Ava's Mission

Happy memorial day everyone! (God bless America) First of all I hope at least one person I went to high school with understood that title line. Shout out to the legendary Mr. Beazer! I miss math class. But we really are putting in the work out here! It's getting hotter and hotter every day and I'm enjoying the work more and more every single day as well. I LOVE HOW HARD IT IS. This week was sad because all of my friends (the people we are teaching) have the hardest lives! Timothy's son passed away this week, Kursta is moving, and Charles has to take care of personal stuff from the past so he'll be off the grid for a couple years.... those were our 3 people with baptism dates and I was so excited for all of them. It'll happen! The Lord's timing is better than mine I know. We had 8 people lined up to come to church and THEY ALL PROMISED THEY'D BE THERE and nobody came again! Satan is the worst. As soon as anybody even starts to desire to come into Christ he p...

Hola everyone! Another transfer down! We had workday Monday yesterday so today is my pday! I will be staying here in Peoria to finnish off sister Fairbanks training! We are having way too much fun together. This weeks highlights: My mom sent my ukelele and it's been so much fun to have that here with me and we took it to the hospital to sing and minister to the mother of Zino. (our favorite African convert.) It was such a special tender visit and brought me right back to when my sisters and I would take the ukelele to the hospital and old folks home back home to sing to all our friends there. Sister Fairbanks knows how to make literally anything out of balloons so she's been teaching me! I'm getting pretty good not going to lie. Every night we have a balloon sword fight in our apartment. And today I made a bow and arrow that actually shoots. Yeah, cool I know. We did a family history both at Peoria Station to try and get people to FIND THEIR COUSINS! We got to do gro...

Hello friends and family! It's been another good short week here in Peoria AZ! We found 4 new people this week and are finding like crazy lately so our already huge teaching pool just keeps growing and growing! The other day we taught 7 lessons in one day and it was AWESOME. I love this area and the people here so much. We spent a good amount of time pulling the nautious weeds that take over this entire state! There was one point where we had gotten all the weeds except for a small patch of especially dead ones. And when we stepped on them it made the exact same sound as packed snow when you step on it. You know when it crunches under your feet and the hair on your neck kindof stands up and its a disgusting noise? Yeah I love that noise and miss it so much. I just closed my eyes and for a few moments all of us missionaries were walking on snow and it was heavenly. Hilariously pathetic but heavenly. I had two kindof tough days when everything fell though I felt super weird, bu...

Okay friends!!!! Quick lil update for ya. The miracle with the hindi family continued.... a couple weeks ago I picked up Arabic pamphlets from the mission home because I wasn't sure what language they spoke and when I found out it was hindi I just left these Arabic pamphlets chilling in my bag for only God knew what reason. This week we went to do some service for Kursta, someone we are teaching, and she wasn't home. We had spent a lot of time getting there and I was a little frustrated at the waste of time. Sister Fairbanks was more in tune with the spirit at that point than I was and knew that there had to be some reason that we were there.... she saw this house and felt like we needed to knock it. But we were bother super sweaty and gross and in our service clothes so we decided to come back when we were more presentable. We didn't even make it to the first light when we both looked at each other and were like yep, we are turning around and kocking that door. The spirit...

Boy do I have a miracle to share with all of you. Thee craziest thing happened this week. Back on like week 2 in the field I had this feeling that we needed to knock the doors on 69th and Karen Lee lane, but we didn't get the chance or make the time until last week, and that is where we found the family from India that I wrote about last week! Raj, Raji, Boonam, and Mahi. As we were preparing to go back and teach them yesterday, I went to restock my bag with book of Mormons. In amongst all our English and Spanish Book of Mormons I FIND A RANDOM HINDI BOOK OF MORMON. So just for fun, and because there are no such thing as coincidences, I took it, and compared it with my English book of Mormon and found all the best verses and highlighted it up for them! If you were to ask me how to write "Alma" in Hindi I could tell ya! I've also got all their numbers down! It was fun. Anyways I take it with us to our lesson with them and as we are talking I ask them what language the...

Okay so here's an email where hopefully I don't forget anything!! The biggest miracle of my week is in the weekly email, so go read that one there! It was the coolest thing ever. I ate swordfish this week and it was soooooo good! Sister Ashby brought her parents back to visit her mission, and we were doing service for our recent convert Chris and when she texted him to tell him she wanted to come back and visit he told her that we would all be there and she planned to come at the same time so she could see me!! When she walked in I just started crying. It was the best ever. I love and miss her so much. It was also super duper weird for me to see her again not as a missionary. It was like I was seeing a ghost Haha. The cabin looked like it was such a BLAST! I LOVED the pictures! The crawdads, kayaking, jumping in the lake, my heart! I wish I was there with you all but your smiles were enough for me to feel like I was! I MISS YOU CRAZIES! This week we got a call with a last...

What a week. That quote is the title of this email because I feel like I'm just out here trying to fake it till I make it! Most of the time I literally have no idea what I'm doing but somehow it all works out it always does! Fun things that happened this week: - we witnessed 3 drug deals happen right before our eyes as we were teaching our friend Timmothy up in the trailer parks. It's ghetto up there and we see A LOT of things. - IT RAINED IN THE DESERT AND IT MADE ME SO HAPPY I MIGHT HAVE CRIED. - We had an Easter miracle while we were out last night where because of Gods perfect timing, and right before we were about to turn back we found this family from India who are super prepared for the gospel! She literally says to us, "I have 3 questions: where did I come from? Why am I here? And where am I going?" Umm boy do we ever have those answers! There was a crazy language barrier and I can't remember a word of what I said and I know the gift of tongues is ...