HAPPY PIONEER DAY!!! And SOOOO many blessings!​!!

HEY EVERYBODY!!! WOW!!! WHAT A WEEK!!! This week has been jam-packed full of a million tender mercies and blessings and miracles!!! Tuesday we had dinner with a member in our ward who is married to a non-member and they have the cutest little baby boy and they are the most adorable family! I LOVE them! I REALLY hope that now that we know them a little bit that we'll be able to start teaching the husband sometime! :) After that, we visited with Rob (a less-active in our ward), and it was really good! It had been a little while since I'd really seen him, so I was happy that we were able to visit with him then! He's such a great guy, I just hope that he will decide to come back to the church fully one day! :) Wednesday we went to the Potomac Nursing Home and visited with sweet Alma! It was SO good! :) After that, we street contacted and walked and walked and walked and walked - for like THREE hours!!! I kept on telling people "Happy Pioneer Day!", but none of them were from Utah - plus they were definitely African-American or Hispanic, so they just looked at me confused and like I was crazy. It's fine. I'm proud of my Utah heritage and pioneer ancestory! :) Then that night we had a really powerful lesson with Reacha! A member of our ward came with us (her name's Natalie), and it really added SOOOO much to the lesson! Reacha even told us that night that she definitely wants to get baptized!!! She just wants to go to church first and think and pray about a date! WOO HOO!!! I REALLY hope this really happens!!! I love Reacha SO much!!! Thursday we did a lot of street contacting, too. We walked to dinner at a member's house (about a half hour walk from where we live), and dinner was really good! After dinner, we walked to the Chamber's home and dropped in and said hi to them and visited with them for about an hour or so! It was SO good (as always)! And they, of course, couldn't leave us empty-handed, so they had us leave with a goodie bag! I LOVE them!!! :) That night, we stopped by the apartment complex that Negeset (the Ethiopian woman who Sister Woodbury and I check on and talk to about once a week) works at and visited with her very briefly. She's SO sweet! She gave us both a hug and a kiss on the cheek when we came in! :) Friday we were able to have a lesson with every single one of our progressing investigators - so three lessons in one day!!! That was SOOOOO exciting! We had a lesson with Reacha earlier that day, then we saw Jan, then we saw Keren that night! And all of the lessons were SOOOOO good!!! Jan had actually been studying in the Book of Mormon since we last saw her on Monday and she was LOADED with questions for us! But they were all totally valid and good questions that showed us that she's genuinely interested in this and seeking truth! It was SUCH a powerful lesson! :) Also - in the middle of Reacha and Jan's lessons, we stopped by and saw a member in our ward named Sister Palkki because she happened to have some old clothes that she wanted to give to us! I just inherited a new rainbow-striped maxi dress and a black maxi skirt! Plus she gave us two ADORABLE cardigans to share! Our ward is AMAZING! :) Saturday was... interesting... Haha! We had been planning on going to a stake activity (it was a Pioneer Day Picnic - OF COURSE I wanna go to that!!!) and we were planning on a couple of our investigators coming, but then at the last second, neither of them were able to show. However, we still felt like we should go and mingle with the ward members - particularly because Sister Palkki told us that she has a couple of non-member friends who would probably attend who she wanted us to meet. So anyways, long story short, we were NOT meant to go to that picnic for whatever reason! Somehow tomtom (my GPS) got us going in the wrong direction, and we may or may not have temporarily COMPLETELY accidentally crossed the Potomac River and left our mission for a minute or two... I PROMISE it was an accident! That's how close we are to DC! If we just miss ONE exit, then we cross the Potomac! So now I've learned! NEVER go that way - even if tomtom says so! Sister Akin and I were FREAKING out! ...but laughing hysterically at the same time. But it really is funny how truly guilty we felt leaving our mission, even though it really was a complete accident! Later that day, we went over to Keren's apartment and I CUT HER HAIR!!! She asked me to just cut her bangs at first, then after she saw how great her bangs looked, she asked to trim the rest of her hair, so I did, and it looks FANTASTIC! I had SO much fun doing that! :D After that, we visited Sister Kuang shortly, and then we went back over to Keren's and waited about fifteen minutes or so until her ride came to pick all of us up and take us to a BAPTISM!!! Yep. Keren told US about a girl's baptism and invited US to go with HER. ...kinda the opposite of how it's supposed to be, but she was invited to that by some guy in the single's ward and she told us about it. So anyways, we went to the baptism and it was SO good! Keren had a lot of questions about our church, but in a good way! I really hope that she gets baptized soon! I LOVE her! :) Sunday (yesterday) was SUCH an incredible day!!! We witnessed the Lord's hand in our lives then more than ever before! it was a day packed full of Chinese people! It was AWESOME!!! At church we met a new investigator from China who Sister Lamborn and Sister Kreamer met street contacting and had a lesson with a few days before! Then after church we visited with our two newest recent converts - Sister Kuang and Wu Biao - and they both are doing WONDERFUL, as always! Then later that night, while we were street contacting by the 23rd street chapel, waiting to go in for the Chinese fireside put on by the Chinese Elders, another miracle happened!!! We street contacted into a father and daughter who are on vacation here from China, and after only talking to them for about ten minutes or so, we invited them to the fireside and they said "Ok"! So they came to the fireside and stayed the whole time and they told us that they enjoyed every minute of it! The daughter, her name's Yao, even told Sister Akin, "I think that everything that they talked about is true." YES!!! SOOOOOOOOO amazing!!! Then the father, Ping, wanted to meet with us again and even insisted that they take us out to dinner on him! So we're going out to dinner with Yao and Ping tonight and we're also going to teach them some more things about the gospel! I know that this doesn't count as far as any key indicators go (except for AR's, of course), but I know that I am helping to bring children of God closer to Him and to Christ, and that is what I am out here to do, so I am SO excited! :) And the best part is, Yao will be coming back to the U.S. to go to school, so I'm sure that she'll continue to look into it more when she gets back to the states! :) The new Chinese investigator and his wife (their names are Hong Bin and Yu) both came to the Chinese fireside tonight, too! So Sister Akin and I had too many investigators there to sit with them all together, so I sat with Hong Bin and Yu, and she sat with Ping and Yao in the row right behind me! It was SO incredible!!! :D I LOVE being a missionary!!! I LOVE Crystal City (Arlington) and I LOVE Sister Akin! There is no doubt in my mind that this is truly the Lord's work, cause all of that was definitely divinely inspired - where I am, and who my companion is, and who I've met - EVERYTHING! Sister Akin and I have talked about it, and we both feel like there's something more to our companionship than just learning from each other; we truly feel like together we have SO much power to be SUCH strong, powerful power-house hell-shaking missionaries!!! :) THE CHURCH IS SOOOOOOOOOO TRUE!!! :D I love you all!!! Love always, Sister Aubrie Orrock P.S. Aubs - THANK YOU SOOOOOOOO much for your letter!!! I love you SOOOOOOOO much, mi hermana!!! Daddy - Yes! I got the birthday letter and money! THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOO MUCH AGAIN!!! I LOVE YOU!!! :D