Popsicles and Cotton-Eyed Joe

Hello mi famila!!!!!! 

How are you all??? Wow, Butternut sounds like quite the party this week! I´m so jealous that you are all together! Ah, that sounds like a wild time haha--I'm so jealous! I hope you all have so much fun! Is Bear Lake next week? I´m so excited to hear about it; that´s going to be so fun! Don´t have too much fun without me :)

But I hope you are all happy! Thank you so much for all the support this week! Thank you so much for your package, Carrie! I loved it so so so much!!!!!! I about died when I saw Skittles, I miss them so much :) Thank you! And Martha and Lowli for the letters, thank you so so much! You are the best; I am so spoiled!!!!!

Well, this week was super crazy, but so good!!!!!!! Guess what? You know Alexander´s little siblings that are really shy and have never wanted to get baptized???? Well, they have baptism dates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I´m just a little bit excited about it. So this week we decided to have a picnic in the park with just the 3 kids--Alexander, Ana, and Mateo--to have a DTR with them haha. We bought popsicles and just chatted with them. They seriously are like our best friends--I feel like they are my younger siblings haha. We asked them what their doubts are and if they really believe what we teach them is true. They said they believe it all and know it´s true. We asked them about their doubts and they said they really don´t have any. So we talked them through a couple things, then asked them if they wanted to be baptized and go to the Temple with their family. They said YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!! I´m so happy I can barely stand it. The date is the 9th of August, and we are praying so hard for them that they keep up the spirit they have right now. They are seriously the best family; I love them so much! And we are going to get them sealed!!! I´m so happy, it just makes my heart sing :) Also, I can´t remember if I told you, but they´ve been coming to church every week as a family, and Tatiana just got called as RS President!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This family is incredible, and there is such a change in all their countenances--everyone in the branch has noticed it. I love them so much and am so excited for them!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I realized I should give you updates on people, cause I always tell you about all these people and never tell you what happens with them haha. Well, Marina, our little missionary who always brings people for us to teach, is on vacation with the lady she takes care of. So she´s gone, but we text her every night with scriptures to read, and we are just praying so hard that she still wants to get baptized when she gets home.

The Amigó family are on vacation, but they told us we can come visit them when they get home :) I still think about them all the time. Their son, who the elders are teaching, came to church, and I kind of attacked him because I was so excited to meet someone from their family! It was funny haha.

Karla, the amazing girl we were teaching, moved back to her home in the north of Spain, so we can´t teach her anymore. :( But we are going to pass her to the missionaries there, and we are planning on seeing her name in the baptisms soon cause she is so golden. :)

Pretty much summer is just crazy, cause EVERYBODY goes to the beach here--it´s like how every Utahn goes to Cali to go the beach during the summer. So finding steady investigators right now is crazy, cause everyone we find is only here for a while and all our other investigators are gone! But that's all right :)

We are visiting tons of members every week, and it´s so fun. I absolutely LOVE these people. I love these families here so much, and I am so grateful for all they do for us and the chance to teach them.

This week the biggest event was the talent show!!!!!!!! So a family in the ward--the ward, not our branch--decided to have the missionaries put on a talent show so that the members and investigators could see that we are normal people, so they will trust us more. We didn´t really know what we were getting ourselves into, they just told us what to do. But this week we did it, and it was so fun! So there are 12 missionaires here--6 in the branch and 6 in the ward, and we did it all together. It was WILD haha. It was so fun. We had the craziest mix of stuff ever. I sang an Ingrid Michaelson song on the guitar, lots of people sang, someone did the Haka--everything. They wanted to have an American culture song, so we did Cotton-eyed Joe haha and all did the line dance to it. I did a stall and everyone went crazy haha. It´s been a long time since I´ve done break dancing! I also played the guitar and sang with other people, and I sang "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" with an elder who is studying voice at BYU and has a PHENOMENAL voice. I felt like I was singing with like Josh Groban or something haha. Basically, it was super fun and crazy. We felt dumb that it was only us performing, but it ended up being good, cause TONS of people came and they all loved it. They filmed the whole thing and are going to give us a copy and said they would send one to our parents, so hopefully they send it to you guys soon if you want to watch it :)

So pretty much, life is really good here! We are getting tons of activites going and seeing lots of progress with this branch. It´s amazing how activities bring everyone together. I just love being a missionary! I just want to give a little chapa speech cause I love my chapa (nametag)! :) I love wearing Christ´s name on my chest every day, because every day I tell myself that I need to live up to my chapa--do everything so that people can recognize me as a servant of Christ. I love having that standard, and it pushes me to be better every day. I love being a missionary with all my heart. I love it. I'm so grateful for the chance to be filled with so much love that I know is from the Lord and the chance to teach others every day the things that bring us the most happiness. I just love this gospel so much! I know that it´s true, without any doubt.

I love you all so much and hope you have so much fun together this week! I love you so so so so so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, Hermana Boyer :)

Email from Zaragoza

Hola familia!!!!!!! 

¿Que tal? Hello my wonderful family! How are you all? How is the summer treating you all?? I hope you are all partying it up and having so much fun! I hope you are having lots of exciting adventures.  :) I´m so jealous you are all going to party this next month together! Ah, I´m super jealous; that´s going to be so fun! Take lots and lots of pictures and take note of the funny comments that happen when we´re all grazing in the kitchen together, cause those are my favorite in the world :) But really, though--tell me all the details, cause I am so jealous!

Huge shout out to Annie this week! I hope you have such a good birthday! I hope you get to do something super fun! I love you!

This week was HOT! Oh my goodness, I don´t ever remember being this hot haha. This city is like St. George--dry, but super hot and deserty. It´s been over 100 everyday! Seriously, I walk out the door and before we´ve left our complex I´m sweating. It´s quite the adventure!

But this week was really good--full of miracles! The best miracle was that Marina, our investigator who always invites people to listen that we´ve been working with for a few months, finally accepted a baptism date!!!!! It was the best! We´ve talked to her about baptism a lot, but she keeps saying she needs to pray about it and she doesn´t think she can be baptized again even in a different church. But this time when we invited her she said, "Claro!" (like "Obviously!"). It was the best! So she is going to be baptized the 9th of August! The only problem is that she works interna (in Spain almost all of the South American women care for an older Spaniard woman and they live with them as a nurse)--and her interna is leaving for the beach for 2 weeks. So we are super sad cause she´s leaving for 2 weeks, but we are planning on calling her every day and reading with her in the BOM over the phone. She is so ready and she loves the BOM so much, so I know she´ll get baptized. :) We are super excited!

We just had so many miracles: We did intercambios with our roommates this week cause Hermana Porter is a Sister Training Leader, and the day Hermana Porter came with me, every single cita fired! But we passed by TONS of people and every single person was home, and we ended up having 10 lessons that day! It was the biggest miracle ever; I was so grateful. I don´t know why, but the Lord just blesses us so much even when we don´t necessarily deserve it.

Okay, so let me tell you about my new obsession haha. Okay, so there´s this huge family named the family Amigó. He was the stake president and is now inactive. All of his kids want to come back but are afraid cause he doesn´t want them to. When he went inactive, about 6 other men went inactive with him--all leaders in the Church. For some reason, I have become obsessed with this family haha. I think about them all the time, pray for them in every prayer, and just have this intense love for them, even though I´ve never met them! So we´ve been passing by and calling, but nothing ever happens. Finally this week I talked to the daughter, and she said they don´t want anything to do with the Church and to not call anymore. I cried after that phone call, cause I just care about this family so much, I don´t even know why! BUT, while I was praying about them that night I had this feeling to drop off brownies to them the next day. The next day we didn´t have time, but 3 of our citas fired, so we went and dropped off brownies. The next day I was with Hermana Dorgia in her area, and she gets a phone call from a family, thanking them for brownies. After she gets off the phone, she says "Wait, did you drop off brownies to a family yesterday?" I FREAKED OUT!!!!!!!!! The mother of the family called them cause it was the only number they had and said they were so touched by the brownies and that we can come VISIT THEM!!!!!!!!! I seriously was walking on air the entire week. What are the chances that our citas fired so we could go take brownies, that the only day I was with the other hermanas in their area, she called them? Man, the Lord is so good to us. Miracles, I tell you. So we still haven´t visited them yet because they are leaving on vacation for 2 weeks, but she promised when they get back, we can come. On the phone I must have been such a spaz cause I was like, "Oh my goodness, I love your family so much and I think about you all the time, and I just can´t believe you called us, and basically I just really love you a lot!" Probably she thinks I´m super weird haha. Anyway, we are going to reactivate this family and with it, we are going to bring back the other leaders that fell with them. I know it´s possible and we are going to do it, no matter what it takes. :)

Well, we don´t have too many crazy stories this week like last time. This is a story from last week I forgot to tell you, though--so we were waiting for the bus, and we heard a man speaking broken Spanish trying to ask how to get to the train station. I asked him if he needed help, and he´s from Texas! He´s just backpacking around Europe and had no clue what he was doing haha. So we got on the bus with him and showed him to the station. On the way we were talking and became friends with him. Right before he was about to get off the bus, he was like, "Hey, I´m going to Pamplona to run with the bulls, you should come!" (Oh, and Hermana Noakes was contacting someone else so it was just me.) I explained how I can´t and everything. He was like "Really, I´ll buy your ticket and no one will even know you´re gone!" He was trying so hard to convince me to come and finally when the door opened, I just shoved him out the door and was like, "You´re going to miss your train!" haha It was funny. We just have crazy stuff happen as missionaries, I decided.

To answer some questions: we have 6 missionaries serving in the branch, and 6 in the ward, so our district is all serving in the branch, so we have a good team.  :)

You have asked if I ever sing--well, I sing in every cita when we sing hymns, and a lot of times we do musical numbers as missionaries, but I haven´t sung any solos on my mission. We are having a talent show this week, and I´m going to sing and play the guitar, but that´s it! I always pray for opportunities to sing, but I´m too shy to ask if I can sing a solo or anything haha. I think I´m learning that the most important way to use my voice is to bring the Spirit. :)

Well, this work is real! This morning I was reading in John 15, and I absolutely loved it. I realized that the Savior could love perfectly because he was perfectly obedient. When we keep the commandments, we put ourselves in a place to feel Christ´s perfect love and also be consumed with it for others. That is my goal, to always live the commandments so I can always be filled with Christlike love for other people, and that is where we find our joy.

I love this work, I love my Savior, and I know this is His church without any doubt in my heart. In Spanish they always say "No doubt fits in me," and I really like that because it´s true!

I love you all so much and thank you so so much for all your support and love! You are all my heroes! Love you so so so much!

Hermana Boyer :)

This is us eating lunch together for an Elder´s birthday!

President and Hermana Resu came with us to visit a less-active family that live in the mountains. It was super fun; they made us really good Columbian food.

Fires and Fiestas!!

Oh my goodness, familia, how are you all? How is your summer going??? It sounds like it's just a huge party out there on Butternut and at the cabin! I'm so jealous! I hope you are all having so much fun! Okay, the world has officially ended. Glenn Campbell isn´t our home teacher anymore. I can´t believe it; that is just wild! Mom, thank you SO much for the package! You are the best--I seriously can´t thank you enough for all you do for me. I´m officially the most spoiled missionary ever. Huge shout-out to Carrie this week! I hope you have such a wonderful birthday! I wish I could be there to celebrate with you, but know that I am thinking about you and love you so much!

Today is super weird cause it´s my 9-month mark!!!!!!!!!!!! I´m freaking out. I seriously feel like I just barely got here--seriously, I have no idea how the time flies like this. I thought earlier in my mission that I would get to my halfway mark and feel super accomplished and good, but I just feel sad! I literally am so sad--I love my mission with all my heart and the thought of only having 9 months left just makes me so sad. It´s the weirdest thing ever. I think I´ll just be a missionary forever.

This week was CRAZY!!!!!! Literally, it was the craziest week of my mission, maybe my life haha. It was so fun though! I will tell you the miracles, and then the craziness. First of all, we are teaching the friend of this incredible family in our branch, named Beatriz. She is reading the BOM and LOVES IT!!!!!!!! She is learning so much, and she loves what we teach her. She is super sensitive to the Spirit and it´s amazing. We are super excited!

Another miracle: we were walking down the street and I was on the phone, but Hermana Noakes had the feeling to talk to a woman we passed. The woman said "Wow, I would love to learn about your Church--do you have time right now?" WOW!!!!!!!! That never happens. Ever. haha. But she is incredible! We taught her a lesson about the BOM and everything right there and she loved it all and said she would read it and come to church and everything! It was a huge miracle!

Then we got a call from the elders about a woman named Karla that called them. She has been taught all the lessons, but never wanted to get baptized. She said that she hasn´t been able to sleep for months because she keeps thinking about our church and how it´s true. She wanted to talk to us about how she can really know for sure if it´s true. We had an incredible lesson with her on a bench--the Spirit was SO strong, and she promised to really pray and find out for herself if it´s true. She´s amazing!

We are also teaching Marina and she´s still doing well--still praying about baptism. But she´s still as cute as ever :)

And Diego, Ana, and Mateo came to church again!!!!!! And guess what? Tatiana got made RS President yesterday! It was the biggest miracle ever, and she´s going to be incredible. Also, Alexander blessed the sacrament, and I was so proud of him I just could've died. The best part is that Diego, Ana, and Mateo LOVE church and have a light about them that everyone is talking about. Usually they are super shy, but they have come out of their shells and seriously have a new light about them! It´s the best thing ever, and I´m so excited for them. I love that family so much, it´s just unreal. And Alexander is bringing his friends to lessons still and they love learning about our Church! It´s the best.

Okay now here is the craziness--here is story number 1. So the four of us in our apartment were coming home one night, and we started to unlock the door. All of the sudden we hear a thump on the other side of the door. We were terrified! We all stepped back and were staring at the door as it started to open--from the other side!!!!!!! Our faces were probably so funny cause we were in terror--for real. This guy opens the door and his face looks like how I felt--sheer horror. We all screamed at each other until he realized what happened and told us to calm down, as his girlfriend peeked around the corner of the door--she had been hiding haha. Turns out we had the wrong floor! Oh my gosh, it was so funny, cause all of us were terrified. We all laughed about it after haha.

Story number 2! Okay, so Hermana Noakes and I are coming home one night, and I open the door and walk into piso. We had smelled smoke in the elevator, but didn't think much of it. We heard the smoke alarm, but thought it was the neighbors. I open the door and look to the left into the kitchen. I see smoke and everything is red. I look to the stove and I see a FIRE!!!!!!!! Straight up FUEGO!!!!!!!!!!!! I freaked out and realized I heard screaming. I look to the right to see Hermana Dorgia screaming in pain, holding her hand, which was covered in boiling oil. Without thinking I yanked her to the bathroom and put her hand into water while Hermana Porter and Noakes booked it into the kitchen to put out the fire! Meanwhile they were opening all the windows to get the smoke out, but it was really windy, so all the doors were slamming. It was WILD!!!!!!!! Seriously like a movie! Finally everything got calmed down and poor Hermana Dorgia was just sobbing with pain. Turns out they had left some oil on the stove on high while they were doing their planning. Right before we walked in, Hermana Dorgia had realized what happened and yanked the pan off the oven so that all the oil fell all over her hand and burned her--as the fire started! It was crazy, I tell you. So we went to the ER and were there til 1:00 in the morning. She´s okay, just has a super bad burn--her skin is completely purple and blistered. It was seriously the craziest thing ever haha!

Also, we are starting lots of activities to get this branch more unified--so we were in charge of the Relief Society activity, the missionary activity, and partly in charge of this huge welcome-home party for a missionary that came home. So we practically lived in the chapel cooking, decorating, cleaning, and setting up for the next party haha! It was wild but super fun.

Okay, sorry--you probably are all bored to death; that was the longest email of my life, but I just had a lot to tell you! But I love this work, and I wouldn't be doing anything else right now. This work is so important and we all have a part in it and I know the Lord loves us so much! I love you all SO much and hope you have such a wonderful week!

Love, Hermana Boyer :)

Email from Zaragoza

Hola familia!!!!!!!!!!!!

¿Que tal?? How are you all?? Happy Fourth of July! How was it?? I heard there were some fun festivities at the cabin and all sorts of things! I hope it was so fun! I was thinking about you all hoping it was a super fun day :) How is everyone´s summer! I can´t believe Matt´s in Thailand! That is super wild. I hope he has so much fun! I hope you are all happy and loving summer! :)

This week was super good! We had so many amazing miracles happen. I just have to say a couple things about Hermana Noakes--she is seriously the funniest person I've ever met haha. I love her so much! We are having so much fun together. We are SUPER different, but best friends. She says exactly what´s on her mind and it´s so funny. She is super loving and just loves everyone. She talks to EVERYONE--literally every time we sit next to anyone anywhere she talks to them like they've been best friends forever and everyone just loves her. It´s so funny. She is hilarious and always has me laughing. She is working super hard though and has brought such a good vibe to this branch! She has lots of good ideas and is super good with working with members. We are seeing so many miracles here!

Yesterday the best thing ever happened--Diego and Anabel and Mateo came to church! Alexander´s family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Their whole entire family came to church for the first time!!!!!!! Oh my gosh, I almost died. I couldn´t stop smiling the entire meeting. It was the best thing ever to see them all together in church--for the first time! It was the biggest miracle ever cause we've been praying for that for SO long!!!! Ah, it was the best thing in the whole world!

So like I've said before, this branch has a lot of problems where there´s just not very much love and unity. So many scandals and bad things have happened that everyone has just closed off because everyone´s been hurt so much. We've been praying so hard to know what to do to help it. This week we made a plan though--that we are going to visit every member often to animate them to love and help us. Also, we are going to have a branch activity every week to get people unified. We are going to focus almost all our time on the members so we can fix problems in this branch. We have been having faith that the Lord would bless us because we aren't focusing on investigators as much as usual. And it´s been incredible! He has put SO many people in our path--in the houses of members, on the bus, and just right in our way as we've been working with the members. He is so good to us! It´s been incredible. So we are finding a lot, but also really trying to help this branch.

Here are some little, but really significant successes:


- We visited a woman who is so sweet, but has done so much for this branch and never seen good results, so she stopped caring. But we invited her to try again and to bring the love she has back to this branch. She shared her testimony in sacrament meeting about how she´s been thinking about that, and she´s ready now to give everything she has and love as much as she can. Huge victory! It was amazing!

- A family who is kind of going inactive had us over for a FHE, and they invited a neighbor who isn't a member. We taught Lesson 1 and the Spirit was incredible. Afterwards, the woman said that she had never felt anything like that and she wanted to know how she could get more. We told her about reading and praying. It was amazing, though, because it brought the Spirit into this home, and they were rejuvenated and so excited to help us with missionary work and get really involved in the branch. Huge miracle!

- A menos activo decided that he never wanted to come back to church again. We had a heart-to-heart with him and really helped him sort through things. He decided to come back, and he bore his testimony in church that was incredible! Yes!

- We met with Marina, the lady we are teaching that is amazing. She brought us more investigators! It´s unreal. Also, she decided that to help her friends understand better, she wants to act out the Book of Mormon and give everyone a part so they have to study and understand--isn't that wild? What investigator does that? We talked to her about baptism, and she says she wants to pray and receive an answer for herself. We are praying so hard that she receives it soon. She is amazing! Such a huge miracle.

Anyway, we are seeing such good things happen in this branch. We are just trying to love with everything and serve as much as we can, from cleaning a pregnant woman's house for 3 hours, to making a cake for a woman who doesn't have money to buy her son a cake for her birthday, to planning the welcome-party for a returned missionary, to being in charge of the Relief Society activity. I know as we continue to serve and just love, the Lord will help us bring a spirit of love and unity in this branch--it´s already working!

Also, we had a super fun 4th of July! We wore red, white and blue, and Hermana Noakes had us all say the Pledge and sing the National Anthem haha. We went to a store called Little Taste of America and bought American stuff. Then we met with the elders for lunch and made French toast. It was fun! :)

Well, I'm learning that the Lord really is in this work, that when we pray for Him to bless us with love, He does. I feel like He has blessed me to be able to love these people way more than I ever could by myself. It's incredible. Sometimes we have to just love and serve, and we see miracles. I know the Lord is with us and He loves us individually so much. He's with us in our struggles and our successes.

I am so grateful for all of you and your incredible example in my life! Have a wonderful week! Love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, Hermana Boyer :)



Here we are ready for Church :)


Fourth of July!

I'm so sorry I didn't send pictures last week--I didn't have any! But I will be better about taking more :)