09.03.2014 Email

Holy Crap. I seriously did not think this day would ever come! So we didn't email on Monday because today we went to the temple!! It was so cool and so fun and I am so glad that we got to go! One of the members here gave us a ride to Mesa, we had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning in order to meet and drive up there. So yeah i guess you could say I am totally dead right now. But it was definitely worth it. I wish we could go to the temple every week! But of course not, because that would just be too great!

This week has been a SUPER AWESOME week of being a missionary though, wow. We have met so many new people!! (Of course some really random and interesting people thrown in there too.) 
One of the nights we went out to this little (basically ghost town) called Standfield. We were trying to find a couple less actives and old investigators that lived there. But in the mean time got eaten alive by mosquitoes. We didn't have much success finding people and it's probably because people looked out their windows and saw two girls dressed in skirts dancing and jumping around smacking themselves- and occasionally each other. I swear to you I have never had so many mosquito bites on my body before! That night when we got home we counted, and i literally have 34 bites on my legs. My companion has like 50. It's horrible! So now as we walk around it probably looks like we have some disease growing on our legs!

We had some MAJOR miracles this week! Pedro is still continuing to come to church ever Sunday, and we've had some super awesome lessons with him! AND he is getting baptized on the 20th of September!! I am so freaking excited and happy for him! It basically took all that i had to contain myself and not jump up out of my chair to hug him! He is doing so good though, and he is really excited to get baptized!

So we spent basically all of last week trying to find this girl named Vanessa. She told us we could come back last Monday, but then when we went back she wasn't there, which was a huge bummer! Then right as soon as we were about to stop going by, we finally were able to see her and have a quick lesson with her. She is so cute! She is our age and she has a little boy, apparently her husband is in jail. She is so excited to be meeting with us! We went back the next day and taught the restoration. It was really one of the BEST lessons I have ever taught!! The spirit was so strong and at the end, she accepted to get baptized on the 19th of September! I have not ever met anyone more prepared than she is, she told us she already believes it all because it all makes sense! So yeah, pretty stoked about that. We are going to get ice cream with her this Friday!

Our other investigator we have on date is Marianne, she is super awesome too, we FINALLY got her to come to church this week, which that alone was a miracle! I can't even tell you how hard we have been trying to get her to come to church the past three weeks. Something always goes wrong, Satan is definitely trying hard to not let her date go through. But she is so awesome, she can do it! She is getting baptized next week!

Also, monumental moment for me: i had the great opportunity to have my FIRST real conversation with a Jehovah's Witness. Just kidding it was not a great opportunity, I almost punched him in the face. We were talking to this guy in his yard and then his neighbor comes over and he's like asking us all these questions about us as missionaries and where we learned Spanish and such. Then out of nowhere he whips out that he's a Jehovah's Witness. My first instinct was actually to run. But then we were just trying to talk to this guy we were originally talking with. And he just kept throwing all these scriptures at us and completely bible bashing us. 
LIKE REALLY? DO YOU NOT HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?? 

Ugh. It was so frustrating. Then after a couple minutes when he realized we weren't going to sit there and argue with him, he got up and went back inside his house. But good news-- his neighbor is interested and invited us back! wahoo!

This Monday because we didn't have P-day, it was the weirdest day of my life! First thing in the morning i went on mini exchanges with the English sisters because one of them is sick. So i got to go teach a couple lessons with them in English. Weird, but super fun. Then we did service for a couple in our ward for a couple hours, they gave us cinnamon rolls after so of course it was all worth it. 

Last Wednesday we had a mission tour. Elder Schwitzer came to talk to us, it was really cool! (I probably completely spelled his name wrong, ) Then our mission President talked to us for a little while too, which of course was a super great experience! Then this week we had zone meeting. I have learned so much from these two meetings! I am so grateful that we have opportunities like these to go and be trained on how to be better missionaries! i am definitely applying everything from these meetings into my teaching!   

Something I have definitely learned this week is to have PATIENCE. i don't think I ever even knew what patience meant before my mission. But I just know that Heavenly Father loves all of us so much and that he is going to bless us whenever we are keeping the commandments and doing what we should be doing. Sometimes we don't see these blessing come right away, but I promise that they do come!! Just remember that we can find happiness no matter what the circumstances are! Okay i love you all so much! Thanks for all the emails and love :)

 Also, shout out to Brynn this week for being in Tempe!!! Too bad I'm not in Tempe anymore or I would have totally snuck in to see you:)