"He/She who sings prays twice" (Temple Day, Service, Death)

Well first off oh my GOODNESS how exciting my brother Austin is going to Santiago Chile!!!! Austin I love that you will be coming home Spanish speaking :D Be prepared to get some letters in Spanish after you hit a year (because by then I hope you can understand my spanish haha). Austin please know that I prayed so fervently this past week that wherever you were going that the people there would need you and love you. I know with all my heart the Lord is sending you there because he knows the people in Chile need YOU and only YOU can touch their lives. Please take my advice and study spanish haha it will pay off and you will be so ahead of the game!!! Please know that your call really did come from the Lord and no one else.

Where you all able to watch the Broadcast on Sunday about missionary work form the members? I loved it!!! We seriously cannot do this work without the members of the church. As I was sitting there I received the strongest reconfirmation that being on a mission is exactly what I need to be doing right now in my life. I am so grateful for following the promptings of the spirit and going on a mission. If I didnt go I know for a fact later down the road I would have regreted it.

Texas Houston Temple Day

I have been learning a lot. We moved our P-Day to wednesday so we could go to the temple on monday. The temple was so beautiful and the bishops wife was so kind and took us. I have never felt such peace in any other place as the peace I have felt as I enter the Lords sacred houses. What a blessing it is to be able to have a temple in our mission.

We actually have the opportunity to teach some new people this week! E granddaughter 10 has been interested in taking the discussions! We were finally able to teach her and the 3rd lesson with her she accepted to be baptized on July 13! She wants to be a member of the church so badly! She told her grandma that when she grows up she wants to be a missionary like Hermana K and Jaeger! I thought that was such an awesome thing to hear!!! We are still teaching E, we gave her 3 dates and asked her to pray about which she feels she needs to be baptized on. 

Service with Hermana V and S G

The other night we visited the D family. We had fun listening to the girls stories about girls came and were able to talk about the improtance of the scripture "ye cannot serve two masters". As we were talking abou this topic the Spirit brought to rememberance something I learned a long time ago in Young Womens class!!! I explained this demonstration of when we put a ball on a table what does it do? The ball rolls to one side or the other. This demonstration can be related to us! We are the ball and we are always moving in some direction, we cannot stand still. So we need to make sure that we are always moving in the correct direction during our lifetime. The family was sweet and the older son had gone out and bought us Blue Bell ice cream because he know how much we loved it!!! They were so kind and we asked in next week we could come by and have a family home evening with them. They were excited and agreed to be there. 

We also were able to teach two new young girls this week named A who is 12 and V 6. When we walked to their house we had planned to teach O who is 19 but as we got to the house they were having a huge party with a ton of alcohol. A and V walked over to us and told us what they were all celebrating. We taught a simple and quick lesson of the plan of salvation to them which was awesome! They loved it and we set up another time to go back and teach the whole family.

Okay so a few weeks ago we meet T family who are 3 sisters in their 30s that are neighbors. They are a great family and they love being together as a family playing volleyball and BBQing. About 4 week ago we went over to visit. We talked to one of the sisters P and met her hsuband. the husband was nice and the family jokingly told him he needed to listen to the lesson because he needs to stop drinking. The husband scheduled a day for us to go back and told us his kids need God in their lives. The day we were suppost to teach the family they were having aparty and told us to stop by in 2 weeks after all the festivities. The day we went back the family was awkwardly quiet but nice. We soon found out from one of their neighbors that P husband had died 2 weeks ago from drinking and driving. We were shocked it made me cry to think here we are as missionaries in this area and we weren't able to teach him about the gospel before he unexpectidly passed away!! I felt so sick because I woundered what he would have thought if we were abel to teach him before he died. We went over again to the family, we played vollyball with them and tried to get to know them more. Its hard because so we decided we are going to try and find a way to do service for her and have the opportunity to teach her about the Plan of Salvation.

Studies

We have been biking more often because now we have a limit of miles haha. We have had to bike quite a bit and I give props to missionaries whos only transportation is a bike. Everytime we bike I always sing a hymn because I love to sing to myself haha and too "he/she who sings prays twice" so I feel its double the protection and a continual prayer when I sing and bike haha! I love this area and the people in it! Hermana K and I see a lot of great potential in our investigators and I have a feeling this next transfer is going to be awesome.

I love you all and hope you have a great week! I will talk to you again on Monday :]

Love-Hermana Ashley Jaeger  

First Day Biking!

This poor turtle was trying to cross the road.  I had to save him!

Well this week has been interesting and different!

Before I forget, PLEASE as a family read D&C 31:3-13 BEFORE Austin opens his mission call. I was trying to find a good scripture that can relate to him and that is a perfect one about receiving your mission call :]

This morning we got a text at 6:15am saying we needed to read the emergency hurrican evacutation list and head to the church. In my head I was like Uhhh why does this have to happen on P-Day!! We jumped out of bed and started doing everything listed on the list; pack all valuables in a trash bag and put on a high shelf in the closet, pack up change of clothes, bedding, scriptures, and a ton of mroe things like non parishable foods, gallon of water, ect. We took an hour to pack EVERYTHING away into plastic bags and then put onto of shelves, got our stuff in the car, got gas, and headed to the church without ANY makeup, hair quickly put into a pony tail, and clothes kind of wrinkled. As we pull into the church we see all the elders in our district there. Come to find out our whole mission had a emergency hurrican evacuation DRILL. We were kind of upset but we have such funny Elders in our district we couldnt stay upset. One Elder said when he heard about the evacuation he ran like a fat kid to the fridge and got the pan dulce (cake) Hahaha!

(Biking and Slupries!!)

This week was my first time to be on my bike! I love it thanks for picking out a good one :] But oh man the day we rode bikes was HOT and the roads we took had no sidewalks...thankfully we prayed for safety before and the whole during the whole ride that day. As we kept biking further into our a new part of our area that we hadnt visited yet we started to get discouraged because we weren't finding any spanish speakers. During our last hour of biking before dinner we conacted a lady who have us a referal!!! We hurried to the house and the lady opened the door and allowed us in!!! We were able to quickly teach her about the restoration but what caught her interest the most was temples! We gave her a picture of the Salt lake temple and explained about it and that we have one in houston! She was so excited and understood all teh doctrine we shared with her. I was blown away when I started simply exmplaining and teaching I.. while my comp looked for a scripture passage, the words were just flowing from my mouth with easy. I know the Lord was guiding my words because I couldnt have taught her without his help haha. She is catholic and likes wehre shes at but felt it was a sign from God for her to change her religion because we showed up at ehr door AND that we speak spanish because in that neighborhood theres only one other spanish speaking lady! Teaching that lady, I.. was honestly a miracle from God after such a long day of biking. How grateful I am for the many blessing and miracles the Lord has blessed our area with!

I didn't know my hour long prayer was going to put my comp to sleep... 

Okay so Sunday we FINALLY got our first investigator to church!  Her and her son were able to follow a member in the ward to church. And funny enough the sunday R and her son came to church the bishop asked if Hermana K and I could sing a special version of army of helaman of sacrament because he loved our voices. R loved the song and told us she wanted us to sing more at her house when we teach haha! R felt really comfortable and there were a lot of nice members that went up and said hi to her :]

Also this past week our district had a study on praying specifically in our prayers. Elder Birks asked me if I would share my thought on depending on the Lord through prayer. i decided to share read in Luke 22:39-44 about the Saviors prayer in the Garden. Rememeber this is all in spanish haha. As I read those few verses the spirit touched my heart and I couldnt hold back the teach which were filling my eyes. Just seeing how much pain The Savior suffered and after feeling so much pain he prayed more earnestly instead of just quiting. His endurance is amazing and he is the perfect example of depending on our Heavenly Father through prayer. 

A sweet sister from our ward brought these shirts back for us from Guatemala :)

Later that day as we were out we ran out of visiting all the people we had written down to visit and looking in our area book. i prayed to myself to know what we should do and I felt like we should tract on a specific street. we drove to the street and I said a prayer for the both of us. I prayed that we would receive referrals and have the opportunity to talk to people who were interested in learing about the gospel. Just as we got out of the car there was a man walking towards us with his dog. We stopped to talk to him and asked if he knew of any spanish speakers on the street. Right away he threw out 4 people for us that we could go visit!!!! I was so impressed and couldnt believe the Lord answered my prayer that quickly for us to have help and receive referrals haha! The man spoke both english and spanish but wasn't interested in "being taught at" but we were able to talk about our religion and we invited him to visit out church on sunday.

The rest of our investigators are doing well and are a great families.

Biking & burnt arms

I've notice a very interesting yet amazing phrase while reading about the life of Christ. I love reading the stories of all the miracels he preformed. I love that after he heals every single person he tells them, "Thy faith hath made thee whole". How powerful that phrase is!!! To know that we can be forgiven, healed, made clean, when we put our faith and trust in the Savior.

I love you so much and hope you are all doing well! Tell me ASAP where Ausitn is going please!!!

Love-Hermana Ashley Jaeger

"God seeks to have us become more consecrated by giving everything. then when we come home to Him, He will generously give us all that he hath" -Neal A Maxwell

"Consecration, likewise, is not shoudler-shrugging acceptance but instead shoudler-squaring to better bear the yoke"

Our refrigerator!

We get bashed & just SMILE back :)

Doing what we love to do on Pday's!!!

Hola mi muy bonita familia!

Wow that's crazy Kelsey's video of us opening our calls is on the Deseret News page! That's super awesome I hope it helps motivate youth to go on missions, especially the young women! Being a missionary is the best decision I have ever made in my life :] It's not easy but oh is it worth it. Not only does the mission change the lives of others but it also is changing my life. Its helping me prepare to be a strong member of the church, funny enough teaching me good mom skills and wife skills hahaha. I love reading the scriptures and just gaining more knowledge about the church. Its amazing I thought I knew a lot about the church and in the scriptures but being out on the mission I've come to find out theres always room to learn more about the church haha.

Oh thank you SOOOOOO SOOOOO much for the package! One morning I was walking out of the bathroom and my companion yells, "Its christmas!!!' Haha someone dropped of the package to our apartment and I was so ecxcited! I love evrything that you put in there thank you so much you really didnt have to do that but i really appreciate it and am so grateful!  I cant explain how happy that made me.

This week we had the chance to teach a few new people. We are teaching a members husband named L.G.  who is awesome! We watched the Restoration video and he loved it, hes been trying to figure out which church is the right one. He was really interested in learning more and we are so excited to go back and teach him the Plan of Salvation with his amazign wife.

Took off our shoes to go help wash cars :)

R. B. is amazing and progressing so much! When we stopped by her house she was outside washing her car. so we took of our tracting shoes and helped her wash her truck, she was so grateful and the whole time we washed her car she was asking us about hwat she had read in the scritpures!!! In just a few days she had already read the first 6 chapters on Nefi!!! As we were finishing up her truck, her husband pulled up to the house and was so impressed that we were helping wash the car in skirts! He was kind and offered us water and started helping us clean the car. After we finished we hurried and ran over to C. truck and started washing his! It was fun and it reallly showed them how much we care for them. They were nice and afterwards helped wash our car. Then we taught them about church and showed the pictrues of the church building (great idea from Elder Lewis) and they loved it. 

Though we have few members in the branch that can help us they are wonderful. We have received a lot of help from L R. We taught the restoration to a family and it was really powerful!!! The spirit was so strong! My companion and I did really well with explaining the restoration in a good amount of time. 

This week Hermana K and I are having an inner/outer beauty night with the young women for mutual. We are so excited and we hand made 25 invitations for the young women and for them to invite their friends. We hope as we meet new nonmember girls we can teach them at the members home.

We have helped reactivate some less actives.  They feel so happy being back to church. I think what sparked the interest again was having them have the chance to talk about their baptism and how it was such a special day. Its awesome to see the reaction of them coming back to church and feeling that happiness and peace again from attending church. 

MO City District

Spanish is coming along pretty well! everyone is so nice and keeps complimenting me on how my spanish is improving. I'm working really hard on it and practice something in the spanish textbooks everyday. I love serving a mission and just want to help everyone I come incontact with!!! Funny, a few times this week we've had to knock doors and I'm sure it surprises peoplethey are bashing and I'm just smiling back at them becuase I seriously have no idea what they are saying to me. But I've realized even if I dont understand spanish and the people that speak it I have such a great love for them because I see them the way God sees them. Precious.

Thanks for all the love and support and prayers!

Love-Hermana Ashley Jaeger

fav quote: Heaven is a continuation of the ideal home :]