First, I must congratulate myself. It´s been the first week of me being out here in the field that I haven´t cried once. Okay, last week it was when I was sick and I would have rather been sick at home. So...it gets better!
Sometimes I have dreams where I can´t speak a lick of Spanish and I don´t like those dreams. But I picked up on a few more words this week, such as suyo or cierto. I´m not entirely sure in what context to use them so I´ll keep listening to my trainer. It´s funny the random words I pick up.
So in the mornings, something I´ve never mentioned yet... we wake up at 6:15 so we can have 10 minutes to read the New Testament before we exercise...it´s a mission wide thing. I like it because I haven´t been able to really read it since my first year of seminary. But I started reading it in Spanish this week alongside my English. Since this time is just for me, I thought first to just read in English, but now I do first in Spanish, and I only look in English if I don't know a word.
So...cool story. We have another connection in my area, with home. Jessie Tanner, go get Brandon. You'll see why. Our ward mission leader is Hno. Laulo. The other day he had us and the elders at his house for pizza. He likes to say Canada must be boring...all a joke. He said that he had a mission companion from Alberta. He took down this collage on the wall from his mission and I took a quick glance at it. ¨Elder Tanner¨ he said, and was about to put it back in the wall. The name clicked, and I knew Brandon served in Mexico City. I was just like ¨wait, wait, wait¨. And I was too excited to think in Spanish I said wait in English. So, there was a picture of him and Brandon as mission companions. And so I told them that his wife is a friend of mine.
This week. So remember all those contacts I told about for Tuesday? Yeah...no one was home. However, Hno and Hna Celiceo, the less actives from last week, they were at their house for FHE. Hno. Celiceo taught us about eternal families. And that night I had my first chilatole in what felt like forever. It was amazing! But...earlier on Tuesday we had our meal with a member in the ward who is 5 minutes from our house. I was in the bathroom for a minute and I came out and Hna said ¨Vamos a nuestra casa!". Okay, I didn't entirely understand why, but when we got to the street we starting running to our house. There was rain and thunder, and we had clothes on our clothesline. (we dry our clothes in the sun here). But those elements didn't click to me at that moment. ¨Why are we running¨¨ I asked Hna. ¨Nuestras ropas!!!¨ Yeah...sometimes I can be a little blonde.
This week, my favourite day was Thursday. In the morning we went to the Hernandez house to help Hna Cookies (wife of Hno Hernandez) and Karen decorate some items for the ward activity we would have later that night. They also fed us breakfast, which was nice because we barely have any food in our house.
We went after to visit a family that was referenced to us as a less active family. They´re a part member family, as they stopped attending their church before their youngest (who is 12) could be baptized. We're going to their house sometime this week for FHE. We hope for them to return to church and teach their 12 year old so the father can baptize her.
We were to visit an investigador after our visit with them and were hoping for a taxi to come soon. I said a little prayer in my head that we could have one to come soon. So when the taxi came, which wasn´t too long after, we started talking with the driver. He has a Book of Mormon, and knows it to be true. But he works all the time he hasn´t had time for the missionaries to come and teach him. He gave us his contact info. So that was a cool experience.
With our investigator R, our plan was to teach him about the Plan of Salvation. But he had some other questions and we ended up teaching him some of the commandments, like the Word of Wisdom. He knows English, so he talks to me in English and I teach him in English. Hna says that when I have the oppurtunity, teach in my language. That lesson really reminded me that we are here to teach people, not lessons. Why there is a guide such as Preach My Gospel.
That night, the ward activity was a belated Mother´s Day activity that involved the whole ward. There were different challanges to be done, and we were in charge of two. Hna, Elder Lopez and I had letters of the alphabet. Corresponding with the letters were Hno. Laulo. Hno Hernandez and Elder Boyd. When we flipped to a new letter, they had a theme and had to talk about something corrosponding with that letter. It was quite funny. But afterwords, they wanted to switch roles. anmd have us talk about how it is hard to be women because we have to be dressed up all the time. E. Lopez was the conscience of a women. Hna was worried about me because I don´t know everything in the Spanish language. Elder Boyd said I could do it in English, but that would be no fun for me. So I did it in the limited spanish I know. The ward had quite a laugh. It was fun.
The second challange was for some of the hermanos in the ward to play telephone, but charades style. They all faced one direction and the hermano behind one would tap their shoulder and act it out. We chose movies for them to act out. I chose Snow White. Pretend to eat an apple and fall, right?
The first Hermano pointed at me ... the only guera in the room and bobbed his hand for the seven dwarves. So the trend continued. I found it funny, so now I have the sign on my desk, and why I had Hna take a picture of me in it.
Sunday, for our third hour, we the missionaries were in charge of teaching the hermanos and hermanas together. I was slightly terrified because though I just had to speak 5 minutes, it was the most I would speak at a time in front of a large amount of people. I s`poke of the importance of sharing our testimonues with our friends. Either I did a good job, or the ward wanted to make me feel better about my lack of spanish, or both. But there were some people who came up to me afterwords that said they liked hearing my portion. I think it was good atleast.
Well, I look forward to this next week, where Hna says that I´m in charge of planning where we go and starting the lessons.
Keep being awesome!
Les Quiero Mucho!
And a Happy Belated Birthday to the amazing Ali Grant!!!
Hermana Jones
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