LOVE The Work and Rain

     Monday night we got a gua gua home from Azua and then raced home to eat a quick something and hurried over to our family night cita with M and her family.  She was in the kitchen the whole time so we ended up just visiting with her menos activo husband and old neighbor for about an hour.  Then, M came out of the kitchen with two plates completely filled with pasta and fritos.  I was honestly thinking they were serving plates for her family but then she pulled over two plastic chairs and told us to come eat while it was still warm.  .....  So she sat there and talked to us while we tried really hard to eat all of her food.  It was amazing, but easily enough food to feed ten people.  Hermana Rush was a rockstar and somehow polished her plate but I really couldn´t stomach it and was about to slide the rest of my pasta into a folleto when hermana rush said we had to go (thank heavens) we thanked M and slowly dragged our full bellies home.  It´s a good thing we don´t eat with members here usually or else we would be really really fat. 

      On Wednesday we walked the 3 kilometers to JF´s house to teach M again (we found out his actual name is A and we´re still trying to figure out why we thought his name was M...)  When we got there, JF was chillin on his lawn chair (as usual) but this time he had ripped out a seat from a car and set it ontop of his other chair. It was a really nice upgrade from his normal lounde spot.   We laughed so hard and he just looked over at us like whatever.  

gotta love the "lounge chair"
A+ for resourcefulness!! 

Then U (JF´s wife) came home from the capital.  She was in the capital for breast cancer treatments, which are going really well for her.  She also pulled down her shirt and flashed us her non-existent boob.  haha it was weird.   Then she whipped out this La Sirena bag (a fancy store like Walmart thats only in the capital) and gave me this yellow blouse she had bought for me!  It was the sweetest thing ever...and I wore it this sunday and she was stoked! 

The yellow shirt from Ursela

     So, the girls we took to conference.  They´re amazing.  Loadri is the 13 year old and is super great.  But Eveni is something else.  Shes the 10 year old who looks like a 6 year old.  The last visit we had asked them to read a couple pages in the Restoracion folleto and when we came back Loadri had read a paragraph (which is actually pretty good:) but Eveni had read the ENTIRE folleto TWICE.  As we were going through the lesson she would raise her hand and explain everything in detail, but in her own words, before we even got to it.  She told us about the grand apostacy and what that means, about joseph Smith´s first vision, about the importance of prophets, she even told us that the church is like a mother and her child... the mother gives her child rules and guidlines to help her child... she also explained albedrio and sacerdocio and talked about joseph smith translating the book of Mormon.  If she´s not every missionaries dream then I don´t know who is.

Me and Helen....what a love

     Also, Gabriel is super special too.  We thought a lot about how to teach him the restoracion and we ended up drawing a stick figure lesson of the whole first lesson and then we used the church pictures to help us.  The first hour we went to teach him was pretty frustrating.  He wasn´t understanding and we didn´t know what to do.  We took a breather and went back and tried to show each thing like a prophet and then show the bigger picture and he really got it!  After working slowly on that for a while we gave him all of our sketches and pictures and then he explained it all to us perfectly! We were SO happy and I honestly almost cried.  It was the greatest feeling ever.  On Sunday we brought the little joseph smith first vision video for him to watch and as joseph smith was walking into the trees Gabriel looked over and smiled and pointed and signed the words for God and Jesus Christ!!  It was the best feeling in the world knowing that he really understood it and even though he couldn´t hear the words we KNEW he could feel the spirit.  Gabriel is the best.  OH!  Also Elder Tapia (Gabriels older brother) got back from his mission on Wednesday!!  He served in Puerto Rico so he knows a lot of english now and he is so sweet and was working with us to try to teach Gabriel.  He´s a great kid and we are all so so so excited for Gabriel and Maria to get baptized together on the 26th of October. 

    Oly is getting baptized this Saturday the 19th for reals!  AHHH we´re so excited.  She´s the cutest thing ever.  

     On thursday it poured. We were teaching a lesson in the church and when we walked outside the church the sprinklers were on.  We walked around the sprinklers and were confused when we were getting completely drenched and then realized it was raining. ha.  

     But seriously we looked like we had just jumped into a swimming pool after 3 seconds of being outside.  It was insane.  We ran to our next appointments house but no one was home so we ran to the next one early and noone was there either.  So we ran to a members house and then our district leader told us to go home and shower and get into warm clothes or we´d get the gripe.  But it´s kind of confusing because we actually shower from a giant tank of water from the ground and so we ended up rinsing off the rain water WITH rain water... but that´s just the DR for you.  

     Hermana Rush and I were contacting this week when we stopped by a house with three people in lawn chairs.  When we started introducing ourselves the two people not facing us turned around and they were jehovas whitness missionaries.  It was super awkward and we said bye and ran out of there.  Jehovas whitnesses (testigos) are CRAZY.  Hermana Moronta told us a bunch of stuff that they believe and we were super weirded out.  One thing is that they are very adamant about not eating animal blood.  But that confused me because who does eat animal blood?  but whatever, if that´s what they want to strongly believe it is fine by me!

     On Friday we had zone meeting and my dad, Elder Klein, is dying this next monday so we all said our last goodbyes.  

My Mom, me and my dad! 

Then we got our letters and packages and thanks mom for the almonds and trail mix and gum and the cutest bangles for hermana rush and I!  

We got preached to by a crazy Evangelica lady Yesterday too.  We introduced ourselves and she freaked out on us and started rambling on and on super fast and loud and after 10 minutes I said  Sorry but we aren´t here to fight we were just here to share. and then she screamed that she was sharing with us and kept at her craziness and then again I said we weren't here to fight and we quickly ran out of her house.  crazy people.

    Today we woke up and cleaned the house and had morning devotional and at 8:30 we were done so we´ve just been bumbs the rest of the day and it´s been super nice.  Usually on Pdays we go and do a bunch of stuff but today we´ve just chilled and it´s pretty great.  The second we left the house to go to the internet place it started pouring rain so we grabbed our umbrellas and ran out the door into the flooded streets.  The rain is THE BEST here.  

LOVE the rain!!

    
   Anyways, It´s been another sweet week.  Definitely hard but great!  We also have tried to make only concon this past week and we mastered it last night.  It was great! (concon is when you make rice the dominican way and then there´s hard rice at the bottom)  

Love you all!

Hermana Huish