Temple in McAllen!

October 7, 2019

Hola!!!! So my first week in the field is coming to a close! It's been so crazy and fun so I'll just get right into it...

We arrived in McAllen at around 8:30 Monday night after some delays and airplane malfunctions and stuff, so we just went straight to Presidents house and had dinner which was SO good- it was just celestial chicken and salad and potatoes. President Ocampo is from Honduras and he is super nice and smiley and we love him. 

Anyway, so on Tuesday, we got our areas and trainers assigned, so I'm In Portland Texas with Sister Yanez!! So. Portland is right north of Corpus Christi, so I'm at the very top of the mission. We're in an English speaking area, and our whole zone is English minus one companionship that covers the whole zone for Spanish. Sister Yanez is amazing, this is her 12th transfer, and she’s staying an extra transfer, so she'll go home after my first 12 weeks of training. She’s from Honduras and speaks fluent Spanish and English which is AWESOME because we've ran into a few people who don’t speak English.

The ward is super awesome, there are about 115 active-ish members. This week has been a lot of getting to know them and helping them out with whatever they need! Unfortunately, because we're so far north, I haven't gotten any Mexican food yet, but it's okay, I've heard there's a ton further south. The members are super generous about feeding us, and honestly they've been feeding us pretty normal food which I was kinda surprised about hahaha. 

A highlight of the week was definitely that they announced a future temple in McAllen at general conference!! We are all so excited about it. It is an amazing miracle for the people here in south Texas. Conference in general was so awesome and had me on the edge of my seat the whole time!! More to come about conference later.

As far as the area goes, it's very unique! Portland is a really small town and everyone is really private...which means lots of tracting wohoo!!  Tracting is going door to door and knocking which is so interesting! I'm not really a people person so it has definitely been an adjustment to knock on random peoples’ doors and talk to them about the gospel 🤣 It's super fun though! We have a car which is great, but the mission is trying to reduce driving miles so we end up biking a lot. It's super fun actually because it's beyond flat here. Literally there's like one hill in the whole town. However, the heat makes up for the lack of hills hahaha. It's a good time. 

Right now, we have two people with baptismal dates, Ryan and Peighton; Ryan is 10 and Peighton is 9. They're both from part -member families so they already know a lot about the church, and they're just so cute. Ryan is gonna get baptized on Sunday and Peighton the next Sunday. Were so excited for them!!:) Right now were working really hard to find people to teach, but we found tons of people that said we could come back so, fingers crossed, we’ll have lots more people to teach this week.

Something I really liked in Conference was from Michelle Craig (I think) who said something to the effect of, you are unique, and God has a specific and unique way for you to accomplish things. The brother of Jared, Nephi, and Moses all had to cross waters and they all did it different ways. God will tailor our errand to our abilities!! I just love that so much because God knows each of us individually and is going to give us a way that we personally can do it. I love you guys, have an awesome week!!:

Hermana Coleman