A Sister on the Yellow Brick Road: Week 12: Raindrops are Fallin' on my Head!

Hola mi familia y mis amigos!

First off, Happy First Day of School to all you BYU students out there!! It's so crazy that I'm not there! Just know that I'm sending you lots of love and luck! Make it a great semester! Go to the devotionals every week!!

Next, letter thank yous! Way more happy this week! haha not that I'm only happy when I get letters buuuut hopefully you know what I mean! Thank you to Alicia and family, Brenton and family, and Eric Schofield for the letters you sent to me, AND thank you to Eric for the package!!! I loved reading the letters, getting the pictures, and getting all the wonderful things in the package! Oh!! And to the Hymas family: THANK YOU so much for the shirt and thoughtful note you sent to me in Hermana Hymas's one-year package! It was the sweetest thing and definitely made my day :)

Wow. What an awesome week!! Last week was just wonderful. Complete with lots of storms here in Topeka! Sometimes they get a little scary! Good thing I have lots of experience with crazy storms from the ridiculous monsoons AZ gets in the summers! Buuuuut here the fear of a tornado is always in the equation so that makes it...fun. haha :) Heavenly Father heard lots of prayers from Hermana Hymas y Hermana Shumway asking for safety! Along with rain falling on my head, BLESSINGS in abundance fell on my/our heads last week.

Without our car, so many wonderful members helped us out. There were times when we didn't know how we were going to get from one place to another and Heavenly Father always took care of us and we were able to get everything done that we needed to and get to all of our appointments WITH a member! It was so wonderful. And we got our car back so unfortunately we won't be riding bikes very much anymore...I really enjoyed that!

I mentioned Sonia and Jose in my last email. They are progressing like CRAZY! They both went to mutual on Wednesday, a branch activity on Thursday and church on Sunday - and loved all of it!! We have a lot of fun with them and are really able to be ourselves. That is really a key in missionary work. Being yourself and being real. We got a family in the branch involved in teaching them/giving them rides to activities so everything is working out really well!! We taught them the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity this week and they already were living it, so no hurdle there. Sonia especially has tons of questions and you can totally see her just soaking in everything we say. She is reading, she is praying, and you can see her growth everytime we meet with her. Jose is coming along...hopefully we can get him reading and praying too. We are excited to meet with them this week and continue helping them come closer to Christ and prepare for their baptism on the 13th. We are so excited!! Keep them in your prayers please!

Transfers are this week! Our district leader Elder Oakey is getting transferred...that makes me pretty sad. Hermana Hymas and I are both staying here in Topeka, thank goodness! It makes me so sad to think that I won't spend my whole mission here - I can't even imagine leaving the people in this little Spanish branch! I just love them so much!

Thank you so much for all of you and your love and prayers. I can definitely feel them :) I was reading in a talk this morning that talked about having the gospel of Jesus Christ etched in our hearts. I love that word - etched. I hope that as we all strive every day to be more and more like Christ we really will have Him and His teachings become a part of who we are :)

Have a wonderful week, all!!

Con todo mi corazon y mi amor,

Hermana Shumway