Leaving Texas...Coming Home!

I came home from my mission on July 30, 2014.  Twenty-two missionaries left our mission that morning, seven of us flew into the Salt Lake City International Airport in Utah.  My parents, two brothers, my grandparents, two aunts, one uncle, and two cousins came to greet me.  Mom was the first to see me, as we hugged each other, the first words out of my mouth were that I wasn't ready to come home.

My family ordered a personalized banner to welcome me home!  While they were waiting for my arrival, other people at the airport asked a lot of questions and took pictures of the banner.

My family and I came home, ate dinner, and then I went out with the two sister missionaries serving in my home ward.  Then, my parents and I went over to the stake center to meet with the stake president for my official release as a full-time missionary.  It was really sad to take off my name tag for the last time.

I have enjoyed my mission very much, and I love, and will miss, the people of South Texas a lot!  I am definitely happy I made the decision to serve the Lord as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

Pictures!

Baby Chicks

Me and Chuchi
(looks like "Izzy", my family's dog that I have yet to meet)

A Walking Stick!

Independence Day - Part 1

On the 4th of July, we went to a stake breakfast.  The gym was decked out in red, white, and blue balloons and ribbons. The tables were covered with butcher paper and there were crayons and Dum-Dum suckers on all of them. It was super fun!

There's an 11 year-old member who loves blue Dum-Dum suckers.  As soon as his family got to the breakfast, he went around to every table grabbing every blue sucker he could find.  It was quite cute.  Later, we were talking to his family and I asked him to get me the purple sucker on his table.  "Is that your favorite kind?" he asked.  "Yeah, it's pretty good," I answered.  "OKAY!!!!" he yelled as he ran off to go collect all the purple suckers he could find.  I managed to stop him before he could get too far.  "One sucker is just enough," I said.

The blue Dum-Dum collection

We love our Star-Spangled Banner!
Happy Birthday to the United States of America!

Hastening the Work: When All Else Fails, Just Love!

This week was my companion's birthday. We went over to a member family's home in our area. They are deaf so they taught us the "Happy Birthday" song in sign language than we sang to her in America Sign Language (ASL).  It was really fun!  Later, we enjoyed a nice cake.

Our English ward is the official deaf ward in the area, so during church, there is an ASL translator.  It's super fun to watch during meetings.

I gave a talk on Hastening the Work in the English Ward.  It was short and sweet, and went really well.  I shared Alma 13:24 and talked about how we have seen evidence of God preparing the hearts of his children.  For example, God uses the members to prepare his children - a few weeks ago, we knocked on the door of one house and the people who answered the door were super excited to see us because they had known several members of the church throughout their lives. They immediately let us in, gave us Cheetos, Cheez-Its, fruit snacks, trail mix, and water.  It kept us going for the next week!  We were able to talk to them about the Restoration and they were touched by the message.

Then, I talked about what we needed to do to prepare ourselves to take part in this work.

1) We need to start with ourselves - it's like personal study hour for missionaries

2) We need to help out our families - it's like companionship study for missionaries

3) We need to help out others - it's like when missionaries go out to work each day

Three other missionaries and the Ward Mission Leader also spoke.

A success we had this week:

We stopped by to visit a family, within the first five minutes we were "reprimanded" for asking too many questions.  Things weren't looking so great, but we decided to just listen to them for a while.  The tension eased, then we sang them a song and shared a scripture with them.  We ended with a prayer and told them we loved them. The lady of the house responded that she loved us, too. She also gave us some delicious cookies and little pies to take with us as we walked out the door.  Mission Accomplished.

Moral of the Story: When all else fails, just love.

Baby Chicks!

Another happening this week, we got to hold baby chicks at a member family's house! It was super fun and really quite entertaining watching the two daughters try to catch them in the chicken coop (they're both afraid of chickens). So after several screams and me almost falling to the floor laughing, we were finally able to work as a member-missionary team to catch the baby chickens! Then after, we all sat down to a wonderful taco dinner. A perfect ending to a perfect night.

I love the mission :D

And For This Week's Proselyting Adventures...

...We got egged!!!

The Spanish)Ward had an Easter Party on Saturday.  It was super fun!  Apparently the missionaries were supposed to help with a game, but nobody ever told us.  So, we just went to have a good time, get to know the members better, and set up times to take them out with us to visit our investigators.

At the party, there was a giant bounce house, hot dogs, and an Easter egg hunt.  I don't know if any of you know much about Latin American Easters, but let me just say, I definitely think they are more fun than American ones!  They have real, painted Easter eggs filled with confetti that they hide.  Then all the kids run and go find all the eggs.  

That's when the fun begins!

As soon as all the eggs are found, there is a huge egg fight.  Everyone runs around cracking eggs on each other's heads.  I got attacked by a ton of little kids!  Needless to say, I was a big, confettied mess by the end of it!

It was a good conversation starter the rest of the day as we were tracting!  As we were walking around, we saw smashed eggs and confetti everywhere!  It's like a community event.  I love Easter!

Well, I thought I had nothing interesting to write about this week....

But...

First off, contrary to rumors in the mission office, both me and my companion are perfectly okay.  We may be a little sore, but we're good :)

Second, it was not my fault!

Third, our poor Jeep Jiannie is at the car hospital right now :( for awhile....like 3-4 weeks  :(

So long story short, we were in a rear-end collision on Saturday night after conference.  We stopped at a stoplight and a guy in a truck hauling a big boat wasn't able to stop in time due to the weight of his vehicle and the wet roads.  But we're all good!  The members are taking very good care of us!  And we have another (old) car.

The car got quite a bit of damage for just being a rear-end collision.  It was really sad it being a new car and all, but what can you do?  That's life!

Interior View

Miscellaneous Pictures!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Rattlesnake Territory

A US aircraft carrier that came by our little town!

A Wedding and Two Baptisms! I Love Being a Missionary!

A favorite couple of ours got married on Friday!   :)

The wedding ceremony was beautiful!  We had a lot of help from some wonderful members who have developed a strong friendship with the couple over the last few weeks.  They helped us enormously to plan and put together the perfect wedding.  A member from the Spanish Ward made the cake.  The groom bought the flowers and we, with some help from a ward member, made the bouquet.

 

Then, on Sunday, the bride got baptized.  Everything went smoothly.  It was a wonderful baptism and the spirit was so strong.  I am so grateful I had the privilege to be there.  The groom bore his testimony in sacrament meeting.

 

On top of all that, we had another baptism in the Spanish Ward.  The son of a member was baptized.  

I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know all of these absolutely amazing people!  They are incredible.  I love them soooooooooooo much!  It was truly one of the best weekends of my entire life.

 

We could not have done it without all the help we received.  The members truly played their part very well.  They took the "new bride"  under their wing and made her feel worth a million bucks.  The timing of everything was perfect.  In reality, we as missionaries did very little and that's how it should be. :)

 

I love being a missionary!  :D

 

Among other events this week:

• General Conference this weekend!  So stoked!
• I got proposed to --- long story, super awkward
• I got to watch the Women's Conference  :)
• One of the young members decided to make a service club and went around the neighborhood asking people if they needed help with anything.  One lady accepted their offer to cut the grass.  They didn't know how to use a lawnmower so they used scissors!  hahaha it was pretty funny!

Anyway, as you can tell, it's been a fantastic week!  Crazy busy, but super great!

 

I've learned a lot.  We saw a lot of miracles in preparation for these two miracles.  I'm grateful to have played just a small role in them.  I think everyone should serve a mission.  It's more fun than going to Disneyland!

Fun Adventures!

The mission is full of fun adventures!  I ran into my first wild tarantula!  It was actually quite traumatizing!  We spotted it still a ways away just meandering across the road and hurried to get a picture then we ran off!  I was on edge the entire night after that.  Any little sound made me jump.  I hate spiders.  The wind blew a bag against the fence next to us, and both my companion and I jumped so high just as a car was passing!  It was so embarrassing haha :)

We ate some raw, fresh caught oysters!  This guy who we met a few weeks ago gave them to us.  He even cracked them open right in front of us!  They were super good especially with hot sauce and lime on them!  We later learned it probably wasn't the best idea to eat them.  #1 it was raw.  #2 there was an oil spill in Galveston.....Well, it's been four days and we're still not dead, so I figure we got lucky!   Don't worry, I'll never do anything like that again!  ;)

We also ate some fresh caught crab.  Did you know they're blue before they are cooked???  A member made it for us.  They were tiny and hard to eat.  We had to break the shell open with our teeth then suck out the meat from the legs.  It was quite fun!

Texas Week! Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Others...

So this week was pretty great!  It was "Texas Week" or in other words all of Texas was out for Spring Break.  Being a tourist Party Spot, it was packed in our little area!  Traveling by car was crazy on Saturday, so we just went everywhere by foot.  (It took us almost an hour to go just two miles by car!)  Traffic was backed up clear until the next little town.

Spring Break Traffic

Apparently, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were in town this week along with R&B singer Nio (?) and a bunch of other singers/bands.  We saw a couple limos and wondered....but we didn't see anyone :(  Our little recent convert was going to get something signed by Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, so we gave her some pass-along cards to give them when she saw them and to get signed haha :)

On Saturday night, I couldn't sleep because you could hear the music in our little apartment!! :P Que feo!

Two Birthday Celebrations:), and Companion Exchange:(

One evening, as we excitedly were planning out my birthday, we got a call from the zone leaders saying that one of my old companions had gone home for medical reasons and one of my current companions would be taking her place :( So she left early on the morning of my birthday for her new area.  It was a big bummer.  I have never been so bummed over a companion exchange.  Before she left, we ate a delicious strawberry cake that had been given to us by our friends at the Methodist church food kitchen and opened presents.

On Sunday, we celebrated my birthday again.  We made fudge and brought it to church.  We had a baptism!!!!!!! :D   it was great :D  After stake conference, we went to a member's house to eat my choice of dinner - mole and rice.  She made me a tres leches cake with pink and white frosting.  She's the best!  Another member also made me a dinner (double fed last night!) of pork chops and mac and cheese.  Yum! :D

Tres Leches Cake

So this week was fairly eventful.  To start off, for District meeting, we made a tres leches cake for my birthday.  We frosted it with aqua blue funfetti frosting.  The sprinkles were in shapes of fish.  We thought it was fitting since our area covers an island.  The cake was a hit.  Our district leader officially named our district meeting "Sister Bettinson Appreciation Day."  I had to participate in everything - both prayers, the music, leading the theme, etc. 

Picture Goal!

This past week, we had a goal to take at least one picture every day!  We almost made it!  Enjoy!

Angel Moroni Pumpkin!

On Halloween, we had to be in by 6:30 p.m., so our zone got permission to celebrate by carving pumpkins!  So first, we had to buy the pumpkins.  I don't know if any of you knows this, but buying pumpkins on Halloween is

hard.  We were able to buy a small one, but on the way home, we found a family selling a truck load of good pumpkins for $5!  We were stopped at a stoplight and my companion asked out the window, "How much are your pumpkins?"  Then we pulled over and bought one.  It was super fun! 

We carved Angel Moroni in ours.  We figured, we're only on the mission once on Halloween, so we might as well make pumpkin carving spiritual!  We then cleaned off the pumpkin seeds, covered them in cinnamon sugar, cooked them up, then, of course, ate them!  They were a hit!

Pictures!

Since I found my camera, I'm sending y'all pictures!!

Happy to see each other!

Friends Forever

Carlotta - Our Pet Spider!
(She was a lot bigger than she looks in the picture!)