This week has been great!! Here are my Top 5 adventures from this week!

1. Okay so you know how when I was little Crème Savers were my
favorite and I have recently been searching for them and haven't been
able to find them? Well anyways we  were at the store the other day in
the candy aisle and I decided to look for them and lo and behold they
had them!!! And the bags were on sell for 10 for 10 so I legit bought
every single bad they had! haha I know I am crazy, I will send a bag
or too home so you can share in the excitement. I was so happy that
they weren't extinct oh my lanta they are sooo good!!!

2. On Thursday we got to go with a few members of our branch and clean
the Nauvoo Temple!! It was so cool! We cleaned the sealing rooms and
vacuumed the endowment rooms it was awesome. And we got to do a
session right before that so double awesome! Man we had a great time!

3.Last PDay we went bowling with our District and it was so fun! We
all pretty much are equally bad at it but yes I did get a strike so
that was great. It was just a fun day!

4. We had a great lesson with our investigator Brandon. We were
teaching him the plan of salvation and had planned to talk to him
about quitting smoking. So were teaching him and he's telling us that
he really wants to be baptized and he knows that what we are teaching
him is true so were super excited. So anyways my companion started to
wrap up and I was like no! we need to ask him to quit smoking so I was
like, Brandon we are so excited that you want to be baptized and that
you know that this gospel is true but I'm gonna be straight with you,
we need to be following the commandments before we are baptized and
one of those is the word of wisdom. I simply summarized the word of
wisdom and told him that he needs to quit smoking. He paused for a
second and I was like this is it, he is gonna drop us. Then he was
like Ok if that's what it takes I'll quit.  Oh my lanta we were so
excited! Such a huge blessing! Man it was great!

 5. Creatures of Iowa. We see a lot of animals here. Its crazy. So far
we have seen countless squirrels and bunnies, a fox, a frog, and a
snake. Plus tons of dead possums on the side of the road. Its
ridiculous how much wildlife you see in small towns like this. I love
it.

So yeah that's this week. Everything is great. Our investigators are
great. We have 13 investigators this week and 5 of them are Spanish
speaking so that is awesome. 2 of them have dates to be baptized. We
are really blessed right now and have a fantastic area! Even though
the people kind of gross me out I just love them all. Mission life is
the best!!!!
Love and miss you all!! until next time...xoxoxo Ash

Hey everybody!

Here are this week Top 5 Moments.
1. We had interviews with Pres. and Sis. Jensen. It was great! They
are both super sweet and really chill. They want us to enjoy our time
here but also work hard and do what he asks. He is super understanding
and loving and pretty funny. Him and Sis. Jensen have one of those
relationships that makes all the girls say awww and want a marriage
like that when we are older. So yeah it was great. We all had to
prepare a training to give to the rest of the zone during interviews.
Mine was on obedience. I thought it was kind of silly cause this
mission is known for our obedience and were one of the most successful
missions. But yeah it was awkward but still fun. Good day.
2.We had a New Trainors  Meeting in Iowa City. It was so fun! I got to
see Hermana Clark and Elder Watts again. It was so insanely great to
see them again! I cant even explain it. So yeah we had that meeting
then we all went out to lunch at the Iowa City mall food court. I had
Taco Bell and then afterward we got ice cream. It was a good day. Oh
yeah and cool story. We were all standing in the food court talking
and this lady comes up to Elder Watts and asks if he has oil on him.
He says yes and she says that she has been on a long road trip and has
a long way to go and would really like a blessing. So they gave her
one. How cool is that? I think its pretty dang awesome!
3. So we have a limited amount of miles that we can drive in the truck
and our limit is 1200. Once we hit that we have to park it. No
exceptions. So last week we had two more days left in the month and we
hit 1200 miles. So we had to walk everywhere. It was not cool, Robert
Frost! But the funniest thing was we were on our way to Hope Haven ( a
place where people with mental disabilities come and learn and have
fun that we go visit once a week) and it is like a mile from where we
live but we got lost and ended up walking like ten more blocks than we
needed too! It was hilarious! But it definitely made me super grateful
for our truck!!
4. We got two new investigators this week. The first one is named Lyn
Bix. She was a media referral ( meaning she requested a BOM on
Mormon.org) and she lives in this tiny little town called Lockridge.
She is 40 years old but she looks like she is 20, seriously she has
nary a wrinkle on her face. Oh and in case you were wondering she
doesn't have teeth. That's a negatory on the teethers. Oh and that's
another observation I have made about Iowan women, a lot of them have
legit facial hair. I am not talking peach fuz, long black dude hair
that 14 year old boys would be jealous of. Anywho Lyn is super sweet.
She is Christian and has been trying to decide which denomination to
join. She has been to pretty much all of them and has been waiting for
God to send her a sign. She wants to be baptized and is a super solid
investigator. At the end of our visit with her we had a prayer with
her and she said it and in her prayer she thanked God for sending her
beautiful angels to guide her and she started to cry! It was the
sweetest thing ever! That was a great night.
5. The other new investigator is a 20 year old named Clayton Titus,
sounds fake right? He is a weird duck. He is black and wears black
nail polish, he refuses to wear shoes as long as the weather is good,
he has a girlfriend in Indonesia, and he is an Agnostic Christian
witch. Legit. He has an enchanted ring that helps him to parkour
better and he has a spirit guardian that is in the shape of a giant
raven. He can also see spirits but only when he is drunk and he was
almost killed by a witch hunter three times. He is really fun to talk
to cause nothing he says makes any sense but you can see that he
really believes it. He loves to learn about different religions and
has read the BOM but mostly just likes the stories in it.  He is super
interesting and wants to keep learning about the Mormon faith. So
yeah.

Yep that was pretty much my week. I still love it here and am having
so much fun and working hard! I love and miss you guys
tons!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't wait to hear from you next week!
xoxoxoxo, Hermana Rice

This week I am starting a Top 5 Things from this Week cause I have so
much to say and so very little time to say it. So here goes.
1. Me and Hermana Smoot got really sick and had to stay in bed for 3
days this week! It was awful. I'm not 100% sure but we had but we had
high fevers and stuffy noses and stomach aches and I wont go into the
details. It was bad. But I got two funny stories from it. The first
one is we texted our Zone Leaders and told them that we were dying and
would like them to sing at our funeral. So they left us a message of
them conducting our funeral and singing God Be With You Til We Meet
Again. It was to funny!! Then that night we both had fevers and were
bored to death (sick days are ten times worse without Pinterest and
Netflix) and we got goofy. We just cracked up and everything. Hermana
Smoot wanted something sweet so she got out a frozen cheesecake from
the freezer and didn't want to just let it sit and thaw so she got out
her blow dryer and thawed it that way. Yeah it was a crazy couple of
nights.
2. This week despite being sick we got four new investigators this
week. yay! We are really focused on two. Brandon who is super awesome
and wants to be baptized really bad. He just has two problems, he is a
heavy smoker (we come out of lessons with him just reeking of
cigarettes) and he is living with his girlfriend and does not want to
get married. They have a son who is 6 and he is the cutest thing! He
looks like Russel from Up and he draws us pictures every time we are
over there. So cute! Our other investigator we are really focused on
is Mike. He is a super complicated and I could type for an hour
talking about just him but basically he is a Christian but he doesn't
believe in the bible or the book of Mormon and he thinks he doesn't
need anything in life but a belief in Jesus. He has amazing faith and
love for Jesus but its not enough. He is a great guy and super
sarcastic, we have sass battles with him all the time.
3. So in case I haven't mentioned before, the members feed us really
well. And not all of it is good. I have definitely had to choke down
some nastiness. But most of its good. One member took us out to eat at
this Asian restaurant in town. It was delicious. The members name is
Alejandro. He is 35, from El Salvador but he speaks English and just
went through a bad divorce. He is super sweet and a blast to be
around. It was great!
4. I hit 2 months on the mission this week! woohoo! Only 16 more to go
and boy is it gonna fly by! I don't feel like I have been here for two
months I feel like I have been here for two days. Anywho the 25 was a
good day and a bad day. I made pancakes for breakfast and I burned my
finger pretty bad on the stove but I lived. The afternoon was normal
and that evening was great. We went to Bro and Sis. Moores house for
dinner. They are an older, newlywed couple in the branch. So sweet.
Sis. Moore saw my burnt finger and put some burn cream on it and
wrapped it up for me. We are definitely taken care of. Then for dinner
we had shepards pie and it was nasty! Luckily I had root beer to wash
it down with. Then for dessert we made huge banana splits! Totally
made up for the pie. It was so delicious!!
5. So a lot of you guys have asked me about Spanish and the Spanish
people in the area so I will explain. we are the only missionaries in
this area so we teach in Spanish and English. There are a lot of
Spanish people here otherwise we wouldn't be here. The trick is
finding them. We have a pretty big area. In our ward though we only
have three Spanish speaking families but most of them know English
pretty well so I haven't needed to use a lot of Spanish. One family is
from Guatemala, one from El Salvador, and one from Peru. They are soo
sweet and help us a lot to work on our Spanish. They feed us the most
and are the most loving people I have ever met. The Arguetta family
feeds us every Sunday. They cook traditional food and it is delicious!
Homemade tortillas and beans and rice and meat and fried
plantains....so good. We are blessed.
Anywho that's all I have this week. I love you all and miss you and
hope life is good! xoxoxoxo until next time...