Hola!!
How are ya´ll?? Thanks for all the emails again and for all of the pictures! I love them ALL. You guys all look like you´re having a blast with what you´ve been doing and that makes me suuuper happy. And that´s weird that you didn´t get any letters from me this week... I actually wrote A TON. Hopefully they get there eventually. And I haven´t gotten any except for that very first one from you mama. So hopefully those come soon. Can you believe I´ve practically been here for a month?? It´s insane. I have like 9 days left here because I´ll leave at like four in the morning on Tuesday. Pretty crazy! All the Latinos left on Tuesday and we get new ones today. I´m pretty sad about that cause I loved them so much. Elder Paterina apparently told one of the elders that he was like in love with me and gave him a note to give me after I left. And then he asked me for my email and said bye to me and like almost teared up and it was the most adorable thing ever! I barely understand half of what he was saying though lol.
Can you believe conference is coming up? I´ve never been so excited in my entire life!! It´s gonna be great. But because of that, we can´t go proselyting that weekend... so that means only one more day left of proselyting!! Speaking of proselyting... This week went awesome! I get so excited to talk about it. so here we go:
It was such a good day of proselyting. Oh my goodness! Our numbers improved tremendously, but even better than that, I felt the spirit so much more this week and had a much stronger desire to be there. We worked really really hard and I had sooo much love for the people that we were teaching. The very first person that we talked to as soon as we got off of the bus was a cute, sweet young man named Cristian. He was super interested in what we had to say, so we taught him a ¨short lesson¨about the Book of Mormon and I bore my testimony about it like a champ. He took the book and said he was excited to read it so I was super happy. Then right after that some drunk guy came up and started yelling at us so we left that area haha. We talked to two more guys not long after that, Gabriel and Cristian, and those were both awesome as well. Gabriel said he would come to church at the chapel over there on Sunday and then Cristian took a Book of Mormon and said he´d read it. Cristian was the sweetest. He was outside of his house playing with his little boy and he was intrigued by our message about eternal families, and he´s stoked for the other missionaries to come. I feel like that´s a baptism in the bag lol. Oh and then we ran into Damian, who we gave a Book of Mormon to last week and he told me how he read a little bit and felt good about it, so I was pretty stoked! The Lord has definitely prepared him. Okay and seriously, these South Americans are so obsessed with my eyes. I´m pretty sure they´ve never seen eyes that aren´t brown before haha. One lady started talking to me and telling me how beautiful I was and stuff, so I was like well perfect... can we share a message with you about Jesus Christ? and she ran away sooo fast hahaha. We stopped and talked to a super cute old couple outside of their ¨house¨(moreso shack) and that´s when I realized how little spanish I knew. We talked to them for like 45 minutes and I maybe understood like 5 words... All i really got out of what she said was that her husband has been a reverend for their church for like 16 years... But she invited us to come over for food next week and we said we wouldn´t be there. BUT, they have us their info for the other missionaries to come teach them. So that was kinda crazy! After that, we had ANOTHER guy named Cristian give us his info (making 3 total Cristians for the day) weird the way they all spell it too. Then after that, things started to get a little lsower. It was siesta time so nobody was out anymore. All of the shops were closed and like nobody would answer their door. It´s hard too cause a lot of houses have gates cause it´s in the ghetto, so a lot of times instead ofknocking on the door, we just had to clap outide of the gate. But anyways... we knocked on some door and waited for a solid five minutes and nobody answered, so we started to walk away and felt a little discouraged. Then I told my companion that we should stop and say a prayer and ask our Heavenly Father for help and guidance. I wasn´t even finished with the prayer, when a guy opened the door that we had knocked on and he started talking to us. He was so accepting of our message! We asked him to go to church on Sunday and he was really excited about that. So we gave him the time and address and he gave us his number for the other missionaries. After that guy, we got three more references and like a million more contacts! One of them was really special. We met this man number Ruber at his house and we taught him the entire first lesson! He and his wife are catholic, but they wanted to know everything about our church. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he started reading it before we even left. Then he asked US when church was! We were like OMG OMG OMG! It´s at 9:30 this Sunday! and we gave him the address and I really don´t think I´ve ever been so happy and excited in my entire life. I have such a strong love for these people! I can´t even imagine how amazing the actual mission is going to be. It´s cool to be able to experience Argentina and Uruguay.
Seriously though, this week was a huge improvement from last. Our number of contacts nearly doubled! We went from 33 last week to 62 this week. So awesome. And we stopped by the tennis courts again and there were some really nice old guys playing there that would actually talk to us, so I was telling them how I played college, and they kept handing me their rackets to get me to play and I was like ahh I wish! I wanted to way bad... A little hard in a long skirt though. The area we were in is sooo interesting and so different than anything I know from the U.S. Graffiti is EVERYWHERE! convenience stores are all barred up. You just have to go up to a tiny window and tell them what you want and they´ll get it for you. Then random guys walk around with carts selling donuts and all sorts of pastries. And the whole clapping at the gate thing is frickin´weird. It´s such a humbling experience. I love it so much. We seriously have sooo much at home. I have only experienced two days out proselyting the the city and I already know that I will appreciate home a million times more. It just goes to show that you really don´t need much to be happy! Especially if you have an amazing family like mine:)
Anyways... Not much else exciting happens here the rest of the week. Same old classes and entire schedule. Physical activity is the highlight of my day usually! haha I run the perimeter which is tiny like a million times and then do some leg and ab workouts but it´s nothing compared to what I used to do... I miss working out so much. I´m hoping in the field it will be a little easier. And I won´t be eating so much out there. I have full on like ¨Sunday meals¨three times a day! It´s crazy.
But yeah, I´m hoping I have a little bit more time to respond to your personal emails today, so I´m gonna finish up with this!
Love you all! I´m gonna try to attach a picture of me by the tennis courts out proselyting too.
Have a good week! I´ll talk to ya next week (Last time emailing from here!!!!)
Love,
Hermana Sanders
No comments:
Post a Comment