SO Much To Do!!!!

Typical Neighborhood - they love blue! 

hey!  happy valentines day almost!  AND anniversary annika and michael!  a year?!

 

So... Brenda´s baptism is this Saturday!  We´re really excited and working with her a lot, reviewing and all that stuff.  She´s great though and really excited.

 

On Wednesday we walked forever to Christofer and His mom´s house and talked about the plan of salvation.  His mom REALLY wants to get married and told us she wants to get baptized and sealed... but her husband doesn´t.  it´s really sad.  she was almost in tears and we just didn´t know how to help her.  We´ve tried talking to her husband but he just doesn´t care and uh it´s the worst. 

 

We also cleaned Anna´s house.  We do that at least every week for her in the morning.  She´s so sweet and just beams when we show up to chat and clean.

 

On thursday we had nothing planned for lunch so hermana santana and I used empanada sheets and made pizza empanadas in the oven...  and hermana Ortiz kept saying ¨extraño... pero rico..¨ (translation - strange but rich, which means great!!) so hermana Santana and I have decided to open up a restaurant when the mission´s over called ¨EXTRAÑO PERO RICO¨ we´ll have pizza empanadas, and every dulce served with syrup (because hermana santana eats EVERYTHING with syrup... apparently they don´t have it in spain and she´s obsessed and eats it with bread, on cake, cookies, and would probably drink it if we had a bigger supply.) 

 

We worked with Wilson (recent convert) on friday.  Like no one was home and it was so frustrating so we went to his house and talked about his new calling as ward mission leader and read through PMG and chapter 5 of the red church calling manual.  He´s super stoked about his calling and is always so willing to work with us it´s great.

 

We taught Eduardo the word of wisdom.  He didn´t have a problem with it and was super tranquil (peaceful) and just sat there and we asked if he was ok and he just sat there still.  He´s just super bummed that his wife won´t let him get baptized.  We´ve tried teaching her but she always leaves... so yeah we´re kind of stuck with him!

 

On Saturday I made corn bread and chili for the hermanas.  The corn bread is another ¨extraño pero rico¨ thing for the other hermanas.  But for me it was so normal and so fall and I was in heaven.  mom, i miss your cooking p.s.

 

We cleaned the capilla after lunch and then went on splits with the relief society!  It was super great!  They showed us where like everyone lives in the ward and we visited menos activos and it was really awesome.  We also went into this area really far that we never visit and it was super dark and everyone´s houses were lit by candles and the colmados were actually playing loud music like they´re supposed to and i felt like I was back in Sabana Yegua. 

 

The Zone leaders came to our capilla that night for a meeting and brought my package!  thanks family!  Then I practiced the hymns for sacrament meeting and we went home. 

 

The other hermanas told me at 8:30 saturday night that we had to teach the relief society lesson because they had to help with another class and the teacher would be out of town... my companion was a little ticked and told me to plan it so i stayed up like until 12 planning a lesson about the plan of salvation.  Thankfully it was an easy topic, but I felt a lot of pressure because the usual relief society routine is to read straight from the prophet book manual for an hour and so I felt the need to give a real lesson to help them understand what a lesson should be.  So I planned my best, but I just kept wishing that my mom could be here to give the lesson because she´s really great at those and I´m not. 

 

WELL... sunday morning.  ate really fast, showered, got ready, and just as we were about to leave president drove by on his motor and gave us the sacrament white sheets to iron....  so we quickly ironed those and ran to church so I could teach on time.  We talked about the plan of salvation and focused a lot on the importance of this life and what we need to do now.  I took the opportunity to say that we have so much paz and comfort from the plan of salvation and we need to share this peace and knowledge with others :)  a missionary has got to do what a missionary has got to do..

 

Then hermana caguimbal and I taught the family history lesson.  A lot of the leaders were sent to our class so it was nerve wracking, but the instructors manual is super great and we just relied a lot on that to help us plan so it wasn´t so bad!

 

Then I played the piano in sacrament meeting and the C note doesn´t work and i swear every hymn I played used the C note at least 80 times.... haha but we have a piano now so it´s pretty great!! 

 

After church I zonked for a good hour while hna. ortiz and caguimbal made lunch.  Then we left and had a super packed day which was awesome! Sunday´s are never this successfull so it was a huge blessing.  We went to a contact family and they were super receptive and the mom doesn´t work and doesn´t have commitements on sundays!  hallelujah.  (OH MY GOSH speaking of hallelujah, hermana santana has an IL DIVO CD and they sing that song in spanish and they also sing the song with celiene dion and it´s so great.)

anyways, we visited jesucita and talked about family.  We contacted a BUNCH more and then went and had a meeting with president.  Our goal is the really strengthen the rama here, because it super needs it.  We´re trying to work a TON with members this week to find more people and strenghten their families and callings at the same time. 

sheesh though it´s been a lot of work this week.  over here the rama´s arent super strong so as missionaries we have SO MUCH TO DO.  it´s super stressfull, but it´s also a super great learning experience... but holy cow i´m tired.

Well... that´s about it!  It´s been a good week!  love you all and thanks for the support and prayers!

 

hermana huish