Jenessa, Week 19- WHITEWASHING HENDRICKS!!

Hello Everyone-

Life is so crazy! I love it! I am in the Hendricks Ave Ward now and I
LOVE IT! My companion, Sister McCleary, is wonderful. I love her so
much. She has been out for 7.5 months and has been a Sister Training
Leader for a while. She is 21, from Riverton, Utah and the second of
6. :-) I am so excited to be working with her, she is a phenomenal
missionary and loves this work! Although, we do have a bit of a
problem, between the two of us we can never seem to remember to get
the phone....we leave it EVERYWHERE!! LOL :-) Our previous companions
were basically always in charge of the phone so we never had to worry
about it, so we forget. :-) HAHA! Makes for some exciting times.

We have had an amazing first week here in the Hendricks ward. We are
getting to know the ward really quickly, and have met some amazing
people. We 'whitwashed' the area, which means both Sister McCleary and
I were new to the area. So we are both on this learning adventure
together. I just realized that every area, accept my first, I
whitewashed. Kinda funny. I love it :-) We are also SIster Training
Leaders, kinda like Zone Leaders for Sisters in our Zone. We go on
trade offs with 7 sets of sisters and then we ourselves go on a trade
off with the STC, the Sister Training Coordinators! I love them! We
actually have to do like 10 (24 hour)  trade offs in 4 weeks because
of having a trio and each Sister need their own individual trade off.
HAHA! love it!  Anyways....we've got a lot of work to do to keep up
our area, get to know it, and go out and serve and help all the other
sisters in the Zone....sounds exciting hu??

This week we have been able to meet some amazing people, like the
Ortega family, Brother Ortega is from Guatemala I think, he and his
family are recently reactivated members and have us missionaries over
for dinner ALL the time. We have already had dinner with then twice.
They are such a powerful missionary work oriented family. They have
FHE's and invite non-members over all the time and the missionaries
will teach at those FHE's. They are so amazing. I wish all families
could be like the Ortega's, no fear in the face of Missionary work.
They just live the gospel and aren't afraid to invite others over to
learn more, or just have dinner and then have a conversation about the
gospel....etc, there are so many ways to do it beyond just sharing the
gospel by word.

We met a lady named Bernadette, she is a recent convert and she LOVES
the gospel. Oh goodness, she applies everything in her life to the
Gospel and it is very inspiring. I have so many people that i want to
tell you about that i have met that are just absolutely incredible,
but there just isn't the time here. We are teaching this girl,
Matilda, she is in her early 20's and she is very curious about
everything that we have to share and mostly she just wants to be
closer to God and she can tell that we are and wants to be the same.
She is amazing. We didn't feel prompted to commit her to a baptismal
date this last time we taught, but she committed to reading and
praying about the Book of Mormon. We are so excited. :-)

Well...I am running out of time and I am super tired today, so I need
to be going, I'd like to get in a nap before PDay is over. I love
ya'll and am so excited to report on all that goes on here. I am
loving it already! I have been so busy that I haven't even had a
chance to miss Normandy...haha. I am sure I will soon. We are just
barely making it in every night by 9:30 because we are so busy with
all the people we are seeing. :-) We laugh a lot and are working hard
and I love it!! Good things to come I am sure!! :-)

Smile everyone! The FUTURE IS AS BRIGHT AS YOUR FAITH!! :-)

Love
Sister Heckel