First week in the field - Week 7

First week in the field and boy has it been... indescribable. But I will try my best!

I'm not totally sure where to start. This experience has already been so different than I could have guessed. But I can already feel a change in myself and I am so excited to do this incredible work and see this gospel bless the lives of others.

Area: So we are in an area in Southern Tucson called Los Reales. Its... an interesting place. Very different than I have ever experienced. But it has been so much fun. Surprisingly it hasn't been that hot. It is always sunny, blue skies, not a cloud to be seen, but the highest it has gotten is around 70 degrees. At night it gets pretty cold though. This morning it was 40 degrees. The members here are awesome! So loving and welcoming. We have dinner at a members house almost every night and they make delicious food! I had some enchiladas my first night that might fight mom's for first place haha. This area is very Spanish so I do try to use my language a lot... not that I totally know what to say or how to say it... or even understand. But I try to do what I can. Some people speak slower than others and in that situation it is easier to understand. But others speak crazy fast and then I feel totally lost. Thank goodness for my amazing companion! She is so patient with me. Which leads to the next topic...

Companion: Her name is Hermana Hale and is from South Carolina. We are talking legit south here; she has got the accent, she loves grits, the whole works. She is such an awesome trainer. She is totally patient with me and my lack of language, but she never lets me just slack off or stay silent for a whole lesson. She knows how to push me and it is just what I need. She is great!

Investigators/contacting: So most of our Investigators speak Spanish, but some do speak English. We can only teach people who speak at least Spanish since we are called as Spanish speaking missionaries. But if someone speaks Spanish and English, we are good to go. It is rough though because we met a guy the other night who we were able to talk with and teach the first lesson too and he seemed really solid, but he didn't speak Spanish. So we have to refer him to the English elders in the area. It was actually really fun, we asked if he speaks or reads Spanish and he said no. When he found out that we speak Spanish he says "Two white girls in Arizona can speak Spanish and I cant? Weird..." haha but isn't that a funny thought? It was dark so I couldn't really see him too well but he looked like he had some Mexican in him. Contacting (otherwise known as tracting) has been the hardest part to get comfortable with. It is just hard for me to walk up to someone randomly and try to start a conversation about the gospel. Especially if they speak Spanish. I guess that comfortableness is something that will come with time, im hoping it comes sooner rather than later. We have quite a few investigators right now. We are also teaching a few les actives, and a recent convert. So we have pretty busy days, we always have something we can be doing which is such a blessing. Something we have been doing to contact is called "red shirt contacting" which is where we will pray about a specific item to look for, and then talk to people related to those items. One we use right now is "sol" or sun. So whenever we see a house with a sun decoration on it, we knock.

District: Our district is so much fun. There are two elder companionships that serve in areas very close to ours that we see all the time. They attend the same ward as us on sundays and usually members have all three of our companionships over for dinner. Their names are Elder Petrungaro (I hope I spelled that right), Elder Smith (no he is not related to Jospeh Smith, but he likes to tell people he is haha), Elder Reich and Elder Tyler. They are all so much fun. Hilarious and also very good missionaries. We have another Elder companionship and another Sister companionship in our district, but we have only seen them twice.

Spiritual Experience: One of the things I have been really working on trying to do better this week is to follow promptings from the Holy Ghost. It is definitely something that is very important to a missionary, as we try to be prompted in all that we do. Two nights ago Hermana Hale and I had tried to go see how a potential investigator was doing, but she wasn't home. We had about 40 minutes until we had to be home, and we cant do contacting at night so we were trying to figure out what to do next. So we walked down the street a little bit and saw a guy standing out by the road. We walked up to him and started talking and ended up teaching him the first lesson (he is the guy who couldn't speak Spanish). We actually invited him to be baptized at the end of the lesson and he said yes. Bahhhh! Right?! We were so excited. Even though we have to refer him to the English Elders, it was awesome. So the lesson I learned from this... even if you get a super creepy prompting, you need to follow it, because everyone needs a chance to hear and accept the gospel in their life.

Well I have loved this week here. No puedo esperar por las incredible experiencias en mi futuro (I cant wait for the incredible experiences in my future). Rough broken Spanish.... but Spanish non the less!

Love you all!

Hermana Lundquist