January 26, 2015

Hey y'all!! I am so happy to have heard from many of you today! Thank you!! Thank you so much Mom and "WhitJoSmitMord" for the DSDS clothes! I am so pumped to continue reppin' my dance studio! You made my week!! 

This week we had a wild week of weather! We were dumped on with SNOW! We woke up and had over a foot of snow- it was crazy! The whole town shut down and school was cancelled for both the K-12 schools and the college! We had a few appointments cancel because of the snow, but it's ok! We had the privilege to tract through it for 7 hours :) We were exhausted to say at the least! We found a little puppy buried in the snow- so we rescued it and found it a new home! Successful day! We helped Danny and Linzy set up for their wedding reception this weekend and ironed their table cloths and made everything look nice! We had an investigator, J attend a baptism for the Canyon Ward and he loved it! He came to church and thought it was cool that it was only 3 hours long, apparently his Baptist Church back home in Dallas is 7 hours long!! 

We did some service this week by chopping down tree branches with a chainsaw. We had to balance on a ladder and lean against a clothes line pole with a chainsaw attached to a long pole... who knew I was so coordinated!? I thank my ballet teachers ;) 

Transfers are here!! I will be staying here in Canyon YSA and will be training a new sister! Her name is Sister Danielle Udall and I will be picking her up tomorrow! I am very excited :) I hope y'all have a great week! 

Love, 

Sister Evans 

...This is how you know your YSA is a success! (Eternal) MARRIAGE! 

 What is with this snow in Texas?

January 19, 2015

Hello! It's so good to hear from all of you today! Macey, I am so glad you had a great birthday!! I can't believe you are 12! This week was hopefully the last "slow" week since school starts back up tomorrow! I am so excited to work with a full campus again!! It's been a slow 6 weeks, but things are starting to look more promising! :) We taught a girl from Nigeria this week named E and she is pretty cool! We also saw a recent convert who is so dang smart! His gospel- knowledge is out of this world!! He requested that we teach him a little bit more about the Grace of God and why it is important in each of our lives! Institute started back up and it was so good! I love what we are able to learn from the direction of the spirit! 

Well.. the best part of the week was by far when ELDER BEDNAR came to the TLM! Wow!! The spirit that is felt in the presence of an apostle of God is unreal! We had 2 members of the Seventy (Elder Villareal & Elder Lawrence), The Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric (Elder Davies), and a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles (Elder Bednar) all in the same room!! So cool!! We had a missionary meeting where all 260 missionaries and the 7 senior couples gathered and we had a Q&A session with Elder Bednar! It was so cool! At the very end, he gave us a prophetic promise and said (something along the lines of...) "As you try to be the best you can be and serve the Lord to the best of your ability, you will have no more disposition to do evil for the rest of your lives... But, you must be both diligent and obedient." Then we were able to stay for the next meeting (YSA Conference) where he also did another Q&A! I learned so much this week! I wish I had time to tell you more about it! Something that really stood out to me was when he asked us "Have you unwrapped the Gift of the Holy Ghost?" I know that the spirit is a gift that we have been given as members, but it is so important that we use the gift to the fullest! What a blessing it truly is to have the "spirit with us always" which is the promise we receive when we enter the waters of baptism and covenant with our Heavenly Father! I love this gospel so much! I hope y'all have a great week :)

 Love,
Sister Evans

(This is the group of missionaries that I came out with) 

 Sister Christensen is leaving to go home in 3 weeks!

January 12, 2015

Hey Y'all! 
Hello! Thanks for all of the emails :) Sounds like everything is going well back at home! This week was a pretty good week for us here too! We have a new investigator named J who we were able to meet with twice and he is awesome! We are excited to keep working with him! We were also able to take a french copy of the Book of Mormon to Bi this week (the guy who came to church last week from Conga!) We meet with a lot of international students which I think is pretty cool! 
I took Sister Gonzalez to the doctor this week and they weren't able to find any results.. so I guess we'll keep being patient and praying that she gets better soon! 
Since Elder Bednar is coming this Friday, we've been asked that we make sure that we look our best! My scraggly ends weren't looking so tip top, so I had to go to a sketchy place in Amarillo called "The Haircut Lounge" and I rewarded myself for being a big girl by buying myself a gourmet red-velvet cupcake and a birthday cake macaroon :) haha... yeah, I haven't changed much! 
This week was FREEZING cold! There was one day that it was around 18 degrees, but the wind was blowing so hard that we had a wind chill that made it zero degrees! Brrrr! We filled a little bit of our time by organizing Sister Dale's 3 bookshelves of crochet patterns--- good times! We also were able to do some service this week at the "Botanical Gardens" in Amarillo in their tropical conservatory. We cut down vines and hauled them to the dumpster in a little golf cart and then were rewarded with a fresh papaya and oranges from the fruit trees! It was neat! I felt like I was serving in the jungle! haha! We had another investigator at church this week- his name is S (from Kenya). 
We got a text on Saturday night at 7:30pm asking if we could fill in to speak in Sacrament Meeting! So I spoke about how Obedience Brings Safety. This Friday Elder Bednar will be here to meet with us as the Texas Lubbock Mission and then right after we are having a YSA conference with him, so I will be with an apostle all day long! I'm really excited! I hope you all have a great week as well! 

Love, 

Sister Evans 

This is us in the golf cart hauling vines to the dumpster! It was so cold.. but so fun!! 

DISTRICT PIC

January 5, 2015

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Wowza! Can y'all believe it's already 2015!? Exciting stuff :)  This week was a really good week!  We started off the week by going on exchanges- Sister Bearnson (one of my trainers) came and worked my Amarillo area with me and we had a lot of success! It was 9 degrees that day and people's cars weren't starting, so we had a lot of opportunities to help out (even though I'm not the most knowledgeable about cars!) and were able to share bits and pieces of the gospel with them!  We were able to do some service this week at the old folk's home- so fun!! We "exercised" with them by bouncing a ball in a circle and lifted 2 lb. weights!  A word of advice, if you want to be whipped into shape, just go work out with the 90 year olds! haha :)  Then we had interviews with President Heap and it went so well- I love that man! I know that I have been called to serve in this mission under the direction of President and Sister Heap! He makes me feel like I am the best missionary in the world and I learned a lot from him. 
Another big ice and snow storm hit the panhandle of Texas, so we were left car-less so that no missionaries would get in an accident- it was cold, really, really cold- but it's ok! We met a preacher on the corner of a main street in Canyon who was shouting and "crying people to repentance..." so I thought I'd be nice and ask how his day was and the second he read my name tag and saw that I was a Latter-Day Saint, he gave us an earful.. so that was fun!! haha. 
We had an investigator come to church and it was great- he stayed for all 3 hours! My testimony has really been strengthened this week as I have been standing up for my beliefs, and I have met a lot of people here that I absolutely KNOW that I was meant to meet. The Plan of Salvation is a very real and perfect plan and I know that I knew many of these people in the life before! I am so grateful to be a missionary! Please make the gospel a priority in your lives! We are not perfect, but the gospel definitely is! I love you all :) Have a great week! 
Love, Sister Evans