2014 Portland-to-Coast (part 1)

A week ago now, at 2:00 in the morning, I found myself facing my greatest fears.

Since I was about three years old, I have been dreadfully afraid of the forest. It's a long story that I won't get into right now, but just trust me, I had a bad experience.

Yes, I go to Girls Camp nearly every summer, and I have a great time, but it is rare that you will ever find me in a forest all alone.

One such rare occurrence was early last Saturday morning….

It was me with my little headlamp in the middle of the Cascade Range in the middle of the night heading toward the Pacific Ocean, walking as fast as my legs could carry me.

I am a member of a 12-person, 2-van Portland to Coast relay race walking team. This is the second year I've done this. Only, last year, I had the easy legs of the race. Last year, I dodged homeless people and walked the bridges and waterfront of downtown Portland. My second leg was at 1am on a windy road in the middle of nowhere with no shoulder on the road to walk on--thank goodness for little traffic.

This year, I was surprised to find that I had been assigned the difficult and very difficult legs. Yikes! Last year, I was in much better shape. This year, I had been a major slacker.

When I received the email with my leg assignments, what could I do? I wrote back to the team captain and sent her five simple words…."I can do hard things."

What I learned from facing those hard things and the experience I had was astounding.


To be continued…..

#1's Weekly Emails: Week #62

I was in the store today buying things for back to school, and suddenly #1 snagged in my heart. I suddenly realized that she'll be home in less than four months. Wow! I also realized how long it's been since I posted any of her emails.

I guess we can say, at this point, she's hit her stride. She's joyful in the work she's doing.

I'm learning that her funny titles all have meaning, but….only to her. Someday, when she's home, I'm going to sit down with her and specifically ask what they each mean. For this week, the title refers to the family she and her companion are teaching. They live at the top of a mountain. They visit this family often, and she loves them so much….Thus, the title.


And I will walk 500 miles and I will walk 500 more….

This week was another good one. It was quite fun :)

Monday: We just had a normal p-day. Nothing big happened. 

Tuesday: We went to Olongapo for our district meeting. It was super good. Elder W did a workshop on teaching and listening. It was super good. We applied it right after in our work. YAY! haha 

So this is my cool story for the week.... And it's kind of long so bear with me :)

We went to Matain, to the back of the only bar in our area to teach our investigator, H. She's 16 years old and is awesome. She lives with her 72 year old grandmother whose name is also H. When we got to their house, H the younger was at a birthday party. So we get to their house and no one is home except for H the older. So we walk in and ask if we can share with her, being the good little missionaries that we are. Her initial response was no, that's ok. I'm Catholic. So we said oh that's ok, this message is for everyone. So she sat down and told us to do so as well. And then she told us some stories about when she was younger. She told us about the time that she died for 24 hours and went to Heaven and saw God and he told her to go back and to serve Him. And then about her investigation in other churches when she was younger and stuff like that. And we just sat there and listened. And then asked if we could share with her again and she said yes we could. Sweet :) And so we started teaching her. And applying her past experiences to the Gospel and helping her see how the Gospel could help her. And as we were teaching her and watching her responses, we could literally see the Spirit working on her. Eventually she interrupted us and asked where our church was. And then asked what time it started. And we told her. She said she would try to come to church on Sunday but she wouldn't promise. We said ok, sounds good. And then we kept teaching until she randomly burst out and said, "Ok! I'll come to church on Sunday with my granddaughter." Whooooooa..... Wait a second.... Lets think about this for a second. At first, she said that she was Catholic. And now she's saying she'll come to church?! Awesome! The Spirit really really worked on her. It was super cool. Probably one of my favorite experiences in my whooooole mission. And the good news, she actually came to church :) 

And that's about all I want to share about my week. The C girls, C, Jo, and J, all got interviewed yesterday for their baptism and they're all ready :) That'll be this Saturday.

So yeah. I know that Heavenly Father loves us and He is preparing us to receive the Gospel. I love this work so much. I know this is the true church. Not a doubt in my mind. 

Thank you for all of your love and support. Mahal ko kayong lahat.

Ingat kayo!

-Sister Hess ;)