Hermana Medeiros Texas Houston Mission: We skipped fall and went straight to winter- Week 17

Hi mommy!!! I only have about an hour right now because hermana has to get a root canal...and her appointment is at 130 so we are emailing till about 12 and then after the root canal sometime later today we will come back on (She gets 90 minutes of email time a week). I will probably just wait to send my pictures when we come back. On Wednesday morning she woke up in the middle of night with really bad pain in her mouth and so we went to the dentist and they referred her to someone who could do the root canal and today was just going to be the consultation but they had an opening so they squeezed her in and they are going to do it for free!

It has been freezing here. The weather has definitely dropped and today when we got in the car it was 38 degrees. It's up to about 46 right now, but it's a bone chilling cold! It makes me just want to go to Starbucks every day so that I can get hot chocolate. haha I'll just have to make some of the packet hot chocolate that we have in our pantry.

This week has been really busy we've had so many appointments with members, menos activos and our investigators. On Wednesday we got two bap dates! One of them is with an investigator who has had many different missionaries in the past couple months because of the boundary change but he has been investigating for a little while now and we were able to extend a bap date invitation and he accepted it. His baptism is on December 6th! And then the next bap date we got is for an 8 year old girl whose family is really inactive. She has never been to church before. She doesn't really count as our baptism because she is still nine but her bap is on the 29th of this month! On Thursday we visited another investigator who had her bap date set for the middle of January and we asked her why she was waiting so long and she didn't know and so we extended the invitation to be baptized on the 13th of December and she looked at us and told us that her birthday is on the 14th so she would be getting the gift of the holy ghost on her birthday and she accepted it! It was pretty amazing and we were so happy that we were able to help get these people to progress more and more.

We visited H*** y E*** last night and we are really trying to get them to see that they need to make a decision and do something and then they will receive their answer. They told us they will have an answer for us soon on if they are going to get married or not. Hermana and I talked about it on the way home and we both feel that they just need to get married and then they will receive their answer and also we feel that H*** will get baptized first because he is so ready. Every time he talks you can see it in his eyes and he knows that he needs to get baptized. He even told us. We asked him what the first step he could take and he said that he needs to get baptized. We feel that he will get baptized first and then E***. And then I realized he could get baptized first and then slowly E*** will progress and become ready and then he can baptize her!! We feel really strongly that H*** is so ready they just need to make that commitment and just buy the license to be married. They are so cute and last night at their house i tried herbal tea for the first time....don't think i'll drink it again but it was OK. They always give us cookies and they are so wonderful!

We had the biggest dinner yesterday. It was this soup that had at least a couple pounds of meat...an entire potato and a think corn and rice and other stuff and it was in a HUGE bowl! It was a blessing I was able to finish it.

We got to be helpers to Santa this week! There is a hermano in our ward who is Santa! He has a website that you can go on and you buy a letter to send to your kid from Santa. You personalize it any way you want and then he sends it. Hermana is the voice for the commercial that will be on Facebook and on YouTube and on the website. We helped stuff envelops and it is so cute! This hermano is so cool! He is an amazing photographer and does so many cool things. I kind of realized how much I love doing computer things, like making websites and making videos and playing around with different things on the computer. I think I might major in graphic design or something like that. I think that would be so much fun! We will see how I feel about it in a year and two months. haha. He also does things for the tooth fairy and he might start doing something with the Easter bunny too. He was talking about what he wanted to do with his website and i got really excited trying to figure out how you could do different things and man i just love it!!

I'm glad that you felt so good in the temple! I wish we could go more often!! I want to go!!

That is really awesome mommy! I'm glad that you were able to receive more strength in the blessing. A couple weeks ago when we both got blessings from the Sapps (a couple missionary who just left this month) I was told that God knows that the adversary has worn me down...(which is kind of scary to hear) but then it said how God is pleased with how I am enduring the trials in my life. Blessings are so interesting I think!

I never really blamed God for the bad things in my life that happened but I stopped trusting in him and having faith. I always wanted to say that I had faith in Him but in reality it was so hard. But that's something I've been working on more and more since I've been on my mission and it's definitely been helpful to always trust in Him and to stay faithful even when it seems like the last thing that you want to do. God notices all. He notices how hard we try when we don't want to. He notices when we grow when we fall. He really does see and know everything.

Tomorrow we are singing in an choir at a Lutheran church interfaith. People from many different religions are singing too and it's going to be so awesome!!

We had a missionary farewell party on Friday and that was pretty fun. Lots of yummy food and we were able to talk to a lot of people. One of the hermano's in our ward shared a joke and it was hilarious.

One day there was a catholic preacher walking down the street after the services were over down the way he see's a little boy with a box it seemed as though he was selling something. As he got closer he heard the boy yelling puppies catholic puppies for sale!! He talked to the boy for a little while and then he kept walking. a few days later after the services he was waiting for everyone to leave sot hat he could go see if the boy was still on the corner of the street selling the puppies. As he walked in the direction he heard the boy yelling puppies for sale! Mormon puppies for sale. The catholic preacher hearing the boy selling Mormon puppies was really angry so he ran up to the boy and asked him what happened. Last week he had been selling Catholic puppies and now he was selling Mormon puppies. when he asked the boy what had happened he said "they finally opened their eyes"

I thought the joke was really funny. He would tell part of it in Spanish and then go back and say it in English because not everyone there spoke Spanish.

Anyways I'm ready for another week of greatness!! I love being a missionary more than anything! I hope you all have a great week!!!