#44

 HOLLY STARTED HER PAPERS! Her availability date better be after I get home or I´m going to be TICKED. But I´m so happy for you Holly, you´ll enjoy serving in Chile or Argentina (I´m sticking with South America).

 

I learn a ton every week in this area. Even though this is a really difficult area, I am enjoying myself a ton. I figured that this week we have probably knocked on a hundred and fifty or so doors. Out of these doors that we´ve knocked on, probably 6 have talked to us and 3 accepted another visit.  Of those that accepted another visit, one of them was actually in their house for the appointment. But this has lead me to think of what I can say in the first sentences that will catch their interest. Most of the time, we talk about 1) eternal families or 2) modern day revelation. We are really blessed to know about the Plan of Salvation and SO BLESSED to have a prophet. People think about how cool it would have been to listen to Moses or one of the apostles talk, and we can say that we´ve listened to the modern day Moses equivalent and all 12 apostles. I´m really excited for general conference.

 

We had a baptism this Saturday! Her name is Rosario, and she is a hoot. She´s fifty years old, and super feisty.  She lives alone with her mother, who has Alzheimers, and all of her brothers and sisters are rich, so they pay her to take care of her mom, and that´s her job. She goes to zumba classes every night, and she´s been attending church the last 4 months or so, but she never wanted to get baptized. She said that she wasn´t too sure about the commandments, and she didn´t really see the need to get baptized, but we told her to put a goal of having a testimony by August 30th and she did it! She wasn´t really too sure of anything beforehand, but then we felt to stress the importance of the Book of Mormon. While she was making us juice, I secretly wrote READ THE BOOK OF MORMON and DON´T FORGET TO PRAY on a bunch of post-it notes and stuck them around her house when she wasn´t looking. She took the hint, and she remembered to read the Book of Mormon, and that´s when everything started changing. She started feeling sure of her decision to be baptized, she invited friends from her Zumba class to her baptism, she was willing to keep the commandments, and all of this thanks to the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon has power to change lives, and even though even Rosario might not realize it, we know that it is thanks to the Book fo Mormon that her life changed. It was fun to finally see her get baptized, because all of teh sisters already knew her and lots of them already thought she was a member, so when we invited them to her baptism they were all excited. She´s fun. She will be a great teacher in the church

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What else... Hermana Isama hit her one year mark, so we had a little celebration. I´ll send photos. It´s really fun to live in a house with 4 sisters, each night  is like a little 20 minute party. We have a few pounds of dark chocolate in the fridge, and I lost some mini bananas for a while, and then yesterday I found them, and I wasn´t going to be able to eat all of them before they went bad, so I made chocolate covered bananas. It was a mess, and the chocolate was super dark and not sweet at all, so I figured I´d put sprinkles, but we didn´t have sprinkles, but we did have sugar and I went through and dug out the taffy kit that you sent me Momma with the food coloring, and made blue sugar to put on the chocobananas. The final result was disturbing. They were mini bananas, so they looked like dog droppings, and the blue sugar didn´t really help either. But we all had a good laugh and we ate em up. that wasn´t really that interesting of a story but I don´t have to much to share this week. 

In order: Me, Hermana Deforest, Hermana Isama, Hermana Espinoza, Hermana Rosario, Rosario´s mom, Hermana Mireya (Presidente of Sociedad de Socorro), and unnamed child who decided that she loves me yesterday.  

 Let´s appreciate how tan I am please. I never get good pictures of any of my baptisms. But this is Hermana Rosario. 

 The wife of the bishop, the bishop (he´s super young), Hermana Pita, Hermana Karla, Me, Rosario, Her mom, Hermana Isama, Hermana Petita, Andrea, Hermana Digna (she is an amazing cook and the best relief society teacher I´ve ever had), Hermano Oswaldo, his son Matias (who is the most precious thing ever), unnamed niña again, Hermana Mireya, and Hermana Sandra.