Wednesday, August 24, 2011

This week: hitting the 1 year! :o

From Rio Rancho ! haha this area. is SO different from my last one. Everything is so glamorous up here. There aren't HARDLY as many broken lives as my last area. Everyone lives in houses that are so completely gorgeous. I haven't seen one bulldog, I haven't seen one drug addict. It is such a complete change. But I've come into a Branch that is SO incredible. I have noticed even MORE the importance of members in missionary work. We have so many investigators that are ready to hear the gospel, and it's because these members are the ones that are sharing it to get them excited. Ya'll have something we don't when it comes to your friends. Like. Friendship. haha. So they're the ones inviting their friends to dinner appointments that we happen to show up at-because they had signed up for us too haha ;) and it's so incredible, how willing they are to give rides to investigators, to give up their lives for even 5 minutes to take an investigator to an appointment, or to invite them to family home evening or take them to church. What ya'll can do as members makes all the difference in what God can do with His children. What ya'll decide to do with who we are teaching determines how much more we can fill our potential as missionaries, and how much more successful we can be. Of course, we have our own things to do to help us be successful, but everything is SO much better when we have your support, and everything runs so much smoother.
  Sooo where we're living. We are living with a member, in an apartment above the garage of a member in the English Ward here. The husband is a doctor and a member of the Senate..? I believe ? So ths house is gorgeous haha. We live on a ranch that's amazing, with horses and camels and lamas everywhere, and the sunsets out here are SO PRETTY. It's so fun. I even got to pet a horse the other day :o ! ..hah. that was too excited. anyway. It's so funny, because the water here. We're right next to the Rio Grande River, and I guess we get their water. And there's a GRIP of vitamins and minerals in it still, so. 1, it's not good to drink. and 2. It makes our clothes yellowish when we wash them apparently hah, and 3. It smells like metal whenever we go to brush our teeth or take a shower or something. haaahah cool. :p it's so fun.. it's so different though, seeing how well these families are living, because they're holding on to the gospel more. I feel like that is all that it comes down to. We'll only be as good as we allow God to help us be. But if we keep justifying our actions, and our sins, and the reasons for living the way we live, we will only live according to means we set for ourselves, if that makes sense. We'll only have God with us as much as we let Him be there.
  Umm. What else has been happening. W've noticed that Satan has been working. SO hard on us to try and keep us from getting out and working. I feel like he knows how ready these people are to be helped, so he's trying with all he can with everything materially to stop us from doing what needs to be done. We got here on Tuesday and got working, and at our first visit, Hna. Jardine started feeling sick, which turned into her been out sick for the next 2 days, Wednesday and Thursday. So on my first full day of work here, we went on splits so that I could go out, and I was with Sister Horsford, an English missionary. And so we go to our appointments and visit and try and teach these people I had never before met in my life.. we go to our dinner appointment, then to an English appointment for Sister Horsford, and. hah so weird ! Sister Horsford doesn't know Spanish, so with all of these 'strangers', I had to try and figure out how to fall well with them in our very first visit.. completely alone hah. But. It went well for the most part. I always remember how Gina told me that 'it's only awkward if you make it awkward'. hahah. On Friday our phone dropped in the water, and we couldn't go out without arranging our lessons and getting addresses to everyone.. but this happened to me before. So I knew to soak the phone in rice to soak up the awater. So we just planned and planned, and prayed and tried our faith.... and our phone started working ! And then yesterday we realized that we hadn't filled up on gas, so normally one could just not go out. But the English sisters picked us up ! And we still got to go out. It's so lame, Satan tries, and he just looks dumb when he realizes that when we're with Heavenly Father.. we're a step up from him hah. Heavenly Father always comes through, and ALWAYS. has our backs. As long as we have His.
  But this e-mail is probably long enough. I'm still trying to figure everything out here, but it'll be a good ride. You wanna hear something a lot of missionaries have out here ? It's called the Moleskin. It's a little notebook, and in them we just make a grip of lists of things to really get to know ourselves. Elder Palomo hooked me up with one before he left because I was so excited about them haha. So here are some of the lists we've come up with:
 
The 'not cool' list
List of future baby names we like
list of baby names we don't like.. hah
what makes us happy
our list of personal beliefs/'affirmations'
bucket list
our will
people that have changed our lives
list of family members/how they've changed you
 
ALL this cool stuff ! and it's so cool, because you can do/write/draw absolutely whatever you want to in it. and everyone's is so different. SO everyone. Get the moleskin journal. it'll change your life. hah
 
En cada dia, hay una prueba y una bendicion. en cada momento, nosotros podemos escoger si estamos felices. Nosotros podemos escoger nuestra felicidad, y como vamos a reaccionar hacia cada prueba.. si queremos buscar la leccion. y como dijo Brigham Young.... "Aqui estamos, y aqui vamos a estar."
 
Ok. No se para donde me voy con todo eso, pero mucha suerte a todos ustedes, querida familia mia. Portense bien. Y gracias por TODAS las oraciones !
 
Con amor y estilo. jaja ya ok.
La Hermana B.

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