Week 7: corn, cows and cuss words

- July 30, 2020

CIAO A TUTTI AND HOWDY Y'ALL! Coming at you live from Firestone Colorado...a small little town with more corn fields and cows than actual people😅 My first week in the field has been great! Harder than I ever thought, 500 years long, but all together wonderful. My trainer Sister Aiono is the greatest. The second I walked into the room of trainers on the first day I saw her and literally said a prayer that she would be my comp! She's so sweet, hard working, Christlike and most importantly POLYNESIAN. I couldn't have dreamed up a better fit for me:) She's from Taylorsville Utah but her family is Samoan. She served in Australia for about 2 months before Covid and has only been in Colorado for only 1 transfer! Yet she's training me and doing amazing. Also she always tells me I'm polynesian at heart which makes me happy.

BIKES. I've never had such a love-hate relationship with anything before. We live about a 45 minute bike ride from our area and we have to make the trek up 3 huge hills each day. All I know is I better come back skinny as ever. The bike ride home at the end of the day is always the greatest though. Flying down the hills as we pass cornfields and sunflowers while the sun is setting...can't complain:,) The greatest blessing in this mission has been that there are little to no Covid restrictions! We go out everyday and can meet with members and investigators in person, as long as we stay outside. The members are amazing. They feed us dinner every single night and it's been so fun getting to know them. Two people in our ward served in Italy so I got to talk to them in Italain!

We have been doing a whole ton of service this week. To be specific we have been doing my least favorite thing on the planet. WEEDING. There's this thing called the HOA here which is pretty much like the yard police and people get fined if they don't take care of their yard. So sis and I are the "weed girls" lol and we keep the HOA happy.

We are teaching a few people right now which is so great. One of them is a part member family who are the absolute sweetest. They love the sister missionaries and ask us to come over almost everyday. Zuriko the wife got baptized a few years ago but has since become inactive. Her husband Henery is a Christian boy who loves to drink hahah but he also loves to have us over and talk to us. We are mainly teaching Zuriko's son Raiden who is 9. He is preparing for bapstim and super excited. The family is golden and I really hope we can keep progressing with them. Zuriko loves the gospel but she also loves to cuss, so sometimes it's hard for us to keep the spirit in our lessons. I think the more we meet with her the more she'll want to be a better influence for her family. She's so sweet though she wants to take us to get pedicures with her next week hahah

This first week has been hard not gonna lie, so many ups and downs and a little homesickness. But I still go to bed happy every night because God is good and this work is wonderful. I love my Savior and I'm so grateful for His Atonement which I know strengthens my testimony and also helps me make it up those daunting hills every day;)