Week 23

Hey!! :D

 I am so glad I got to talk to you on skype! I couldn't believe how fast the time went by but I loved every second of it! It makes me so happy to know that you are all doing well and that you guys are happy! It was nice to see that my siblings haven't changed! And that they are still crazy! I miss having my crazy siblings around sometimes. When it's quiet I'm just waiting for some noise to start but it never does haha! And mom I'm serious you look super skinny! You look so good! I'm so proud of you mommy! You work so hard and you never give up! I was sad how fast the time went and I wanted to talk more and more! But it's ok :) I get to see pictures of you and I'm getting the videos ready to send to you and then I will be able to see you guys in the video and then mothers day is going to come super fast! It was so great to be able to talk to all of you and to tell you all how much I love you guys! I am the luckest person to have the family that I have. You guys are so great! I have the best family in the world!! I couldn't ask for a better family :D Yeah we made it to the rest of our apointments haha well we didn't go to the Hernandez family because we didn't have time but we went to the Rodruigez family and we just ate a little bit and she gave us earrings! :) mine are little white flowers and they are super cute! I love them. That family is one of my favorite families in our barrio...I shouldn't have favorites! but I do! And, then we went to our last appointment which happened to be across the parking lot from our apartment and we ate with them and got to help the husband figure out some things in English. 

How did the rest of your week go?  It was good! Evodio got baptized!! Hermana Carbajal and I found him my first transfer when we were contacting one night outside the lavadaria. He asked us to teach him how to pray and so we did and then we saw him every time we went to the lavandaria and we always talked with him. It was a while before we actually taught him the restoration. We decided he would progress faster if the elders taught him and he just got baptized! On coley's birthday!! It was really good! His whole family came (well a lot of his family came) The only problem that came up was that The Elders didn't fill up the font with enough water and so every time he went down he had to go really far down and his leg would come up. Elder Perez baptized him and they had to do it so many times, they put a chair in the font for him to sit it but his feet still came up and in the end they had to have him kneel on the ground in the font for elder perez to get him completely under without having a part of his body come up out of the water. At the end of the baptism the first counselor in the bishopbric explained why they had to do it so many times and it was really good. I love Evodio and I am so happy that he got baptized! I found out later that night that Grecia was also baptized that day! I wish i would have known!

Anyways on Monday we saw Hugo and Edilma! It was so good! I was so happy that we got to see them! We are going to stop by tonight to see if they are home...crossing my fingers. 

On Tuesday we went and met Jeysel (hazel) for an actual lesson and she is so good! She was a referral from the English elders and we taught her the restoration. It was a little rough but it was good! She is leaving to go to Mexico with her daughter and she isn't sure how long she will be gone! Hopefully we will be able to see her again soon! she accepted our invitation to be baptized but she didn't say yes to the date we gave her. Hopefully we will be able to start teaching her again soon and then she will feel ready for the date that we extend. We then went over to the Hernandez family and helped put together the Tamales. It was really hard at first because I had no idea what to do but in the end I got it down :) it was really fun to make them! That night we taught the Obispo's son and he was so tired, he had gotten home from vacation that morning and so he was almost falling asleep during our lesson. His mom had to come sit with him and help him. We taught him how to start on his family history.

On Wednesday (Christmas Eve) For Hispanics Christmas eve is Christmas. We decided to open our presents that morning :) Thank you for all the presents! I loved the shirts! I've been wearing a different one every day! I think I have two or three more to wear :) I'm wearing the red sweater today :) and I loved the stocking and the gifts from my siblings! And I can't wait to start using the gift card set that you sent too! Those gift cards will be used very well I can promise you that :) We saw a couple investigators that morning and then we went over to a family's house for dinner and ate this soup (I don't' know how to spell the name) and it was good, there was so much meat in it and I was so full after but then we had to go to another dinner appointment with the Hernandez's so that we could eat the tamales that we helped put together. All the missionaries were there (the elders and other hermanas) and then they also had some friends over. The tamales were so good, I want to learn how to make the stuff that is on the inside so I can make tamales once I am home from my mission! They are a lot of work though...but they are so good! We took pictures and we stayed there until it was time to go back to our apartment for the night :) On Christmas morning we got up early stayed in our pjs and we went to our car so that we could go pick up the elders to go to the hermanas' and we got to our car with a lovely Christmas present from mother nature. Ice all over our car, we had to defrost it. I guess it's the closest thing to snow we will get! I mean it looks like snow in the picture i sent you :) we picked up the elders and then went to the hermanas' house where we made breakfast, ate and got ready, the elders couldn't come inside and so we left the door open and put the couch by the door so that we could eat and talk with them. It was so much fun! Then we headed over to the Ardmore's house where we played games and they gave us a thing of chocolate :) yummmm and then we ate lunch and played more games! It was so much fun to be able to hang out with our district for Christmas! We then drove the elders back to their apartment Pretty sure all of them fell asleep in the car haha it was a half hour drive and we went down the the Ovalle's- another half hour drive (an hour drive from the Ardmores) and there we got to skype!!! and as soon as I logged on you were calling me! Haha I could tell you were waiting for me to get on! Those 40 minutes were the best! They were so fast but so good! I am so thankful that we got to skype instead of just a phone call!  

On Friday we went to the doctors and we were there for so long. Hermana has been sick and so we decided that since she wasn't getting better she needed to go to the doctors. We waited there for ever and then once she went back it was like another hour before she came back out maybe more than an hour. We went and visited a former investigator and she seems interested in learning again. Maybe it's her time now..I don't know but we will see! We finished handing out our El es la Dadiva cards...there were supposed to be given out before Christmas but we didn't have time to hand out all of the ones that we had and so we just did it after christmas :)  

Saturday morning We went to the church and helped cleaned :) I vacuumed the chapel and all the benches. It took a really long time but it looked pretty good afterwards. Blanca the relief society president picked us up because we have like no miles left! and then she and her husband took us out to lunch at chick-fil-a before they took us back to our apartment. It started raining really really hard. we got back to our apartment and figured out how to use the miles that we had for the day and we ended up driving down south and we left our car at an investigators house who wasn't home and we walked to our next appointments. We probably walked about 5 miles in total. It was really cold and there really wasn't a shoulder on the road so we walked in the ditch. It was nice to walk we had a lot of fun. We ended up seeing one of our less actives and had a lesson with her. We headed back to our apartment  and we got a ride from our apartment to the church for Evodio's baptism! It was so wonderful! I am so grateful that I got to be a part a little bit in his conversion! 

On Sunday we got another ride to church and then we had lunch with the hermanas at a members house and they drove us back to our apartment. We ate more tamales for lunch with this family, they were different but they were really good! We then went to an appointment with the former and we tried to teach the restoration, we got to how the gospel blesses families and I asked her why she thinks we have families and then she didn't stop talking for the next hour. Hermana and I both almost fell asleep, I could barely keep my eyes open haha. I almost thought I did fall asleep but hermana said I didn't. We don't know if she is ready. We didn't make a return appointment but we are going to stop by again sometime to see her and try to teach the restoration and if we can't then we will drop her for now. We went and saw a former but there wasn't a woman in the house and so we walked to McDonalds because it was too cold to have a lesson outside and we just sat in McDonalds and talked with him. He is really cool and right now he just has to be willing to change a lot of things in his life but he said maybe it's time for him to change he needs to figure it out for himself though. He is a really nice person and I hope that he has the desire to change. We then visited the Hernandez family and talked with them about building their foundation on the gospel and how they can become stronger. We talked with them for a while and before we left we played connect four with Edgar :) This week was really good and we got 4 new investigators again! Woooo!!!

I'm glad that you guys got the package! Haha did you like my reused wrapping paper and the decorated box? :)

Are you used to getting up at 6:30 or is it hard?  It's pretty easy, I mean the alarm is closer to me so I turn it off when it goes off at 620 and then I just have to make sure I roll out of bed and say my prayers right as I turn it off. and then i get up and go into the bathroom so there is no way for me to fall back asleep. We haven't been exercising this week since hermana has been sick and so I've just been reading the new era, and the ensigns on the couch and sometimes I let myself fall asleep for fifteen minutes before I have to start getting ready. Sometimes it's really hard but if I can just get out of bed to say my prayers it's all good. 

What are you excited about this coming week?  hmmmm well this week we don't have really anything going on besides the normal stuff but we don't have really any lessons planned for this week yet. That will change soon though haha :) Looking forward to finding more people to teach! and reactivating the less actives!!

With the New Year, will your church time be changing?  We are going to 11  :) which will be a lot better because people don't like church at 9 in the morning, hopefully this will get our less actives to come back to church! 

It has been raining and the past few days have been so cold! I've been wearing tights to help keep my legs warm when we are out walking! We've been trying to save our miles so that we don't go over! it's so hard to keep track of miles sometimes and it's annoying to have to "stress" over it. It would be so nice if we had 100 more miles at least. 

What would you like us to include in our prayers this week?  if you could pray for our investigators that would be awesome :) just pray that some or all of them will be progressing investigators :)

Thanks so much for all your prayers! I love you all so much! I'm so grateful to be here on a mission! There is no place i'd rather be! I can't believe I'm almost at 6 months! Time goes by so fast! You better not blink or else it will be gone! Take in every moment and spend every moment to it's fullest! don't leave room for regret :) Have a great week!!

Con Amor

Hermana Medeiros

Working on the Nativity set you sent us

Mary fell over right after this picture was taken

Trying to fix Mary....

Here is us working on the nativity set, Mary fell over after Hermana Got a picture with it and so I was trying to fix it and then it collapsed and she took a picture of me. Haha it was a lot of fun! Thanks for sending us the stuff to do it! I guess i was just impatient  and didn't let the frosting harden enough. haha oh well we all learn one way or another ;)

Edgar and I haha he is so funny!

Eating the tamales we helped put together

I love Deisy!! I am so grateful to be a part of this family's life!

Jimena and I :)

Christmas time! :D

Shalyn's Christmas box from home!

Look what we woke up to Christmas morning! Almost snow haha ;)

Christmas Breakfast

Christmas morning with the hermanas and the Elders, they couldn't come outside and so we left the door open and sat by the door while we ate breakfast!

Companions!

District Christmas Party

Me!

We found really big leaves while walking on Saturday!

Evodio got baptized!!!!

Evodio got baptized!!!!