#42

Hola familia! This week has been a little crazy, but it has been wonderful!

Monday, our zone leaders told us that two other Hermanas were going to come live with us. Honestly, at first we were a little bummed, because that means that we would have to say farewell to our private bathrooms. But it was exciting at the same time. Tuesday, we went to the terminal to see who were going to be our new housemates, and HALF THE MISSION was waiting there too. There were a ton of changes. But it was awesome, I got to see HERMANA CHIL!!! and a bunch of other people that I haven´t seen since I´ve been able to speak Spanish well. So Tuesday was super fun. We went and they told us that we were going to be in a trio for a day with Hermana Espinoza, from Chile, and that Hermana Espinoza was going to train a newbie and open a new sector. She is a blast! She´s crazy fun but also an amazing misionera. And she speaks English amazingly well with hardly an accent. So left Wednesday for the training meetings, and Thurday, Hermana Espinoza came back to our house with a new gringa, Hermana Deforest! She   doesn´t speak much Spanish but she is so excited and her enthusiasm is contagious. So now we share the ward and the house with two new sisters and it is a blast. It´s especially fun for me because I feel like it was only weeks ago that I was in my training, not understanding anything, and giving my short testimony in awkward Spanish. It´s fun to see the progress!

Here´s  our housemate photo. Hermana Deforest, Hermana Isama, me, and Hermana Espinoza.

Hermana Espinoza and Hermana Deforest. They´re so cute and so much fun! 

Also, before the new hermanas arrived, we had to defrost their freezer, which was almost completely frozen over with frost. I hacked away at it with a dull knife, and we made a snowman. Hermana Isama had never made a snowman before so we decided to take pictures, put on christmas hats, and celebrate north american Christmas. ​  

These mugs were empty. There was no way we were going to be drinking actual hot chocolate.

Chelsea, I´ve actually used your scarf a lot! 

 Also, a week after I got here I found a copy of Jesus the Christ in English, and this week I finished it! It was awesome. I love that book. I cried. I´m a little lost now without a giant reading project, I hardly know what to do at night before going to bed.

This Sunday we had ward conference. I always really like the conferences because we get to sustain the prophet and apostles and I always get weirdly emotional when I see them sustain the brethren after reading their names in their Spanish way. I don´t know how to explain it, it´s just very awesome to see these people sustaining the same prophet and apostles that we sustain up there, and to know that they are called of God to be prophets, seers, and revelators for all of God´s children. I love it.

Oh yeah, an other experience with Ward conference. There´s a recent convert in this ward that is crazy for the gringas. Like, he calls us all day and if we don´t answer, he keeps calling. I´ve used the most straightforward way of telling him to stop, but he keeps on keeping on. Well, I was sitting in the second row with one of our investigators in the ward conference, and about 45 minutes into the meeting, this guy walked up to me and gave me a HUGE BAG of sweets in THE MIDDLE OF THE MEETING. I´m serious, the Stake president was in the middle of his talk. I don´t know if you can imagine how bad that looks, for a twenty something year old guy, to give a big bag of candy to a missionary, in front of the entire ward, and to make things even better, all of the stake leaders were sitting on the stand as well. I was ticked. Some of the leaders sitting in front laughed, but some of them were looking at me suspiciously, as if I was doing something wrong or had flirted with this guy. I don´t know. It looked bad. But I shared the candy in relief society and they were all thankful. The ward conference was interesting too, because we usually don´t have a pianist, but they assigned a less active member to play. He´s a teenager, has long rocker hair, and doesn´t read music. I think he´s in a band. But he played the hymns by ear, with his own bouncy contemporary style. It was funny. I liked it.

Well, I don´t know what else to tell y'all. We´re meeting lots of people, most of them don´t like us to much but we don´t get down on ourselves. It´s amazingly easy to be rejected by people. It makes it all the more rewarding when you find someone willing to listen. 

We tried taking a nice normal picture of our zone. It didn´t work out.