Coloma

Hello family!

I'm writing a little later in the day because at the end of our missions here, President takes us to a place called Coloma where we get to play the whole day--well, until 4:30. A group of us ( who are leaving within the next 6 months or so) got to the mission office this morning and watched a video about the Mormon Battalion who were sent to San Diego to fight in a war with Mexico in 1848--around then. I never knew about the Mormon Battalion before (like I'd heard about it before but didn't know the story). Turns out Mormons were the ones to establish the first post office, the first school, and the first bank in San Francisco. Who knew? After we watched the video, we drove about 40 minutes to Coloma where members of the Church had lived after going to San Diego. There is an old sawmill and a church and a cemetery, a prison and houses and things like that. We had a fun lunch and played bocce ball and horseshoe (which I am horrible at. My teammate kept far away before I accidentally kept aiming the horseshoe at his head.) We got to go to the river, and the water felt so good. It's October, so we thought it was going to be really cold in Coloma, but it was 95 degrees.

We are in serious finding mode right now. We have investigators, but they aren't really progressing. The good news is that we had a goal in the mission to baptize 68 people this month, and we baptized 76. So we have hit our goals 3 out of the last 4 months, which has been exciting. Sister Marroquin and I are coming home every night completely exhausted. I have been having seriously crazy dreams every night--probably from being so tired. But we're going to find them with time.

We're staying positive. Sister Schow keeps things in perspective. Her birthday is on Wednesday, and she will be 82. :) We have birthday surprises in the works. Probably isn't a good idea, but donuts in the morning (that's her weakness), ice cream from Leatherby's in the afternoon (another weakness). And lots of birthday singing, I'm sure.

I'm really looking forward to conference. I liked how President Eyring talked about "What's next?" I felt like that really applied to me, it being close to the end... what's next? And this weekend is going to answer a lot of questions. Hopefully next week we'll have lots of miracles to share.

Love you all,

kates