Miss Spencer got BAPTIZED!!!! Pictures from Hermana Kaaa of the Folsom Zone

Miss Spencer got Baptized!!!

These are pictures from Autumn's 1st companion in the MTC she is serving in the Folsom Zone.   This is Autumn's music teacher and friends of Alicia.  

Elicia & Milo this Sunday after her confirmation  (This is Autumn's music teacher that got baptized)  Her 1st companion Hermana Kaaa taught/baptized her.      

  

Dinner with the Angleseys on Christmas!  Hermana Kaaa had dinner with friends of Alicia's (when we lived in Folsom)

We went on team ups with the sisters up in the hills, and it was SNOWING!!!!!!!!   (12/26/15)

Folsom zone missionaries on Christmas Eve. We watched McFarlane, USA, super inspirational!  (Hermana Kaaa)

Ran out of GAS

December 28, 2015

¡Hola Mamacita!

Wow, it's been a long time since I've talked to you. Has it really been three days!? :P things are still going pretty good. So funny story, Hna Vergaray has been driving the past week so that she can get familiar with the area.  Since then I haven't been nearly as car-minded as I used to be.  On Friday, I had a thought popped into my head that I should check the gas gage in our car.  I shrugged it off, "eh, we'll be fine, Hna Vergaray can see it."  The Elders in our ward had a baptism on Saturday and we were heading over a little bit early so we could set up.  We were stopped at a stop light, then it turned green and we just sat.  I asked Hna Vergaray, "Why aren't we going?"  She said, "I can't, we ran out of gas." Oh jeez.  So I told her to put it on neutral, but before I could even get out to push the car, a friendly, older man came by and said, "stay in the car! I can push it!" So he pushed us to the side of the road and then down the road towards one of the gas stations.  After a few minutes of being pushed, Hermana Ivarra came in her truck and tried to help us. We didn't want the man to push us all the way to the gas station because it was still a little far. So Hermana Ivarra left us to go get a jug of gasoline. Then she came back, filled our car, and we were able to drive to a gas station and head over to the baptism.  It was pretty embarrassing.  We ran out of gas on a main road and everyone at the baptism had seen us. The Jardines were even there as well... We got to the baptism late, but we were there just in time for us to see them get baptized and for us to give the missionary moment.  Everything worked out in the end, but it would've been a lot easier, had I've just leaned over and checked the gas gage the day before.  Oh well!

We had a pretty good Sunday, though! Church is always great! If there's one thing I have gained a testimony of on my mission, it's the power of attending church! I love church! It really does help to set the mood for the week and to help us to feel the spirit! 

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos

Con Amor,

Hermana Twitchell

PS tell Grandma that I am thankful for the snowman decoration she gave me, I forgot to mention it in my thank you card.

Us and the Tongan sisters!

 My "when you get home" cards :P

My shopping for the week: soup, herbal tea, cold medicine, tissues, and saltines. can you tell I got sick? :P

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

Caroling at the Firestations

Caroling at the Fire Station on Christmas

Autumn wanted to show Elaina that she still had her ring and that she remembers her.  Also when I showed Elaina and Austin the video of Autumn baring her testimony they said they couldn't understand her and they were worried that when she gets home they won't understand her.  haha

Christmas Eve dinner

My Beautiful Missionary she is sooo happy.   

Can't wait to talk to you tomorrow

December 24, 2015

Hola Mamacita!

So I'm emailing today, because I can :P it has been a crazy amazing week and a half, full of lessons, the temple missionary meetings, caroling, all that jazz! S I guess first I will start off with last Wednesday. We had temple conference! Yay! We had a Christmas devotional thing and we had lunch. I got to see Hna Fly and Hna Stout! And also Becki Hamilton! It was all very cool. Then we went to the temple to do an endowment session and I was standing in the dressing room and there she was, LAUREN! What the? Haha I gave her a big hug and Sister Jardine asked, "Is that your friend?" Haha all the missionaries were freaking out because they had just witnessed me see my best friend from Folsom who I haven't seen in over a year. You'd think they would be used to it by now. I thought it was pretty funny. So of course I sat with her in the session and she got to meet President and Sister Jardine. :) then of course we took some pictures! It was really neat. I got to see Lauren as a missionary in the MTC and she gets to see me as a missionary in Sacramento! Oh! I also saw Sister Ludlow in the temple! She's so sweet.

We didn't get home from the temple until about 6:30. Then I was dropped off at Hna Galvez's house to go right back to the temple to witness the sealing of the Renteria family. I basically spent the whole day at the temple! The Renteria family is a family in south sac that was baptized last September, just a few weeks before I came into the mission field. Hermana Burke and Hermana Griffith baptized them. They are so cute!! They have 3 boys, Miguel (9), Julian (Juju, 6), and Riki (4). Then Ariana Renteria is due to have another boy on February 27th! It was definitely one of the sweetest experiences of my whole mission. I was able to see Hermana Burke, who I have missed so dearly! Mario Renteria's parents were also getting sealed, so they had a sealing for his parents, then with him and his parents, then Mario and Ariana, then them to their kids. It was so special! I don't think I will see Hermana Burke before she goes home, but I really hope I do! When I was leaving the temple, JuJu and Riki promised me that they would never forget me. Hehe they are so cute!

This week has been pretty great as well. We received our packages yesterday and it was a lot of fun to see the Jardines, especially Sister Jardine with her cute festive antlers. 

We've done a lot of caroling to members the past couple of nights and it has been a lot of fun! I love this time of year because there are always so many opportunities to sing and spread good tidings of great joy! 

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos

Con Amor,

My Hair

A member's daughters b-day party

Our Apartment inspectors gave us these hats for Christmas!  They say Peru on them and on the other side they have Llamas!!

Hermana Ivarra's dog, Coco

Hermana Twitchell

Feliz Navidad!!!

December 14, 2015

¡Hola Mamacita!

¡Feliz Navidad! Haha I don't know when Miss Spencer is getting baptized, I thought it was the 23rd of December, but who knows? So I'm thinking that I'm going to skype probably around 4pm California time on Christmas... This is the last P-day before Christmas since Christmas and part of Christmas Eve are P-days so we won't have P-day next Monday. I'll just use my autumn.twitchell account and I'm pretty sure that dad is already my "friend" on skype. If anything changes, I'll call you around that time. Haha what's your phone number again? I always forget it :P We didn't get to go to the live Nativity at the temple. I wanted to, but we could only go if we went with an investigator and none of them could go. It sounded like it was a lot of fun though!

Haha you read our minds, we did make Christmas cards! I sent you one, but here's a pic as well. 

I only printed out 20, they're expensive! But it was fun. No one's gotten baptized yet because all their baptismal dates are in January. I'm praying that January 19th will be a good day for baptisms! Alejandra Mora, the one who is going to be 9 on that day is so cute! Every other week my companion and I direct the music in sacrament meeting and she always waves at us. The Pardo girls are amazing as always! We had a lesson with them on Thursday and they were telling us about their experiences with sharing the gospel and having family home evening. We went by to help them decorate their Christmas tree and they invited us to their next FHE! They are such great examples! We literally lost the Ivarra family for about 2 weeks. We went by their house every single day and tried calling them and we had no idea what was going on with them! Thankfully we found them a few days ago and it turns out their phones stopped working and they had to get new ones. Now we are back in contact with them and we made sure they came to church. I love them too much to let them go inactive! 

On a Christmasy note, we bought ourselves a Christmas tree! We also sang with our ward yesterday at the North Sacramento Stake music fireside. It was a lot of fun. Of course, the Tongan Ward blew everyone out of the water with their "Hallelujah" song. They just always have such amazing booming voice so. They never even need a piano like everyone else does! Their singing truly was angelic.

The other day I came across a crisis. Oh my goodness! I have less than 3 months left on the mission! so I started to panic that I haven't made enough goals, I haven't changed enough, I need to think about how I can change myself in the small amount of time that I have left! Then we also had a zone trading all about goal setting and it was all really stressing me out. What have I been doing my whole mission! I haven't been setting nearly enough goals to change myself! After a little bit of time, a bit of self-reflection, and some discussions with my companion, I realized, oh, wow! I am thinking way too much about myself right now! I was stressing out because I was worried about myself, when as it says in Matthew 16:25 "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." The best way for us to become what Heavenly Father wants us to is to forget ourselves and go to work, I've been doing that, but for some reason I had forgotten that for a couple of days. The less we worry about ourselves, the more we can become like Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, our perfect savior! 

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos

Con Amor,

Hermana Twitchell

Decorating the Pardos' tree

Service last week with Red Cross (picture with the Tongan sisters)

The Grandkids made Autumn a picture it says
You know Landon, and Elaina, and Lena and Austin and Thayne, and Bentley, and Ford but do you recall the newest babies of all Brielle, Royce and Jacelyn.




We celebrated Hna Vergaray's 9 month mark with ice cream of course! And yes she does know that one family in Connecticut

Excited for Avram

 December 7, 2015

¡Hola Mamacita!

Happy Hanukkah! I looked on my calendar and it starts today :P I think my companions would love pics of the family.  Haha I'm not going to the baptism of Miss Spencer, although that would be very cool! Hna Kaaa is still in Folsom and she'll probably be there the rest of her mission because her companion is going home this transfer. I don't think they would shotgun my home Ward!  Haha she's doing so great, though. Hna Vergaray is so awesome! She is such a fun companion! We have pretty similar sense of humor so we have a lot of fun, maybe too much fun. :P Hna Stout is an STL because the Lord called her to be so. Our area is doing great!  We are teaching two families right now and Alejandra Mora.  We are baptizing her on her 9th birthday on January 19th because her family is less active and the bishop wants her to have time being active in the church. One of the families is Juan Carlos and Maria Vasquez. They have two kids and we haven't taught them much, but Juan Carlos is very enthusiastic about the church. Then we are teaching Jeranimo and Faustina  Pascual.  We received them as a referral from the system, so we called them and set up an appointment. We went and visited them Saturday night and the lesson went great!  Jeranimo wassuper sweet and very open, his wife was a little bit more quiet, but very open as well.  We put them on date for the 19th of January and they also came to church yesterday!  It was so cool! It doesn't happen very often where we teach someone and they actually go to church the next day! They are so amazing!We had a Red Cross service project this week where the first day we walked around neighborhoods hanging door hangers on everyone's door that informed them that Red Cross was installing free smoke alarms. 

The next day we went around and installed those smoke alarms into people's homes. Since we can't go into homes without a woman as missionaries, our group that we went with was me Hna Vergaray, Hna Clark, Hna Thomson, and a 22 year-old woman named Trisha who is serving in AmeriCorps.  Woman power!  It was a lot of fun, but a little scary at times :P we went into some sketchy homes!  After about 5 hours, we had installed 19 alarms and gone into 11 different homes.  It affected about 35 people! It was great!

I love you tons! I am so excited for Avram and that I get to go to his sealing!!! What a special experience!

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos
Con Amor,
Hermana Twitchell

New companion Hermana VegarayChr

December 1, 2015

¡Hola Mamacita!

This week was awesome! Thanksgiving was so great! Since it was a proselyting day, we had to visit people, so of course we visited the members! We basically had about three different thanksgiving dinners. It was so much fun, but painful to the stomach! A lot of things fell through like going to the temple and the baptism, but it's okay. Maricruz's baptism is going to happen, it's just a matter of when. We worked with Karen Pardo on her family history and we were able to get her her grandmother's name for baptism! We can't do her great grandparents though because they were born 109 years ago... So they have to wait a year or get permission from family search... We were so excited though to get her name! Karen got a new job and therefore had to work when we wanted to go to the temple, but that's okay, all the youth are going to the Oakland temple on December 19th to see the lights and do baptisms! I am so jealous! I love that temple! But Nathalia will get to go, so we are very excited! 

Miss Spencer is getting baptized  (Autumn's music teacher)

Autumn's new companion Lorraina Vergaray  

Haha so I just got the card from Avram that has the wedding date :P now I get it! and that's not funny there's no way he could ever get married on that date unless he waited another year. Lately letters have been taking 2-3 weeks to get here. I'm not sure as to whether it's the mission office holding them longer or just the mail... I don't know. 

So as you know, transfers came up and the sad thing is that the Carmichael sisters told us that they have to move out of Sister Schow's house because she's getting too old!! That's so sad! I got a card from her yesterday, she is so cute! 

Okay, back to transfers, I'm staying in the area! Hna Stout was called to be an SIster Training Leader and she shotgunned the Carmichael area with Hna Torres. It's crazy because Hna Torres was Hna Stout's trainer and the only other companion she's ever had besides me. Haha So they should do great! Well, I'm sorry to say that this time you won't be seeing Hna Burke for Skype. I don't know what I'm going to do without my skyping buddy! Hna Burke is currently living my Dream. She is going back to south sac for her last transfer in the mission. Oh my goodness! I about died! Ever since we've left that place we've always said that we were going to come back to "die" (aka finish off our missions). Haha Hna Clark and I were talking and we are going to shotgun south sac together for our final transfer. We'll see what happens next transfer. My companion is now Hermana Vergaray! We are basically the same person. We have the same amount of siblings who are all the same gender, same ages, and same marital status. In a couple months we will have the same amount of grandbabies in the family. She even has a sister who is 27 and lives in Georgia! How crazy is that!! The only difference that I have found between us so far is 6 inches in height and her dad is from Peru. Well, dad is from Payson. They both start with a P, so they're pretty much the same. Haha just kidding they are other differences, but we are pretty much the same. She is from Washington and she met Shelby Twitchell at institute and I'm pretty sure she also knows Steven, too. She's hitting her 9 month mark this month and yes, she said she talked to you on Facebook before coming out on her mission. Haha we are going to have the best Christmas ever!

Para Siempre Dios esté con Vos

Con Amor,

Hermana Twitchell

Drinking abuelita at the Galvez home

Hermana Torra got her own couch