Hey everybody!!

This week was one of the craziest of my mission with lots of highs and like one low, but it was a big hit so here's what's new!!

HIGHLIGHTS✨️

☆ Melissa got baptized!!🥳 It was a rollercoaster in itself because on Wednesday she told us that she wanted to push her baptism back a week, so we did. Then in our lesson on Friday, she told us that she no longer wanted to push it and instead wanted to be baptized in 20 hours lol. So, she ended up getting baptized on Saturday to our surprise!!! It was awesome and she was super happy with it.

☆ Delfina and Oscar also got baptized!!🥲 We found them when I was in this area a year ago (they're Julio's cousins) and they have been taught since then. They finally got baptized this weekend and Delfina was just sobbing while they bore their testimonies which was so cute.

☆ Juana, who has been mentioned in my emails pretty much throughout my whole entire mission because she's been in essentially every area of mine, IS BACK IN MY AREA. We found her and she was baptized in this area a year ago, and now she's preparing to receive her endowment!!🙌 This is the craziest moment of my whole entire mission: to see her go from being baptized to now receiving her endowment is the biggest miracle ever.

☆ We set a date to go to the temple with Julio on November 15th!! He's going to do Baptisms for the Dead for the 1st time, and it's super cool because it's exactly one year after his baptism so we're praying with our whole heart and soul that everything works out. 🤞

LOWLIGHTS👎

☆ This was genuinely some of the worst news of my whole entire mission and I cried for about 30 minutes (it's not anything bad, I'm just dramatic). Moises Rivas, who is the greatest ward mission leader ever, best example, nicest and funniest and most caring and pretty much most perfect person ever, is moving to Colombia to be with his family. It’s a long story but his family was supposed to come and be with him, but things happened here, and they could no longer come into the country. 😭 Obviously very happy he will be with his family, but it is like the saddest thing ever and he was crying and we were crying, and Las Vegas is literally losing their strongest member, if not the whole United States. Prayers for him and his family. 🙏

☆ The APs told us there's a 90% chance Sister Arce gets switched to Portuguese this transfer so our odds of staying together aren't looking too good. 😬 Transfer news is going to go crazy so let's hope it's good.

Besides those two things, this week was incredible and full of so many miracles!! The scripture for this week is Alma 26:31 which says, "Now behold, we can look forth and see the fruits of our labors; and are they few? I say unto you, Nay, they are many..." Being back in an area is so fun because I get to see the fruits of my labors! I get to see Delfina and Oscar be baptized a year later, Julio go to the temple for the first time, Juana receive her endowment, and so many other things! We get to see how ward members have progressed, some who weren't active are now our most reliable members, everything just keeps moving forward and it's so fun to be back here and see it all!!

Love y'all and hope you have the best week ever!

💙 Hna. Pursglove

Hello everyone!!

The week started off a little rough with our friend Karen not showing up to her own baptism.👎 The whole ward was very excited for this baptism because it was going to be the first one in a few years and everyone came, but it turns out she still had some concerns that we didn't know about. The good news though is that she's back on date for October 14th!! Pray it actually happens this time. 🙏

The week got a lot better on Saturday with the most chaotic but Spirit-filled baptism ever. We got to the chapel, and the font hadn't been started, so with 20 minutes to go (it takes an hour to fill the font) we started filling the font with buckets from the kitchen cause it wasn't going to fill in time. We got some help from the ZL's and our recent convert Angel, and by some miracle it was filled in 15 minutes.😅 The baptism went very smoothly after that and Noelia was crying the whole time which is just the sweetest thing ever.🥲 Angel baptized her which was amazing, but then we had a jumpscare when the form wouldn't submit because no one put it into the system that he had the priesthood. That was probably the most stressful 10 minutes of my life thinking that it wasn't a valid baptism, but it all worked out and he DID have the priesthood, thankfully. The baptism itself was amazing though and the Spirit was so strong from the very beginning.

We had another miracle on Sunday night when we were about to leave night church, and a random guy walked in. He asked where to go and we showed him, and then he asked if we were going to go in. To go to night church, you have to have a friend there, so our thought process was that we'd sit with him until some missionaries claimed him. However, when we asked him who was teaching him, he said no one and that this was his first time. We went in and sat with him the whole time, and then we got his info at the end. Turns out, he's a media referral that we've been trying to get in contact with for the past week and he actually was our friend!!💪 Now we're teaching Josue and he's awesome and is so ready to learn about Jesus Christ and His gospel.

As I'm sure everyone knows from every missionary email this week, President Nelson passed away this weekend, so I just wanted to share my favorite quote from him. It's from his April 2020 conference talk and says, "The increasing darkness that accompanies tribulation makes the light of Jesus Christ shine ever brighter."💛

Love y'all and hope you have a great week!!

💛Hna. Pursglove

Hello everyone!!

Like I said last week, I'm back in my baby area which has been the biggest blessing ever!!!😍 The highlights of being back in the area:

1. I get to see and teach Julio again. 😭 Julio was a man we taught last year, and he ended up being baptized after a lot of trials and opposition. The day of his baptism was the best day of my mission, and it honestly changed my whole mindset. Seeing the progress he made, seeing him work so hard to be baptized, and really just seeing how much he relied on Christ and on the gospel was something incredible to see. Now a year later, he's dealing with some of the same problems again. 👎 We had a lesson with him on Thursday, and I have literally never felt God's love for someone as strongly as I did right then. The lesson ended with him and me both in tears and a commitment that we're going to help him get to the temple so that he can have that peace that he needs so badly!!! Pray for Julio and that he can get the help he needs and go to the temple soon!

2. Julio's cousins, Delfina and Oscar!! Delfina and Oscar came to church last year when Julio got baptized and we taught them once before I left the area. They have pretty much been taught since then, but they haven't gotten baptized because they didn't want to get married (or so we thought). TURNS OUT, they got married 4 months ago and just didn't tell the missionaries at the time. 😀 So... THEY'RE GETTING BAPTIZED ON OCTOBER 11TH🥳🥳🥳 If y'all knew them and the whole process it's been, you would understand just how crazy this is. Pretty much all of the Spanish missionaries are freaking out because they're both so ready and it's finally happening!! It's been crazy to see, that a year later, they're finally ready. 🙌

3. The 3rd miracle is literally just the work. The work in this area is absolutely insane, and I never really realized it when I was here the first time, because I didn't know any different. Now that I'm back and have served in other areas, I am so happy to be here!! There are so many friends who are progressing, the ward is stronger than ever, there are some people who are preparing for baptism—it's been so much fun!!

Context for today's thought:

Julio was supposed to go to the temple a few weeks ago, but it ended up being cancelled because of some struggles he was having. A few days later, I was reading in Alma 26 when I saw that I'd written Julio's name next to verse 30 (probably about a year ago). The verse reads, "And we have suffered all manner of afflictions, and all this, that perhaps we might be the means of saving some soul; and we supposed that our joy would be full if perhaps we could be the means of saving some." If there's one thing I've learned on my mission, it is how much God loves each of His children and how He never stops working to bring us back to Him. Julio has had to fight to get to where he is today, and he's still got a fight ahead of him, but one of the coolest experiences of my mission has been to see him change. To see him move forward, sometimes fall back a little bit, but then keep pushing forward. He hasn't given up on God, and he told us on Thursday that the thing that keeps him going every day is knowing that he's a child of God and knowing that God loves him. I can honestly say I'd never had this joy in my life before the mission. Seeing people come to the realization that God loves and is aware of them, and then clinging to it, is the best thing ever and nothing can ever compare.

Love y'all so much, and please pray for Julio that he can get to the temple soon!!

🤍 Hna. Pursglove

Hello!

There were some awesome things this week!! First off, our friend Jonathan is getting baptized on September 1st (hopefully)!!🌊 We had a phone lesson with him last Tuesday and asked him what he was thinking about baptism, and he said he didn't know yet. We told him he was ready, hyped it up, gave him the date, and he said yes! The area's been a little slower this transfer so it's nice to feel like there's something going on.

The craziest thing that happened this week was that during district council yesterday, these 3 Spanish-speaking women just walked into the building and asked us how they could be baptized.🤯 It was actually wild because if they didn't just happen to show up on a Monday morning, to the one building in the area that happens to be where the Spanish ward meets, who knows what would have happened? It was crazy!! Highlights of the week!:

☆ We got to go to the temple last Tuesday! One of the biggest blessings of my mission is having a temple that's so close and having the chance to go every transfer—it's the best.

☆ I had an exchange in Pahrump which is like the boonies of the mission, and it was so fun! Got to spend the day with Sister Dickman and Sister Davenport so that was a party time. 🥳

☆ Sister Gadd and I are making a zone music video so stay tuned for that. 😏

☆ Sister Peraza came to night church to visit so I got to talk to her for a long time which was super fun. Prayers for her though, she's having a rough time right now. 🙏

☆ Did a musical number in the Spanish branch with Sister Gadd on cello and Elder Tuala singing, and it was actually pretty good. We've been recruited to do one next week, so the branch members were fans.

Favorite scripture this week was from Luke 15:20 which is the story of the Prodigal Son. It says, "And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."

Love y'all!

💚 Hna. Pursglove

Hola! 👋🏻

Ok, I know I said last week was the best week of my whole mission, but I actually think this weekend was the best weekend of my whole life.

JEZIEL GOT BAPTIZED!!!🤩🥳😭😱😁 We were honestly a little worried because we know that the adversary tends to go absolutely feral the week of a baptism and mess things up. Thursday night, Jeziel comes up to us after English classes with the most frantic look on his face and tells us he needs to talk to the branch president on Friday. I was like ohhhh no, but we asked him how he was feeling about Saturday, and he says that he needs to be baptized more than ever, so that was a win. He met with President Kidd on Friday, everything is fine and there were no issues, but it was a jumpscare and a half.

Saturday was baptism day!!!🙌 He showed up 30 minutes early with his sister (who's an inactive member) and his mom. The baptism started, talks were given, and then Jeziel got baptized! Turns out the water was a little toasty and he wouldn't stop making jokes about baptism by fire and how he didn’t know his sins had to be burned out of him, but he's fine, just dramatic.🙄 It was super Spirit-filled though and he had tears in his eyes the whole time. We asked him afterwards how he felt and what he was thinking, and he said that he couldn't even begin to describe it and that he would never forget July 19th, 2025.

Sunday was INCREDIBLE. Jeziel's sister just had a baby, so she brought her to church so she could get a baby blessing, and it was the sweetest moment of my whole mission. The blessing was precious, but I literally could not stop crying the entire time because it's so cool to think of the impact that this one baptism can have. Jeziel just got baptized, and his sister, who hasn't come to church in 10+ years comes back and wants her daughter to be blessed. His mom who hasn't ever really liked the church came to his baptism and gave the sweetest testimony about the good that the church has done for him and how grateful she is for all the members and missionaries. His little niece is now going to grow up with these good influences around her and with the gospel as a part of her life. Jeziel came up to me after Sacrament and said that he's excited for his niece to go and be a missionary in 19 years and it's CRAZY to think about that. Because of one person, so many lives are going to be changed, and it was just such a special weekend. 😭

That was obviously the highlight of the week, but there were lots of other fun things!!

☆ Got to do interview trainings which were the funniest things ever and the sisters reallyyy got into it