ELKINS and SIS VAN TASSELL

Hey Y'all! 

These past few days have brought a lot of change! I absolutely LOVE Elkins! It is a super cute small town with beautiful country hills all around it and this time of year it's especially beautiful with all the trees changing color. The people here are the definition of redneck and I've already eaten deer jerky and a family we teach is going to make us Squirrel gravy!!! It's a very different atmosphere than Teay's Valley was but I love it already! We have a small ward with only about 50 active members and we've already been asked to give talks next Sunday :) 

I also have to take a paragraph to tell you about how AMAZING my new companion is! Sister Van Tassell is such a great missionary and I already know I'm going to learn so much from her. She is the kindest most fun loving person I have ever met and is always full of energy. She's from Paul, Idaho, right next to where Sister Condie was from. Good thing I can still use all my potato jokes:) This is her last transfer in the mission so I'll be killing her off soon unfortunately :( She is such a hard worker and I know that we'll work wonders with the help of God in this area!

Sister Van Tassell

We teach two AWESOME young families. One is the Mallows. The mom just got baptized in August and the dad is still learning more. We asked him in my first lesson there what's holding him back and he said he just hadn't prayed about it because he didn't have the time. We committed him to do so before our next appointment and Bro Richards (our ward mission leader who is leaving for his mission in a couple weeks and was baptized a year ago) bore his testimony about receiving answers to prayers and the Spirit was SOOO strong. At the end of the lesson we asked Bro Mallow who he wanted to say the closing prayer and he said that he would say it! Sister Mallow was shocked because that was apparently the first time he's volunteered to do it himself! I'm super excited to come back and continue teaching him. 

Diamond, a stray with such cool eyes!

Diamond likes to be our walking buddy.

The second family we teach is the Currences. They are super into hunting and are related to everyone within like a 5 mile radius of them. They're on date to be baptized in November and are super solid! Every prayer they have in our their knees as a fa

mily, whether it's the opening prayer or a prayer over the food. 

Justin: "I work at this Mexican Restaurant and it's really good! You guys should go there!"

Me: "Is it like authentic Mexican food or Americanized Mexican food?"

Sister Currence: "If by authentic you mean they cook it in the restaurant then Yeah!" (She was 100% serious)

Everybody: "Oh! Do you speak Spanish" 

Me: "No"

Them "oh...."

Something else I learned this week: When Sister Van Tassell says she's going to knock walnuts out of a tree, stand far far away. Otherwise you'll get pelted with falling walnuts. 

That's all for this week! I hope everyone has a great week and I love all of you!

Sister de la Cruz

Cute little farm :)