Vision with Purpose

Hi everyone!

It has gotten SO COLD here. I'm seriously dying. It is so hard to wear a skirt every day in the winter. Mom, if you could send my under armor pants so that I can wear them as tights, that'd be great!

Nothing too eventful happened this week. We had zone conference and President talked a lot about vision and how necessary it is. He shared this scripture in Proverbs 29:18: "Where there is no vision, the people perish...."  He talked about how when we create a vision with an understanding of our purpose, then and only then can we create strategies and tactics to help get us where we need to go. If we try and skip straight to the tactics without thinking about our greater purpose, we'll wander around with no clear direction. One thing he said that I really like is, "Hoping things work out isn't a strategy." We have to make sure we have a clear idea about where we're trying to go if we're ever going to figure out how to get there. With that in mind, my companion and I decided to present a similar idea to the bishop. Because the ward is so new, there's no vision or ward mission plan or anything along those lines which we think is why it frequently feels that we're going nowhere as a ward. We're having a dinner with our bishop tonight and, for our dinner message, we're going to very humbly present our vision, strategies, and tactics that we have for ourselves as missionaries and ask him how we can incorporate our vision into the one he has for this ward in an attempt to encourage him to formulate a vision. Wish us luck, we're super nervous. 

I played the piano this week for Young Women's in Excellence! This might seem like a small thing but anyone who has ever asked me to play the piano during a church meeting knows that I am extremely hesitant to do so. It's been a long time since I've played anything so it wasn't perfect but I'm pretty lucky because Hispanics don't really pay attention to the piano at all when they sing. Special thank you to my wonderful piano teacher, Sister Forsyth. We had a correlation meeting right after and another set of missionaries brought something that tasted just like Sister Forsyth's ooey gooey butter cake so it literally felt like Sister Forsyth herself telling me I did a good job. :-)

We went on exchanges with Sister McCrite and her companion. I ended up going with Sister McCrite to her area in Woodburn and it was great! We taught a lot of people and I really enjoyed being with her again, even if it was just for the day.

I have a lot of pictures to attach so I'm going to start now so I don't run out of time.

From last week's trip to the Capitol...

representing by the PA flag

 Oregon's answer to the Liberty Bell

and one I found online from Zone Conference

(love the Elders photo-bombing in the back)

Note from Mom:  LOVE that she played the piano for YW in Excellence!  My reward for years of paying for piano lessons.