Cate Mission Weekly Letters

Olááá a todos!  Another week flew by here in Corvallis! Because it was the start of a new transfer, we had our MLC meeting in Eugene where we receive counsel from our Mission President and his wife. They talked to us about ministering and always focusing on the needs of the people we are serving. Definitely applicable to everything we do as missionaries and something I am going to take with me after my mission as well. He also told us as a mission, this past month we messaged over 11,000 new people which is insane!! The work is still moving forward despite the pandemic! And at MLC I got to see Sister Warner my running buddy from Klamath Falls. It was probably the last time I'll see her until I finish my mission, because she goes home in March! So bittersweet for sure! We started to hear back from some of the people we are teaching which is really good! They've all been struggling with some things in their personal lives but we are hopefully going to get to see them sometime thi...

Oláá! First off I want to say thank you for all the birthday wishes! Crazy to think I'm 20 and no longer a teenager.  Well this week there was a lot of new to say the least. I said goodbye to Sister Moore who is now back home in Utah and now I am companions with Sister Bennett. She has been out for a year and was originally called to Iquitos Peru but never made it. This is my first time receiving a companion as a missionary, I've always been the one to get transferred. And she's never been a STL before so I'm also training her to do that, too as I've only been a STL for one transfer. So like I said, lots of new! But we are figuring things out! A few highlights from this week were helping a member of our ward prepare her flower shop for Valentine's Day, getting pie shakes with some of the Sisters, helping pass out free meals, and getting to see lots of my friends at the transfer spot. We are kind of at a stand still with teaching right now, all of the people that...

Olá meus queridos!! This week I hit EIGHT WHOLE MONTHS as a missionary. I feel like it was just yesterday that I showed up here in Oregon! This week also marked one year since I received my mission call to the Brazil Campinas Mission! Little did I know when I got my call that I would be serving in Oregon in the middle of a pandemic, but here we are and all I can say is it's a good thing God is in control! He knew how amazing Oregon would be for me so he made it possible for me to come here and hopefully also go to Brazil for a little bit too!  This week I got to meet with Jake and his wife who speak Portuguese and that was pretty awesome! They want to teach us how to make Brazilian food and help me improve my Portuguese! So that's going to be awesome. We also got to have dinner with our new friend Nicole! She is from the Marshall islands and is wanting to deepen her relationship with God. When she found out Sister Moore was leaving, she gave us both little purse things made fro...

  Olá!!!!! This was another solid week here in Corvallis! We started teaching another girl named Zoe and she's awesome! She has a lot of questions and we are excited to keep teaching her. Our other friend Zoe is progressing so well. We taught her about the Plan of Salvation this week and she loved it. She said it really aligned with the views she has of a loving and merciful God. She is so excited to be baptized and we're excited for her, too! We were also able to go out on exchanges with the other companionship of sisters on the coast which is always a good time. On Tuesday it snowed and I was so excited! Up until I had to drive our Corolla through the snow, and let me tell you those cars are terrible snow cars. Luckily, everyone in all of Corvallis doesn't know how to drive in the snow so we were going sub 15 mph everywhere anyways. But let's just say it took me 5 minutes to park the car outside our apartment because I couldn't get over a one inch snow pile in fro...

Olááá!!!! As the subject suggests, this week has been so so full of miracles. But the biggest miracle of all has to be our friend Zoe has decided she is going to be baptized on February 27!! We've only taught her for about a week now, but she is so prepared. We taught her the Restoration on Tuesday and I was able to tell her about Joseph Smith's first vision. Right after I finished, she looked at me with a smile so big I could see it through her mask and she said, "wow, that is amazing." Our next lesson with her was on Saturday and she told us she had prayed to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet and if the Book of Mormon was true and she had this overwhelming sense of peace. She read the Book of Mormon every single day since we'd last met, and she absolutely loves it. We invited her to be baptized, and she said yes!! She is beyond excited, and we are too!!  Another miracle from the week, we were on exchanges and Sister Laymon told me she knew this guy at a Gyro pl...

Hello everyone!!! This week was a pretty busy week for us! We got to go on our first round of exchanges this week with one of the companionships of Sisters who live out on the Oregon coast. I never thought I would get to see the ocean on my mission, but there it was! I got to spend the day with Sister Peterson which was a lot of fun. The coast sisters live an hour and a half away from us, so we don't really get to see them except for exchanges and zone conference, so it was nice to go out there for the day and see them. Unfortunately due to COVID we can't stay the night, but it was a good day trip at least! This week we also had Zone Conference! Sister Moore and I presented about Facebook Finding and we set some good goals for the zone that we are excited about.  In terms of teaching, we started teaching someone named Zoe! Zoe was in contact with the missionaries before I got here, but we had never been able to get in contact with her. We texted her on Thursday, and she finally...

  Hello everyone!! This week was a pretty solid week! I had the chance to go to my first MLC which was amazing! At MLC, all the Sister Training Leaders and Zone Leaders gather to receive training from our Mission President and his wife. It was a really great meeting, President Weekes talked a lot to us about differentiating between doctrine and principles which is something I am for sure working on in my studies! The other amazing part about MLC is that I got to see my friends! Sisters Warner and Merrill came up all the way from good old Klamath Falls so I got to see them and talk to them for a little while which was amazing. I love serving in Oregon because so many of the amazing missionaries I have met are going to be in Utah after their missions too so I will continue to get to see them! Tender mercies from COVID:)) In terms of teaching this week, we kind of had a slower week. We are over the YSA here in Corvallis, so most everyone went home for the holidays so it's been kind of...