Hola!

This week flew which is crazy because usually the first week of transfers tends to drag a little in my opinion, but this week was honestly so much fun.

First things first, my new comp, Sister Pope, is amazing. 🎉 She's so funny, is so hardworking, so dedicated, and we're having such a good time!! Her only flaw so far is her food preferences but we're working on that.

Second up, the area!! It's definitely different from any other area I've been in, due primarily to the fact that it's mostly white people which is a little bit tragic when we're trying to find Latinos.👎 But we're meeting members and the Elders in the branch took pity on us and sent us half of the people in their areabook, which is literally the nicest thing a missionary could do honestly. So, bless them for that one. 🫶

One fun thing about the area is that it's literally ginormous and the branch president took us on a 45-minute road trip on our first day to meet a member who lives pretty much just in the middle of our area.🚗 Our furthest member is 1.5 hours away and they apparently come every week, so kudos to them. It was such a good time though and I was so happy to be on a "road trip" even if everything was brown.

We had orientation for Sister Pope on Friday, and I won't lie, I wasn't super excited to hear the same presentation for a 4th time, but Sister Nielsen took pity on the trainers, and we had our own meeting with her. This of course meant we were just laughing the whole entire time and got sidetracked more than we should have. Gonna miss her and President in a few weeks. 🥲

We met a friend, kinda! There's this guy named Joel (white guy who's dating a member in our branch) and he's SO FUNNY. Like genuinely we were nearly crying the whole time we had dinner with them, but he would tell us how his experiences with the gospel and with members have blessed his life, but then tell us he wasn't interested in the church. He definitely is but just doesn't know it yet, so we're going to work on that. He DID come to church on Sunday which was a plot twist so pray for him to have an open mind. 🙏

Something I loved in my studies this week was Alma 22:18, and it says, "... and I will give away all my sins to know thee..." So many people we teach here have a hard time giving up worldly things, and those are the things that can separate us from God. It's only when we truly give those things up that we can draw near to Him!!

❤️ Hna. Pursglove

Buenassss everybody! 

This week was super fun, but also a total rollercoaster!! Lots of good things but also a few tragic things but we'll start off with the highlights! ✨️ 

Holaaa!! This week was pretty solid, and it FLEW by because every day was just a party. Here are the highlights of this week:

☆ Darien's baptism! Darien is this precious 9-year-old boy whose mom got baptized in February. He decided that he wanted to be baptized because it made his mom so happy, and it was genuinely the sweetest baptism I've ever been to. Everyone was in tears, and then when he was confirmed, the blessing said something along the lines of, "...and in a few years when you open your mission call, you're going to look back and remember this day that started it all." SOBBING. 😭 Then my 6-year-old friend Josue held my hand during the closing prayer to try to make me stop crying. Didn't work, it had the complete opposite effect, but the effort was there!!🥲

☆ JACOBO'S GETTING BAPTIZED!!!🌊 There were lots of prayers and fasts being offered in our district this week that he would actually go to church, and HE DID.🙏 So we've got his baptism this week which is so exciting because we've been trying to baptize him since I got here in November.

☆ JOSUEEE!!! Josue is the funniest, most angelic kid ever. 😇 His family has been taught by the elders for a while, but they've recently started coming to EVERYTHING. They come to activities, church, baptisms, devotionals, literally everything. Whenever I play the piano for anything, he'll come up, sit on the bench, and hold down the pedal for me. Pretty much got a future Mozart here in Las Vegas. 💪🎹 His brother told me the other day that Josue wants to marry me, and when I asked Josue if it was true, he GRINNED and nodded. I might be married by the time I come home, so stay tuned! 👰

☆ Had an exchange with my mother, Sister Glauser, and about 1/2 of the time we were together was spent plotting how to convince President to let us be companions her last transfer. Odds aren't looking great but we're going to keep praying and subtly slipping it into every weekly email and interview and any interaction we have with him. 🤪

☆ My favorite member that I've met on my mission got called as the ward mission leader in one of the wards we're over, and genuinely every single missionary's hand shot up so fast to sustain him. He made us all arepas as a celebration and that was a highlight of the week. 🥳

A scripture that really applied to this week was 3 Nephi 9:22: "Therefore, whoso repenteth and cometh unto me as a little child, him will I receive, for of such is the kingdom of God." Seeing Darien be baptized and be so happy that he cried the whole way home, having Jacobo's baptism this week, and seeing Josue and his siblings sit with their faces pressed against the glass at every baptism have been some of the most tender moments of my mission. In the scriptures we're told (repeatedly) to become "... as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him..." (Mosiah 3:19). It's only through this humility and willingness to become like Christ that we can truly change our lives!

Love you all and hope you have the best week!

🤍 Hna. Pursglove

Happy Easter everybody! This was such a miracle-filled week, and we had so many fun things!

A big miracle this week was Easter Sunday! We have 3 wards, but we unfortunately weren't made aware of the fact that one of our 9:00 wards was going to be combined with our 10:30 ward, and this was the ward that Jacobo and his mom had been planning on coming to. They ended up driving 20 minutes to our other 9:00 ward which was such a miracle because we've been trying to get them at church for WEEKS now, and they finally made it even though it didn't quite go to plan. 🙏 We ended up having the most friends at church I've ever had on my mission and they were all unexpected. It was so cool to see that people were willing to make the effort to come worship on the greatest day in history!

Fun things of this week:

★ Highlight of the week was Zone Conference! This was the Nielsens’ 2nd-to-last zone conference, and they spent an hour just giving little pieces of advice. They were all super specific and it was such a Spirit-filled part of the conference.

★ Sand volleyball on pday! 🏐 Except the sand was pretty much just pebbles and it'd been cooking in the 95-degree weather all day, so I'm fairly positive we all had 2nd-degree burns on our feet by the end of that. It was way fun though and my team won. 💪

★ Easter concert! Jenny Oaks Baker came back to Las Vegas for an Easter concert, and we got to go with Veronica. It was amazing, of course, and was such a good intro to the next day, Easter! 🎻

★ We had such a long day on Thursday and were so ready to go to bed, so I went out to grab water before we got in bed and I saw the most gigantic cockroach I've ever seen running across the floor towards me.🪳 So I yell for Sister Arce because she's way braver than me, and for the next 20 minutes she was hunting for that thing. She finds it, kills it. Next morning I'm saying my morning prayer, and I look over for who knows what reason, another GIANT cockroach is in my closet. It was fortunately already dead but Sister Arce also had to dispose of that one. Best comp ever!! 🥰

I reread one of my favorites talks this week called "Sunday Will Come" by Elder Wirthlin and this is kind of long, but I especially loved this part.

"I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross. I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest. But the doom of that day did not endure. The despair did not linger, because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind. Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered, and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays. But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come. No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come."

I know that Sunday will come! Sometimes it feels like those Fridays never really end, that it seems impossible for Sunday to come, but I know that it will, thanks to Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice for us.

I hope you all had a good week and really took this week to focus on Christ and the miracle of His Resurrection! Love you all!

🤍 Hna. Pursglove