Sister Elizabeth Ashley Smith: Day 260 Yakima, WA serve so hard

Hellooooo world!

Yet another fantastic week in Yakima, "the Palm Springs of Washington". Oh boy. (ha there's a sign that says that on the freeway. i'll get a picture of it one day.)

Oh um...tomorrow is my halfway mark exactly. Nbd. It's fine.

So the lady we live with, Sis Olander, teaches seminary, so she asked us if we could come this week and talk to the kids about our experiences with the scripture 1 Nephi 3:7 and how we decided to come on a mission. I shared my experience with how I received my answer to serve a mission and how I just gave my will to the Lord and He made everything work out for the best. It was fun!! I love going to seminary.

I had exchanges with Hermana Rockhill this week, she came out at the same time as Sister Gamble. It was AWESOME. She's a natural at missionary work. It was great since Sis Gamble is really shy and doesn't really say much when we're talking to people, so I have to be the one to carry the conversation. But Rockhill was super involved and I felt like I was teaching with an experienced missionary. She's from Lindon and a SUPER cool girl. (She's the one who's little sister is in UVCC right now...maybe Meagan knows her?)

We put David on date this week!! He's the one who used to be a JW and left that church and is now just looking for truth. We're working towards Oct 4th with him...we don't think it will actually be that day but the fact that he was willing to set that as a goal is HUGE. So we're really excited about that! We're going again tonight to teach him the plan of salvation with a member of the bishopric. Should be good.

Another cool thing that happened this week...we had dinner with this single mom and her two sons last night. Her sons are really good kids but are starting to stray away from the church and stuff. Anyway, it was my turn to share the thought, so I shared my missionary scripture, and then I just got this huge prompting to share my decision to serve a mission. Which I never volunteer unless someone asks me. But I did, and the Spirit was so strong!! Afterwards in the car Sis Gamble was like "that was PERFECT!" I hope the boys felt the Spirit and have at least a small increased desire to serve a mission. Their mom is so cool. They've been through a lot.

So Saturday was the world wide day of service!! And it was a HUGE success!! Our stake had a bunch of projects around the city, but the main one was planting trees on the greenway. They had over 1,000 rosebushes and trees they wanted us to plant. The parks and rec guy was like "Yeah, we bought a TON of stuff so you'll probably only be able to get through like a third of it this morning, which is awesome." Buddy, have you MET Mormons?? Yeah. We blew through every single one of those in an hour and a half....what else ya got?! haha it was awesome. It was a really good turnout and it was lots of fun! AAAAND we got to wear those sweet yellow "helping hands" jerseys. See pictures. :)

The other night we had a SWEET thunderstorm here in Yakima. Oh my gosh it's been a while since I've seen a good one. We were SOAKED. And we loved every minute of it. I miss good lightning and thunder.

Well my friends, I gotta go. But I love and miss you all!! Keep that mail comin, I'm loving it!

Until next week,

Sister Ashley Smith