July 30th Letter

Dear family,

Wow. It was quite the week! Here are the highlights...

Wednesday HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY ABBY!! I love you so much and I cna't believe you are 16! I hope it was truly a sweet sixteen birthday :) Wednesday was also transfers! Lots of big changes for the mission. Sister Rex and Jarrett came back to the battalion! And Sister Salines and O'Neill left :( Sister O'Neill went english speaking! So that will be new for her, ha and because she left I got a new sister trainer companion and it is Sister Frampton. She is awesome and I am excited to serve with her and learn from her. So get this... mandarin is now in our mission and they are coming mid transfer and so Sister Miller is in a trio with Sister Jarrett and Mulipola and then next week when the 2 mandarin speakers come Sister Miller is going to leave La Jolla and open a new area in Poway and train the mandarin sisters, so Sister Miller's call got changed to mandarin speaking.. SO SWEET! I secretly wish that was me.. haha but I'll have my time someday to learn Chinese. Our mission also got Laotian! Elder Geier's call got changed to Laotian and he is training to elders who just came from the MTC learning Laotian. We also got Arabic speaking!!!! They opened an Arabic area in El Cajon and the coolest part is the two elders that got called have never spoken Arabic in their life! But now they get to learn :) We are making history! It's so cool to see the mission transforming and evolving! After transfer meeting, Sister Frampton and I had a meeting to discuss things and create a schedule for the next transfer. We also got to create a 12 companionship schedule for the battalion because next week we will be up to 12 companionships which the battalion has never had before. After all the transfer excitement we went and had a lesson with Kevin about tithing and he thought it was genius. We then had a lesson with the Edgars about missionary work. Edgar Felix's mom sat in on the lesson! And we finally got to see Ortega. He's kinda been MIA. We met with Alan Klos and went over President Monson's talk from priesthood session. It was good! Alan has such a good heart and he really is doing great, he just needs more love and friendship from the ward I think. He relies on us a lot, so we are trying to make a shift for that.. it's just really hard! We don't want him to feel like we have abandon him or anything. We then had dinner with a potential named Kaitlin. She gave us these strawberry ice cream mochi ball things that were amazing! I think I remember having mango flavor ones with Megan one time? Either way.. they were delicious.

Thursday sadly wasn't too exciting.. we just weekly planned and made our transfer vision and then had mobat and I failed at writing in my journal right away that night so I can't remember what exactly happened at the battalion that night... sad. I know there is importance in writing in your journal every night! Haha at least on my mission.. otherwise everything just mushes together. It's crazy.

Friday we had district meeting which was all about joy. As a district we decided we were going to make this a joyful transfer! Our district got changed a little.. Elder Geier is our district leader now and he's with Elder Nestoryak and Koerner until his Laotian companions come. Also Elder Geier and I realized it was this exact time last year that we were in the same district.. crazy! We had a lesson with Kevin about following the prophet. Shawn and Robert came which was awesome and Kevin said he finds great comfort in knowing we still have a prophet today. We also went over the baptismal questions. We had mobat next and guess who came in tonight? The Grover family!! It was SO good to see them! I got to take them on tour and even Bryan came with his wife! They are so cute. It's crazy cool that they are married. I love the Grover family. 

Saturday we had a ward blitz! About 12 people showed up so it was pretty good. We got to see some people who we haven't seen in a long time and invite them to church and activities, so that was awesome! The bishopric got us pizza after :) yum! We had coordination and then we attempted to visit a referral. After I got to go on a special exchange with Sister Riggs to go to Bin's baptism! I taught Bin in La Jolla. He's from China and he decided to get baptized finally :) wooohoooo!! First we got to stop by Yuyu's baptism though because Sister Riggs sang at it. Yuyu is a temple referral and all the mobat sisters know her. Bin's baptism was so wonderful and he shared such a sincere testimony at the end. It's always fun to see La Jolla people! I went back to the mobat after and guess who came in tonight? Haha Matt & Cissy's family!! I was like what the! They are all so big and adorable. It was super fun to take them on tour and Dallin dressed up like the soldier and I think he really liked that. They bought me groceries which was SO nice of them. Tonight I just said a very heartfelt prayer of gratitude to my Heavenly Father for my amazing family, which is all of you! I can feel your prayers each day and it gives me so much strength. So thank you all for being so loving and supportive. I love you more than you know! 

Sunday was what we called invitation Sunday! We had been preparing our ward the whole month of July to invite a friend to church this Sunday. It was a success! There were a lot of new faces which was awesome :) Also about 30 min before church started, Neil asked me if I would sing with him, Adrienne, Megan, and Britni during sacrament. It was fun! We did our own version of 'Come, come ye saints.' We also had this awesome couple speak (the Williamsons). He used to be a pastor of another church but then he met the missionaries and was converted so it was so sweet to hear his experience. President Hunt met us at church to talk to our investigator Kevin. We found out we have to postpone Kevin's baptismal date. He was bummed, but very understanding. He realized it was just another step on his path to following the Savior. Ah. He has such a willing heart! It's so cool. He really is an Alma the Younger story. After church we had ice cream which was part of the invitation Sunday and we mingled with the new people and then we had mobat. Mobat was crazy this afternoon! The busiest it's been in a while. It was an adventure :) Oh and I saw Janessa Kenney!! She is so pretty. Elder Nash also came in. He is so cool. After we went to Nathan's. He moved so him and his brother Seth were showing us their new house and then Dan came and we all had a lesson! There step brother Dillon (who is 10 and not a member) asked us if he could join the lesson and we said yes. We talked about family history and the temple and it was a really cool lesson! Dillon was so excited about it all and he asked if he could go inside the temple and we were telling him he could when he was 12 and a member and he was like 'Can I get baptized next week?' And then he was telling us how he watched the testaments and when he watched that and every time he saw us and every time he reads the book of mormon (because yes he reads it on his own..) he gets this feeling inside of him. Then after the closing prayer he said, 'See, I just got that feeling again even stronger!' We told him that it was the holy ghost and that He was telling him that it was all true and he was like 'I know!' Ohh my goodness... most prepared 10 year old I have ever met! We are definitely sending the missionaries over. It was such a sweet lesson.

Monday we had mobat in the morning. Sister Patterson and I took this father and son from Hong Kong on tour and they were so awesome! While we took them on tour the wife was sitting on the porch and my companion gave her a book of mormon, so they both had cool experiences! I thought that was awesome. I also took this guy named John on tour from New York. He was asking me about my mission and I asked him if he's ever seen missionaries in New York and he said he had but they never visited him. I was like well do you want them to visit you? And he was like.. hm.. I don't know! Haha so I talked with him a little about the restoration and invited him that next time he saw the missionaries to go up and talk to them and to tell them about his experience at the battalion and he got really excited and said, 'Yes I am going to do that!' I hope he really does. I had a meeting with Sister Frampton and we planned training. We are going to do a scavenger hunt while practicing presentation skills.. haha it should be interesting. I hope the sisters like it. We had a lesson with Kevin about baptism and confirmation. We talked with him about the difference between the power of the Holy Ghost and the gift of the Holy Ghost and he just kept talking about how it is the greatest gift ever and he can't wait to have the privilege of having it. I can't wait for him to have it either! We then met a referral for a lesson. His name is Ernie and it was quite the experience. He kept telling us how we are being deceived and how Jesus Christ came in 1948 and we don't know about it and how he is willing to do anything to save our souls.. haha super interesting. He promised us he'd read some in the Book of Mormon though. We went to fhe and had some dinner and some of the members brought non members so we talked with them and it was sweet and then we went to visit a referral. She wasn't home, but her grandma was and she invited us in! Her house is BEAUTIFUL. Wow. She told us about Christy and showed us a picture and we got to know her a little and talked about faith and then asked if she needed any service and she just was so sweet to us!

It was a great week :) Full of lots of tender mercies. I am so grateful for tender mercies. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father knows each of us so well and He knows what makes us happy and how to help us. I have been studying the Isaiah chapters this week and although they still confuse me a lot, I was able to get out of them more than I usually do. That was just a testimony to me of consistency. As we consistently read the Book of Mormon, we will understand it more and more each time and our minds will be edified each time we read it! It's cool how sometimes even if what I was reading didn't make sense.. how because I was reading, the Spirit could impress in my mind about other things even if it didn't have to do with what I was reading. There is definitely power in reading the Book of Mormon every day. I love that book! 

And I love you all so much!

Love,

Sister Cassie Rasmussen