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Hola, amigos!

This week I had my eight week follow up. All of us trainees and
trainers got together with President Mortensen. Us trainees taught
lessons to the other trainers and they gave us feedback. I had been
super nervous about eight week ever since I got to Texas because I
knew I would have to teach in Spanish by myself. But, I ended up doing
well! The best part of eight week is that I got my iPad! I can now
read my emails throughout the week, so feel free to email me whenever!
😀 I can still only respond on Mondays.

Our investigator, Jose, is still on track to be baptized next month!

We are super excited! His daughter found out she has a tumor this
week, so prayers for their family would be appreciated. The Elders
started teaching Kevin and Erick this week, and they agreed to make a
goal to be baptized October 15th! That made us so happy! This week we
started teaching a part member, Sandra. We are hoping to set a date
with her soon.

 We saw a cool miracle this week, one morning we decided to do our

studies at the church (which we never do!) This random lady pulled up

in the parking lot (we were the only people there) and told us that
she drives by the church every day and she always feels something. She
said she is really going through some hard things in life right now
and that she thought we might be able to help her. We started teaching
her the Restoration right there in the parking lot and she loved it!
Unfortunately, we had to give her over to the English elders, but we
were so happy we were able to be there and make that first contact.
She came to church yesterday and the elders are now teaching the whole
family!

This week the air conditioning in our apartment broke, so we got to
REALLY experience the Texas summer. But, we are living with some of my
favorite people in the ward, the Morgan family, for the week until it
can get fixed. They are white but they go to the Spanish ward because
he served his mission in Mexico and the wife has learned Spanish. I
love staying with them! They are very "Texas" (they have accents and
say all of the stereotypical phrases like "bless you heart") and are
in their 60s. They are the best. I wish we could live with them all of
the time because they have the best house and they make us the best
food!

This week I have been thinking a lot about baptism. We know that in
order to enter the kingdom of God, we have to be baptized. (John 3:5)
But, what about those who never had the opportunity to learn about
Christ? Are they penalized through no fault of their own? 1 Peter 19
tells us where Christ was during the three days between when he died
and when he resurrected:

18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the
unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the
flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

Christ went to preach to the spirits that were in prison. So, we know
that those who have never heard the gospel have a chance to accept it
after this life. I am so grateful to have the knowledge of a fair,
loving God!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Hermana Bettridge

My MTC companion, Hermana Taylor, and our trainers at semana ocho

 ❤️

Three Months!

Hello!

I didn't get to email last week because we had no time and no wifi! So, I will try and make up for it this week :) This last week I had my three month birthday in the mission! I am now 1/6 done with my mission.

So I am now part of a new zone, and Hermana Sheirbon is a STL! Now we are in a Spanish district, and it is amazing! And hermanas got put in Navasota so we don't cover Navasota anymore. Now we have our district meetings in Spanish and we can hang out on P days. Last P day we went ice blocking and had a water balloon fight. As you can see in the picture, Hermana Sheirbon and I got matching, ugly water shoes. The second picture is of us at our district meeting in Navasota. As you can tell, there is nothing in Navasota! 

On Wednesday I am going to my "8 week follow up." All of the trainees and trainers are getting together and us trainees have to teach the first three lessons by ourselves! I am really scared! But, I think my Spanish is improving. Last week we had exchanges with the English sisters and I was the one left here in the Spanish area. I was super scared, but I did it! Heavenly Father helped me out! :)

The picture below is of our investigator Jose. We set a date with him! He is going to be baptized on October 1st! He is from Peru. He is super smart and thinks really deeply about things. He is interesting to teach! 

Jose

Dinner at a member's house

We had a lot of miracles finding this week. During contacting time this week we looked at a map and prayed and asked Heavenly Father where we needed to go. We were led to a street. We only had time to knock ten doors. The people at those ten doors all answered and we got return appointments with all of them!

I hope everyone has a great week!


Love,


Hermana Bettridge

This is a temple that we are making out of pictures of different temples on the wall at our apartment

Transfer week - staying in Bryan

Hello!

This was a really great week! I don't have a lot of time, but I have a lot of pictures. This week is the start of a new transfer, but Hermana Sheirbon and I are staying together. 

Us with the free frozen yogurt we get whenever we want (the owners are members of the church)

  

Us with the Elders in our ward (we used to not be friends, but we are now!) 

We got to go to the temple twice! Once with my zone and once with our recent convert, Alicia. she got baptized last month. She is awesome! She is a really sweet, old lady and she was so excited! We wore matching shirts. She was baptized for her great grandma and it was really special. 

Us matching with Alicia at the temple

The sisters in the zone at the temple

Us in the car driving

A lot of people have been asking me about what kind of food I eat. I eat some interesting things. People here are from all over South and Central America, so I eat food from a lot of different countries. We get fed a lot of rice and beans and chicken. I eat a lot of Mole, which is chicken that tastes like dirt. This week we ate papusas with chicharron and it was the best thing I have eaten on my mission! It was so good! (It's like a pancake with pork skin in it.)

Us with Bianca (she made the papusas)

Us with Bianca's son, Michael

I think my Spanish is improving! (I hope so, anyway!) Tonight I am going on an exchange with an English sister, and we are staying here in my area. So, I will be the only Spanish speaking missionary at our appointments! Prayers please! :) 

Have a great week!


Hermana Bettridge


We pretended this week was a vacation (it seems like we live right by the temple, but we are two hours away)

Us eating lunch after

Lunch after the Temple

Our ice cream from sub zero, Hna had never been there

Hna and I

When we serve others, we serve God

I don't have any good pictures from this week because it rained everyday and I looked horrible,
but here is all of us at zone conference last week!

Hola!

This was a very, very rainy week. (which I love because it's kind of less hot, maybe?) A lot of stuff kept happening that could have made us sad. But, we stayed positive! At least everyday we would do a random act of service for someone else. (We brought the Elders Taco Bell, we wrote nice notes to people in the ward etc.) I felt great! I know that when we serve others, we are serving God. The Book of Mormon talks about this in Mosiah 2:17

And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.


I love being a missionary! Sometimes it isn't super fun to be walking around Texas in the middle of summer, talking to people about God when they don't want to listen, but I love the gospel so much! It's all worth it because I want to share what I know. The gospel has brought me so much joy and peace, and I want others to feel that too in their lives.

God is our Heavenly Father and He loves us! He knows everything about us and everything that is going on in our lives. He cares about us. We need to reach out to Him, and He will respond. I know He has blessed me with so many things in my life!

Have a great week!

Love,


Hermana Bettridge

A New Week

This was such a great week! I saw so many miracles! We were able to find so many new investigators, and it was so amazing!

Here is Hermana Sheirbon and I and some girls from our zone at zone conference! We all had animal print on. I know I am not wearing cheetah, but don't worry. Cheetah is still number 1!

We had a great zone conference last Thursday with President and he talked about faith in Jesus Christ. When I think of the people in my life that have the most faith, I think of those who don't just believe in Him but those who dedicate their lives to acting the way He wants them to. He invites us to learn about what we need to do. He constantly invites us to "learn of me" and "follow me."

This week I have seen that as people start to study the scriptures, their actions change. Even if we haven't taught them specific commandments, they will start to live them. Faith is when we act even when we don't completely understand. Faith leads to change. In the Book of Mormon in Alma 34:17 we read about how we "begin to exercise your faith unto repentance." As we come to trust Christ, our lives change.

This week I would encourage you to think about what it really means to have faith in Jesus Christ. I know that as we do what Christ wants us to do, and not simply what we want to do, we will be so much happier!

Love,

Hermana Bettridge

Here is Hermana Sheirbon and I and some girls from our zone at zone conference! We all had animal print on. I know I am not wearing cheetah, but don't worry. Cheetah is still number 1!

16, 16, 16 Months Left!

For anyone who isn't cool enough to understand the subject line, it is a high school musical reference. But I only have 16 months left! Isn't that crazy!

Here is a picture of a cat I got to share the gospel with while we were out. There were like twenty cats at this house. The humans there weren't interested, unfortunately.

This week was really fun! I left Hermana Sheirbon one day to do an exchange with the English sisters in the YSA at Texas A and M. That was interesting! The first thing that happened was I learned I would be biking! (just for the day until I went back to my area.) I wanted to die. First of all, it was 100 + degrees outside. Also, I wear a skirt every day and I didn't have my bike shorts with me. And I was wearing my $20 cute, impractical flats. But, I did it! I almost died riding down the highway (in a bike lane, but still) and looked nerdy in my helmet, but I did it! I had to keep telling myself how much I wanted to share the gospel, but I did it!


But, I did have a really good time. It was weird being on a college campus again, I felt normal! (despite the fact I was trying to talk to people about God) We walked around wheeling a huge whiteboard that said "If you could ask God any question, what would it be?" We had sticky notes and people walked up and put sticky notes on the board with their question and we talked to them.


We met a really nice student that just came here from China. He noticed our tags said "Sister" (well, mine said Hermana) and he told us how he doesn't have any siblings because of the rule in China but he really wishes he did. We told him that because we are all children of God, we call each other brother and sister at church. We told him we could call him brother and we could all be siblings. He was so happy! He told us he was Christian and had been looking for a church to go to in America. We invited him to come to ours, and I told him that our church was in China too. (which I only knew because I was randomly looking at mormonsandchina.org the other day #promptings) Anyway, he is really excited about everything. We taught him about the restoration right there because he had time. I saw the English sisters today and they told me he came to church and loved it. They taught him again and he is going to be baptized in 5 weeks!


One thing we talked about at zone meeting this week was how it is so important for us to know how God speaks to us. If you don't know how God speaks to you, pray to know how He speaks to you. Now is the time to figure it out. There will always be important choices in our lives we have to make, and we need His guidance. He loves us and wants us to communicate with us!


Love,


Hermana Bettridge

"I Don' Know What Week It Is"

Hola!!!


This week was hard, but good! I love being here in Texas, but it will be so much better in a few months when I don't walk outside and get hit in the face by super hot humidity! The other thing about Texas is that there are so many bugs! And weird bugs. I somehow got kind of used to them? But I am not used to cockroaches. We always have roaches in our apartment, even though it is really nice. We always scream and hope a neighbor doesn't come over and make sure we aren't dying because it is Texas and someone would do that. We always have poison spray (that will probably be illegal in a few years) on hand.


One big change that happened this week was that I am now an English missionary! We serve in an English ward (Bryan 1st) and an English branch (Navasota) in addition to our Spanish ward. The number of missionaries here is really going down. But, I like it! I like being able to talk to people and teach them in English! It is so much easier! :) And I think I am going to get an English name tag too, so that's exciting!


In addition to teaching people about Christ, we do service every week. We help teach an English class that meets twice a week and we volunteer at the food bank. I love service because when we serve others we are really serving God. If you want to be happier, go serve someone this week!


We have taught a lot of lessons this week. One of my favorite things as a missionary is to be with people when they pray for the first time. It is so sincere! This week we were outside on a porch, teaching these two brothers. It was hot, there were bugs, and we were not in the good part of town so there were all kinds of cars with loud music playing and sketchy people walking by. But, this was one of my favorite moments on the mission so far. One of the brothers was talking about how he has done so many things he regrets and how he wants to change and he wants to know Christ. We talked to him about repentance and how, with baptism, he can start over and become a new person. He said one of the most sincere prayers I have ever heard. I felt the Spirit so strongly. I hope he continues to desire to be better and he continues to reach out to Heavenly Father. I know he is always there for us, no matter what we have done!


I hope everyone has a great week! Let me know if I can ever do anything to help you.


Love,


Hermana Bettridge