This has been another great week!
On Monday Sister Smith and I spontaneously bought a "flan" pan and learned how to make homemade flan. It was pretty good if we do say so ourselves. Sister Smith has continual moments of realization that she is a missionary, and that time is passing quickly, and she usually just has a miniature freak out and I just sit there and laugh.
On Tuesday we had to spend a lot of the day at home because we were waiting for a plumber to come fix a leak in one of our pipes. The garage ceiling had been dripping water, so we had to get that all figured out. It made me appreciate running water going without that for a few days! During that time we were at home we did a serious study session with the other sisters we live with. We studied lots of deep doctrine about the Plan of Salvation, and the Priesthood, and we had a great time. I love learning those kinds of things. That night we went to have dinner with a sweet family from our ward. We felt so bad because everything seemed to go wrong in the kitchen, the smoke alarms went off, and a bunch of oil spilled all over the floor. The food was still delicious, and we texted Sister Morales that night to tell her thank you so much. She sent us back the sweetest text about what a privilege it is to have missionaries in her home. Members are just the best! I love them! Especially because a lot of these Latin members were converted by missionaries, so they love us!
On Wednesday I hit my one year mark! I can hardly believe it! That morning we were on our usual morning run, and I was just thinking about how one year has gone by. I just feel so blessed for this last year I have had as a missionary, I wouldn't want to spend it any other way. That day an adorable little Cuban sister in our ward took us to lunch at a Chinese buffet. It was so fun to be with her, she is so cute! Plus who doesn't love all you can eat sushi? Sister Smith kept laughing at me because I am so used to speaking Spanish to anyone that doesn't speak English that I kept saying "gracias" to all of our Asian waiters. Haha, oops! That night we went to go visit a less active member, she has been really sick, and she just got released from the hospital. She lives with her husband, who is very old and not very functional, her daughter who has some mental challenges, and her granddaughter who also has mental health problems. I felt so much respect for this woman taking care of 3 other people, when she should probably be the one being taken care of. She said she wants to come back to church so we are going to try to help her with that. Her husband is just adorable, he did not really understand what was going on, but he told us at least 5 times during the visit. "Gracias por la visita, mi casa es su casa." (Thank you for the visit, my house is your house).
On Thursday we saw a HUGE blessing. We had just parked our car and I was grabbing some supplies out of the trunk. Suddenly Sister Smith calls to me "Sister! Don't shut the trunk!" She had left the car keys in her bag, and closed the door, forgetting it was an automatic locking car. We had already had to call the mission office for locking our keys in our car a few weeks ago, and also earlier in the week for getting our pipe fixed, so we did not want to call them again to come rescue us! We spent the next 25 minutes sweating bullets in the trunk of our car, trying to figure out how to get inside. We finally figured out how to unlock the back seats, so we could push them forward, and get the car keys. We were so sweaty, but so grateful! We ended up knocking into a really cool black man named Mr. Walker. He is a minister from a Presbyterian church, and he ended up talking for about 45 minutes straight. We didn't get a chance to say much, but he has a really cool story about how he turned his life around completely. He used to be a big athlete, only cared about money, and involved in drugs. However, when he suffered from a stroke, and had a heart transplant in the same year he was forced to turn to God. Now he lives his life focused completely on God, and helping other people. Such a cool story!
That night we had our usual "ward missionary night." So we went on splits. Sister Smith went and taught one of the recent converts in the ward named Paula. I went to teach our investigator Alideisy. She is set to get baptized on July 8th! It is coming up so fast, and we realized that we needed to teach her the 10 commandments, word of wisdom, law of chastity, and prophets as soon as possible. We decided that if everything seemed to be going well we would combine them all into one lesson that night. I ended up being paired with a sweet little Cuban lady from our ward. It was a pretty nerve racking lesson trying to teach all of those things, and all by myself. However, the Spirit helped a ton, and Alideisy accepted everything! She had already read about the 10 commandments in the Book of Mormon because her 2 year old little boy had moved her book mark, so she ended up reading in Mosiah instead of the chapter in 3 Nephi where we'd left her. It worked out so well! She is progressing so well, and we are so excited for her to get baptized this Saturday!
It was so funny because when we were explaining about our living prophet earlier in the week, she got really confused. So, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and Thomas Monson is a prophet? She just looks between us both, and looks at our name tags. We assured her that it was just a coincidence, and that not everyone in the church has the last names of the Prophets. She thought it was pretty funny.
On Friday we had a zone wide exchange and I got to work with a Brazilian sister named Sister Kutomi. We had a pretty normal day, we did some good less active visits and visited Alideisy again. She spent all day trying to teach me some Portuguese, but she said my accent is still too Spanish. I will have to keep practicing I guess. That night there was an "Aloha Dance" at the church. We were so surprised when Alideisy showed up! We had invited her earlier, she said she wasn't sure if she was going to make it. It was supposed to start at 8, but according to Latin standard time it started at 9 so we had to leave almost as soon as it started, but she said she had a good time!
On Sunday we had a great day at church! Alideisy came, and she was even so excited to tell us that she was fasting (we had taught her about that the day before). It was a little crazy because on her first full Sunday at church the fire alarms went off during Relief Society and so we all had to evacuate the building. I guess some people were having a little too much fun in the kitchen. However, she enjoyed church and is so excited for her baptism next Saturday! I just love her so much! She loves learning about the gospel, and reads everything on mormon.org. We went to go teach her the tithing lesson, but she said she already knew about tithing because she'd read all about it on mormon.org. That was an easy lesson!
That is all for this week!
Love, Hermana Monson
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