November 29, 2021
🏡Trailer Park Fiascos🤠
Hey everyone! Finally I was able to finish emailing everyone back! (Also, sorry in advance this is going to be a long one!)
I really enjoyed what we did for this last p-day. We got together as a zone and had a Thanksgiving potluck. We brought potato salad and normal salad. The rest of the food was mashed potatoes, gravy, mac and cheese, rolls, chick-fil-a chicken nuggets, southern shock mtn. dew from KFC, Jarritos (Mexican sodas), and dessert. It was really fun and I stuffed myself. To burn off the calories we played volleyball. It was pretty hilarious and the ball was going all over the place.The rest of the night we did Hna. Marvin’s training. We are trying to catch up on that because we have been so busy. After that we had another video call lesson with Nicolás. We read Joseph Smith’s Testimony with him and explained more about how we received it. He loved it!
On Tuesday we had DCM and it was great. We talked a lot about working more with members and making the most of the meetings we go to. For lunch we went Moe's Southwest Grill. I had never been there before. Hna. Marvin and I split a steak and potato burrito with some other stuff in it. It was actually pretty good! After that we went and had a lesson with David. He told us he had messed up that week, so that was sad. He had been doing so good. He still wants to be baptized though! Then we went and had a lesson with Milvian. We are still trying to get her some more friends, so hopefully this next week someone can come visit her with us. Afterwards, we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner with the Whitehouses. I was sooo excited for this. Hna. Marvin got maple chicken and I got chicken covered in gravy. It was delicious and we had yummy dessert. We were very full as we taught English Class. Johany and Emilio came and they brought Dana.
On Wednesday we were able to meet with Caren’s family. It went really well and they understood the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ. Right after that, we had another great lesson with Doris and her kids. They loved learning about the Atonement and how they can use it in their lives. Then we sped over to the Colecio’s and had a quick lesson on the sacrament. Abril is doing really good after her baptism. She feels so much better and happier. After that, we had dinner with the Sims family and the elders were there too. We had tacos of course. I liked the addition of queso. Then we sped over to Marla’s house and set up another appointment for next week. She is going to feed us dinner and we are actually going to be there this time. To end our crazy day, we had the longest lesson every with Johany. We were there for an hour and a half! Hna. Ramirez was being amazing and sharing her testimony and explaining things. She helped them understand so much. We invited Johany and Josue to be baptized and Josue wants to. They said that they will pray about it.
Thursday was Thanksgiving!! Before we went to the Mejias for dinner we went and visited some people. Then we grabbed our pies and went to their house. When they said a Mexican Thanksgiving I was thinking that we were just going to be eating salsa, turkey, and tortillas. There was turkey, ham, rolls, potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese, potato salad, pasta salad, pumpkin pie, tres leches giant cake, apple pie, and pistachio pie. It was a ton of food. What was really cool is that David and Daniel came too. The Mejias invited them! We ate and were able to talk. For entertainment Hermano Mejia turned on the Luz de las Naciones compilation. So we all watched that while we ate. It was fun and it carried a good message for them. After that, we went and had a lesson with Bella. We brought her some pie and taught her about the “Beatitudes.” The scriptures are found in Matthew 5:1-12 and 3 Nephi 12:1-12. We talked about how we need to be developing all of these throughout our lives. We played a little game that was made about them and she kicked our trash twice. Then we went and taught English class. When we got there, there was a light on… the mother’s room. (Something went down a couple of weeks ago and I don’t remember if I wrote about it. The elders left us their key there and we were going to go get it so we could print some things. They called us and they said they were at the church earlier. They said a light was on, so they went and turned it off. When they left, it had been turned back on. We figured out that the mother’s light had been on and they went through the girl’s bathroom to turn it off. The girl’s bathroom has an automatic light that turns on, and that is the light that “turned back on” when they left.) We went in and taught EC and as we were finishing up we heard a toilet flush (they have to be flushed with a lever). No one was in the church on that side but us. They had to have been in there before we got there because we would have seen them walk there. We freaked out and got out of there as quickly as possible. I am not fond of scary things. We are just hoping it was nothing.
Friday was a fun day. One of our lessons canceled so we went to visit someone else when we turned onto Virginia's road. We saw her outside talking to another lady. So we parked the car and hopped out to go and talk to them. Natali is Virginia's friend and Reynold rents a room from her. Virginia was busy so we talked to them. It was funny because she told Natalie and Reynold that talking to us would help cast out the bad things in their lives, but she didn't join us. They are both from Vera Cruz but different parts. We read John 14:27 & 16:33 with them and talked about it. We talked about that for a minute and talked about how it wasn't a coincidence that we met. We asked them if they'd be interested in talking more. They said yes. We gave them a pamphlet and invited them to read it. After that we weekly planned and then drove to see the Sanchez family. As we planned last week, we came with all the ingredients to make pepperoni and marshmallow dessert pizza. It took a lot longer than planned, but the pizza was delicious. We were able to teach them a lesson and Mia who is 11 wants to be baptized on January 8th. We are hoping that she will be able to do that. We went and visited Hna. Huipe after that. We are now going to start working to help her and her daughters go to the temple. It will be a really neat experience. To end the night, we had a video call with Nicolás. We taught him about the Word of Wisdom and he has no problem with it which is awesome!
We went to the Pulga (flea market) Saturday morning!! We didn’t have any flyers so we went and printed some off in a library. We got there and it was very interesting. Not a lot of people were there and it looked run down. We were able to hand out all of our flyers and hang up some. I got a free ring, socks, and some candy. Hopefully doing this will interest some more people in English Class. After that, we went and visited some more people on our list we made. Then we had a really good video call lesson with Nicolás. He loves the lessons and is learning a lot. Then we ate leftovers with our sparkling apple cider we bought. Right when we finished, we drove to Bella’s for another lesson. Walter was there too! We taught them how the Holy Ghost works and how to recognize when they are receiving answers to their prayers. (Here are some really good scriptures. John 14:26, D&C 9:7-8, D&C 50:22, 2 Nephi 33:1, John 16:13, D&C 8:2-3) Afterwards, we had a really great lesson with Johany! She is really excited to start reading the Book of Mormon.
On Sunday, I translated the sacrament meeting this time. Your mouth becomes very tired after talking for 45 minutes straight without too much time to breathe. The talks were about Charity. 2 Nephi 26:30 says, “Behold, the Lord hath forbidden this thing; wherefore, the Lord God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love. And except they should have charity they were nothing.” Charity is the pure love of Christ. We all need to have charity but it isn’t something that we can do on our own. We need help from our Heavenly Father. It was really cool because there were 17 Spanish people at church!! It wasn’t even the separate Spanish sacrament meeting. Bella, Walter, Daniel, David, and Esteban all came! It has been neat to see the progress. It is happening but just very slowly. After church, we went over to the Bakers to pick up cookies from them. Sister Baker said we gave her cookies so we had to try her favorite cookies. They were chocolate peppermint covered cookies from Trader Joes. Then they gave us pizza and pie for lunch. She also told us we could come by later and pick up pasta from her for lunch today. After that, we went to go and find this guy named Eduardo on our born out of the U.S. list. We knocked on the house and had no answer. The bright green trailer was kind of sketchy. We felt like going to talk to the guy next door with the bright yellow trailer. It took him a minute to figure out who we were talking about, but he told us that Eduardo had passed away in a car accident about 3 months ago. We told him thank you for the info. and went to knock on some other houses. No one answered. We did get barked at by two dogs and a rooster all at the same time. We saw a lady and went and talked to her. She told us the same story, so we are pretty sure that he is not here. She told us we could talk to her neighbor, so Hna. Marvin knocked on his door. The first knock sent the door swinging open… it was hilariously awkward. It took a minute for someone to come to the door and he was really nice. We invited him to english class and to learn about the gospel. After that, we had a lesson with Natali, but she wasn’t there. She called us back and we rescheduled. She seems super happy to be meeting with us again, more than we originally thought. After that, we had dinner with the Mellors. It went really well. We had turkey enchiladas and they were delicious. My favorite part was the brownies and ice cream. Their kids are just the cutest and were showing us all of their Christmas decorations. We dropped by the Bakers and they gave us the pasta and we drove to Nicolás’s house. We had a great lesson. He didn’t make it to church, so he won’t be able to be baptized next week.
I just wanted to end with my testimony. I know that our Heavenly Father truly loves us and answers our prayers. The answers may not always be the ones that we are looking for or may come how fast we want. He knows what we need and when we need it. With this, patience comes in. Being patient is hard, but I know that it brings growth and understanding. It has been really hard not having the progress or growth come like a snap of a finger or flip of a light switch in my mission. My areas, the people I am teaching, and myself haven’t changed or become better that quickly. Answers and progress usually take time. I am so grateful that my Father knows what I need most and that He loves me enough to not give me what I want, but what I need.
Love you all! Espero que el resto de su semana esté bien!!
November 22, 2021
Baptism🌊 and Adventures🌄
Last p-day was pretty chill. We went to the mall with Hna. Maxfield and her new companion. Our dinner appointment canceled, so we Hna. Marvin got Burger King and I chose the lesser of the two evils, Chick-fil-a. We went and took cookies to a family and then our other lessons canceled. It happened to be a 35-40 minute drive there, and they told us they weren’t there while we were standing on their porch…
We had DCM again on Tuesday. It went really well and we learned how to work better with leadership in the church. We can’t do anything as missionaries without members. Then we went out to lunch at 5 Guys and my burger was delicious! I made two things of fry sauce so I was in heaven. Afterwards, we had a really good lesson with Milvian. We haven’t really taught her a full lesson yet because we didn’t know how interested she was. She asked us where we go after this life, so we taught her the plan of salvation. She was so happy to learn about this and know that this life isn’t the end. Then we went and visited Heidy and she wasn’t there. We went to another house that was about ten minutes away and they didn’t answer either. But, we did find a cute cat over there. We fed it one of Hna. Marvin’s dog treats. We sped over to English Class and after that had a REALLY long call with Pablo. It felt like we were going around in circles. He just wasn’t understanding the things that we were telling him, even though he thought he was. We asked him to give us a list of the things he wanted to talk about. He gave us a list and as we tried to explain it, we felt that if we taught him about the restoration he would understand it better. We started to do that and he said, “I think that we are straying away from the theme.”😂 We tried to explain why we were, but he still didn’t get it! This is going to be a long process.
Wednesday morning was super busy. We went and saw Doris. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and she said she loved the kid videos that explain it. After that we knocked on this door. The lady was a self referral. No one answered, so we went and sat in the car. We called her and she said she was at work. As I was looking at her address I realized we had been visiting the wrong house. Her house was the one before😂. Google maps isn't always correct. Then we went on exchanges!! I got to go to Columbia again with Hna. Stewart and their trainee Hna. Roth!! The drive was long, but it was super fun. Hna. Stewart was given a flower at the gas station and asked for her number. She told him she was a missionary and he ran back to his friend’s car and said “Go, go, go!” Then they peeled out of the gas station. We went and visited this adorable family. Their little boy Josue was just the cutest thing ever. He kept blowing us kisses the whole time and I about died. We made tortillas with them and it was super fun. We then ate the tortillas with this pork and bean stuff. It was good, but the meat looked interesting. She just kept giving us more food and we had already eaten dinner. We had went to Subway before this. Then we went next door for another lesson. We taught this girl named Luz and her dad Luis. They were really nice. We taught them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I invited Luis to be baptized in Spanish while Hna. Stewart invited Luz and they both accepted!! It was a cool experience. After that, we went and taught an English Class. It was kind of sketchy getting there. We drove down this path through the woods following these two guys back to their house. A ton of people lived there and their aunt(?) joined us too. We only taught them the alphabet because they knew basically nothing.
We ended the exchange on Thursday, but before we did we went to Manny’s! I flipping love that place. I got an elote and a blackberry colada. It was sooo good and worth the money. It has become my favorite place in Columbia. Even if I never serve there, I am going to visit it for sure. We drove to this gas station to meet up and we switched back to our normal companions. We of course had to use the bathroom so we went in and it had a sign on the bathrooms (pic down below). Then Hna. Marvin felt obligated to keep that and went and bought something. It was a minimum $5 to use card, so I paid for her treat in cash. The people working had a TV on the counter playing Friends. Needless to say, Hna. Marvin hates that gas station now. Then we went and had dinner with the Mejias. It was delicious. We had this giant thin piece of meat with rice and salsa. For dessert, they had tres leches, cheesecake, and pumpkin pie because it was Hna. Mejia’s birthday the day before. They gave me a slice of each one. I ate the cheesecake and pumpkin pie together (pumpkin pie cheesecake) and I didn’t finish the tres leches. To finish the night, we went and visited Marla, set up another time to come over with her, and taught English class.
On Friday, we had our interviews with President Monson. I learned a lot from it on how to improve my personal studies. He taught me how to feast on the scriptures and dive into them. I am going to start studying them with a specific question that I want answered. When that was over, we went and taught Doris and talked to her about baptism. Then we went and saw Caren and set up another time to come over. We are still trying to teach her husband. After that, we drove all the way out to Greer to visit the Sanchez family. We were going to stop teaching them if they didn’t answer the door. They opened the door and let us right in. We were able to develop a better relationship with them and talk about lots of different things. We are going over next week to make pizza with them now! Then we had a really long video call lesson with Nicolas. We taught him a lot of things and he loved it! He really wants to learn more about the Book of Mormon. Right after, we called Pablo and shared a scripture with him because we didn’t have much longer to talk to him. I was glad that he didn’t go off with all the questions that he has.
Saturday was Abril’s baptism!! The missionary who baptized her family flew out so he could baptize her. Hna. Marvin and I got to the church at 11:30. We swept the font, killed spiders, cleaned the glass, and then filled it. The baptism started at 2pm and it was neat. Abril looked so cute in her little white dress. We had pizza after and mingled. Then we went to the Stake Conference Leadership meeting. President Monson asked all this missionaries from Greer to Gaffney to go to it. I learned a lot of things that can help us out in our area. President McClellan (our stake president) focused on: how do we inspire? He explained the meaning in latin. In means into, spire means breathe. He said the answer is spiritually breather into. There are people in the world who are spiritually suffocating. The don’t know where to turn to. We need to feed them spiritually. If we don’t eat or drink water for a long time we will physically waste away, it is the same with our spirits. If we don’t pray, study the scriptures, and more we will spiritually waste away. They gave us Chick-fil-a for dinner. Afterwards, we went and visited Johany and her family. We taught them a little about the Book of Mormon and they told us that they were going to come to church. Throughout this lesson, Johany’s baby Dana was going through my purse. It was all that she wanted to play with. So we put it on her and Johany said that Dana was going to go out as a missionary.
Yesterday went by soooo quickly. It was Stake Conference! I was stressed that I was going to have to translate it, but they ended up having some members to translate it including Arlen. We didn’t think that we would get very many of the people we are teaching there. Daniel and Johany and her family came, as well as Hna. Sanchez, Hna. Hernandez, Humberta, and the Huipe family. Esteban and Hna. Rosas came and he told us that he was going to move back to Mexico. It is sad because we watched him grow, change, and become better and now he is worse than before. The talks were really good. Here are some things that stood out to me: The world needs more light, love, and kindness. We need to be examples of light and love is the key. Someone said, “If we want to share our light with others, we must learn to glow first.” As well as, to never take a moment for granted. Afterwards we worked on this born out the U.S. spreadsheet. We are going to visit all of the Hispanics in the Stake. President Monson said it will help a lot with teaching and finding people to teach. We went and visited a name on our Part-member family list. His last name was Hispanic but he didn’t speak any Spanish. I know that is normal, but I haven’t met someone like that in a while. He was very nice, but he made it very clear that he had changed his religion. After that, we went and had a lesson with the Huipes. Then we went and took cookies to the Baker family. It was really good to get to know them. We thought that they didn’t like us, but it went great. They told us their story and it was really cool. Sister Baker joined the church while their were dating and Bro. Baker baptized her. They said they would help us out with anything and invited us over to make Christmas cookies. We also took cookies to the Sims family and then went to our lesson with Nicholas. Sadly, he wasn’t there and only two of his roommates were. We quickly shared a spiritual thought and then left. To end our night we watched Luz de las Naciones en Español. It was really good and I would recommend watching it.
Hope you all have a wonderful week!!
Duo timing otra vez😜
November 15, 2021
Hey everyone! Super sorry that I didn’t send an email last week. I haven’t done that since I broke my collarbone. Last Wednesday was super busy, so I didn’t have time to finish writing it. We went to Top Golf!! This made me laugh because I went last year around this time. It was fun and I won surprisingly. This doesn’t mean that I am very good though. After that, we went to Sister Shivley’s house for dinner. She cut Hna. Marvin’s hair and then we ate potato stew and homemade bread. It was really good. I haven’t eaten normal food in a while. Then, we went and had a lesson with Jerlinson. It went pretty well, and hopefully they will start reading the Book of Mormon. He gave us this soda called Malta Goya. It was a malt soda that contained no alcohol. I love malt in my ice cream and whoppers, but this was disgusting! Then we had two lessons at the same time. Hna. Marvin and I taught Nicholas on a video call and Hna. Hanson taught Pablo on a phone call. Nicolas is doing good and loves what we are teaching him. Pablo has a lot of questions that he wants answered.
Thursday morning Hna. Hanson headed out to Columbia. Some other sister took her there, so Hna. Marvin and I started our day. It was sad to say goodbye and I miss her. She officially went home on Friday. It is nice being back in a duo, but the trio life was super fun. We had lots of laughs and crazy adventures. Daniel took us out to lunch at this place called Guacamole. I got beef enchiladas and they made guacamole in front of us. We taught him about the restoration after and he understood it. He gave us new strings to put on his guitar he lent us. I haven’t learned anything yet. After that we went and had a lesson with Milvian. She is just the cutest. We are trying to introduce her to this one family. Then we raced over to the Mejias for dinner. We were very full, but were able to eat. We ate this meatball soup and arroz con leche. Then we went to Heid and Manuel’s house. They invited us over to their baby’s first birthday party and to meet Manuel’s kids. To end the night, we taught English Class. It was nice because we had 3 new people there, and 6 in total. I got asked a question I never had before by Alex. He said, “Why is bread pronounced differently than beat, bead, words with ea.” We said it was the “r.” A couple minutes later, he asked, “Why is ‘read’ in bread pronounced in past tense?” I had absolutely no idea.
We went and visited Maria who makes pupusas on Friday. It had been a long time and we wanted to see how she was doing. She made us pupusas (they were heavenly) and we ate while we talked. She told us that we need to start teaching her family. I held the cutest cat ever and wanted to steal her. Her name is Hada which means Fairy in English. After that, we went and saw Doris. We read the Book of Mormon with her. She really liked it. She has a baby who has Down Syndrome and she is so cute. I got her to smile and it was adorable. After that, we had a lesson with David. He is doing so good and is so excited to get baptized. We are still waiting for permission. President Monson said it should take a couple more weeks. We taught him about callings in the church. At the end we asked him if we would be willing to have one, and he said it was a must! We can’t wait to have him join other lessons with us! Then we went and visited the Colecio family. We talked to Abril and Hna. Colecio. They told us that Abril is getting baptized this Saturday! That was a shock to us. We are going to help them out with that. Later. we went and saw the Huipes. They are so much fun. Every time we visit they open up more. We made bracelets with the girls and it took forever. It was good our next lesson had canceled. Then we got rejected by Juan. We invited him to read the Book of Mormon and he flat out said no. I almost started laughing. Most people aren’t honest to us. To end the night, we had a lesson with Pablo over the phone. Hna. Hanson was right, he has a LOT of questions! We were on the phone for an hour and 20 minutes. He started breaking out his bible and reformation knowledge. I had never heard it in Spanish before, but it was nice because I was able to answer him. Thank you European History class back in high school.
Saturday we did our planning for the next week. We didn’t have enough time on Friday. Later, we went to go visit the Delgados (Maria’s family). Here is another story of rejection. I got to see Ada again. We knocked 3 times on the door and no one answered. There were 3 people sitting on the couch right by the door and someone walked past it. We knew they could hear us. So, I picked up Ada and we went and visited Maria again. She told us all about how she lost her eyesight and the things that she is going through. Her great-grandaughter was there, and her mom came to get her. She was one of them that was sitting on the couch… Maria asked her why she didn’t answer the door. She said that she didn’t hear it. Her face said otherwise, so there was this awkwardness in the air. Right as we were about to leave, the Ramirez family showed up to visit Maria. It was cool because we didn’t even have to ask them to do it. Our next couple of lessons canceled and then we went to visit Leo and Ana. They had so many questions. Ana was super shocked that Jesus Christ visited the Ancient Americas. Leo was like, “How do you not know that?” They kept bantering about it. We talked about so many different things. Deep bible stuff got brought out too. They are excited to learn more about the Book of Mormon and more!! We got home super late...
Sunday was crazy! I translated for the Primary Program. Pablo, David, Daniel, and Sister Huipe came to church. We have been inviting her for four months and she came. I was so happy to see her there. It was cute hearing all the kids sing. David loved it! Pablo borrowed a hymn book to practice on his organ. That will be nice for when we have seperate Spanish meetings. Afterwards, we went and visited Esteban for the last time. He just isn’t progressing and doing the things that we ask him to do. He isn’t willing to do that right now. We told him that we love him and will return when he is willing to do that. I am super sad because we had taught him everything, but he has to decide to do it all for and by himself. Then we drove to Hermana Sanchez’s (Millie) house. We ate fajitas as we played Sorry with her and her daughter Genesis. We got to know them better and it was super fun. We also ate pumpkin pie covered in whipped cream. After that, we had a lesson with Bella. She is having a really hard time missing her husband. We tried to comfort her and gave her a listening ear. No matter what we are going through in our lives we are NEVER alone. It made me think of the talk:
None Were with Him
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2009/04/none-were-with-him?lang=eng
Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left alone nor unaided, even if sometimes we may feel that we are. www.churchofjesuschrist.org |
It is a really good talk, you all should read it. :) To end the day, we went and visited Nicolás and his cousins. We hadn’t found really anyone to teach throughout the week. I told Hna. Marvin that we were going to find 4 people at his house. Hna. Marvin said we were only going to find 3 (because there are only 3 other people living there). We get there and in Hna Marvin’s words, “Lo and behold, there is another one name Israel. He trecked from Guatamala for 3 months on foot/bus to get there that day.” It was pretty cool! We found 4 new people to teach. We taught them about pray and they loved it. They want to come to church and meet again!
Thanksgiving is going to happen this month, so I started thinking about that. I remembered a scripture in Alma 34:38 that says, “That ye contend no more against the Holy Ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.” I love how it says that we need to live in thanksgiving daily. We will be giving thanks this month, but it doesn’t mean that we have to stop after. We have so many things to be grateful for no matter what circumstances we are in. Our Heavenly Father has given us everything, so at least we should thank Him. What are you all thankful for?
That’s all for this week! ¡Les quiero tanto! ¡Cuídense!
