 |
| Temple trip!!! |
This week was CRAZY!! So many awesome things happened!! I'll do this one in a day-to-day format, or I'll lose my place.. So here's what happened :)
Monday: It was a pretty normal P-day! We learned how to make salsa with Hermana Salazar, though, and that was way fun! We also saw Jesse and Maria Vega when we were walking around High Point and talked to them for a while. We love them :)
Tuesday: today we went on exchange with the Sister Training Leaders! Sister Wood and I took our area in Spanish, but she doesn't speak any Spanish.. Haha we got juked for almost all our lessons, but we still had a great day! This is her first time being an STL, but she's been out for like 15 months and is a great missionary. I love her a lot. We had an awesome Spanglish lesson with Carlos and Carlitos this day! It was so awesome! They'd done their Book of Mormon reading and we talked about all of the restoration! Carlos had lots of good questions. At one point we were talking about prayer and how we can know these things are true, and he said he had a question. This was it, word-for-word: "so one time I was at my grandma's house that lives like an hour away and they were all there and they were standing in a circle holding hands and they were all quiet except for one who was screaming cause she was talking to God.".... and we were like "so, what was your question?" and he said "yeah that was my question." Hahaha so we explained how we do prayer a little differently, a little more reverently. And then we asked him to say the closing prayer for us, and it was so cute! He's about ten years old, and I think this was his first time really praying, at least out loud. He kept saying "we bless you that..." instead of like "we thank you.." It was so cute. Carlos works all the time, though, so we can really only go see them Tuesday afternoons.. But we're going over tomorrow to teach the Plan of Salvation and I have high hopes for them!!
Wednesday: Today we had interviews with President Taggart! This was my first time doing this. It was really cool! We went up to Eatontown (about an hour north) and received some training from the AP's, as well as a little chat with Sister Taggart and the other sisters in our zone. In my interview with the President we talked about things that are going well and things that I'm trying to improve. There are lots! But we talked about how I need to focus on the things I CAN control, and let the Lord work with the rest. I can control how many people I talk to, I can control how well I use the phone to make appointments, I can control lots of things! So I need to recognize them and do my best at them, and then not worry too much about the things outside my control. That creates extra stress I just don't need :) I also got my iPad today! Woo!! Our miracle today was that we didn't get juked!!! That was the first time that's happened my whole mission!! We had two member-present lessons, too! It was awesome. We saw Argentina with Sister Regus, and the Vegas. We had dinner scheduled with Eriberta Esteban, and she invited her not-member sister-in-law to come eat with us! It was awesome! And in our lesson with the Vega's Maria said she totally knows our message is true! She knows the Book of Mormon is true. We've just got to get her to take some action now :)
Thursday: Today was AWESOME. We woke up a little early and headed up to Newark with the STL's for our temple trip! When we got there, we rode the train into New York. On the train I sat next to this guy named Doug, who's a drummer! He works in sales for some music label in New York City. Pretty rad, right? We talked a lot about what we do as missionaries and how we help people find Christ. He was happy to hear that there are people here helping people learn the word of God, he seemed to think everyone in New Jersey is Atheist. Hahaha. When we got to Penn Station, we hopped on a subway to the Lincoln center. When we walked up to the street, the temple was right there!! It was so cool!! It was amazing to see it right in the middle of things! There were broadway show signs all over, people walking everywhere, and someone selling flowers across the street. It was lovely! Going into the temple was a cool experience. It was amazing to see the real difference between the world outside the temple and the world inside it. There was an amazing calm, peace, and quiet as we entered the temple. It was so clean and pure, so different from the subway under New York City. After taking pictures after and everything, we ended up late to the train station, which meant we missed our train.. That was a little bit stressful, but we ended up just having to wait for like 40 minutes for the next one! It was okay! So we got some Auntie Anne's pretzels and hung out there. On the train back to Newark I sat next to a girl, Teressa, who reminded me a lot of Katherine! She was awesome. Super nice girl, probably in her late twenties. She's just about to start an internship in New York City and just graduated from law school. She's interested in international business and seems super smart! It was cool to talk with her. Back in Newark, we went to lunch as a zone. We drove through the city (which was totally crazy) to Elm Street Barbeque. There they have like 5 choices of meat, all of which comes with fries and rice. And that's it. Hahaha dad, if you're in Newark you have to check it out sometime! Some of the best ribs and chicken I've ever had. Seriously amazing. As we backed out of the tiny parking garage, Sister Pace may or may not have slightly bumped our District Leader, Elder Rajakhumar with her car.. Haha oops. But everyone's okay! No worries! On the drive back we did a 25 question get-to-know-you-thing with the other sisters and that was fun! We learned lots about each other :) Also today we got a text from a referral we'd been trying to get in contact with.. His name is David and he's like 16. He finally got back to us in a message that said "Hello sorry weve been really busy and we have a lot going on so we won't be able to join your church so sorry for wasting your time" hahahaha oh David. It's okay. It's just your eternal salvation.
Friday: Today I earned my pillow :) We had a lunch appointment with the Guerra's who live pretty far south. They have another guy living with them, Max, who isn't super active, but has a bien fuerte testimony. When we got there, Max had invited his friend, Ryan, to have lunch with us! It was way interesting, because Ryan doesn't speak any Spanish.. But the Guerra's don't speak a lot of english.. hahah but it was great! We had some good Mexican and Cuban food and a little lesson about prayer. Ryan said he's way down to come have lunch and a little lesson with us again! He was a cool guy. We visited Gerardo down south too, and that was great! He didn't have a ton of time to meet with us, but things are going well for him! They gave us sweet potato fries and warm syrup like they always do :) We love them there at that restaurant! We had a lesson with the Vegas that went well! We didn't have a ton of time to meet with them, but we talked about sacrifice. It went over well and I know they're progressing! Yay! We then sped over to Maria and Antonios and that was awesome! They're a couple that the elders found a few weeks ago that have known a lot of missionaries in the past, but are still investigating. AND GUYS. THEY HAVE CHICKENS. So I pretty much have to baptize them now. Haha but they're awesome! And their son-in-law, Jimmy, was there and had lots of great questions! We talked about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon and I think we can really get somewhere with them. I think getting the branch involved will be the key there. And hopefully one of these weeks I'll have a picture with their chickens to send home. We met with the Saavedra's tonight too, and talked about Lucy's baptism! They were so excited :) We love their family!! Anyway, today was an awesome day. I went to bed nice and tired :)
Saturday: I felt sufficiently tired today too!! We had our english class in the morning, and then went to a potential investigator's house. We were pleasantly surprised, she was actually there and expecting us!! And her husband was there and expecting us too! So we sat down with Adellia and Juan and talked about the restoration a little bit. We talked about what we do as missionaries and he told us all about how awesome Mexico is. Haha but it was great! They said they'd read and we set an appointment to come back next Saturday! So fingers crossed for them! They're pretty Catholic, but they're open to talking with us and learning more! Another great surprise today was our lunch! We were going to go to some sandwich place, but Raul (our GPS) took us to some little deli and grocery store thing.. But we got some AWESOME sandwiches! And then we got Rita's next door! And good news, the Rita's was "under kosher supervision by Rabbi Yoffe." Oh Lakewood. We did a lot of things at the church to get ready for Lucy's baptism and it was awesome! We then had a little FHE with the branch at Hermana Laura's house! We didn't have too great of a turn-out, but it was alright! Sister Pace and I shared a little message about the temple and families and we ate LOTS of food. And, bless their hearts, they gave us a TON to take home! Seriously, we could feed the whole district for days on the food they gave us! But we're having a district cook-off tomorrow, so we might bring some rice from that.. Haha so much rice. But way good guacamole too! Anyway, it was fun! We then went over to another potential's house and were pleasantly surprised there! We'd seen them a few weeks before, but didn't really know if anything was going to happen with them.. But they totally randomly texted us on like Thursday and said they'd read the pamphlet we'd left and wanted to talk with us and learn more! We were a little nervous going into it because we didn't know if they'd studied some things online about us too (and you never know how that ends up), but it turned out really well! They were super open to hearing the message and invited us back! Super nice little couple.
Sunday: This day was great!! We went to church and everything was good, and we went into Young Women's the second hour to help with the lesson about patriarchal blessings! It gave me a cool opportunity to study mine that morning and remember how cool those are. After we took the sacrament, we started getting everything ready for the baptism right after church. We went to fill the font, and HOLY SPIDERS. There were like eight HUGE nasty spiders down there :( Haha that's what we get for not having any baptisms recently!! But our branch mission leader was kind enough to come kill them for us :) We got everything all prepared and ready in time, and the baptism turned out to be awesome! Her sister, Maggie, played the violin and her parents both spoke on baptism and the Holy Ghost. President Judson baptized her and Brother Regus confirmed her. She is so darling, she was totally glowing. It was such a happy day for their family :) and like we do, we had TONS of food after! It was great! And they gave us more food to take home.. oh man.. Haha but we love our little branch :) We had dinner with the senior couple here, the Ross', and the other sisters and that was lovely! Then we set out on a people hunt for Ramon and Hermano Esparza, and both of them were home! Miracles! So we had little lessons with them and set some return appointments, which was great!
Today has been a good day so far! Some lady at wal-mart asked if we had multiple husbands.. But other than that it's been pretty uneventful :) We got some sweet New Jersey shirts though! And some awesome skirts!
Some other random things from this week you might enjoy:
-lots of "honk for trump" signs on the side of the road. hahaha
-we drove past a place called Muscle Maker Grill. Seth would probably like that.
-a collection of bumper stickers saying "RIP King of Pop" and different pictures of Michael Jackson. Hahaha
Anyway, life is good, folks! I'm a happy missionary :) I'm not perfect, but that's what the Atonement is for! The Lord is surely blessing us. We're happy today for sure :)
I love you and think about you all the time!! Have a fun party tonight, take lots of pictures of everything and send them all to me!
Les quiero con todo mi corazon!
Hermana Millington
No comments:
Post a Comment