Hermana Medeiros Texas Houston Mission: Week 51--Her Birthday Week!

Gah!!!! How does time go by so fast?? I can't be in the 100's! That's just not possible haha. Oh geez I've been gone almost a whole year! That is so scary! (198 days until she comes come)

Aaaannnyyywwwaaayyyssss haha let's not talk about that right now..........

So this week it was kind of crazy...we ended up dropping 3 of our investigators that i worked with all of last transfer. One of them just never answered the door or her phone never responded to our texts or calls and so we left a note telling her to call us when she is ready to have us back. Another one told us she is Catholic and will never come to our church, she only liked us to come over so she could talk with us. And then the other one i'm super sad about because she had a baptismal date but she started avoiding us. She didn't show up to 2 appointments, never answers her phone and so we left a note like we did with the first and told her to call us when she is ready. So right now we are on the search for some new investigators. We've had a couple really cool miracles. I told hermana to pick a street to tract and when she chose one we knocked on every door, didn't have very many people open up. So then she told me to choose where i wanted to go to tract and i decided to just walk over to the next street. We knocked on one door, no answer so we went across the street and knocked on the door, a little girl opened up but a huge family was sitting in the living room and kitchen. one of them started talking to me in english, we talked to her for a minute and then we asked if they had 5 minutes for us to share something and she said "well i'm the only one that speaks english" i was like "perfect! We speak spanish!" so we got to go in and share a video with them and it was super cool. we got all their numbers so hopefully we will be able to get in touch with them again to be able to visit all of them.

Last night was temple tours and we were dying to go. We literally called almost every single person in our phone but no one could go, but then an investigator that i haven't met yet called us back and said he wanted to go. We had a member that was willing to drive us so we were going to meet them at the church and half way there we got a text from the investigators girl friend telling us that they are too busy and he can't waste time going to the tours with us. So we sat in the car for a while because we were super sad. But then we got a call from a random number, and we've been calling a lot of former's and so we didn't know if it was someone who we called a few days ago or what, but anyways we answered and this lady told us that she just moved into bryan with her non member husband and she talked to the bishop and got our number. So she gave us her address and we went over to go meet her. Well she forgot to tell us if she was apartment a or b so we knocked on a and this lady opened and she told us that they were the new ones next door, i did an awful contact but we asked her if there was another day that we could come by and visit her and almost without hesitation she said yes. So that will be really cool!

This new member is so awesome she has a non member husband and they are both so cool. Haha expect i felt so bad last night, the husband is black and he was talking in perfect spanish and without even thinking i said "now how do you speak spanish so well" he said "well i'm Hispanic and from costa rica." haha i felt so bad! I apologized and wanted to crawl under the table! luckily he wasn't offended at all. but anyways this member has the coolest conversion story and she told us that she has gone 2 months without going to church and she says she feels like she is about to explode! haha i mean dang she is so awesome she is going to help our ward so much! and hopefully we will be able to teach her husband!

On tuesday we ended up being stuck at a car place for like 2 hours. One of our small light things on our car was dangling out of place and so we took it in and at first the guy said he could just glue it back in but then he didn't have any of the right glue. Then we had to wait 2 hours for the part to get there and for him to put it on, we ended up going to the dollar store across the street. That night we had an awesome lesson with our investigator who has a baptismal date we taught her family history and it was so cool! it went really well. Expect she didn't come to church on sunday :/ so we have to move her date. gah!!!

We had zone meeting on Friday and we learned an entirely new way to contact! When we are door contacting we are not going to say "hi we are missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints" we go about it totally differntly now. It's a little awkward but it will get better as the time goes on. we had dinner with the morgans that night and (man mom you'd love her) haha she calls me her short imp. She kills me. I'm so happy to share birthdays with her.

We had a lesson with a potential investigator and we tried using a technique that we learned in zone meeting. We show the bible video "thou art the christ" and then we ask them a couple questions and then we ask "how would you feel if this same church that Christ built when he was on the earth, if it was back on the earth today." we've used that twice since zone meeting and both times it has back fired on us because they say "well that church is the catholic church...." and then they go on talking for a long time. But anyways this one particular lesson was insane. We got up to the aposotasy and then she started saying all the things that she didn't agree with so many of them were things we didn't even say or that we could have fixed her understanding if she would have just let us talk. But that didn't happen. So when she finally stopped talking after 45 minutes or so, i looked at my watch and said "oh my i'm so sorry but we have an appointment to run to" we didn't set up a return appointment. i mean we really did have an appointment to go to. We got into the car and pushed back the seats and just sat there for a minute. It was even all in english and it still drained us!

Saturday we had the best breakfast ever with an investigator who made hand made tortillas. Mmmmm we ate eggs and beans and something else all with our hands and tortillas haha it was so much fun!

through a lot of the lessons that we had this week i felt the spirit really strong. Sometimes we are in a lesson and i'll be speaking and then when i stop i just start thinking about how cool it is how much i can speak and understand in spanish. My spanish has improved so much...not boasting or anything. But really the gift of tongues is real. it's so wonderful because sometimes after those moments are the times where i really know that God is helping me with my spanish and i feel the spirit so strongly.

This week was really good, and we have some cool stuff coming up this week! hopefully we will have new investigators and more people to work with. We are working really hard and everything is going so great! Going on an exchange tomorrow, we have interviews on thursday and my birthday is sunday! woot woot!! I finally won't be a baby anymore! maybe i'll start getting companions younger than me! Instead of older than me haha.

Pray that we will be able to find new prepared people!

Always do the things that will help you to grow in your faith. Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge.

Hope---> Faith --> Experience --> Knowledge

This is a cycle that is continuous. I have grown in my faith so much since i have been here on my mission. I can't believe that i have been out almost a year. My testimony has grown so much stronger. I pray every night to be able to stay strong in my faith and to be able to stay faithful every day. I invite you all to do the same.