In True to the Faith it says that a great sunday activity is writing missionaries ;P ahhahah love yaaa!
love,
elder bertha
