“They shall roar like young lions” Isaiah 5:29

This week has been a COLD one! But the Spirit continues warming us both 🙂 Like last night when we were tracting in the 25 degree weather, and we were able to fulfill our prayers and find two amazing new potentials, one of whom has a sister who is a member in Rice, Texas 🙂 They live in a lone trailer in the middle of nowhere, but happily stood outside with us in the cold, moonlit night. We were able to share with them the message of the Restoration, and as they both felt the Spirit, they told us it didn’t matter how cold it was – they were thankful we took the time to come by. It was awesome. (And then later, as we went out to try knocking a different door, we almost got mauled by two huge German Shepards running at us from out of an orchard.) But things have really turned around as far as finding/going the extra mile goes.
Milagros, Brian and Lexi are continuing to progress, and were actually our ride down to Stake Conference yesterday! That was a tender mercy. In the car it was Salvador (the hubs – recent convert), Alejandro (brother of the hubs – also recent convert), Milagros (on-date, and the wife) and us two. We were able to have an amazing conversation about what we all took away from conference on the way back, and the hour long drive felt like it only took about 15 minutes. Time flies when you’re feeling the Spirit.
We’re excited for this week, and we’re trying to not speculate -too- much about what transfer calls will bring us on Saturday.
Have a great week!
Hermana Mrozek

 

Salvador, Carmen (a new investigator), Milagros, Alejandro, Hermana Capi, Me, Lexi and Julie yesterday after the Spanish session of Stake Conference 🙂

From our temple trip this past week 🙂 It was so nice to be back in Kennewick, again, even if it was for just a couple hours. PLUS I got to see one of my favorite member families from Kennwick when I was serving there 6 months ago – the Fingers! I was praying they’d be working in the temple that morning, and my companion found them by a miracle in the baptistry!

This is a picture from when I made churros at Hermana Guillen’s house this past week. My Mexican companion had no fear of boiling hot oil, and would not cease making fun of my whiteness. But forreal though, for the first churros I’ve ever made ever, they were PRETTY good. Hermana Guillen is in the backround of this picture (pink hoodie) and she made us about a gallon of Chocolate Abuelita ❤ Mmm. That stuff is good.

Temple Selfie:)

Just Chillaxen’ in Chelan

  This week has been full of finding struggles and teaching joys and all the things that make missionary work actual, hard work. It’s been hard seeing a lot of progress as far as finding through knocking goes (a lot of the Hispanics have migrated back to Mexico, and none of the rich white people seem to want much to do with us) but we have been seeing a lot of tender mercies by finding through our recent convert families 🙂

     One of the reasons that finding out here is so hard, is because the sun sets at 4pm. And after that, this place gets scary. There are dogs everywhere, unchained and vicious, and there are no street lights at all outside the nucleus of the town. So we’ve been having to plan a lot of our finding/knocking time from 1-4pm… exactly the time when everyone is at work. So therein lies one of our biggest problems.

     Buuuuut, by way of finding through recent converts/part-member families, we were able to have an awesome home-court at Bishop’s this week with our on-dates Milagros(Mom), Brian(13) and Lexi(10), along with the rest of the family Julie (7), Salvador(Dad), and Kaylee(2). It was super powerful, and Milagros told us that she had a dream in which she was told that the Church is true, and that she knew what she needed to do. So we are super excited to see them again tonight!

     We have also been teaching Christal’s dad, but we were sad he wasn’t able to come to Church this Sunday. Elkie (the matriarch of the family) was sick, so she and her 8 kids stayed home, making the one tiny ward we have here look like it was halved in numbers :p But we hope they feel better soon.

     I am so excited for Wednesday when we’re able to go to Kennewick for a temple trip! I am in need of some guidance that really only the temple can bring. And oh man, have I missed that place, and all the people there that I was able to teach and see baptized 🙂 Norma, Juan and Erick, Susana and Rafaela and their families, little Anahi and Kimberly. The temptation to make our member take us to see everyone is going to be real, but I trust that they’ll all be doing just fine when I can visit the other mission the kosher way in a couple of months :p

      Life continues to be splendid here in Chelan. Earth has reached its paradisaical glory, and it’s in Chelan, I’m convinced.

     Live Righteously,

         Hermana Mrozek

On the docks of Lake Chelan

What I wake up to every morning 🙂

The companera and I looking fresh to def on the set of Twilight (Aka: everywhere in Chelan, always.)

Chillin’ in Chelan.

There is absolutely no accurate way to sum up how awesome this week has been for Hermana Capi and I, so I’m just going to photo log it for this week.

1. This cat lives with a family of 3 that Hermana Capi and I just put on date for the 5th of December. It climed up to my shoulder then sat on me for 30 minutes while we had a lesson outside with Brian.


​

2. Hermana Capi did my hair to look like Utah, and I did her makeup to look like an asian, and this is what we both ended up with.

Well, I’m officially out of time. It’s been a great week, though! 🙂 3 new on-dates for baptism, and two investigating families at church, and a whole lot of fun times in the rain/ice 🙂

#ET #PHONEHOME

Whaaat is my liiiifeee right now. You know in movies where you see the two main characters in a The-Struggle-Is-Real moment, and then one of them says: “Well, at least it can’t get any worse :)..”

DUNN DUNN DUNNNNNNN

Actually, it can.

On Thursday morning last week I woke up with a killer headache and some nausea, which only served as a precurser to the biggest surprise of my mission. At 7:30am after morning exercises, President Lewis calls to tell me that he is going to “alter the course of my day a little bit,” that I need to pack my bags, that the APs were coming to pick me up in 3 hours, and that I was moving 3 hours north to Chelan to trade places with a new missionary who needed an Emergency Transfer to an area closer the mission home. My area, in Moxee, to be exact. Waahhhh. So I scribbled out notes to all the people I wouldn’t actually be able to say goodbye to, hurriedly shoved all my earthly possessions into my decrepit luggage, and at noon, the APs and I set sail for Chelan. (Which I would like to say was the most awkward car ride of my life, alone with the APs without a companion. Plus I was experiencing some unprecedented I’m-Gonna-Barf car sickness, and they kept trying to get me to eat food from the MASSIVE pile of “provisions” on the back seat – AKA cookies and sweets.)

So anyway, there were a couple other changes being made to Chelan that day, so we picked up another sister in Moses Lake, and the moseyed our way up to Chelan. We passed through Ephrata which was the best moment of my life, being able to see my old stomping ground again, but I thought I was going to die later as we were wending our way through the switch-backs of Chelan on the way to meet my new companion. I seriously had a high fever and chills at the same time, which is weird because I -never- get car sick. After 5 hours of driving, when we stopped the car at the church building, I was able to walk about 6 feet away from the car before I threw up for all I was worth. All. Over. My. Feet. I was so weak, I couldn’t think, so Sister Blackmer (the one we picked up in Moses Lake) helped me shuffle into the church building where I she literally cleaned my feet and legs, then we got back in the car like nothing happened. After we got out 10 minutes later at the purple Victorian mansion which is now my home and hugged my companion, I shuffled off to a huge brush pile to throw up for my life again. Poor Sister Blackmer is such a trooper. She held my hair back, and helped me sit on a boulder. The APs gave me a blessing, I went inside the house and spent about 30 minutes on the floor by the toilet, my companion made my bed, I spent my entire first night in Chelan throwing up into a trash can, sick with the flu that Sister Averett and I both caught down in Moxee.

Weekly planning was shot, because we were both trying to recouperate from our respective illnesses – Hermana Capi with some kind of bronchial infection, and me with the flu. It wasn’t until Friday night that I was well enough to even start unpacking. Or shower. Gross.

Halloween was super lame, because we had to try and do our weekly planning, which we’d missed on account of being sick. So we went ahead and did our best on that, got some service in for a recent convert named Christal (helping her do her Halloween hair and make-up), went to a dinner where we had shrimp gumbo with spicy sausage, and then came home to watch movies, paint nails, and spend some time actually getting to know each other now that neither one of us was fighting to stay alive.

Later that night at 12am, however, Hermana Capi woke me up. She’d been throwing up and wanted to know what to do to make the nausea go away. My super exhausted/disoriented answer: “Well, Hermana, did you think to pray?” Her response was no, but she wasn’t really thinking about that while haunched over the toilet while her body tried to put itself inside out. I gave her the useful advice to sleep sitting up, and then went back into my sleep oblivion. Poor girl spent the rest of the night throwing up and crying while I just stayed in bed. Which I guess is karma for her making fun of my throw up sounds the day before, and telling me she wished she’d recorded my throwing up fun times so we could laugh at them together :p

So on account of the new bought of flu virus, we spent Sunday inside, missed the confirmation of our recent convert, and both tried to keep all our food and water on the inside.

It’s been an interesting week, to say the least. The irony is that Hermana Capi and I are dying together on December 18th, and this week we literally died together. We’re both up and running again, though! 🙂 So that’s good. Hermana Capi is awesome, and we’ve got some super solid plans. I can’t say I have a very good grasp on anything at this point (having not met pretty much anyone in the ward or our investigators) but I trust that Hermana Capi knows what’s up and we’ll have some awesome miracles to report on next week. 
Chelan is absolutely gorgeous. It’s all mountains and clouds and when it’s gray and there’s the smoke-like clouds all over the mountains, I really honestly feel that at any moment the characters from Twilight are going to emerge from the woods. It’s really eerie at night though. We live in this huge purple Victorian mansion off the shore of Wapato lake (slightly smaller than Lake Chelan) and although it’s been completely renovated like something chic off of HGTV, it’s got this haunted vibe that chills the soul. It’s really cool here all the time, and I love the vibes of this place. I finally feel like I’m in Washington!

​Meet Hermana Taua, from Honolulu, Hawaii! Her many talents include: singing, playing the piano, figuring out how to make steamed rice in the microwave, and bearing an awesome testimony with everyone we meet.

​And here’s a selfie of hermana capi and me like 5 minutes before we came to write 🙂 She’s way chill. Reminds me of an old homie of mine, Aimee. It’s awesome to be able to kick it with such a swagtastic companion (not that Hermana Taua was without swag.)