WEEK 9

I have lived in a foreign country for a month...and been on my mission a little over two months that is crazy!!! This week was EXTREMELY productive, my trainer and I are so excited about all the work in our area. We met and surpassed all of our goals for numbers- we wanted to contact five people in the street every day to arive at 35 for the week and we contacted 37! But next week....SEVENTY! I know we can do it. I finally started initiating these street contacts, I used to just say  éxcuse me would you like one of these cards?´and my trainer would say the rest. But I´ve found if I just force myself to say the next thing people are super open here, you rarely get rejected. It´s awesome!!!

Chosen caption: "Literally grabbed this Hermana's ear during a picture"

Also this week we met a very special family. Their dad died a couple of months ago- it´s a mom, her son who is about 14, and her daughter who has a little girl of her own that is the most beautiful girl in the world, but is also pregnant and having a difficult pregnancy.  This family is incredibly open to the gospel, nodding and smiling throughout the lesson as if we´re merely reviewing things they already knew. The second time we came by the mom got her Book of Mormon out and said she did her homework and read! And she said sometimes in this life it´s like we´re little kids and we need someone to take us by the hand, and shes so glad we found them and could tell them about these things. I was crying literally the entire time and as we left the house. The mom offered a prayer and in it she said please watch out for people in our circumstance or worse.´´ I just couldn´t believe the kindness of this woman, she had to move in with her pregnant daughter because the dad that died had supported the family, and they´re going through so much, and she was STILL thinking of others. I asked them to be baptized and they said yes. They came to church on sunday. It was so cool bringing them to church. I hope the talks in sacrament helped them. During sunday school the mom was quietly saying the answers to the questions the teacher was asking behind me it was so awesome and funny! and she kept saying ´mhm , celestial, si, mhm , mhm´, the  Plan of Salvation just completely rings true with her and she loves it. 

An interesting experience this past week was we had INTERCAMBIOS, or exchanges, divisions, splits, whatever your mission calls them. Most days here are super awesome but of course this was at the end of a rare frustrating day. We got a call 15 minutes before bedtime saying we were going to have intercambios. It felt so odd that all the people we had planned for, all the lessons, I wouldn´t be there for the next day. And that I´d be sleeping in someone else´s bed the next night, with an Hermana I didn´t know. I told myself it was for a reason it was at this time and tried not to let it stress me out too much. It ended up being good! I learned a lot about controlling the situation, aka, not wasting too much time, using the time in our lessons effectively, while also getting to know people. It´s a challenge here because people here open up very quickly and have cool stories and love to talk, but sometimes we need to focus in on our lesson so we can help them progress! The only thing I didn´t like about proselyting in this different area is a rooster woke me up at 4am. It´s safe to say I do not want to live anywhere near a rooster for the rest of my life. 

Hilarious and weird things happen daily, I try to write it all down. I guess to a couple of ward members they think I look like Britney Spears? and the impression one lady did of that was....beyond words. Oh I bought a mango because we had a mind blowingly good mango at a member´s house and while I bought it I said but what if it has a worm in it? LO AND BEHOLD, IT HAD A WORM IN IT. I asked my companion the whole morning if I was going to die, she assured me probably not. We got to our first appointment of the day and I told them and they laughed and said it was more protein if I ate part of the worm. Eesh. My stomach has expanded a lotttttttt. Yesterday I ate a cemita, or a sandwhich with the whole world in it, the size of a dinner plate, and wanted more, so they gave me more of another one. I say yes to seconds and thirds, and can eat green and chipotle chiles. 

I don´t have a lot of pictures because it was a super busy productive week yay! But we have me in front of an ad for fire extinguishers in the other area during exchanges. I´m so glad they drew each SPECIFIC fire extinguisher, down to the gauges.

Also, a bird house tree in the other area, and my view every morning.

Love you all and pray for you all the time!!!