Adventures in the CLAM: BIKES?! (March 3, 2019-March 10, 2019)

 Hey, before we get right into it, for those of you that didn’t see yesterday’s post, I am going to be posting (every day) letters from my mission, telling about the adventures I had there! I’m super excited to share this with all of you. If you have any questions, please drop a comment! I’d be happy to explain things further. Enjoy family, friends, followers, fans, and fandomeers!

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Hello one and all!

The CLAM is amazing! I love it here! A little bit about the mission before I get into my area and the details of the week:

Sister Haynie (mission president's wife, she is the best and I love her) told us before we got here and said the mission was very international, which I figured just meant that it was Los Angeles so a lot of people are from a lot of different places, but no, all the missionaries are from all over the world too! Just in our apartment we have four sisters from three different countries!

In our mission we aren't allowed to eat dinner with ward members except for on weekends because during the evening is the best time to proselyte and visit people so if anyone wants to send me easy recipes missionaries could easily make that would be awesome!

Whenever we are asked to pray at a meeting we are supposed to pray in our assigned mission language, so so far I have witnessed prayers in Spanish, English, and American Sign Language.

Okay so let me just say as a missionary THE FIRST DAY TRULY IS THE WORST DAY. Once you get into the actual mission part the mission is sooo good.

In our interview on my first night in the mission Sister Haynie said that some companions you get along with no problem and you just click with, others you have to work a little hard to get along with, but she hoped my trainer was the first kind of companion. Well she IS!!! My trainer is Sister Sanerive. She has been on her mission for three months, which means she just finished her training and is now training me! She sings all the time and she seriously is such a Christlike example to me in how she serves me and everyone around me, you couldn't believe how kind and giving she is. Also she tells pretty much everyone "she didn't go to MTC!" because she was so shocked by that haha!

We live with one other companionship, Sister Thawornniwat whose release date is the same as mine (May 29), and Sister Merkley who just came from the Provo MTC!

I am serving in the Reseda area in Reseda, California! I got to meet some ward members this week and they are all super nice!

Well guess what Sister Sanerive told me when we got assigned. We are riding BIKES. Needless to say it was rough going at first but now I'm doing pretty good and I actually really love the bike!!! 😍

So some things we did this week is service at Operation Gratitude. We stuff teddy bears for children who have parents serving in the military every week so that's pretty awesome.

Sister Sanerive and Sister Thaworniwatt have an English class every week and let me just say I LOVED ENGLISH CLASS. To the shock of no one but dang I love studying the English language.

We also had a sisters conference with a special guest, Sister Eubank from the Relief Society general presidency! It was great getting to meet her and hear her speak about how we are the "first responders" of the people we are teaching, how we are the people that show them the peace and safety of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I got to share with everyone at that meeting why I love Isaiah 41:10, how it helped me get through my mission preparation to know God was always with me making me strong and how that is why it is the scripture on my mission plaque. To make it even better it was on International Women's Day! 😍

Some friends I got to meet this week were:

Trinity, she will be getting baptized in about a month and we got to teach her the Plan of Salvation this week.

Steve, he was baptized in September so we read some Book of Mormon with him and spent some time with him.

Sukki, who LOVES Sister Sanerive so much haha!!! She just loves us and always gives us food and is so sweet to us. Yesterday we had a really good talk with her about Jesus Christ, the first time she had really talked about that with us so that was amazing.

I got to meet the Hernandez family for a bit but we don't have an appointment with them until this week.

Also don't worry because we are well taken care of! Our ward mission leader Brother Hart is so helpful and kind and he even buys some of our groceries for us because he says he hoped the ward members were taking care of his sons when they served missions, so he figured our parents are hoping they are taking care of us! He is seriously the best.

To close I'd just like to share the scripture we discussed with Sister Eubank this week, Isaiah 41:10:

"Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee: yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold the with the right hand of my righteousness."

Remember that this week. God, our all-powerful Father, is with YOU.

Thanks and much love!

--Sister Day