Hermana Lizzie Koch: June 30, 2014: Conroe Area: Weeks flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy almost 5 months leeefffffffft :*******(

Hola hola hola how's it going? Everything's AWESOME IN CONROE!!!

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY AND I NEVER WANT TO COME HOME!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean I do..... because I love you all and miss you terribly BUT I LOOOOOOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!! AND I WANT TO CRY TO THINK THAT IT SO SOON IS GOING TO BE OVER! D: ................................. SO I MUSN'T THINK ABOUT IT. ("Emma"- Gwenith Paltrow voice)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOOKIE!!! I LOVE YOU SOOO MUCH!!! I hope you know how special you are!!! Also COLIE!!.......... wait I already said those things last week haha :)

Love you all sooo much! Oh wait, I haven't written the rest of my email ahha

Ok so this week was awesome! Just like every other week! Exciting things always happening! Satan always trying to tempt us away! But it doesn't work! Because we have the best defense ever! The scriptures, praying, and going to church! Even though this week was wonderful there might not be very many eventful stories :D sorry!

Monday: A beautiful restoration lesson with Sara and Carlos! The ones we met the Sunday before last Monday! It was so wonderful I just get so giddy and happy and excited before teaching the restoration! We have the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth! His power and authority to do ordinances on the earth today! And with that we can be sealed to our families FOREVER! :) Living with my family forever in a state of never ending happiness (mosiah 2:41) just sounds like the best goal ever! And it's going to happen! :)

Tuesday: We ate dinner with Kayleigh!! :) I love her so much! She's such a funny, pregnant woman. We went and saw Paula and Mauricio and taught them about faith and talked about how faith without works is dead. We had a lesson with Jenni and her husband!! :) It was AWWWESOME! We played the gospel game! (a game hna Burnham's boyfriend Kyle, made up on his mission!) I made footsteps to do it and wrote on them! Faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the end. Then you put one person on the earth and then their family in the Celestial Kingdom across the room! Then you tell them to get to them but they can't touch anything and they can't because they can't touch the floor, they try to jump, fly use the couch.. none of which work, and then you give them the steps to get them there! It's awesome :)

Wednesday: We sang with some other missionaries and some youth from the english wards at a funeral for such a sweet woman. I wish I had known her! It was such a beautiful missionary oriented funeral! We sang Come unto Christ the youth theme song this year! It's pretty much all solo parts so they had 2 boys singing and then another girl and then I sang and on one or two of my parts Hermana Buno came in and harmonized like an angel because she just, you know, does that without even practicing haha but it was really really beautiful. At the end we thanked her for allowing us to be there and sing and told her about both of our loses and how it was a tender mercy to be able to visit a funeral because both of us missed our family member's. The spirit was so strong and someone basically just gave a beautiful long talk about the plan of salvation!
We taught Jose the plan of salvation again, focusing more on the things we need to do in this life to keep us strong and the purpose of being here. We then taught Abraham a lesson! He is someone that is attending the english classes our ward does. The hermanas taught him the restoration on their last exchange and so this week we taught him the plan of salvation! The Barrera's were there and it was awesome! He just kept saying "andale" haha it was funny. We aren't exactly sure how well he recieved the message but the spirit was there so that's the important part! :)

Thursday: WEEKLY PLANNING!!! MY FAVORITE!! IT MEANS HERMANA BUNO AND I GET TO TELL EACH OTHER WHY WE LOVE EACH OTHER! hahaha :) We ate dinner at Kayleigh's and we got to see Paula!! :) We read a chapter in the Book of Mormon, just the first chapter and she was beaming!! She loved it!! And she really wanted to hold her book. Her mom kept trying to give it back to us and Paula was like uh-uh my book haha. I loved it, it was a really beautiful experience. I felt like I learned so many new things from the first chapter that I have read like 500 times haha :) My favorite verse is when it talks about God and the angels surrounding Him. Then we talked with one of the sweet teens in our ward that we meet with once a week. She's had a rough childhood and we just laughed about clean, happy, silly things and then taught her a lesson about how God wants her to fulfill her dreams and that He will provide a plan for her and that if she always does the little things she needs to in life that she can always have His guidance and help!

Friday: SPECIALIZED TRAINING IN THE TEMPLE!
wow... What an incredible experience. We were able to go to the temple with President and Sister Pingree as well as the temple president and his wife and later we went to a room and had a discussion it was beautiful! I learned so many things through the spirit! It is so important to have the spirit so that He can lead and guide us and tell us what God wants us to know!!! :) We took our last pictures with them and got to hug both of them and I just cried. Hermana Buno and I gave them a song in a frame that we had written. It started with me singing it in the shower in my first area and then hermana Buno helped me finish it. It's just a version of I am a child of God.
Then we went to see Francisco for an appointment BUT he wasn't there.... great. Well instead his two roommates were and we taught them the restoration with Kayleigh!!! IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!! THE SPIRIT WAS SO STRONG!! We later that night went to Jenni's and we talked about the differences she has seen in her life from the Gospel so far and it was really sweet and special! :) She wants to take us to the Zoo next monday!!! :D

Saturday: Nothing really exciting happened. Saturdays are REALLY hard for some reason. No one is home, it's hot and it's bleh ahha BUT! It's ok. We were also loopy because we had woken up at 4:30 in the morning the day before to go to the temple! So we were really not doing well. We didn't have a dinner appointment so the Ardmore's made us omlets and we had happy times together! :)

Sunday: I GAVE A TALK IN CHURCH! They asked me to share some of the miracles I have seen in my mission and then tie it back to being guided by the spirit. It was really an awesome experience to talk on that. It was so cool how the Lord gave me a week of miracles that I could share with them so that they could know about the amazing things happening in their area! I ended talking about how in one situation the only reason I could be guided by the spirit was because I was worthy. I shared the sacrament scriptures Moroni chapters 6 and 7. Then later in the 3rd hour that was combined the Bishop quoted my talk a couple times!! It was a tender mercy because I felt like I wanted to say sooo much and said like nothing... but then he told me that he loved it and quoted it!! :) I felt so happy and soooo greatful for the spirit. Jenni came to church and was sitting in the back and smiling at me sooo big! :) I was just the happiest little missionary alive! Jose came as well! :) It was a good day of church! :) We taught the youth the restoration! They are being taught the priesthood this month and so we decided to explain to them the restoration and the blessings we have! It was a surprise lesson after all... SOOOOO we went with what we know best :)
Later that night a young man we had found and taught the restoration texted us! He hadn't been texting us back so we thought he had lost his interest and we were a little bit bummed but then we got a text from a random number!!! SAYING IT WAS HIM!! AND THAT HE HAS BEEN READING AND THAT HE IS ALL THE WAY IN ENOS AND THAT IT TOUCHED HIM SO MUCH AND REALLY MADE HIM THINK ABOUT TRUE AND REAL FORGIVENESS!! It was the cooelst experience ever. We testified to him through text.... interesting experience and he said thank you for your words, they inspired me to read more!

I loved this week! It was the crazy, the funniest, or the height of anything, but it was still amazing. I can hoenstly say with my whole heart that every week of the mission is AMAZING. It is divine. It is sacred. It's incredible and it's the biggest blessing I could have ever recieved! I know that it isn't required of me as a young woman of the church to go, but I know me, and I know, a long time ago in the pre- existence, I told someone I would. I told someone I would love them and find them. I love this work. It is so special. If you ever doubt going or having your child go, remember "doubt your doubt before you doubt your faith"
THE LORD ALWAYS PROVIDES. HE ALWAYS GUIDES. If we are worthy of that guidance.

I know this gospel is true, I can feel it seeping deeper and deeper into my soul. It's ingrained in me, and for that I have to thank my parents. And it's all of me, for that I have to thank the Lord. I know He loves me, and I can honestly say I think I know that because He loves YOU. The more I feel the love of God for others the more I feel it for myself. WE are His light. WE chose before this life to come and fight and love and gain knowledge and help each other get back to Him. Let's do it.

I LOVE YOU ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!

Hermana Koch