11/29/2010

hahaha ohhh my GOODNESS I have stories for you this week. But first I have GOT! to say, your Thanksgiving sounds like thee FUNNIEST disaster ever. MAN I wish I was there. But I guessss. I'll start from the top and make it to Thanksgiving. coo ?

Sooo we went tracting all day last Tuesday in Sparks right? Sparks is like THEE GHETTO.. like a little city within Horizon, if that makes sense. And so we made Tuesday more or less 'car appreciation day' as Schwartz and Manwill would call it. And I had my pedometer from Kaiser on, which I use everyday and we walked 24,000 steps.. what whaatt ! Ahha, so we were walking visiting former investigators, and this dog. This GORGEOUS dog across the street gets up and starts walking over to us. It looks kind of like one of those half wolf dogs. GORGEOUS. So I'm saying 'Hermana, ..Hermana..' and the dog just comes over to us and just stays next to us like our bodyguard hah. And the ENTIRE rest of the time we were walking the dog, who I named Dil, would just follow us to every single house we were going to. It was cool, he was like our own Dumbledore or something, just walking past all the dogs that were going CRAZY at us but everything was okay. And if a HUGE dog would start barking, Dil would walk over to me and kind of nudge his head into my leg haha. He reminded me of Buffy :p
 So then it's Wednesday night right ? And we get a phone call during dinner, so we called the number back and it's...DUN dun dun. "RAUL'S WIFE". And she starts going buckWILD in Spanish about how her and Raul are splitting up now since he's started listening to the gospel, and she's all threatening us saying she knows our names and she's gonna be looking for us and everything. Sooo. needless to say. We can't go back there :/ .hm. I should have asked if she knew the name under ours on our name tags :p hah. That probably wasn't funny.
 So Thanksgiving! We had a dinner appointment at aroundd 1ish at a Spanish home, and I got to help make mole tamales! BAMB. But those were the last of the tamales-there were liiike 5 different kinds or so. And so it's time to eat right? And it's us and Elder Pearson and Anderson. And so I start eating my tamale and there's like. Nothing buy spicy gooey funk in mine. So I'm just eating it, and I look across the table at Elder Anderson and he's looking at my tamale while he's eating and trying not to laugh. And so he looks at me. And we look at each other. With only one of us realizing what I'm really eating. And so we just both look down and I just SHOVEL like it was the last thing I was gonna do, and after we got out of there, I asked my companion what it was. And it was chicharon (?)..pig skin. That's just cooked and it's basically like chewing the fat off a steak throughout a tamale with spices in it. It wasn't HORRIBLE. It just wasn't you know. Necessarily. Turkey. hahaha
  So we ended up visiting some people later, and I had some chocolate silk pie and this one member's house, only because it made me think of Mom and Gina and how much THEY like chocolate silk pie. Andd we had another dinner at an English member's house later that night and ended up talking gospel til aroundd 9:30. And it is SO CRAZY!! In our area, there are cement adobe houses that were built by the Lamanites that are talked about in the scriptures! So prettyy soon we're going to try and see them. It's incredible, the dad REALLY knows his religion. And he said that this is the only place in our mission where these Lamanite homes still are. So we have GOT.! To put that on our list :p

oh! BTW hah, I'm sending ya'll Christmas packages today.. open them! Cuz the presents inside are wrapped :P
  Umm what else! OH HEY! BAPTISM this Sunday! This SUPER sweet 18-year-old girl Celali. She's had SUCH a rough life. She kind of gets thrown around to live wherever with her family, like the leftover. But she's getting baptized, and I am SO! Excited for her. I've never EVER met somebody that wants it as bad as she does!! So if you could pray for her that would be. SO appreciated :)
  Ummm! More. I guess this week has just been reallyyy. REALLY different. It's weird, the days go by as a missionary, but when a week passes by I realize exactly how much has really happened. I've had a REALLY hard time focusing this week for some reason, and I started letting myself think that because I was letting myself get distracted, that I came here for the wrong reasons. But I started thinking about how I just wanna do good. And who knew it could be so difficult to just try and do good! I don't get it! But Satan wants not ONE good thing to happen. And I read that I wrote down in one of my notebooks from the MTC that Satan has been watching us for YEARS. So HE KNOWS what pushes our buttons, and what weakens us. So no matter how hard he tries to get me to think I'M out here for the wrong reasons, I need to recognize and think about how happy I've been when I have seen somebody's life helped from me being here. Of all places I could be helping Heavenly Father iN THE WORLD, He chose me to be here. So if THAT'S not drive to find what I'm out here to do, I dunno WHAT is!!

  Welll familia. Life isn't the same without you. But it is always amazing with the gospel. I know these holidays are gonna be WAY weird, but hold on to the rod! I'll probably e-mail more right now and send pictures. I've just lost my train of thought in this e-mail hahaha

Jesus loves you!.. Hermana Batchkoff