Week 34

April 29, 2013

Hello Hello!!

We have had quite an exciting week this week! We had a lot of stuff going on, which is always good. We have been working in the creepy trailers everyday and now all the kids in the neighborhood know us. Every time we pull in we get about 4 or 5 little girls that chase after our car and give us a hug as soon as we get out. We just love it there! We have a couple of really solid investigators there that we are really excited about.

We had quite an interesting experience this week with a man who tried to bible bash with us for an hour and a half. It was a bit difficult for me to just keep my mouth shut and just smile and nod. I wasn't hiding anything though he could see it on my face. I have always been so bad at hiding my feelings on my face. Anyway we survived.

Ok funny story:  We were in a lesson the other day with a family we have just started re-teaching. They are super nice and are much more open now. So we were teaching them the Word of Wisdom because they had questions about that. Hna Barnes still is having a hard time keeping up, of course she has only been out a few weeks, but we wanted her to get involved in the lesson. So Hna Redondo wrote on a piece of paper (while they were going off on something about tattoos- written all in Spanish, “Ask them if they have any problems with these substances?”)  I passed the paper to her and she immediately starts to study it! It was finally her turn and I gave her the nudge. She looked up so innocently at them and said in Spanish “Ask them if they have any problems with these substances?” She read word for word what was on the paper! Hahaha! I was watching the 20-year-old daughter as she said this and she had such a confused look on her face. It was silent for a couple of really long seconds and then the mom finally says Oh uhhh, we drink coffee? hahaha poor Hna Barnes had no idea what happened until we walked out and Hna Redondo and I just lost it. She is a good sport. She is always willing to speak up even when she has no idea what she is saying. She is so awesome!!

It has been a super great week I love you all and hope you are doing well!! :)

Week 33

April 22, 2013

Greetings my dear family!!

You guys are all just my favorite people ever! I just think you should know that.

We have had yet another awesome week! I just love it here. We have been going back all week meeting the nice people of the creepy trailers. I LOVE that place! It is such a treasure. We went back this week to contact some more of the trailers and were invited in to almost all of them without even introducing ourselves. This makes me happy. Everybody we have met there thus far has been from Mexico.

There was a lady, Maria (of course...they are all named Maria) and she was really friendly and she told us she was from Mexico and I was teasing her and told her I was from Mexico too she was so excited and asked from what part. I always tell people the same place- Chipilo but sadly no body has ever heard of this place (its real though I promise!) so that's when they doubt it and I tell them I am kidding. Well she bought it and just took off talking for about 10 mins about how proud she was of me from staying true to my Latina roots and such...that was a bit awkward and I felt bad when I to crush her a bit and tell her there is no speck a true Latina in me. I have learned I need to be careful with this joke. On the bright side it means my Spanish is getting better. :)

We have been contacting a lot lately! Because there is 3 of us, we have the advantage of being able to take a member out with us and do splits so we can cover more area. When we do this Hna Barnes and I are always together because we like to practice for when Hna Redondo leaves us next transfer. I am so nervous about that. I don't know how I am going to do this without her! But I do have a testimony that God puts us where we need to be and with who we need to be so I know God thinks its possible so it must be. We do pretty well on our own though which makes me feel better. It helps that Hna Barnes is not afraid of anything, which really helps me to get over my own insecurities and get it done.

We are very happy and loving what we are doing!! I LOVE you all soo much!!!

Week 32

April 15, 2013

Helloo Familyyy!!!

Hey hi and hello there, my wonderful family!! It sounds like ya'll had just a great week!! I love to hear that you are all doing well and are happy! I'm a bit sad the house is sold but that is a blessing that it happened so fast.

Our week has been really great!! We have been really trying to be the best we possibly can be. We have really been focusing on getting our members involved, which has been awesome. On Saturday we had about 4 hours that we decided to dedicate to knocking. Knocking is really not a lot of fun but we were all just so excited about it for some reason. We were just positive that we were going to see miracles and find the people that have been prepared! It was so great, we found so many really awesome people! Poor Hna Barnes saw her first naked person open the door. Happens way more than we would like, they always think just "hiding" behind the door will cover them...it doesn't. We were contacting an apartment complex for a couple of hours and then decided we would go try somewhere else.

There are some trailers by our house that we call the "creepy trailers" because they are a bit sketchy. I was super excited to contact them the first time Hna Redondo told me about them and I dragged her there and the second we pulled in there were drunk men whistling and such so we decided to leave it for another day. Well we were there on Saturday and it was a dream! The people were all so humble and we had so many people set up return appointments with us and everything it was amazing! Right when we were about to head to our car we decided to do just one more trailer. A woman answered the door and almost immediately invited us in to eat. She was offering us tacos before we even told her who we were. We went in and told her who we are and what we do and she was really excited. She has been looking for something to help her kids be close to God. She mentioned how much she loves hymns and loves the feeling she gets when she listens to them so my companions and I sang I am a Child of God to her. She was crying through the whole thing. The spirit was really strong in the room. She is really prepared. The sad part was she lives outside of our area and was just visiting her cousins that live there. But she asked us to give her information to the elders where she lives so she can learn more.

I love experiences like that. I love being able to talk to strangers about our Savior. I love being a missionary!

Thanks everybody for your prayers and support!! I love you all!!

Week 31

April 8, 2013

MARRRNINNNN FAMILY!!!

I hope you all just loved Conference this weekend. I love conference so much! I remember being younger and thinking that I would die conference was sooo long and now I am super depressed once it is over. I got a lot of answers to prayers and just felt great about the whole thing. I love Elder Holland so much! He just knows how to get it done! I hope you were all listening when they were talking about members doing missionary work, not to be super sister missionary on you all but...DO IT!!! It’s a commandment!, that's all I am going to say about that. :) The temple in Cedar made me so happy! That is so awesome!! I can't wait to go to that open house!

Well this week was a great one. We have been really trying hard to find and to get our members involved which, both can be really difficult tasks, but I know God sees our efforts and will bless us in His time.

Training has been a lot of fun. It’s a bit stressful because I feel that I have to be perfect all the time and well that is just not possible especially when I am involved but I am learning. Our new companion, Hna Barnes is so awesome though. She has no fear and just does all that she knows how in Spanish. I really look up to her. I hope I can help her in some way too.

Recently we have started to teach a man who has been a 7th Day Adventist for 30 years. We were worried that he only wanted us over to bash with him but he has always been very kind and genuinely wants to understand. They have some very different beliefs from us so it has been quite the challenge to help him understand. Sometimes I wish I could just force people to do the things they need to, to find out if it is true, but there is only so much we as missionaries can do. It has been interesting though to study the scriptures with him in mind. I am just so grateful to have the truth and that it makes sense.

We had one investigator come to conference this weekend. His name is Andres. He is a sweet old man. He has an alcohol problem that we are working with but he has had a really rough life with a lot of regrets and he really wants to change and make things right. He is really great! We have a recent convert in the ward that also had to give up addictions to be baptized and they are just the best friends. It is so precious!

Anyways family I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!!!

Week 30

April 1, 2013

Well family this has been quite a big week. Last Monday, after we had emailed Hna Redondo and I received a call from President Hall. We freaked out because we knew that meant one of us would be training!! I made her answer the phone but quickly after answering she passed it right back to me. I am training for the next two transfers! I am extremely humbled by this opportunity. It is a lot of responsibility. The poor girl has a very imperfect trainer but luckily Hna Redondo is still here too!

So our new companion's name is Hna Barnes. She is from Nashville, Tennessee and she is 19 years old. I am learning so much more from her than she is ever going to learn from me! She is so awesome! She only had 6 weeks in the MTC to learn Spanish but she has no shame in making mistakes and just trying! I love her a lot! We are so excited for this transfer with it being the 3 of us together!

Well this weekend we had 1 baptism. Crazzzzyyyyy things happened with Yancy that just broke all of our hearts! She up and moved with her boyfriend and we have lost all contact with her. That has been really sad for us. She has so much faith and was doing so well! All we can do now is hope and pray that she is able to find the missionaries where ever she is now. However Hno Paez did get baptized. He has been investigating the church for a whole year so it was quite a big day for him and his family! We are so happy for him! He was baptized Saturday and was confirmed yesterday! He is such a sweet man. When he first met with the missionaries a year ago he was basically atheist and has really come a long way with his faith!

For Easter yesterday we had the opportunity to have dinner with one of the sisters that works in the office here. Easter isn't a big deal to Latino members in fact most of the thought that we don't celebrate it so we didn't have any plans for Easter and when this sister in the office heard that she was heart broken haha and just had to have us over. It was a lot of fun. She is super sweet and even have an Easter egg hunt set up for us haha (Hna Redondo's first). It was great to eat normal food too! I am so grateful for the Easter season we are all so incredibly blessed by the Atonement way more than we can even understand!

All is well and we are working hard at becoming at least a little better everyday which is not at all easy. I love you all so much!! 

The Trio: