One Year Mark -- Sister Twitchell

Querida Mamacita, 

Haha I emailed so early because that's the time I usually email, or at least I try to. It depends on how long it takes us to go shopping. The reasons why I emailed so late those last two weeks was because We weren't done shopping until 2pm (we were at a thrift store and Sister Lalomanu got really excited)' and I went to The Coloma field trip and didn't get back to my area until 4:30pm. 

I haven't gone to the temple because we can only go on transfer p-days. I wanted to go really badly this past transfer, but when I got to this area We couldn't because we had an unchangeable appointment on p-day. I was slightly devastated, but I am going next Tuesday!! It's going to happen, even if I have to make several phone calls! :P I think I'm ok on names.

I am happy, why do you keep questioning my happiness? :P  It's a choice to happy, no one can inflict it upon me or take it away from me. No matter what happens, it is always easier to just be happy, so therefore, I choose to be HAPPY! Haha mom, your so silly, you don't have to go through Hna Burke's mom to tell me that you love me, you can just tell me! I can get emails at anytime, I just only have one hour a week to respond to them.

My birthday was great! I got a ton of letters the Monday night after. I counted and I have I think about 18 thank you notes to write :P I might need more cards. Haha I'm figuring by the end of next transfer I might have them all written. 

My year mark was good too! We weren't sure where to burn a skirt, so we did it in our kitchen sink :P it turned out pretty good! I burned an old missionary's skirt so don't worry, I still have plenty of skirts to wear! 

Haha the funny thing is that the next day, I received my English nametag in the mail. NOOOOOOOO!!!! Haha good thing it came with some candy :P I love the senior office missionaries!! They're the best! So I wore my "Hermana Twitchell" nametag for exactly one year, and then the next day I'm wearing "Sister Twitchell". Haha at least I made it to a year! 

Yes, you won't hear from me until Tuesday, like always, I have no idea what is going to happen with transfers. Next time I talk to you I could be in another area with a different companion, beware! I'm going to the temple so I might email a little later :P I want to go back to Spanish work more than anything, but if it is not the Lord's will that I go back this transfer so be it. I will be happy anyways! I'll go find my own English speaking Hispanics! :P haha 

Ya I've met Elder Weber. Hna Burke and I fist bumped him in zone conference because our moms know each other :P after we said hi, Hna Burke and I just looked at each other, "our moms!" We love you! Yes, he is in Hmong work, Hmong are super cool! We shared the same church building with that branch back in Sac!

For the 5th Sunday (this past Sunday), we had the great opportunity to speak with the youth during the 3rd hour of church for both Vineyard Ward and Wilton Ward. It was a lot of fun and a great experience for us and the youth. In the vineyard Ward, Sis Lalomanu and I were in charge of the whole hour, so we had ourselves a district meeting! We recited D&C 4 with them and committed them to memorize it. To get to know them, we went around the room and had them introduce themselves. Then we invited them to ask us a question. Some of them were silly like, "What's your favorite color?" Or "What's the weirdest food you've eaten on your mission?" But then we had some really thoughtful ones, like, "What has strengthened your testimony the most on your mission?", "What made you decide to go on a mission?" And "What is something you would've done differently to prepare for your mission?" The spirit was so strong and I am so thankful that Sister Lalomanu and I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to the youth. It strengthened our testimonies and reminded us of how important this work is and how important it is to help the youth to see that. I love this work!

Te quiero!

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos

Con Amor,

Hermana Twitchell

 This was from a couple weeks ago when the Jardines took our zone out

for chick-fil-a. Hmmmm! I can't count how many time we've been this
transfer, but we have to go at least twice a week :P some of the
workers have become pretty good friends with our STLs :) we are
chick-fil-a missionaries!

Statue in Wilton

Fun at Wilton

Aug 24, 2015

¡Hola Mamacita!

This week was pretty great! We've been focusing a lot more on our prayers and recognizing the little miracles that happen everyday. There wasn't always success, but we saw tender mercies of the Lord that told us that he really does answer our prayers. One instance was that we had an appointment with a part member family. We parked in front of their house and pondered what it was that we wanted to pray for. We decided to pray that we would be able to talk with the husband that isn't a member. We got to the house, knocked on the door and no one was home. So we decided before we left that we should write a note. As I was writing it, a car pulled up, and it was the husband!! Our prayer was answered and we were able to talk with him! He wouldn't give us a return appointment... But it was still a miracle!

A few days later we had another miracle. We have a solid investigator in Wilton, named Maricruz, who is the sister of a recent convert. She knows a lot about the gospel already from sitting in the new member lessons with her sister. When I came to visit them last week, I thought, why haven't we been teaching Maricruz when she's right here! Haha so we've started teaching her. We invited her to be baptized and she said that she knows that she will! She wants to learn a little more, but that she knows it's going to happen. We are hoping that we can help her to set a date, but as for now we are so excited that she wants to be baptized! 

As always, we have met some fun animals this week, we met some snakes, rats, tons and tons of bunnies! (I'm just watching out for the were-rabbit... I guess that's only in Wallus & Grommit), zebras, lamas, emus, rumors of mountain lions just down the road eating the emus, cute pugs, scary black dogs, horses, all that jazz! The other day my companion and I were knocking on a door (big surprise!). As soon as the door was open, a dog ran out and tackled me! I about fell to the ground! I thought it was just an over friendly dog that can't help but jump, I've seen some very jumpy dogs out here! But then I heard it bark and I knew it was out for murder. Haha but seriously! Thank goodness the owner got him off me! 

Last week during zone conference we had to introduce ourselves by saying what is our favorite thing about our area. I can't lie, my favorite thing is that it's a petting zoo!

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos,

Con Amor,

Hermana Twitchell

Quick letter

Aug. 17, 2015

To answer your question, yes! We did have zone conference on Wednesday in Rancho! Every zone conference we are asked to clean and wax our car. Well, our area is very dusty, so we hurried up and did everything we needed to do, then we covered it in old missionaries' sheets for the night. What lengths we go to to have clean cars!

Zone conference was so fun! I got sang to for my birthday (and other missionaries birthdays) and I got to see all the Hermanas in the mission besides Hnas Kaaa, Webb, and their trainees! *photo of all the Hermanas. I also took pictures of our cute little house at the "Wilton Hilton"

Dorky birthday, we went and got PUPUSAS!!!! My favorite! At Las Palmas. They were so good! Then we went to the church where the zone had a surprise for me!

The people we live with found a rattle snake near our houses, so they killed it and skinned it! Pretty cool!

haha it's Hispanic tradition! we have 8 Spanish speaking missionaries in the zone even though only 4 of us are actually in Spanish work. Beforehand they sang happy Birthday to me in English, Samoan, and Spanish. It was awesome!!

It was a lot of fun! Also, we went to Coloma today, all the missionaries that are going home in February, April, and May (makes us feel old). So I was with Hna Kaaa for most of the day! I'm pretty sure it was a field trip that I did in the 4th grade... but I don't remember! In the end we were panning for gold :P it was pretty funny. We just got back about an hour ago though, it took up the whole day! I'll hopefully have pics next week.

Sorry, I have to go! and the emails pretty short, but I love you the most!!! Also! I had to give a talk yesterday and it was super intimidating, but good! haha I love giving talks! :P

Clean

10Aug15

 ¡Hola Mamacita!

About the dress, that sounds fine. I liked it a lot! But it might be a little impractical at the moment :) for my birthday, I think we might go out to lunch with Hnas Burke and McCloud to go get papusas (El Salvadorian deliciousness!). English work is great, but one of the things I miss the most, is the food and not having tortillas at every meal, so we're getting Hispanic food! 

Sister Myrick, my 5th cousin (or something like that) gave me a packet of some stories that were written about Ephraim Twitchell. She really wants to do some family tree comparing, so getting dad's info would be great! What's his email and phone number again? Everywhere I go, I'm meeting more and more people that are related to me in the Elk Grove stake. I was standing outside the chapel while the Spanish branch was getting out yesterday and they saw that my name tag said "Hermana" so they automatically gave me hugs and kisses. They're so sweet! Then I found that one of the members in the Spanish branch is related to me as well! (They're white, they just are serving in the Spanish branch to help out) I've found on my mission that no matter where I go, I can't ever escape people that I knew before my mission and family. It's crazy! 

The work is going a little slow. English work is quite a bit harder than Spanish work. Hispanics are so friendly and are always willing to invite people in even if they are not particularly interested, whereas English speakers are a lot more reserved and are not afraid to say no :P it's hard to find new people without help from the members. We had a really solid investigator that was supposed to be baptized on the 22 of August, but last Tuesday, she said she wasn't ready and didn't want to continue taking lessons, so she dropped us. We still have hope though and we are pressing forward! 

We live in the Wilton Hilton where a bunch of missionaries have lived here before us... And they all like to leave a bunch of junk in the house. So this past week, we spent time cleaning up the spare room that was a pig sty and we found some fun stuff! Haha but most of it was garbage or stuff to donate to the DI. 

Because we have iPads, we've had to transfer all of our area book paper work onto the iPads. It has been a long process. Our areas are done, but the Spanish areas are a nightmare! Lots of teaching records! So we have been helping out the Hermanas and Spanish elders with transferring teaching records onto the iPads. It's hard for the English missionaries to help them because a lot of it is in Spanish. *Perks of being a Spanish missionary beforehand :D 

Well, I better go, but I love you the most! And I'll email you next week! I'll talk to Sister Myrick on Wednesday night, so give me dad's info! 

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos

Con Amor,

Hermana Twitchell

PS I finally memorized the first vision in English! It took a while. Haha it's easier in Spanish :P

Wilton is the BEST

August 3, 2015

Querida Mamacita,

Haha I wasn't planning on getting a new name tag... something about my Spanish pride said, "no". :P but then President Jardine came to our district meeting last week and he made a comment about it saying that even though I won't be in English work for a long time, it's probably a good idea to get a new tag. Aww, okay. It takes about 2 weeks to get a new one, so we'll see in the next couple weeks. 

And in response to some of your questions: Of course I'm not mad at President Jardine! If I were mad, I would really be mad at the Lord. This is the Lord's calling, not President Jardine's and I will not be angry with the Lord. I know his ways are higher than ours. It's not easy to follow the will of the Lord, but it is always worth it. I haven't said anything to President Jardine, nor do I plan to. If I were to tell him that I don't want to accept this calling or ask him to reconsider, I would be basically telling the Lord that I don't think he knows what he's doing and therefore rebelling against the Lord. I'm letting God take the wheel because I know that he's the perfect driver. 

We do have a car and we have a monthly allotment of 1450 miles. I've never had that many miles my whole entire mission! And Spanish work gets a ton of miles. It's just that we live in Wilton and Wilton is huge! Also we live about 10 miles away from our other Ward that we're over, Vineyard, any sort of shopping areas, and the church building. So we drive a ton! But once it starts to cool down (if it ever does) we're going to start biking in Vineyard because we use way too many miles as it is with just driving. Sister Lalomanu is super awesome!! Haha it's kind of funny because she loves Spanish and so I'm trying to teach her how to speak it. We are not shot gunning the area. Sis Lalomanu was trained in Vineyard and half way through her training she was called to be over the Wilton Ward too. It's crazy being over two wards! We were in church for 6 hours! Haha it was so weird because I realized that this past Sunday was my first sacrament meeting in English in 11 months! Haha I got up and bore my testimony in English... And some Spanish, I couldn't resist!

I'm send a present home to you for my birthday! Haha yes! I'm giving you a present too! I'm sending home the red dress, not because I don't like it, I've already worn it twice and it's perfect in every way! But I found a hole in one of the arms so I'm sending it home because I don't think my sewing kit will do the trick... We can get packages whenever. 

Sister Story is so cool! I went thrift shopping with her a couple weeks ago! Her companion Sis Limb is super cute! I served with her for a couple transfers in East Sac.

It is weird teaching in English, we do it sometimes in Spanish work of course, but I have to memorize the first vision in English still...

I'm still a bit terrified of white people, but I'm getting over it :P I've gotten pretty bold in Spanish, now I just have to find a way to be bold in English! Haha

So I have found this past week that I am related to half of the Wilton ward. We did splits with two sisters the other day and before I could even introduce myself, the relief society president said, "Get in the car you're coming with me!" What?! What did I do this time? Haha she is Sister Myrick and she has a huge family and they are all descendants of Ephraim Twitchell! Super cool! I've heard lots of stories!

Well to end the email, I just want to say, I love Wilton! The scenery is so beautiful and I've met so many friendly animals along the way. I helped heard some goats while we contacted a guy, scared off some peacocks (while trying to take a pic ;P), mooed at some cows, barked at some dogs, nayed at some horses, and heard rumors of bears, coyotes, and mountain lions! (I really hope I don't encounter one of those :P). It's always a great morning of studies when I hear the cows moo outside my window :)

Para Siempre Dios esté con vos,

Con Amor,

Hermana Twitchell