Training

Dear family,         

Bienvengut! (Valenciano but that and "corespondencia amb las lineas tres, cuatre, y cinc" from the metro is all I know) So it's for real, I am training... AHHH!!! JK, it's actually going super good (super stressful don't get me wrong, but good...wow anyone else think I use WAYYY too many appositives? oh well). Going up to Barcelona to pick up my trainee was so fun because I got to see a lot of old friends from the CCM. It's so weird that the MTC was 3 months ago! It was also super weird to see missionaries I know finishing up and going home. There are two sisters and two elders from my group that are changing and then a couple who are doing the second half of some missionaries' training. We then had some amazing training meetings with President and Sister Pace which were so good. I know I say this way to much but I LOVE my mission president and his wife. They are some of the sweetest and most inspired people I have ever met. I am so lucky. Not to mention they are hilarious! After all of that we got assigned to our trainees. Mine is Hermana Walker! She is from Oregon and Allen, Texas. She is studying to be a fashion designer in Oregon. She's great! We are a lot alike and get along super great.

That's pretty much the most exciting news I have for you folks, pretty much all of our appointments ever since we got home from Barcelona have cancelled on us so we have done a ton of contacting which has been awesome! We have been getting so many numbers from people, God is truly blessing us for just opening our mouths and talking to everyone.

Today for Preparation Day all of us Valencia missionaries (12 of us), hung out in the chapel playing card games and mafia. It was actually a ton of fun but nothing to crazy to write about.

Sorry for the boring letter, I promise next week's will be better :)

Love you all!

- Hermana Tuttle

 

 

Some Poor Greenie

Dear World,

This past week has been CRAZY! It was Hermana Shaffer's last week in Valencia (which we knew was going to be the case for several weeks because she has been here for 6 months) but we ended up being separated for 4 days because of intercambios (companion exchanges). We tried to work as much as possible but with Monday: Preparation Day, Tuesday: District Meeting/Intercambios (Hma. Shaffer headed up to Zaragoza and Hma. Arana came down), Wednesday: Intercambios, Thursday: Intercambios (Hma. Shaffer returned, I headed up to Barcelona), Friday: (I returned)... it was a little nuts (sorry for the WAY too detailed description)  Intercambios were great. For some reason my Sister Training Leader changed when no one else's did down here in Valencia so Hma. Arana came down from Zaragoza to spend a couple of nights with me. It was great! She is this super cute, little Peruvian. We spoke spanish the whole time (besides a cita with a Nigerian) which was so nice. Speaking of that appointment, I asked Manuel (our recent convert) if he would help and he was so excited. He did amazing! He bore his testimony at the perfect times and when we asked him to share how he felt after he was baptized he said: That day changed my life, I am so happy.

My intercambio up in Barç was great because I got to be with Hermana Noakes but it went by super fast because we were pretty much running around the whole day doing little errands like getting her piso contract signed and me getting my DNI (yes I am officially legal here in Spain... no big deal that I was like a month overdue for it...Oops... but it's fine because I didn't get deported....YAY). I also brought back an English triple for Manuel, he almost cried when I gave it to him. He is so excited to study it. We didn't have a ton of appointments this week but the ones we did were great!

Well... it's official... I'm training! I am SUPER nervous but very excited! This means our suspicions were correct: I will be in Valencia for 3 more months. Woot Woot! I'll keep you updated when I learn more about it  (like who).

Love you all!

-Hermana Tuttle

Soy una Africana! (I'm an African)

Hola Friends and Family!

 

Hope everything is going well on the other side of the atlantic. I'm just living it up here in Valencia. Getting a nice tan, eating a ton of great food, meeting wonderful people, you know, all that good stuff. It is getting very hot and humid here and it's tempting to just chill by the beach which is what EVERYONE in Valencia is doing these days but I'll have to wait a little bit longer to do that.

 

So this week was great! We didn't have as much success as we would have liked. We knocked a couple of buildings that didn't give us a single contact. But even with that I count it as a great week because...(drumroll)... Princess got baptized!!!! It was beautiful and I am so happy for her! It is crazy to think that just a couple of months ago we were in a metro stop and a woman began waving at us telling us that her aunt, who is a recent convert, has been trying to find the chapel here in Valencia since she just moved here from Nigeria. We visited her aunt and Princess and now Princess has come to church (an hour away from her house)  every single week since that day including stake conference, she has given up coffee and wine, and she has been baptized. I am so excited for her. After she was baptized she told us that she felt different, she could feel a change and that she felt great and very happy. She was smiling from ear to ear. As I said last week, she made herself, Hermana Shaffer and me African dresses to wear to her baptism. Mama Africa (from Cameroon) loved it she was so excited when she saw her "daughters" dressed up like Africans, a Nigerian man named Wisdom said that we were now officially Africans, and Joy, who is also from Nigeria and is super sweet and hilarious (we tell everyone we are literally sisters that we just have different moms and that's why we have different skin tones) just laughed and said "Dad would be so proud." It was beautiful day.

 

We have started to teach Manuel the recent convert lessons and our last lesson was about the priesthood. He was so excited when we told him that he could hold this power of God. He told us about how he would do anything God asked and how it is his greatest desire to serve God and be a disciple of Him and a tool in his hands. He just kept saying "I will do it" and "I am ready." We also invited him to begin the Book of Mormon from the beginning and he said "I will do it, but I don't think I can read it in one day." We explained to him that it might take him a few months to read it and that that is okay but he replied: "give me two weeks." He is amazing. We gave him some pictures of his baptism and on one of them it said "We love you Manuel, Love your sisters." He just smiled and said that it made him "so very happy."

Sorry this email is kind of short, I know that I have a few friends who are entering the Madrid MTC next week to serve in Spain so just know that you are about serve in one of the most incredible and diverse countries on Earth. It is beautiful! The food, the people, the culture it's all amazing. The Lord is hastening his work, he needs more missionaries here in Spain because the people here are becoming more and more open and prepared to hear this wonderful message. I am so grateful to be here. Thanks for all of your love and support.

 

Love always,

 

Hermana Tuttle

 

P.S. Transfers are next week so it might be a little crazy and I'm not sure when/if I will be able to email.

 

 

Happy 4th of July!

Okay, there is pretty much no better place to be on the 4th of July than with the Tuttle family. But with that in the back of my mind, I decided that I would make Valencia, Spain the second best place to be. So after getting dressed in red, white, and blue, Hma. Shaffer and I decided for companionship study (where we always sing a hymn and then recite something like a scripture or our missionary purpose) we were going to sing the national anthem and recite the pledge of allegiance. We of course stood up and put our hands over our hearts and then for the pledge we called a couple other elders who are super patriotic and recited it with them on speaker phone. But that of course was not enough for Hma. Shaffer and me. We went on to sing America the Beautiful, My Country 'Tis of Thee, Proud to be an American, and Independence Day. It was so fun! We then decided that for medio día (lunch) we were going to have hamburgers, mashed potatoes, chips, and other American food. But then, an American family in a different ward in Valencia (reading our minds I guess) invited us over for lunch at their piso. I was totally going to take a picture of all of the food when we got there but then realized that that would be super weird and pretty much all of you saw what the picture would have looked like a few days ago. But basically I got to eat hot dogs, potato salad, frog-eyed salad, chips, chocolate chip cookies, watermelon, etc. It was amazing! I love the Wardell's they are the greatest!

So Manuel continues to be absolutely amazing! We met with him last week to do the "recent convert" lessons with him and afterwards we asked him if he had any friends that we could share the gospel with. He then went on to say that friends are people who talk about the gospel with you, that friends don't let friends drink and they don't talk about smoking, so God, Hma. Shaffer, and I are his only "friends". That being said he did end up telling us he wanted to meet with a few people he knows he just doesn't call them "friends." He is so precious! I remember the week before he got baptized an elder asked him if he was excited. He said "I will be the happiest man." He brought an umbrella the day of his baptism even though it was a sunny day because he didn't want ANYTHING to keep him from being there. It's amazing how much I have learned from him.

I have been so lucky to have grown up in the church all of my life and yet I learn so much from my investigators and the recent converts here. I'm impressed and inspired by their faith. Here the same people clean the church every single week. There is one man who is at the church cleaning or repairing or setting up or filling the baptismal font or whatever it may be nearly every day of the week and he is a recent convert. 

Princess is getting so excited for her baptism this week. She even made us African dresses. I love her! She is another person I am so inspired by.

Today we went to Oceanografic (kind of like sea world) for preparation day, it was great! I will send pictures next week. There was a dolphin show and a shark tunnel which were super cool!

I love you guys thank you for all of the prayers!

-Hermana Tuttle

Bon Dia!

Hi family!

So I'm still on the mission and still absolutely loving it!

I have decided it's really smart to have us missionaries email on P-Days because we have been able to relax a little and we are always in a good mood. If they had missionaries emailing home on Sundays it'd be a little different, I think. Sundays I am always so exhausted! Which is good. I love coming home from proselyting with Hma. Shaffer on Sunday nights and just looking at her and we both just talk about how dead we will feel (and then we get super excited cause it's P-Day eve and we make cup brownies or something else that's awesome).

This month we have been working especially hard for "Mes de Mil" (Month of 1,000). I think I might have already mentioned this but President Pace challenged us, as a mission, at the beginning of this month to find 1,000 new investigators (we usually find around 700 but where June was the "month of invitation" he knew we could find more). Everyday all of the missionaries in the Spain Barcelona mission would say a prayer at 10 am for this goal. We just got the results back and we found 1,013 new investigators! It was a miracle of prayer and hard work and I am so happy.

Last night we got to watch the rebroadcast of the mission conference from last week (we couldn't watch it last week because of the time difference but we had heard some stuff about it throughout the week). I am so fortunate to be a missionary during this time. It is so cool to be a part of all of these changes and innovations and this stronger emphasis on missionary work. I loved the call to action for members everywhere. I'll be honest when I was home I never thought about missionary work (except for writing letters to friends who were serving). Growing up I rarely talked to any missionaries in my area. But members are KEY in missionary work. This last week we had a member in our ward offer to come to all of our appointments one day even though they were super far apart, and it helped so much. I know things are a little different in Utah, but my invitation is to find a way that you can help the missionary force in your area. It's so important and will bless your life.

Oh and we have three new baptismal dates! Princess (13th, such a miracle!!!! we are super excited!), Oscar (13th), and Victor (20th). Woot woot! We are so excited for them! They are all such great people!

Sorry this week wasn't super exciting but I love you and am so grateful for your letters and prayers!

-Hermana Tuttle


Picture 1: Another picture from Manuel's Baptism with some of the other missionaries serving here in Valencia and a few members from Nigeria

Picture 2: Today we went to Bon Aire to go shopping at the outlet mall (primark, Zara, Mango, etc.)... I swear I'm a productive missionary most of the time...