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

helives.mormon.org

Man oh man these weeks are FLYING. I feel like I was just here emailing like a day ago. I so badly just want to hold onto every day. Being a missionary, I get to see first hand how much this gospel blesses us. It changes the people I talk to, it changes my family, it changes me! I feel like I am a completely different person some days...And then my desire to eat acai on the beach while listening to Switchfoot comes back and I can tell that I'm still good old Rebecca:)

I got to learn how to make tortillas this week! FINALLY. I have been wanting to make them my whole life and we finally got to learn. They are so easy. But mom, I think you need to buy me a tortilladora when I get home. It's worth it, I promise. It makes them so much easier to make. And I think you can only buy them in Mexico, so we may need to take that vacation too:) Just maybe though.

We set a baptismal date with Janie and Doug!!! They are so excited about it. The day we set it, Janie called us to tell us she was writing it up on her calendar. In the lesson, we were talking about their questions from the Book of Mormon and then after they were done, they looked at each other and then at us and said "Okay, we are ready to make the commitment". Stupid me, I had zero idea what that meant haha and so my companion went ahead rejoicing and set the date. I don't know why, but I was so lost. AND IT WAS IN ENGLISH. I am so excited for them. They have been talking with members of our church about our beliefs for most of their lives, and now in their 60's they are finally accepting the gospel. It is amazing! I just can't wait for their sealing. I will be there without fail. I love them too much to not go!

Also, we have a less active member who had a few questions about her family this week and what steps she needed to take to help her family. We promised her that if she watched all the sessions of general conference (including the woman's session) her answer would come. And I could not believe my ears when they spent the whole evening talking about the family in that session. I just about died of happiness watching it. I talked with her after and she was like, "man, you weren't kidding! That was full of answers, wasn't it." I just really really really love how God works.

One last thing, we were talking to a lady in a dumpster this week. She used to be a member of the church! And she wants us to come teach her. We just have to get bishop's permission, and then we'll go for it. God truly is reaching out to all of us every day! He loves us so much.

I hope you all have an amazing Easter Sunday/Conference weekend. Can it get any better than that??? I am so excited. We are too spoiled as members of this church. Come with lots of questions and there will be lots of answers!!

Love you all! Don't forget to share #becausehelives

helives.mormon.org

Whether you're Mormon or not, it will strengthen your testimony of Jesus Christ. He lives today and He loves us so much!

Hermana Peck

She had a bunny right by the door!

I cannot express how wonderful it is for the weather to warm up! We've been spending so much time outside and we have met so many new people! New investigators are joining our teaching pool, and our prayers for the work of mighty miracles this transfer are being answered. I could not be more grateful for how much the Lord is blessing our work and our area right now.

We've been teaching a cute old couple, referred to us by our Bishop, who have always known people from the church. After teaching the Restoration, the husband was in tears and the wife's only concern was if their friend from Salt Lake who introduced them to the church could baptize them. Of all the concerns someone could have, I couldn't have asked for a better one! We are so excited to keep on teaching them! Plus, it's really helping our Bishop get excited about the work. When a bishop is working hard to share the gospel, the whole ward gets excited for missionary work as well. I swear, THE WORK IS HASTENING. And I get to be in the middle of it! It's way too fun. I just love being a missionary so much. It is the biggest blessing and I could have never predicted how much I would need it.

On Thursday, we had exchanges, and I stayed in Borger with my STL [Sister Training Leader], Sister Carroll. She is an amazing leader! We had no plans that day.  We weren't allowed to use our car, and it was pouring outside. But we didn't let any of that stop us.  We got out on foot from lunch to dinner in the rain walking ALL OVER TOWN. And it was so worth it! We found 2 families...not just one but TWO, and so many other solid potential investigators. I was so excited. Plus, the majority of people we talked to were Spanish! That never happens here in Borger, but it was such a blessing! Plus, Sister Carroll doesn't speak any Spanish, so I got lots of practice!

Also, I received a mini miracle this week. I still don't understand why God even thought to bless me like this, but I was so grateful for it! Tuesday night I was in bed. It was after 10:30, and I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about how we needed to contact a particular area the next day. I wrote it down so I could get it out of my head and then fell asleep. The next day, we went over to that area, and no house but one stood out to me. We knocked it, and she wasn't interested at all, but just as we were going to leave, Sister Ogles commented on the fact that she had a bunny right by the door. I hadn't even seen it because of where I was standing, but I got soooo excited. She let me hold it and I was in heaven! My companion thought I was crazy, but I was so happy. God just loves us too much.

I hope you all have an amazing week and seek out those little miracles! God wants to bless us so badly! He'll do anything and everything to make us happy:)

Love you all!

Hermana Peck

Kids make miracles happen

Man, this week has been so crazy busy! I love weeks like this. I've been yearning for weeks like this. It feels like I get so much done and the spirit is so strong when we have weeks like this. But, I'll start off with the boring stuff first.

(Don't read this if you have a weak stomach) So, This week at district lunch, we went to some random, on the corner, Mexican restaurant in Pampa. I thought it was GOOD. But I don't know what it is about my companions, but they just can't hang some days. Sister Ogles ran into the car after lunch and basically puked her guts out. Poor girl can't catch a break. So, Tuesday we didn't get to work much, but our house got nice and clean because of it!

Wednesday we got back out to work, and it was so fun. We had a lesson with a new investigator in the morning and I don't think I've ever experienced something so crazy. During the period of a 20 minute lesson, her child  repeatedly hit me in the face with a ninja turtle, the pizza guy came, the fire alarm rang for half the lesson, and the entire time she talked about how her kid just killed their dog and it died on the blanket we were sitting on and how the Book of Mormon looks like an AA book. Sometimes, I don't understand God's sense of humor, but you just have to laugh away lessons like those and keep looking for those who are prepared:)

Also, we found another family to teach! They are so amazing. Their son is 12 and probably the most solid person I've ever met. He LOVES praying and he will not let his family go to bed without saying family prayer now that we committed them to. Kids make miracles happen in missionary work, I'm telling ya! I don't know much about them, because we only taught them once, but I'll keep you updated on their progress!

Later in the week, a former investigator from like 6 months ago called us freaking out because he heard some war was starting and he had a dream about it too so he wanted our opinion on it. Haha, we'll take it! He has been taught for about 6 years off and on, but he seems to really want it. I couldn't believe the lesson. Never have I had an investigator be so close to the spirit. He was seriously teaching me and Sister Ogles things the entire time. Everything he said, you could just tell that he is really seeking truth.

Also, on Friday, a miracle happened. I don't know if I mentioned this, but at the beginning of our transfer, Sister Ogles said that missionaries can't have fun because that leads them to break rules. JUST ABOUT KILLED ME. So, I've been working on that:) And while we were driving home from service, she randomly said something along the lines of, "wow, I have had so much fun today. And we didn't break any mission rules. I guess you can have fun as a missionary." I cannot begin to express how happy my heart was. FINALLY! Looks like this next transfer with Sister Ogles in Borger will be full of fun:) (Oh yeah, transfer calls came on Saturday!)

Saturday was an amazing day! We got to go to the temple and see a family  be sealed that was baptized about a year ago! The room was FULL of missionaries. Ones that had gone home, and ones that were all over the mission still. It was so cool to see all the people that worked to help this family get sealed. My favorite part was when their kids came in. MELTED MY HEART. It was the cutest thing ever. #familiesareforeverforreals I love this gospel and how happy it makes us and our families!

Sunday, we had a baptism with the daughter of one of our less active sisters. It was so amazing! She normally has work and can't come to church, but she wanted this so badly for her daughter, and you could just see the Lord moving mountains for their family this Sunday. It brought their family so close, and you could just feel the spirit in their home that night. Once again, I love this gospel and how happy it makes us and our families!

Also, this Sunday we were driving and these two like 6 year old boys came flying down the road in some sort of dune buggy (is that what they're called), cut me off, and then started spinning doughnuts on the side of the road. SCARED ME TO DEATH. I don't know how two kids (like LITTLE kids) were driving on the road, but I just about died laughing about how ridiculous it was. Only in Borger...

There is so much more to share, but no time at all! I love you! Have a great week:)

Love, 

Hermana Peck

exhanges 

Bible belt notice

The district 

Best temple trip yet!

Grace's baptism!