Hola Familia! - Week 2

What a week! It has been so phenomenal! Definitely busy and I have never been so physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted in my life. But it is all worth it! Its crazy to think I have already been here for two weeks! The days drag by but the weeks fly. The saying here is that days feel like weeks and weeks feel like days. Well... its definitely true.

So Mexico is pretty awesome. It is always gorgeous and THANK GOODNESS for trees! They are all over the place. I honestly feel like I am still home. Its great! Hermana Hurst has a strange but hilarious love for trees so she always comments on them! Too funny. The food has been pretty good. When we first got here it was all very new. They had some strange looking things for meals. So I usually opted for soup or salad. They always serve these delicious tortillas for lunch that I swear are homemade. They also always serve beans and rice... which isn't shocking haha guess I should probably start getting used to this food now. But lately they haofetaen serving more Americanized food. The missionaries who got here this week are so lucky. Honestly, our last three dinners have been hamburgers, pasta, and corn dogs. The hamburgers were hilarious though. They each has a slice of ham along the patty. We all laughed pretty hard about that. They took the name a little to seriously. But pday night dinner is Pizza, and the slices are literally as big as my face! I took a picture last week. If I can figure out how to connect my camera to the computer I will send some of them.

So us Hermanas started this new tradition. On our second day here, Hermana  Field bought an Arizona drink (what a coincidental name haha) and she made a goal that she wouldn't drink it until the 1st week mark. So we all accepted the challenge as well. We told the Elders in our district and they adopted it too. So every Wednesday night, we all buy Arizona's and have them at dinner as a celebration for another week down. We also save our cans so by the end of these 6 weeks we will have a pretty awesome Arizona Pyramid. Man alive the things we do for fun here haha.

My district is awesome! The Elders are Peterson, Buchanan, Cobb, Jeskee, Somerfield, and Sundrud. Elder Sundrud was our District Leader, but him and Elder Jeskee actually just got called as the Zone Leaders so Elder Somerfield is the District Leader now. They are all going to places in southern California. My compañera is going to Nicaragua! Pretty awesome huh? She was originally called to El Salvador, but then her called got changed. So she got to leave a month early and now she is my wondrous companion(: We get along so well its awesome. Lessons are always great because we have totally different takes on things so I could share something and she would be able to share another tidbit of advice in a totally different angle. And we are always making each other laugh. I'm just very thankful.

 

Speaking of lessons, we finished our lessons with Roberto on Thursday. On Wednesday we followed up with his prayers and he said they went well. So we went ahead and set a baptismal date for him! And then on Thursday we asked him if he was excited for his baptism and he said yes! So... we baptized our first investigator! WOO! What an awesome experience. Even though he isn't actually an investigator, it was really awesome to just see a little of what it will be like. And on Friday something crazy happened, we walked into our afternoon class... and Roberto was there! His actual name is Hermano Ortiz and he is our new afternoon teacher. So strange. He knows very VERY little English so we have a hard time communicating with him. Whenever he cant figure out how to say something, he pulls out the Spanish to English dictionary. Oh how the tables have turned. That used to be us in lessons haha. We found out that not only is he our new afternoon teacher, but our morning teacher, Hermano Cruz is our new investigator. His name is Mauricio. We taught him our first lesson yesterday and it went pretty well. We spent a bit of time getting to know him and his needs, then taught about who Heavenly Father is and how to pray. We only had 20 minutes to teach the lesson so I'm sure it would have gone better had we not been rushed for time. I can already tell though that he is going to be a tough investigator. We also found out that we are going to be teaching Hermano Ortiz again, but this time as a guy named Otizel. We haven't taught him yet, but we watched a short video that kind of gives us a quick summary of who is he, what his problems are how he heard about the church. His main problem... he is addicted to alcohol. Well so much for having the easy investigators haha. Other missionaries that have been here longer always tell us we are "lucky because we have the hard teachers and hard investigators". Sometimes I agree! I mean it really has helped our Spanish to progress so much! I can almost always say what I need to in Spanish! But sometimes I just want to pull my hair and run screaming down the road. It is hard work, but good work!
 

Oh man get this. So in class on Saturday we started with Hermano Cruz telling us we were going to learn to teach the Restoration lesson in Spanish. Well... it was not as easy as it sounds. By the end of the lesson, he had us summarizing the entire thing in 3 minutes... in Spanish. Even in English it would have been crazy! I felt so fulfilled after though. Honestly, everyday I surprise myself with what I know how to say in Spanish.
 

We have also started watching clips of videos from the District in class. They are awesome. We watched this video about a family the sisters taught named the Robles. The husband was inactive and the wife was not a member. But as time went along their faith grew so much and they were eventually baptized. It then showed them visiting the temple to be sealed together. Oh man alive there came the tears again. It just reminded me of that experience we had in the temple before I left when the Temple Worker bore his testimony to me of the importance of working to get our investigators to the temple. I am so excited to go out in the field!
 

We said goodbye to our first group of friends this week. They were the senior district in our zone and we got pretty close to them. They are awesome, so hilarious and fun but also amazing teachers. They are all going to be great. The night before they left, they called us sisters into their classroom and present us with a map for a treasure hunt! Apparently it is a tradition our zone has had for a while and you cant pass the directions off unless you find "those who are worthy", aka: those who would be cool enough to carry on the tradition. After we finish writing we are going to go try to find the treasure, although we are a little worried. The directions say to go to the forest of Aragog and find the path where the eleven stones of the Brother of Jared hold up the trees, etc etc. This should be interesting!
 

We had a devotional this week where we were challenged to pray about five questions. I challenge you to do it as well.

1. God do you exist?
2. Do you have a body of flesh and bone?
3. Do you know I exist?
4. Do you know me personally?
5. Do you love me?

I promise that is you sincerely pray about these things, seeking for an answer, Heavenly Father will give you your answer.
 

Well my time is about up.

Yo se que JesuCristo es nuestro salvador. Yo se que Jose Smith es un profeta verdadero y el libro de mormon es verdadero tambien. Yo se que nuestro ofeta, Thomas S. Monson, es llama de Dios. En el nombre de JesuCristo, Amen.  [I know the Jesus Christ is our Savior. I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet and the Book of Mormon is true also. I know that our prophet, Thomas S. Monson, is called of God. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.]

I am so thankful for the opportunity to a missionary of the Lord and to wear our Saviors name at all times. I am thankful for how this opportunity has allowed me to grow into a person I am so proud to be. The gospel is true! I know it! I live it! I love it!

Love,
Hermana Lundquist