After getting our companion assignments and having some meetings with the Mission President, my trainer, Sister Zaldivar, and I headed to our area, Chula Vista, California. It was literally on the US-Mexican border at the last USA exit.
The next few weeks were a blur of meeting new people, trying to speak Spanish, and falling asleep exhausted every night. This time was full of paradoxes: feeling inadequate, feeling the love of the Savior, loving the people while being terrified of them speaking to me in Spanish, eating a lot of new food and loving most of it, and in general, trying to figure out my place in the Lord’s Kingdom as a sister missionary.
The people we met on a daily basis were so kind, and I couldn’t believe how beautiful San Diego was. We were split between an English and a Spanish congregation, which means our time was spent half speaking in Spanish and half in English.
Sister Zaldivar was such a wonderful trainer! She was patient and kind and hard working. She taught me everything I needed to know at that time. We were both in that area for the first time, so we spent time getting to know our way around and meeting the people. After only our first day together, it was obvious that we were going to be best friends.
On one of our first preparation days, we met as a district at a park to play sports and get to know each other. Someone asked Elder Bott, what the significance of our district was–why had we been put together in such an interesting mix of missionaries? He just laughed and didn’t say anything. I will never forget- Elder Moreno, laughed and said to all of us, “I bet we’re going to be the District 2, and they’re going to come film us or something.” Sister Zaldivar and I laughed at how ridiculous that was.
We all knew what The District was. The Church had filmed 6 missionaries in San Antonio, Texas, reality TV style. I had watched the videos in the MTC and loved seeing real missionaries doing missionary work.
A few weeks later, we had a zone conference.
When we got to zone conference, President Donaldson asked us to stay behind after it ended. There were some people visiting from the missionary department and one of them was Brother Allen, who had spoken in the MTC just a few weeks before when I had been there. When zone conference ended, we all made our way to the high council room.
I was not prepared for what happened next.
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