Week 20: The Crazy, Exhausting, Wonderful, Terrible, and Eventful Week of Hermana Buxton

Querida familia,

Pues, esta semena fue super locisima. This week has been so long! It was a pretty hard week as well. One of our Hermanas went home this week. She hasn't been feeling well and we were helping her out driving her to interviews with president and such. She got a call Thursday morning saying that she was leaving the next day to go home! So all day Thursday we were helping her pack and getting her things to the mission office or the post office. It was so hard to say goodbye to her! I was an emotional mess all week. We have gotten to be so close serving in the same branch and seeing each other all the time. It was so weird to see her go, but I am glad she is safely home and is doing awesome there. :) I really hope she gets to come back, but we will see! 

Her companion -Hna McGlothin- is now in a trio with us and we are combining the areas for this transfer! She is so fun and awesome. She has been sleeping on the couch the past few days but finally we are getting bunkbeds today! It is going to be a party for the last month of the transfer. ;) She even makes us yummy food! We feel super lucky to have her. We think we will just stay together after Hermana Francis goes home, but we will see. 

Hermana McGlothin moving into our apartment. We cleaned out the cleaning closet and put her things in there. She thought about bringing out her inner Harry Potter and living in the closet. haha 

Hermana McGlothin made us yummy fruit and yogurt parfaits!

This week we volunteered at the senior center and catered a memorial service. It was pretty sad and happy.. you know how those things are. It brought back lots of memories. It didn't help that I was already emotional this week. haha. We were in charge of the coffee and tea. Which was pretty funny considering we are LDS missionaries. We got a few chuckles outta people. ;) We had been there for five hours and we were so tired from standing so long and so we had cleaned up and were ready to go home. But then Joanna, the chef, came out and said "you girls look so beautiful so I hate to ask you, but would you please help us come wash the dishes? It will only take 10 minutes I promise." Well 10 minutes turned into an hour. haha It was a pretty crazy service day. 

Something funny: Hermana Francis loves the nutcracker! She danced in it for like 10 years or something. So she turned on her nutcracker CD for us and danced every part! It was so funny, but she did a good job-especially when there was more than one part happening at once. ;)

We also had the first Family Home Evening with the Soto family! They heard about it in conference and have been wanting to get that started, so we taught them how to do FHE this week. They loved it! Even the oldest daughter Gabita came out to participate. Valentina drew us beautiful pictures of my little ponies. Yesterday Gaby gave me and Hermana Francis these really beautiful bracelets to say thank you for everything. I didn't get a picture, but i will try to remember this week!

Something crazy! We went to a member's house for dinner and the children had a guinea pig. Hermana Francis held it and maybe 20 minutes and later broke out with hives all over!!! We came home to get her benadryl and it turned out I had a fever and Hermana McGlothin woke up at 4 am to take her companion to the airport and so she was so exhausted. We texted President Hall and basically just said we were all falling apart:)  He is going to let us sleep in one day to recover.

Hermana Francis holding the guinea pig before she found out she is pretty allergic to them!

News on iPads. Well the decision is to roll them out! Looks like it will be happening the first week of December if it happens this year. But our mission is first on the list. We hope we get them soon! Speaking of iPads, a woman from the missionary department is coming tomorrow! We got picked to be a part of this observation group, which is why we had to change our temple day to Wednesday. But it is going to be so fun! We are going to be helping with making the missionary learning software on the ipads even better. Especially with language. We are so excited to be a part of it! 

Also, we opened your birthday package today so that I could send you pictures and thank yous! Muchas gracias!! I loved everything mom and dad! You are the best :) I love the new necklace you got me! I'm guessing you could never find the other one I lost. But I am so grateful to have something new to keep with me to remind me of Heidi. Yesterday we ate dinner with the familia Bran. He made me enchiladas de guatemala again for my birthday! They were so delicious. I think it is my favorite food so far on my mission! 

 My birthday package from home!

Pictures of my birthday dinner with the Bran's.

I am excited to start this week as a trio and just go out and serve the Lord. Oh and I got the package with the clothes for the Chavez children. They are so cute! They will love everything. We are excited to give them to them! Thanks to everyone who donated clothing.

I love you all so much. Keep on keepin' on. I know that Jesus Christ lives and loves us and that I am serving Him! I love missionary work. :) 

Con amor,

Hermanita Buxton 

 Me with Hermana Jensen

Contacting we found this really cool little shed!

We are babysitting this plant . His name is Clemence and he is an "air plant" whatever that is. ;) We were trying to figure out a way to bring it everywhere with us!

Me with Hermana McGlothin

Week 19: I will Follow God's Plan for Me

This week has been filled with crazy and amazing experiences!

Transfer meeting was Tuesday and it was so sad to say good bye to Hermana Watts. We love her and she is such a good missionary. But she is going to do great things at home. Hermana Jensen's new companion is Hermana McGlothlin. They are both blondies in the most densely hispanic part of town. They stand out so much! They have people calling them "Los Angeles." It is pretty great. :) 

Also, on Tuesday we found LICE in my hair!! It was awful. My head was itching so bad and burning from all the bites. I think I got it teaching these cute little children on exchanges with Hermana Jensen. Luckily no one else got it. We called the mission nurse who told us to get delicing shampoo and wash all our sheets, towels, and pretty much everything. The only problem is we found it around 10 pm. So she told us to do it first thing Wednesday morning. However, we had to go to Mission Leadership Counsel all day Wednesday. So, she told us that I had to put my hair up in a bun and not hug any of the hermanas. Needless to say it was a pretty long MLC. That night it took 3 hours to delice. Long hair isn't fun when you have lice! Thursday morning Sister Lisonbee (the mission nurse) came to check my head and it looks like I'm now lice free! Yay! But goodness gracious, I hope I never have to deal with lice ever again. {We hope Hermana Watts didn't take lice home with her. They are head to head in the picture above!}

 Off to purchase lice shampoo! Hermana Francis is a little bit scared to get close to me!

The Hermanas...

Thursday we prepared a lot for Zone Training Meeting. It was a pretty rough day for me. I was feeling so inadequate and had a lot of fear teaching and training everyone in spanish! I just felt a lot of responsibility and felt like I couldn't do as good of a job as someone else. But I have a wonderful companion who helped me prepare for ZTM. Elder Linford came to give both of us blessings. I am so grateful for the priesthood and for the knowledge we have that God is our loving Heavenly Father who truly cares about us and wants the best for us. He blessed me that as I taught at the ZTM, I would be filled with the spirit in order to teach the Zone. And of course, just like he promised, ZTM on Friday went really well! I could feel the spirit working through me. I am so grateful for Heavenly Father's help this weekend. :)

Friday night we got to teach the Soto's daughter Gaby. (Gabita) She has decided to start listening to our message! We are so excited to be teaching her and we hope that she will feel of the truthfulness of the things we teach! 

Saturday was the baptism of Peter and Rebecca. It was the cutest thing ever!! That morning, Hermano Chavez called us saying "guess where we are driving home from hermanas?? The temple!" It made us so happy!! We are so blessed to be working with this family. We are so proud of them for embracing the gospel fully again and renewing their covenants in the temple. Hermano Chavez was emotional at the baptism. It was sweet. The spirit was so strong there. After their baptisms, the kids were confirmed by Hermano Jolley, the High priest leader in the rama. Now listen to this amazing story: He home taught the family every month throughout all of their years of inactivity. He could have given up on them, but he didn't. When Hermana Francis and I came knocking on their door a few months ago, they were ready to accept the invitation to return to church. We didn't do the hard work! But I am so grateful for a wonderful home teacher who did. So I have learned to always always always do my visiting teaching. Do your home teaching or visiting teaching too! It really does make a difference. Hermano Chavez said that even though they weren't ready to go back to church, they always felt the ward's love for them. I am so happy that Hermano Jolley took care of them for all those years! :) In their confirmations, Hno Jolley told them both that they would remember the things that the hermanas have taught them so that they could prepare to go on missions and teach others. It was so cute! I am excited to see them do just that. ;) Then I can show them all the pictures of them with their little handmaid name tags when we talked about missionary work! I love them so much. After the baptism and confirmation, we asked the kids how they felt. Peter said, "I feel SO good!" We gave them pictures of Jesus with children to put in their rooms. they were so excited! 

We celebrated the baptism with elote in the park! (corn with butter, mayo, cheese, and chile). It was delicious :)

Yesterday was the primary program! It was so cute to see all our little children up there singing their hearts out! They all did such a good job and it made us so happy to see them singing primary songs and learning in the gospel.

Jose is always ready for us to teach him.  He has the chairs all set up!

I have such a strong testimony of missionary work! I used to think about missionary work as finding non members to teach. But I have realized that more than anything missionary work starts in the home with parents teaching their children. And, with members of our ward families. I have such a strong testimony of reactivation. It makes me so happy to work with less actives and help them come back to the love of the gospel. Now all these children get to spend time at church learning about our loving Heavenly Father and His plan for us. One of the songs the kids sang was the one that goes "I will follow God's plan for me. Holding fast to his words and his love. I will work, and I will pray, I will always walk in his way. So I will be happy on earth, and in my home above." I know that is true. When we follow his plan, we will be happy. Part of His plan is missionary work. And I promise happiness in that, too :)

I love you all so much! xoxo

Love,

Hermana Buxton

Week 18: Baptisms and Bicycles

Querido Familia,

Hola! Como estan ustedes? I am doing great! First of all, we got transfer calls this week and Hermana Francis and I are staying together for her last transfer! I am so happy. :) We have been working so hard with investigators and with members of the rama and so being here for another transfer is an answer to our prayers. Also, Elder Linford got released as our district leader and is now going to be one of the new spanish Assistants. We are so excited that he gets to stay in the district and that he will now be in our rama. Hermana Jensen is staying in her area too. Which made me super excited! :) When we told Marili that we were staying she hugged us and started crying in relief. She told us that she remembered that transfers were every 6 weeks and that it was coming close to time. She was so worried we were going to be leaving. She had tears in her eyes as she told us that us staying was an answer to her prayers. We love her and the other girls so much. This week they all accepted to be baptized. :) Pray for them to be able to go to church. They really want to go but haven't been able to go for the past month.

Happy to get to stay together!

Alright last Monday was such a crazy day! The elders in our district decided they wanted to do a district activity of getting pedicures. haha. Oh man it was pretty funny to see them there. It was sort of for Hermana Jensen's birthday last week (it was on Halloween). Then that night we had the baptismal interviews with the Soto Family! They all passed and Valentina danced all night long because of it. :) We also went to a pumpkin patch and carved a little pumpkin for Halloween! It was so fun.

On Halloween there were two Hermanas in our district who went to the departing missionary temple trip. So, Hna Francis and I did little mini exchanges with their companions. I got to go with Hermana Jensen for her birthday! It was so fun. We taught a lesson completely in spanish together. We were so excited to see how far we have come since the CCM. It was a really good confidence booster for the both of us. We also got to go serve in this awesome place called the Gibbon's Center. Gibbons are a type of monkey from Asia and they have a little conservation center here in Santa Clarita. It was so fun! Those monkeys are so active. Much better than the zoo. And boy do they scream and holler. Those that work with and study them live there and I don't know how they get any sleep. haha. And, the best part, we got to bike together in her area! She taught me the how to gracefully get off the bike in a skirt!  We also went to sushi for her birthday lunch!

After exchanges, Hermana Francis and I went to go teach Peter and Rebecca to get them ready for their baptismal interview. They were so cute and in their costumes...all ready to go trick or treating. We had an early curfew of 7 on Halloween. President wanted us to deep clean our apartment and so we did that the rest of the night. One of the hermanas in the rama even let us borrow her vacuum because ours is terrible! So the floor actually got vacuumed and our apartment is sparkling. I got your card Halloween night too - right before curfew, so I didn't get to go get donuts. But thanks for thinking of me in that little family tradition. :)

November 1st was Valentina's birthday. She turned 8! Hermana Watts' mom sent some hand me downs to her to give to some of the girls in the ward and there was a beautiful white baptism dress! She wanted us to give it to Valentina. Oh she was so adorable in it. We also got her a pretty white bracelet for her to wear at her baptism the next day. She had a little birthday party with friends from church. She was Ana from frozen and had a tres leches cake.

So here comes the best day of them all: Sunday, November 2nd. The baptism day of the Soto Family. :) They were so happy! The spirit was so strong in their service. So many members from the rama came to support them, there weren't enough chairs! Hermana Francis sang "yo se que vive mi senor" and I accompanied her. Then we had the baptisms! :) Our ward mission leader baptized them. My heart was so happy. We also did the confirmations yesterday because next week we are combined with the english ward for the primary program. The joy on their faces was so special. The korean sisters, who first knocked on their door, got special permission to attend the baptism. We are so grateful for their faith and prayers as well! It was the best day so far. :)

Now here comes the craziness. We had dinner after the baptism with the Brans. They fed us panza, which is stomach. Oh my! You could probably see the fear in my face as I took my first bite. Hermano Bran kept saying, "hermanas, tienen miedo?" and laughing. It was okay...but I definitely will try to avoid it in the future. This dinner definitely beat out half cooked chicken for my craziest mission food. They have a saying that goes "pancita llena, corazon contento." (full stomach, happy heart). Boy was our pancita llena de panza. Hna Francis and I were trying not to think about it the rest of the night. We had to stomach that one. (haha ;)

I love you all so much. I love missionary work! And I loved helping people come to Christ through baptism. Greatest week ever. :) And we have Peter and Rebecca's baptism this Saturday. :) Angel can't be baptized anymore. I guess the dad changed his mind about letting him get baptized. We are pretty sad about it, but we are so happy for the Chavez family. Hermano Chavez is even preparing to go to the temple now! 

Have a wonderful week!

Con carino y mucho amor,

Hermana Buxton

 A super burrito our ward mission leader brought to us!  It was delicious.

Headed to the baptism!