Special Trip To Boise!

A couple of Saturday’s ago we made a trip to Boise. It was a trip that I had dreamed about making for the past 9 years only I never imagined it would be as special as it turned out to be. A few weeks ago I got a message from someone that is very important to me. Her name is Solmary. I met Sol and her incredible family when I was on my mission. While I was called to serve on Temple Square (the most amazing mission in the world), about halfway through our mission we receive a second call to serve in a “normal” mission because our work on Temple Square is so different from other missions. I was called to serve in the Boise Idaho Mission! There is a small corner of Oregon that is part of that mission and that is where the Boise mission president sent me! I was so blessed to be companions with the only Spanish speaking sister missionary in the entire mission, Sister Hutchinson. She was incredible! She taught me how to be a “field missionary” and to truly fall in love with the area. She introduced me to Oralia(mom), Solmary(12) and Nubia(7). I instantly fell in love with them. Oralia and Solmary were the most recent converts in our little Spanish branch. They loved the sister missionaries so much for bringing them the gospel. When my 3 months in the “field” were up I had to say goodbye to the incredible family and head back to Temple Square. I was lucky to get to see them again when they came to the Square to see me and another sister that had taught them. It was awesome!

Sister Ribeiro is the other sister in the picture that taught them. I’m wearing a Mexican flag because I was giving several Spanish tours that day:)

They took awkward pictures of me giving them a Spanish tour.

This is Fortino, Oralia’s husband who has not been baptized…yet;) The girl in the grey dress was my companion at the time.

Yes, I gained a good 15 pounds on my mission…doesn’t everybody? Maybe not…

Ok, so back to the message that I got from Solmary. She messaged me to let me know that she got her mission call!!! What?!?! Yeah, 12 year old Solmary is now 20 and has been called to serve in the Guatemala City South Mission! The same mission Rich served in! That was such an amazing message to get but not only that, she was going through the temple for the the first time and wanted me to be there! It’s incredible to think that we have come full circle. I met Sol as a recent 12 year old convert and was able to continue to teach her family and now she is going to go out and do the same thing! So proud of her!

So beautiful and so grown up!

 

It was such a great day! Rich was incredible and took the kids to a really fun kids club while I was in the temple and then we all met at Chuck-A-Rama and he got to meet a few of the members of the Spanish branch that I served in. It was so good to see everybody and to see that the little Ontario, Oregon Spanish branch is still going strong.