Oroville Dam

So... there were a few worried emails about the flooding last week. I forgot to mention in my last email that my last area was the one affected by the evacuation from flood warning. The Oroville dam, which I walked one day with my zone and is a mile long, was not working and put the whole town city and the cities under it at risk so they evacuated! Fortunately, it was fixed and no home was damaged. Everyone was safe. I'm in Redding so we have flooding, but was not part of the evacuation. It's STILL raining! 🌊 it's been raining this entire month it feels like. It's the wettest season they've had in years. Guess the drought is over.

This week we went up to Shasta Lake to contact the YSA less actives that live there. It was a little successful. While we were there we checked out the dam. It was preettty crazy with all the water moving through!
We met this lady while we were up there and we asked her if she knew of the Mormons. She said oh! She would LOVE to be one! I was soooo excited to give the elders this lady's address and then she kept talking and she was telling us all about her dad who was Joseph Smith and how he started the Mormon church, but she never went and how he also started alcohols anonymous and his name was also Bill and Will. And her name was Diane, but it could also be Melanie. I was like oh my goodness. This lady was straight serious too! She thought everything she was saying was making sense. I'm usually good at being able to tell whether someone's on drugs, but I think this lady was sober. Maybe she had drugs in the past and she was fried. Idk. She was so crazy. Redding - where you have to discern whether drugs have already fried someone's brain too much to be able to teach them the gospel.

I went on exchanges on Thursday! With..... Sister Heder! My MTC companion!!! It was so great and refreshing! I learned a lot about how I want to go into my new area. I loved it. We had a full day of hardworking fun. It was so great. I learned so much from getting to be with her again. We were able to catch up and learn from each other's stories and past experiences. It helped me a lot. It was great to also catch up on each other's families :)

Friday was zone conference! We talked all about our focus of teaching repentance. I love this. I've really been focused on this this last month. I know that as we live what we teach - repentance - we will be more able to relate and to testify with power of the blessings that come from it. Again, my favorite quote right now - "When we comprehend His voluntary Atonement, any sense of sacrifice on our part becomes completely overshadowed by a profound sense of gratitude for the privilege of serving Him."

During zone conference, we talked about the fear of missing out. That is a huge reason why we might choose not to repent. Because we are afraid of missing out on some things of the world. Are we afraid of missing out on the opportunity to be with Heavenly Father again? To live with Him? This should be the question. Are we doing everything we can to align our lives to this goal?

Judith is getting baptized on the 4th!!! It is going to be great. We taught the Word of wisdom to her and she took it like a champ! She just changed. She said it should be easy. I am so proud of her! She has so much faith and wants to get baptized so bad. She is so excited! She was just like well, it's what I'm supposed to do, right? And I was like well, yeah! I am so blessed to learn from her faith. :D

Happy 31st Birthday!

I decorated Sister Young's corner while she was asleep.