June 9th- First week in Coquille, OR

Hey Fam-Bam!

SO. I made it to Oregon! EVERYTHING IS SO GREEN. I absolutely love it! I need to take more pictures, I can't believe I am here, everything seems so surreal. 

 

My trainer is amazing! Her name is Sister Hamilton and she has been here about nine months! Crazy coincidence.. I found her blog before she came out here! Before we knew we were going to be companions she sat next to me at dinner. We got talking about how I found her on her blog and then stalked her on the mission blog after she made it to Oregon... THEN BAM! We become companions!  I have so much that I can learn from her!Hey Fam-Bam!

SO. I made it to Oregon! EVERYTHING IS SO GREEN. I absolutely love it! I need to take more pictures, I can't believe I am here, everything seems so surreal. 

 

My trainer is amazing! Her name is Sister Hamilton and she has been here about nine months! Crazy coincidence.. I found her blog before she came out here! Before we knew we were going to be companions she sat next to me at dinner. We got talking about how I found her on her blog and then stalked her on the mission blog after she made it to Oregon... THEN BAM! We become companions!  I have so much that I can learn from her!

(I think this is Sister Hamilton! Corinne is not sending any photos, so I stole the photo from Sister Lisa Hamilton's blog- Amy)

So far my mission has been amazing!! Well, my first couple of days were rough... why? Because I honestly didn't do any missionary work until about Friday evening! Sister Hamilton is a Sister Trainer Leader, so she had a conference she had to go to on Thursday (the day after we got here). We didn't have time to drive back to our area, so we drove an hour and a half to another place to spend the night. Thursday I was stuck in a trio with some sisters who were both new to their area, so we drove around all day trying to find different people for them to teach with no success. Then Friday Sister Hamilton had another conference and I sat around Coos Bay all day. Going from being really busy in the MTC to having plenty of time to think was NOT GOOD. Then we finally started teaching lessons, tracting, and everything was fine!

I am in a little town called Coquille. And it is ADORABLE. I feel like I was taken out of the year 2014 and placed into about 1980. I love these people! Everybody loves the missionaries! The ward is amazing! This is a place of miracles! It is economically depressed, which is good for us, because we get into more houses! As a missionary it is really amazing how the hand of the lord is in your life. I can not even number all the miracles we have seen. The first door we tracked was a lady named Jailene. We taught her the restoration and committed her to be baptized, which she said yes. She also came to church on Sunday and had been reading out of the Book of Mormon. She holds that book like it is a precious little baby! Her story ended up being a lot more complicated than we thought, but I love her all the same.

It is crazy how different my life is- I get ecstatic when strangers let me into their home, and I go out of my way to talk to people I used to do everything to avoid! I also can feel the love God has for everybody. We ran into an old man name Efton who sat and taught me what I didn't know about the bible even though literally everything he told me lines up with our beliefs. Then he told me about how I couldn't trust my feelings or the Book of Mormon! But the crazy thing is that I LOVE him and can't wait to talk to him again! Little Efton doesn't know what is coming for him ;) We haven't been in our area for very long, so I am excited for this upcoming week.

 I found out the mission scripture is D&C 6:36, which is my favorite scripture  "Look unto me in every thought. Doubt not, fear not." The church is true, we don't need to doubt or fear that. God watches out for his sheep! 

I love you all! 

 

Sister Jones