Hoopes and Dreams: Holy Guacamole Batman, She's 1/2 way done!! :)

Pappa Bear,

This week was really good. I am starting to get into the routine but also realizing that my responsibilities take a lot more out of me than I anticipated but in a good way. I am finding that I am giving more of my heart, more of my time to praying for these sisters and more effort in the work. In bible park we meet so many interesting and different people, I love it.

This week we met with Princess, she is 18 and has been struggling because she is trying to get into college. She has studied and worked really hard but hasn't been able to pass a few entry tests. We were able to teach her how prayer and her relationship with Heavenly Father will help her to achieve all the righteous desires she has but only when she does her part. The spirit was there and she kept her commitment to come to church and she stayed for all 3 hours. MIRACLE. We also taught Bernard, he is a recent convert, he's probably 60-ish and has been through a lot in his life. We were able to invite him to come to church to partake of the sacrament instead of having it be brought to him, guess who also came to church? BERNARD. MIRACLE. On Saturday we met Betsy, an investigator, and a mother of a 10 year old daughter, Savi. Betsy had just had surgery on her bottom teeth and was in a lot of pain. We offered for her to receive a priesthood blessing, she accepted. In the past, the sisters have had a really hard time teaching Betsy so it was nice to have a fresh start with Sister Packer and I. When the Elders were giving her a blessing, afterwards she said that the whole time the blessing was happening she couldn't feel any pain. It was a testament to me of just how powerful the priesthood is and that its here on the earth to bless ALL of God's children. MIRACLE. Bruce is a convert as well, probably in his 50's, he has a learning disability but his heart is made of PURE GOLD. He has made a goal for himself to read 7 pages of the book of Mormon every day. As he has he's been able to understand more and more. We were able to teach him this week about how faith in Christ leads to repentance and how we need both faith and repentance to return to Heavenly Father. The spirit testified to me that the things we taught were true and it reaffirmed the things I knew were true. MIRACLE. Last night we taught a woman named Katie. She is a Muslim and has lived in the U.S. for 8 years. We taught her our purpose as missionaries and testified and taught her about the nature of God, how he is our loving father in heaven who wants the best for us. We taught her that we can pray whenever we want to, that the relationship we have with God is founded on prayer and that its the way we talk to him and feel his love. When we started she was a little shut off because she only believed in Muhammad but as we taught and testified to her she started to ask questions and her heart got softer. We will be teaching her again this week. MIRACLE.

We also had a lot of fun things happen this week. We go to 4 different district meetings and its such a spiritual boost! WE LOVE IT. Its so fun to see how all the missionaries in the zone are doing, how their testimonies are growing and all the miracles they are seeing in their areas. Its such a treat. This week we went on a blitz with the Spanish sisters that cover our zones, I got to go with Sister King, a new missionary and try to find people for them and for us to teach. As we were contacting, these two guys were standing on the balcony of an apartment complex. We approach them and since they looked Hispanic sister king was speaking in Spanish, they looked SO confused. So I talked to them in English.. Still confused. Turns out they were Arabian and the one guy looked like he was Aladdin in real life... Its gets better. As we are trying to talk to them about the plan of salvation we had to speak suuuuuuper slow so they could understand. They kept saying "slow English, slow English" so we were speaking really slow, trying to show them the pamphlet in English. Turns out they meant small English or in other words, they couldn't speak or understand English very well. Then Aladdin started hitting on us saying "Oh, so beautiful" and kissing his fingers like an Italian chef that was super proud of the pizza he just made... HILARIOUS!

Since I hit my 9 month mark this week, its tradition among missionaries to burn something. Elders generally burn one of there 12 white shirts that all look the same and sisters burn their least favorite skirt. I decided to burn a skirt that was left in the apartment since I like my clothing. This skirt was hideous. It was orange and long and fluffy, just no... So it got burnt. We have a fireplace in our apartment so we balled up the skirt and threw it in, we made sure the vents were open and all that jazz and we lit it. It was all good at first but then the smoke was starting to fill the room and the alarms were going off and we were kinda freaking out. so we got a broom and sister packer got her planner and stood on the table waving the alarm. Then we realized it would take a long time for the smoke to clear so we needed to recruit some help so we ran over to the YSA sisters apartment (which is two doors down) and told them to come over so all four of us run back to the apartment with a bucket and a dustpan so we can scoop the skirt out and put it on the patio. So two of us are waving the smoke away from the alarms and the other two are scooping this burning skirt out of the fireplace. It was super funny! Eventually we just took the batteries out of the alarms... should have thought of that earlier.... goodness me! But in the end we all just laughed and had a lot of fun and somehow still made it to bed on time. MIRACLE.

All around its been an interesting and fun week! I've learned a lot and am loving the time I'm spending serving the Lord. :)