Dear Family,
My goodness, it sounds like everyone is having a great summer! I can't believe all of the fun things that you've been doing over the past few weeks! I must admit that I'm a little envious of the fun adventures that you get to experience. But no matter, I'm glad that you all get to do these things before school starts later this month. This summer has just FLOWN by! Congrats to Tatum and her swim meet, that's totally awesome. And also to Levi for the award he got at the Jamboree. So cool! And that's AWESOME that Booker touched the stingray in Mexico! And the swimming with dolphins is always a fun treat to experience. I loved doing that!
Olympia is awesome. We have a ward that spoiled us rotten with the apartment and they are really excited to have both Elders and Sisters in the ward now. They are very excited about the missionary work and we have a ward council and ward missionaries who are very involved with the missionaries. I just love it! Plus, it helps that we have the temple right across the street from the chapel. The spirit here is just so strong with the temple in the ward boundaries. We are trying to get a feel for the area, we don't have a GPS so we're using a good old map that's 6 years old so I'm getting REALLY good at 3-point turns and U-turns! But we really enjoy it. There's a lot of hope and potential here so we're excited.
My companion...So she's named Hermana Allred. Oh yes, I am training a Spanish speaking sister! That's a wonderful adventure! She's my first 19-year-old companion so that has been interesting but she's great. Just younger, but that's not bad and I think that it's going to help me to remember to have fun and not serious and boring all the time. She's from American Fork, Utah and just loves being a missionary. She's extremely obedient which I hope she keeps with her throughout her whole mission. I don't have a picture of her yet, but I hope to have one that I can send next week.
The biggest miracle that I've seen is the miracle of the gift of tongues! I didn't think that I remembered ANYTHING from my 9th grade Spanish class but Heavenly Father has been gracious with me. Hermana Allred is great with her Spanish (the Spanish Elders say so as well) and has been teaching me while practicing and improving herself in her language studies. I may not know any of the vocabulary, but I remember almost all of the rules on pronunciation and such. Basically, the Lord has helped me to remember how to read the language correctly and how to speak correctly. Now I just need to learn vocabulary words! But it truly has been a miracle over the past week to see what the Lord has helped me to remember. It's nothing new, just a lot of things that are coming back to my memory. It's so weird!
I got the package, and I'll probably get the other letters either today or tomorrow. Thank you for everything that was sent! They were great and I love all of them! I especially loved the pants you sent, they were super comfortable and my companion was pretty envious of that. It was great though. Mom, you cut your hair?!?! You totally need to send me a picture of this! I'm sure that you look great! And I hope that you have a fantastic birthday next week as well. To answer your guys' questions, I don't do anything special for my birthday. It's just another day of missionary work! But that's OK because I am not here for me, I'm here for my Savior and His time is short and precious. But a member found out that my birthday's on Friday so she signed up to have us over for dinner that night and is planning on making a cake for me so that'll be fun. I just hope that they don't make it all about me because we're supposed to be in their home to help strengthen them and their testimonies of the gospel. So we'll see how it goes! But thank you for all that you do and thank you again for the birthday gifts! I truly feel blessed and I know that the Lord has a lot of miracles in store for all of you because of your righteousness. Love and miss you all!
With love,
Sister Ward
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