Weeks 7 & 8

Week 7/8

Friends! Sorry I couldn't write a post last week but this weeks post will include both weeks. Last Saturday was also my two month mark on my mission! It hardly seams like it. I feel like time is going by so fast, but I also feel like I have been doing this forever.

We have had some amazing miracles. We have set three new dates since last I wrote! Humberto, my 17 year old friend and investigator, is finally getting baptized. He had been ready for a long time but he was

working a job that wouldn't let him come to church on Sundays. Missionaries have been working with him for a long time hoping that a miracle would happen and it finally did! Humberto got a new job where he doesn't ever have to work Sundays. His date for baptism is May 10th. We are also talked to Humberto about serving a mission. He loves missionary work and wants to serve. Now he finally can!

We have also had some really cool lessons with an investigator named Dee. I told y'all about him a could of weeks ago. He has diabetes and has had some issues with his babymama. We'll last week he called us

bright and early in the morning. He asked if we could meet up by the river front. He hadn't slept the night before and wanted to talk to us. We met up with him in a beautiful place where we could sit next to the river. It was a beautiful day. He told us that he was feeling down and that the night before he had bought of us and had immediately called us because  he knew that he would be able to make him feel better. We talked about some pretty cool things he had questions about and shared with him a Book of Mormon. Right before ending he asked us if he would bring his friends to meet us the following Saturday in the same place. On Saturday we met his cousin and his friend and we taught them the restoration. They are a couple of great guys!

My East Sunday was amazing! For sure the best Easter I have ever had. I actually got to hunt for Easter eggs! What? Supper cool, I had a blast! This week was also transfers week and like I said last week we all got to go and hear the inspirational talker whose name was Dan Clark. He was supper cool! Well anyways pretty much everything changed this transfer. Sister Stucki left and Sister Allphin came it. Sister Allphin is supper sweet though, I love her so much already. And then our Zone leader Elder Loveless also left and in came Elder Bishop who is fantastic! It has been fun getting to know these new missionaries!

The Spanish work is blooming just like the flowers here in Paducah, Kentucky! Yesterday evening we finally found where all the Hispanics were hiding! We have our work cut out for us so wish me luck! 

Week 6

Amigos y Familia!

Wow this has been a busy week! I don't even remember half of it but it but I will sum it up in a couple words... meetings for dayz! Hahaha One of the parts about missionary life that I had no idea existed was the number of meetings we have every week. We have District meetings, Zone meetings, Zone conference, skills training, transfer meetings, and this week I was also able to go to my very own Trainer-Trainee meeting in Nashville:) Also along with these training meetings there is a lot of driving! Its about 3 hours to Nashville, well pretty much everything over here is really spaced out the good thing about that is that we do have a car! These meetings are awesome though because they are like trainings and motivational all at the same time and they just make me want to be a better missionary.

Next week I will be able to go to transfer meeting as well! If you don't know what transfer meetings are they are pretty much every six weeks and every six weeks you have the possibility of being transferred to a different area. Companions get moved around and the old missionaries go home and new missionaries straight from the MTC come in. Ill be going to transfer meeting but I will not be transferred. President Andersen invited all the missionaries to transfer meeting this month. As a trainee I get to stay with my trainer, Hermana Garlitz for two transfers. Speaking of Hna Garlitz! She is the best trainer in the world! I wouldn't even know what to do without her. Anyways it just hit me this week that I have survived a transfer and things will start to move around again. I am not a change kind of person but as a missionary you get to experience a lot of change.

This week was also really good for getting to know the members in this ward. We had a couple of dinners this week and I was able to make new friends. Its really great to see people getting to know me:) Its really funny because from far away I look like a very serious kind of person and most people aren't drawn to me. My serious face is not very inviting:) So as these people start signing up to feed us they start to communicate with me and they start to like me and by the end of the dinner they are like, "We love you come back soon!" hahaha its really great! There are some truly amazing members in this ward. I didn't think any other ward could be as awesome as mine, and lets face it I honestly don't think there will ever be a better ward than Cobble Creek 2nd but the Paducah ward comes close:).

Investigator wise we have had some cool break through with the Hernandez family! Juan and Marta are a young couple with two young girls! I have only visited them twice but this last lesson was pretty cool! We were able to talk about the Plan of Salvation and were able to explain the importance of the restoration. Hna Garlitz said that The Plan of Salvation is usually a break though with most Hispanics because they aren't able to understand our purpose until they understand the Plan. Juan was very interested and Marta was quiet but we could tell that they had understood and had felt the spirit. In the end I told them that in order to make it to the Celestial Kingdom we needed to keep ordinances and that the first ordinance that we make was baptism. Juan then asked me to clarify and he asked if people could make it without being baptized. I then said, "great question Juan! Let me tell ya..."  Without the proper baptism we wouldn't be able to make it. We told him that we needed to be baptized by the proper authority from god. We then explained that Joseph Smith had restored that authority and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was the only church on the earth that had that authority. At that point he understood our purpose. It was pretty exiting to see it all work out in their minds and then they understood why it was so important for them to know if the things that the missionaries said were true and so they asked us...:) And we said... read the Book of Mormon! Its pretty great logic... if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith is a true prophet, and if he's a true prophet then he really did see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and if he saw them then the powers of the priesthood were truly restored and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints is the true church and kingdom of God restored on earth! We haven't been back but I am hoping that what we said would motivate them to read.

This logic is pretty cool but the important thing is for these people to want to know for themselves. We had similar experience with a young man named Luis who lives in Mayfield. We introduced him to the Book of Mormon and we told him pretty much what we had told Juan and Marta. I asked him if he would actually read and know for himself, he said that he honestly didn't know but that he was grateful that he had a book incase he ever did want to know... There is really nothing that we can do at this point and we were sad. We will continue to teach him the rest of the lessons and pray and hope that he will have a desire to know.

Its pretty discouraging when you hear these things and as my first transfer comes to an end I begin to worry if I will every get to baptize a convert. Lucky for me I have wise companions that help me lift my spirits! Sister Tenny is one of those people that are just so inspired you want to quote them all day every day and this is what she told me... "the true measure of your success if not how many people you baptize but the convert that you take home"... Wow, I mean WOW! This made me truly exited because I was able to think about my own conversion and how much I have changed already since I left home. I felt peace because my own conversion is coming along great! I know that I am already a much better person than I was when I left home. Being on a mission is fantastic!

Have a wonderful Easter week!

Love, Hermana Orellana

Week 5

My sweet friends!! I was so happy to hear from you!:D I have this one day to look at my emails and to my surprise there multiple emails from friends and family! I think about you all them time. I am officially starting to get in the groove of missionary work. Like my companion says you can feel a tons of emotions in only one day. I can feel happy and exited and then calm and thoughtful and somewhere in the middle of the day we will feel disappointed and sad. No matter what I do though I don't forget that I am where I need to be. Oh my goodness conference was a blast! I cant even count how many times I have sat and watched conference all my life and I have never gotten so much out of it as I did this last time. The spirit is truly a blessing. I know that because of it was able to absorb so much out of conference. I felt truly sad that it had ended only to think of how many new talks my companion and I will have to listen to and to study for another 6 months.

We had some wonderful experienced with investigators coming to see conference with us. One of them was a sweet girl named Ella she is a wonderful girl who has been taking the discussions from the sister missionaries Sister Stucki and Sister Tenni. I had the chance to meet her for the first time at a Noche de Hogar that Hermana Garlitz and I organized on Monday. We invited the members to come and meet our investigator and to fellowship. Hna. Garlitz gave a wonderful little lesson about Christ like attributes and then we played a supper fun game of charades. Everyone had tons of fun and really bonded with our investigators. Ella is a wonderful sweet girl with supper colorful hair haha. She works at the mall in Clare's and the sisters have been working hard with her to be able to get her to church. Ella has a hard time getting work off to come on Sundays but she was able to attend the first session of conference on Saturday. The first session on Saturday was my favorite, I mean they started with Elder Holland! Right off the bat I knew that it would be awesome. It was so powerful and Elder Eyering spoke directly to Ella and it was amazing after the session she told us that she was so exited to get baptized! The sisters hadn't even discussed that yet and there she was telling us that she was ready! We were so exited but we told her that we needed to wait for her to attend church first. All of a sudden she became supper happy and she said that her boss had given her two Sundays off in a row! It was perfect! So now we are so exited for dear Ella to be baptized in a couple of weeks. Today as Sister Stucki was writing to her Ella said, "I know that this is right and I am so happy". Like Ella I know that this is right and I am so happy.

Another exiting miracle for conference is that the investigator who had dropped us last week, Alejandro, came! He actually took my challenge and came to both sessions of conference on Sunday with Hermano Zaragoza. We can tell that he is still having a difficult time but I have faith that his heart will soften. He is still willing to let us in and talk in fact we went over to his house Friday night and he gave Hna Garlitz and I two big bowls of aroz con leche (rise pudding) and it was so good! I have so much love for Alejandro and even though he doesn't understand the importance of our message, I do and I know what it will mean to him and how happy he will some day. I know the priceless blessings that await him. Humberto also came to conference he stayed for the first Saturday session and then Ana Pastor got baptized in-between sessions on Sunday! Haha Anita turned eight years old last week. She is the youngest daughter of recent converts Domingo and Santa. They are a wonderful family and it was supper exiting to see Anita get baptized by her dad. Bishop gifted her with her own pair of English scriptures and a huge teddy bear. Funny story, I asked Anita if she had named her bear and she decided at that moment to name her Orellana Garlitz:D haha she is super cute.

Along with conference some of the highlights of this week was the amazing food that I got to eat. On Thursday night an investigator named Guadalupe invited us to eat dinner at her house. We helped her prepare a delicious ceviche and had tostadas de ceviche! yum:) We went out to eat the other day and I had Salmon and then just yesterday we had tamales that Santa had made for Anita's baptism. The other night we also got to eat at a Mexican restaurant! That is a whole other story haha so being Spanish speaking missionaries in a small town in Kentucky there are not a lot of Hispanics! The toughest part about being here is that it is hard to find people to teach so one night after much frustration trying to find Hispanic looking people at the mall we decided to YOLO it and go to a Mexican restaurant and just try to talk to the people there! HAHAHA honestly I don't know why we didn't do this before it was a great hit! Everyone was supper exited that a dressed up Hispanic girl was walking into their small town restaurant to try out the food. The funny thing was that we weren't actually planning to eat just pass around pamphlets and Books of Mormon and see if we could get some addresses and phone numbers. We obviously didn't think this through very well so when we got there it got supper awkward cuz they were all working. So I asked for a menu and started looking at it as if I was trying to decide if they had good food or not. I noticed the deserts and invited Hna Garlitz to some flan. We sat down and immediately they brought us chips and salsa and when they brought our flans out they also brought some new bread that they wanted me to try so that I could tell them if I like it:) It was pretty good actually. In the end we got to talk to our waiter who actually turned out to be from San Luis Potosi my home town! how crazy huh?! We gave him a pamphlet and he gave us his number to call him so that we could talk about our church. Right before leaving he took the receipt and bought our food! hahaha supper crazy.

I love you all, and I love your emails!:) Thank you so much for your support and your prayers.

          Hermana Orellana

Pictures From the MTC!

Also, I think i gave some of you the wrong email address.
The correct one is : julia.orellana@myldsmail.net
I love getting emails so please write :)

Week 4

Wow I feel like I was just here three days ago! This week has gone by supper fast! This week was also my one month mark! Whoopee for me:) I'm stating to get into this routine and I'm getting pretty comfortable with it. At first it was supper difficult to me to open up and try new things or to knock on strange doors and talk to people I had never met before and talk to them about religion, but it's getting easier to get myself to do uncomfortable things. Contacting in stores or in random places is still tricky for me though.

This week was full of ups and downs. I'll start with the downers first and then I'll talk about the ups. So the biggest downer actually happened yesterday during my little Spanish Sunday school  class. Alejandro one of our resent investigators who comes to church
regularly decided to speak his truth during our prophets lesson. It was just all pretty random because it was all during a discussion about how we can know for ourselves if a person was a true prophet. He just raised his hand and told Hermana Garlitz and I that this was
going to be his last day in church because he had decided to return to his Catholic Church where he was comfortable. This was all very shocking to us because our discussions with him were going great and he was keeping his commitments and was reading the Book or Mormon and was feeling the spirit. In other words he knew that the Book was scripture but was not willing to leaving his comfortable life of ignorance. Of course we didn't think of this at first because his excuse had been that all churches were good and that as long as you follow God you would be saved. So my automatic response would be the importance of the restoration of the priesthood and the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon but that wasn't what he was concerned with. From the very beginning he was very worried about the commandments and the more Hna Garlitz and I thought about it the more we knew that his concern was deeper than he was letting on. Long story short Hermano Zaragoza, Alejandro's friend and co-worker who introduced us to him and brings Alejandro to all the activities and sits in on the discussions, told us some background about Alejandro that solidified our theory. Our next step is to teach him the commandments and to make him understand the blessing that come from knowing the truth. As I think of this I think of a scripture, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). So true not only for this situation but for a lot of other things too. Anyways this whole Alejandro bummed us all day yesterday.
Enough of the sad stuff! Have I told you guys about Mayfield yet? We'll if I haven't Mayfield is where we go on the weekends or in other words Mayfield is the promise land. There are more Hispanics there in a block than in almost all Paducah. So interesting fact: Hna Garlitz and I had to drive to Zone Conference this week which means that it killed our miles and we had to walk everywhere in Mayfield. It wasn't so bad though because Mayfield is really small and walking is a great way to talk to people taking a walk on the weekend. The super awesome thing is that it pretty much rained all weekend and so half the fun was being soaking wet for most of the day. Mayfield is always super busy, we talk to and teach people all day long because we spend less time finding people to talk. My favorite lesson this week was with a sweet family that includes five kids and their parents Myra and Alfredo. We taught them the restoration and I got the chance to share my testimony about the Book of Mormon. I felt the spirit so strong and I knew that they had felt it too. In the end they both asked us for a copy of the Boom of Mormon and promised to read it and invited us to come back anytime. It was truly amazing! We'll is this all for this week I hope you are all doing good! This was a really busy week for mail I was so happy to hear from new people and surprised to hear from others. In all I love hearing from you guys to keep it comin:)

Until next week,
    Hermana Orellana

Week 3

Friends,

Its been two weeks since I got to Paducah Kentucky, a little town in between Possum Trout and Monkeys Eyebrow. Its quite small but not as small as Mayfield. Mayfield is where Hna. G and I go on Thursdays and Fridays (about 25 min from Paducah) because it is full of Hispanics! I promised myself that I would write a full on post this week! So sorry last weeks was so short it was a hard week but this last week was way better!:D It went by so fast but I have been writing down exiting things so that I can remember them so here goes... First of all there are squirrels everywhere! I mean EVERYWHERE! They are so cute though! I love the squirrels we are becoming close friends. Another thing I forgot to mention is that it is absolutely beautiful here! You are surrounded by trees where ever you go with houses scattered here and there, the houses are romantic and majestic and old (they often smell of mold but we over look that while talking positive) . This is also hillbilly town. Not in a bad way because my companion and I have fun proving the rumors right about the south. Not that its really the south because Kentucky was divided during the civil war but don't tell the folks around here that or they will freak out. Oh and another thing! You know how Utah is pretty much filled with churches from corner to corner well here its the same except for the churches are from different religions. Just down town Paducah (which includes two very small streets by the way, this town is tiny but not as tiny and the Mayfield which is another place I work in on the weekends) is full of churches right next door to each other! This place is a bit crazy I could write a whole other blog post just about my encounters with Baptists and Pentecostals (I have never even heard of that religion before but they have some seriously "different" ideas). Oh it has only been two weeks but I am loving this mission! .

So it turns out that most of the people in the ward are converts! I thought that was fantastic, they are a bunch of amazing people. Sundays have a whole new meaning for me now because Hermana Garlitz and I are in charge of the Spanish speaking people which means we translate ( I translated for the first time this week) all of sacrament and then have our separate lesson for Sunday school which Hna. Garlitz teaches and I have a feeling she will make me teach next week. I have unofficially been called as a translator and a Spanish Sunday school teacher! How fun!:P

I have learned a couple things while on a mission. First of all it is no easy, you have to be positive or you will be miserable. Also is mission is awkward! Hermana Garlitz and I have loads of fun being awkward missionaries. I have learned that missionary work is just crazy stalking and often awkward conversations but I have embraces the "Awko Taco" as they say over here. I can not tell you how creepy Hna. G and I are when we get those rare moments and we find a Hispanic at Walmart. The good this is though that we have cool gadgets to help us on our way! Yup yup I got my very own mini Ipad on my first day on the field. Not that I use it often because I cant get on anything other than the planner and the church library but ether way its fun stuff. I also have a car! Hermana Garlitz named our car "Rojita" because she is a small and red car:) We thank Heavenly Father every morning for "Rojita" because it is always cold and having to walk in this weather would freeze me in a matter of a couple of minutes. We are also blessed with a cellphone which broke on my third day on the mission and I had to learn the hard lesson of living without a cellphone. We just got it up and running again yesterday and I don't even know how we ever survived without one. Another thing that is cool (but that I don't participate in because I am still a toddler in training) is that the missionaries here are allowed to have Facebook (strictly for preaching and communicating with the investigators and members only)! Whoo so I came into this mission thinking that I would have none of these things and that  all I would have was a book of Mormon and a bike. Wow was I wrong!

I am really starting to love this place:) I didn't think I had enough space in my heart to like a place other than Utah and San Luis Potosi (the place I was born in) but it is starting to grow on me. The mission is hard but it is also very fun and happy. Sharing the gospel makes me happy! Whenever I feel homesick I just wait for the next opportunity to open my mouth and teach because I know that I will instantly feel better. I don't have room to write all the amazing experiences I have had with my investigators but I did have one experience that stood way out from the rest, it goes a little like this...

On the second day of my mission I met a boy named Dee and a guy named Russell. They were just hanging outside cleaning a car and we decided to talk to them and ask them if they had Hispanic neighbors (we go around doing this all day everyday). They instantly reminded me of friends I used to have who would just wonder around all day away from home with bicycles and ether a basketball or a football. I liked Dee and Russell instantly. They were interested so we gave them a pamphlet, invited them to church and they referred us to a house a block away with a Hispanic family. We came back a couple of times to see how they were doing but with no luck. Just a couple days ago we went back to see if once and for all they were interested. I didn't really want to but I felt the need to go see them. (Hermana G. had given me the choice or in other words she wanted me to decide) It felt a little weird right away and as we walked towards the door we could hear shouting. Hna. Garlitz knocked and Dee's mom walked out and told us that Dee was sick with this diabetes acting up again and that he was laying down. We immediately decided to just move on but as we were getting in the car Dee's brother came up to us and told us to wait for Dee 20 min a couple of blocks away. It was all very sketchy but we felt like we needed to see him so we waited and prayed. We met with him and he was indeed sick but said that the cool air and walk would make him feel better. We taught him the Plan of Salvation. He was having a hard time with Diabetes and was feeling down about all the drama going on at home with his baby mamma. He was thinking of moving away to get some space, he really didn't know what to do. We taught him with power and with the spirit. He asked us questions about prayer and about having trials and we were able to teach him what we knew. He thanked us and we invited him to read the pamphlet and to church. I have never felt so much happiness in my life! I just got in the car and started to cry. I thought of the words "and they were filled with the spirit" and for the first time in my life I understood what that meant. It was truly amazing and I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to be a part of that.

Much love,

           Hermana Orellana

Sorry this was a little far back...

Week 2 (maybe 3?)

Friends and Family

This is going to be short and sweet:) I arrived in Nashville safe and sound last Monday and spent the night and the presidents home before heading off to.... Paducah Kentucky! whoo! Yeah I never thought that I would be here. I am not going to lie is it hard here. The one thing that is supper great though is my companion! Her name is Hermana Garlitz and she is awesome! I know that I can do anything with her. She can turn my sad day into the most memorable one. I have met great people and the leaders of the church here are great. I did however speak in sacrament. It actually wasn't has hard as I thought it would be though:) The church is the same where ever you go. I think the greatest lesson I have learned so far is humility. Some of the people around these parts have real problems. They live in places that I would never survive in with conditions and are even hard for me to comprehend. I was telling my companion on the first day out that I had never seen the world like I see it now. In Utah I was exposed less to such worldly things but my spiritually was less, and now my spiritually is a constant flame but the worldly things come across with exclamation points. I miss Utah and I miss the MTC and I miss the comforts but I know that I am doing the lords work. I know that this is the true church! I know it and I cant deny it. It brings me happiness and I need to share my happiness with these people.

I love you all!

    Hna. Orellana