Crystal City is the new Little China!

HEY EVERYBODY!!! WOW!!! Another week has quickly come and gone! I hope y'all are doing wonderful and are happy and healthy! :) Monday was REALLY good! We met up with Yao and Ping (the Chinese COUPLE who we met and went to the Chinese fireside with us last Sunday night) and went out to dinner with them at a Mexican restaurant, and THEY PAID for us!!! :) They're wonderful! After dinner, we walked back to the church building up the street and gave them a mini tour of the chapel and talked about what we do at church and answered a lot of questions that they had! It was SO good! We even exchanged phone numbers, so even though they'll be back in China (and she's coming back to the U.S. somewhere to go to school), we can still keep in contact! :) Tuesday we stopped by and had a quick visit with Sister Essig (a lady in our ward who's also neighbors and friends with Jan), and then we went and visited with Jan for about half an hour. After that, we went and had interviews with President Riggs and then with the Zone Leaders. Interviews were SOOOOOOOO good and VERY insightful! President had us all do something that I think would be very beneficial for all of you to do as well! He called it "Woman (or Man) of Vision". You think of a vision for yourself, or your companionship, or your area; then you make a goal, or time frame in which you are going to complete this vision; you then make a very detailed plan on how you are going to carry out this goal and make this vision happen! It's been very insightful and uplifting as I've created my vision and all of that! Here is my "Woman of Vision": Vision: I am a Hell-shaking, POWERFUL missionary! Goal: I will be continuously striving and working towards this to be better and better! However, I will have at least some-what reached this by the end of the transfer (so, in three weeks from now). Plan: I will continuously work towards this and strive everyday to be better. I will involve ward members a lot more in my efforts in the work. I will always be happy and positive - even more so than I already am now - and invite EVERYONE to come unto Christ! Anyways, that night we saw Reacha and had a really good last lesson with her before she moved back to Maryland. Wednesday we had district meeting, which was good as always. Then we had a really good lesson with Keren! She is slowly but surely progressing in the gospel! I love her! She's wonderful! She really is FAR MORE than an investigator to me - she's a FRIEND! :) After we visited with Keren, we finished our companionship study, then we went and had dinner with the Metts', a couple in our ward. They're wonderful! I LOVE them! :) After dinner we went to the Potomac Nursing Home and visited with Alma for a bit. She's doing great, as always! :) She's approaching her year mark of baptism at the end of this month, so she'll be going through the temple in September! She's so cute and excited! And I'm so excited FOR her! :) Thursday we had lunch with Sister Williams in the ward, then after we were done eating, we helped her clean her apartment a bit cause her cute lil' family moved out this weekend. I'm really gonna miss them! They were only here for the summer, but I got really close to them! They're wonderful! I love them! :) Later that day, we had been walking around street contacting for about an hour or so, when I started to feel really sick and like I was going to throw up; so we had to cut our street contacting time short and go back to the apartment for a bit so that I could lay down and take a quick thirty-minute nap. It's all good. After the nap I felt a little bit better. I was honestly more bummed about having to stop working for a bit rather than feeling sick. Haha. Anyways, that night we went over to Sister Kuang's apartment and had dinner with her and her family and another set of Sister missionaries in the area - Sister Olson and Sister Schooley. It was really good! SUUUPER authentic Chinese food. I had some eggs, and I think there was definitely more than just eggs in my eggs... I'm pretty sure that there was squid and/or liver... Yep. That's right. I unintentionally may or may not have totally eaten some squid and liver... LOVE it. After dinner, we stayed and helped clean for a while cause they left the next morning to move back to China after a two-week trip in California. I LOVE Sister Kuang and her family! They're wonderful! I miss them already! Friday was weekly planning day, so we were inside for the majority of the day. That night we went and visited Jan, which was really good, and VERY much needed for both us AND her. I love that woman SOOOOOOOOO much! I love her husband, Jack, too! They both really have become like family to me! :) Saturday we had zone training in the morning, which was SO good! :) We read a talk together called "Thy Confidence Shall Wax Strong in the Presence of God" by Robert E. Quinn given in a devotional at BYU-I on March 1, 2011. I STRONGLY encourage y'all to look it up and read it! It completely changed my perspective on a lot of things! I LOVE it! Also, we're going to be doing this thing called a forty-day fast (it explains it in the talk - it's not a literal fast, besides the first day); and at the end of the fast, we're going to go to the Natts game (I guess it's a world-series baseball game or something? I don't really know) on September 13th as an entire mission. That'll be kind of a big deal. It should be fun to hang out with everyone in the mission! :) After that, we went to the Temple Visitors Center with Wu Biao (our recent convert) and his daughter, and the Metts' drove us there! It was SO good! That night, we were going to check on a less-active member in our ward who we hadn't met yet, and right before we got to her apartment, we met a woman on the way in, in the elevator. She got off on the same floor as us, and was a little bit behind us, then we appartently knocked on her door. She then went on to explain that the woman who we were looking for was her mother, but she was a member of the church as well, and she just hadn't been for several years. After she told us her name, I realized that she was one who was also on our less-active list. We had a really great experience and she invited us to come back this week! Miracles truly happen! :) Sunday was incredible! We had an impromptu lesson with a guy from Honduras who works in our apartment complex named Melvin! We were in the computer room at our club house finishing our progress record, and he was in there, on the computer, too, and he started asking us questions. We talked to him for about an hour and a half. Towards the end, he kept asking us questions like, "Are you married?" or "Do you have a boyfriend?" and "Are you dating anyone?" We, of course, replied, "Nope." to all of them. ...unfortunately I feel like he may be more interested in cute, blonde, American girls than he is in hearing the gospel. Oh well... It was still a cool experience! That night, we had dinner with a girl in our ward named Mary, and she had a non-member neighbor over as well, so we got talking to him. His name's Tyler and he's really cool! After dinner, another friend of hers who's less-active, and his non-member girlfriend came over as well, and we were able to have a really good conversation with both of them! I really feel like she's gonna join and he's gonna come back! Oh man! SUCH tender mercies! I LOVE this work!!! There's truly nothing better! :) I love you all! The church is true! :) Love Always, Sister Aubrie Orrock P.S. Aubs and Jessica Page: THANK YOU FOR YOUR LETTER!!! I LOVE YOU!!! PLEASE KEEP WRITING ME!!! Daddy: I LOVE YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH!!! Thank you SO much for your letter every week! :)