Our church building is starting to fill up!

The fact that I'm 20 years old is so weird to me. I can't claim being a teenager any more! Mom and dad, you're baby is old, which means you're like REALLY old! Anyway this week has been so amazing. Being with Sister Vance is so much fun! This girl is a hoot. Did you know she has 13 siblings. Yeah...and I thought we had a huge family.

Monday, Sister Ogles and I went around saying goodbye to people here. It was so crazy, people love her here SO much! I mean, you spend 9 months in an area as the first sister in 20 years and people really start to love you. But it really helped me see how much of an impact we really do make as missionaries. I am so grateful to be part of this work! It made me want to work a bagiilion times harder than I ever have. Because miracles really do happen everyday as we serve the Lord! And it is all going by too fast!

Tuesday was transfer day. I had to send off Sister Ogles and Sister Christofferson! It was so sad! BUT I got to spend the day in Canyon with Sister Udall who I love soooo much. She just got out of training and she is so much fun to serve with. She's in the YSA ward, so we went contacting on the WTAMU campus all day. It is weird to teach people that are like my age. Man, we are all immature. We also got to play basketball with the ysa branch. Let's just say, playing basketball as a missionary is really awkward. Reason 1: I was in a skirt and it kept inching up as I would run. Reason 2: Anytime the guys got close to me I just gave them the ball because...ya know...missionary:) Our new companions got up to Amarillo too late, so we ended up staying the night in Canyon. Meaning, I slept in full out missionary clothes...yes the same one I played basketball in. It was only a little gross to me haha.

Janie and Doug are doing well! We have a goal for them to come on our temple trip on the 23rd! So pray that that can happen:) I am so excited for the temple. It will be so much fun. Less active work here is BOOMING. Our church building is starting to fill up and actually look like a ward! I love it! So many new faces at church:) Not going to lie, of all missionary work, less active work is my favorite. It is amazing how the spirit so quickly comes back into their lives. We have about 5 families/members who are starting to come back and working on getting to the temple! I really hope I get to stay in Borger for a while so that I can go to the temple with them!

Also, funny story from last night. There is a member in our ward who 100% is wanting me to marry her son. I was so uncomfortable at dinner. She wouldn't stop. So warning to all people out there...don't set up missionaries with your kids. It's weird. But I still love her anyway! She is one of my favorite members. Sister Vance thought it was the funniest thing ever and told me I had to tell y'all about it. 

Borger is so much fun right now! I am blessed with having no stress about taking over this area! It is so much fun here and I want to be here foreverrrrrr. Well, maybe not that long, but hopefully a couple more transfers:) Love you all. Have a great week! And thank you to all my amazing siblings and friends for my birthday presents and letters! Today is going to be a good one!

Love y'all!

Hermana Peck

Borger Birthday!

Borger Birthday

Transfers

transfers 

transfers

transfers

Day in Canyon

Day in Canyon

birthday! Thank you bagillions! 

Drum roll please....

CRAZY busy week this week. It has been so amazing though!

It was Sister Ogles' last week in the mission but she is ready!...I think. She has been such a good example to me, and I have learned a ton from her. She leaves early tomorrow morning. And my new companion will be Sister Vance! Y'all have heard of her before. She was trained in Portales by Sister Slade right before I was, and she came on exchanges with us a lot. I am exited! She is a hoot, and it will be so much fun.

Saturday, was the day this whole week was leading up to. In the morning, we had the relief society conference in Amarillo that I had to translate at. Our cousin Jennifer Kunz was there! She took pictures to post on facebook for mom. It was so fun. Translating was hard, because they use vocab that I just don't even know, but I survived and the Spanish people understood, THANK GOODNESS. The activity was fun too, and they made cafe rio for lunch. HALLELUJAH. It was sooooo good, I felt like I was back in P-town for a bit:)

Saturday night was what this week was allllll about. Drum roll please....Janie and Doug were Baptized! After 40+ years of meeting Mormons and hearing about the church, they finally got to take the step towards having an eternal family! Oh man it was fun. They were the definition of GOLDEN investigators! They have been so prepared, and I just got lucky to be able to teach them:) The ward loves them, and they are well taken care of now. I'm requesting a year in advance to come back out to the mission after I get home and see them sealed:) Please?

This week was full of storms! Hail the size of baseballs around the "city" and rain that felt like bullets while biking. It has been crazy. Just pray that the town doesn't get hit by any lightning or tornadoes. That would be scary!

I turn 20 next Monday! (hey siblings who don't write, I love you so send a sister a letter please:)) It's crazy how fast time is flying by out here. I just want to soak it all up. The blessings of missionary service are huge. Some days I just sit at my desk during studies and wonder how I was so blessed to have this gospel in my life. We are all blessed and we need to share it with others. There is not a soul who is not searching for it! It may take their whole life to accept it, maybe even more, but they will. So get out there and offer it to them!

Love you all!

Hermana Marmalejo's birthday!

Janie and Doug's Baptism!

Martinez family...some of my favorites!

Sometimes, the music gets boring and we need to take pictures instead:)

Storms have been HUGE

Happy Reunions:)

Selfies and decorating Easter eggs

Service at the museum

Sister Christofferson came to visit again!

Chilling at a member's with the cutest puppy while waiting for the hail to stop

CRAZY storms are here...thunder, lightning, hail, rain, and Borger on tornado watch!

My oh my the storms have been HUGE this week. There was hail the size of golf and tennis balls and a tornado that didn't touch the ground in between Borger and Amarillo (about 20 minutes away)! The hail here wasn't as huge, but the lightning went on for hours and the clouds were crazy huge and black as I've ever seen. Even at like 6 in the morning, when the sky was dark, you could tell the difference between it and the dark clouds. Luckily, I wasn't scared by it, but man it was HECTIC. We are just lucky to have a car:)

On Tuesday I got to play with a horse, a mini horse, a mule, and 2 pigs! The pigs starting eating Sister Ogles skirt when she wasn't looking. It was NASTY and so funny haha. But I felt so country out there. It was too fun.

Also, Janie and Doug came to church!!! It was great. The speaker kinda went into way deep doctrine but they seemed to love it. They fit right in:) They had friends to teach them how to use the hymn book and they were participating in all of it. They are golden investigators and I am blessed to work with them.

Okay, I have no time this week, I spent too much just reading other people's emails. But I love you all and I hope you have a great week! I love this work and I am so happy to be here!

Love ya,

Hermana Peck

so what do we believe about this?

It was such a fun week! Last week at the women's conference, I loved what they had said about there being a seed of perfection inside of all of us because God is the one who created us. How true is that, right? I spent all week trying to live up to that. It's way hard to do, I mean I'd like to think I was perfect, but being a missionary, you see how far we all are from it. Like in conference this weekend how they said that in comparison to God, all of us are pretty much the same. Which is too true. All of us here have so far to go, but God is there, blessing us all the way! That's what grace is all about. I am just so grateful for all I'm learning, because it is making me see how much I really don't know, which helps me work harder on bringing out that seed of perfection in me.

Tuesday was probably the happiest day of my life. We had zone conference, because they had to install this thing called a tiwi in our cars. It monitors ALL of our driving and yells at us when we're bad. Let's just say I drive like a grandma these days, because it just about gives me a heart attack when I speed. Anyway, that's not the happy thing. So, they had to rush these conferences while the people were here to install the tiwi, so they split up a few zones to go to different conferences. And because God is too nice and good to me always, he sent Sister Slade and Rocha up to Amarillo to come see me!!! It was so much fun. I had no idea they would be there until they pulled up and I nearly passed out from being excited. It was fun to catch up on everything! Plus, they're the STLs over Portales so they filled me in on all my old investigators, which was good to hear. 

Tuesday night, we met with a less active member and her boyfriend who isn't a member. We've been working with them a lot to help them get married. We never actually told them to get married until this lesson though. We watched a video from the women's session of conference about families and then asked them to act on what God is asking them to do. They both sorta flipped out and I just started BAWLING. Not out of being offended, but just out of being sad that they were so scared of the spirit telling them it was what they needed to do, that they had to scare it out of the room. It just made me sad to see how much Satan truly is attacking the family. It is precious to God, and something we need to treat with respect. I am grateful that I have a family, and it breaks my heart when people run from that blessing. But all hope is not lost! Apparently my tears helped him change his mood a bit, and they are talking about marriage now! I just pray that they go through with it. Seeing one less broken family in this world will make my heart soar!

Also, fun story. Well, not really a story, but it made me smile. Our investigator who has come to church like 7 times now in a row started saying "we believe" this week instead of "you believe". She kept asking, "so what do we believe about this?" She is totally hooked now! I love it. She is really starting to understand the restoration and is working so much harder at being able to be baptized. Yesterday at conference, she didn't even need us! She went with all the Spanish speakers to watch it, brought food for the potluck, and had friends to sit with during the whole thing. My favorite moments are when people realize they know what they are doing and they don't need the missionaries to hold their hand anymore! They stay strong, and let us go help other people:) although, we're not bailing quite yet, she's got to get baptized first!

Our investigators Janie and Doug are doing amazing! Keep them in your prayers please:) Janie has a good old friend/boss who has talked to her about the church for years now. He used to always say that she was just a dry Mormon. She acted like one, just wasn't baptized yet! She emailed him this week and told him that as of the 18th she will no long be a dry Mormon! She was excited to tell him that. We just about died when we heard that. They are doing so well, but just pray that they'll be ready and worthy in time! It will be the last Saturday before Sister Ogles goes home, so we want to make it happen before then:)

I love you all and I hope you had an amazing conference weekend celebrating Easter. I know I did! What a blessing it was to hear our sweet prophet and apostles testify of the Savior on the day of His resurrection. He lives, he loves us, and because he lives and loves us, we have the restored gospel here on the earth today. That is our good news and we need to share it with everyone! 

helives.mormon.org

Love ya,

Hermana Peck