Thursday, September 25, 2014

August 4, 2014


August 4, 2014

AUGUST 4, 2014




Hey President Clark!!!!

Well this week was crazy. Like every week in the mission. This week we started out powerful but towards the end things just were weird, our days didn't go as planned. I also seem to get myself into the trap of somehow scheduling all my return appointments for Tuesdays.... so we're super productive those days, but then the days before and the day after we don't really have anyone to see because we just saw them... so that's weird. But we'll figure it out!

We had two families come to church yesterday! Javier is still going strong, we had a really good lesson with him on Saturday. He brought his mom!!! It was awesome. And then we got to watch as he explained to her the Book of Mormon, what it is, a bit about Joseph Smith.... he was just teaching her the Restoration with confidence!!! It was so awesome, I know he believes it's all true. He and Elena came to church on Sunday... still waiting on a wedding before he can get baptized. 

Then we just had a miracle with a new investigator named Kathy! She's so awesome. She's also living with her boyfriend and she has two kids. But she just drinks up everything that we teach her. She loves it. We taught her the first two lessons this week and she already came to church yesterday! We also talked a bit about the Law of Chastity last week just in passing, and told her that in order for her to get baptized she'd have to move or get married... well Sunday she came up to me and asked me my opinion if she should move in with her ex-step mom who's renting a room and wants her to move in because she's always fighting with her boyfriend. So I think God is opening up doors for her to go get baptized!!! If she moves, she'll probably be baptized with her daughter in about two weeks. 

Sister Contreras.... I just love her so much. We have such a good time together and we are UNIFIED!!!! I love being unified with my companion. I love teaching with her and just boosting her confidence, because that's all she really needs is to know that I trust her so that she learns to trust herself. We had an AWESOME 12 week experience with Elder Casteneda and Elder Arroyo yesterday. Elder Casteneda is visiting up here, and so before church and after MCM we did 12 weeks together. It was just a really spiritual experience and showed me just how united she and I are and how much potential we have to be a powerful teaching team. I love it!

I love you so much President! Thank you for your confidence in all of us, I really appreciate it and I won't let you down!

Love,

Sister Zollinger



Hey Mom!

We just found out last night that we had to write early! We're going to a HUGE CHEESE FACTORY for our Zone Activity today. Super excited haha. Haha the missionaries here don’t know it.... but I do love cheese. It's going to be a blast.  You can even make your own cheese... downside is that you can't eat it because it's not FDA approved. So we probably will just stick to the stuff you can eat. :D

Ceres is such a ghetto... oh my gosh. If you saw the things and places I go everyday.... hahaha.... like the other day. Picture this. Wish I could have taken pictures... We go to a ghetto neighborhood for dinner. We get to the house and it's not that bad. Well turns out that's the grandma's house, not the place where we are eating. So we go to the backyard. There's lots of places here that have a main house and then a littler house in the backyard that someone else lives in. So we go to the back. Still not it. go through this hole in the fence to the filthy alley... on one side of the fence there's a spray painted sign "NO TRESPASSING. YOU WILL BE SHOT." We walk down a bit and then duck through another fence and then we are finally there at this tiny little house. It's pretty crazy. Every thing here is filthy really. Super drugged. Saw a crazy lady on crack the other day in the middle of the road dancing and swaying while cars tried not to hit her.... it's nuts. BUT. That is generally where you can find people who want to have a bit more light in their lives. So we just be careful ahaha.

We really are safe. It's really a ghetto but God protects us. And we try to be smart. Like if we see people who are scary we just get in the car and go somewhere else and we don't go walking around once the sun starts to set, we just go to places we know and trust. We're really ok.

 We didn't trespass that fence anyways haha, we went into a DIFFERENT fence. It's crazy. also... there's a lot of really bad husbands out here. Mexican men are really into mauchisma... or basically the woman does every single thing that he wants. They all drink and smoke and it's just terrible... most women I meet are either living with that, or he just took off and left her with all of their children but didn't divorce her so they're still married. It's so frustrating.

So jealous that you are all going to the Boundary Waters with the Zollingers and Hancocks! I super miss the family!!! I want to go to the boundary waters with everyone!!!! ..... That's super sad for Jeff Moen getting Chikengunya!!!! Man, everyone's getting sick!!!! An elder that served up here last transfer called me on Friday night to tell me that there's a tumor in his leg and he was flying home the next day to go figure out if it's cancer or not, and hopefully someday he can come back on his mission. He's from Chile. And then mono is just taking out the Modesto zone elders... it's bad.

Hey random question, I heard yesterday from someone that an American plane got shot down over Iraq.... is that true??

How's Jon doing by the way? And Anne??? How's the ward? By the way how's Dallan? I sent him a letter a long time ago and he never responded.

You'll never believe it but today we have WEATHER! It's been hot, sunny, and cloudless for about.... 9 months now. But today... it's only like 80 something and there lots of cloud cover!!! It feels so good! 80 already feels cold to me haha I didn't even sweat that much when we ran this morning because it wasn't hot or sunny! I'm actually in pretty good shape right now. We've started playing ultimate frizbee again... love that game. We played last week and my team DESTROYED... but then we played on Saturday instead of running and my team got DESTROYED.... so it's a pretty fun pride cycle in the which I've discovered I'm a bad sport hahahaha... but it's ok :D


I don't know what I'm going to do when I get home... sometimes Spanish just comes out, even when I'm trying to speak English. God is really investing in me learning Spanish good, almost no one gets native companions, especially sisters, and I've had three, and two of them don't even speak english... he's making a point I'm pretty sure. 


LOVE YOU MOM!!! Talk to you next wednesday, temple trip so prep day changed... love you bye!

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