Hello everyone!
It has been another wonderful week here in Florida!
Monday we had a zone activity complete with volleyball, a potatoe sack race, double dutch, and ice cream. It was a little random, but so much fun!
Tuesday was one of my very favorite days of my whole mission. The morning was pretty normal, with studies and knocking doors. However, that night we had the opportunity to go to the temple with Patricia. Patricia is a recent convert that was baptized the week before I got to this area. She is divorced, and her son has been living with his dad. He got baptized while living with his dad, and is currently serving a mission in Colombia. I bet he was so excited to hear that his mom got baptized! Anyway, the temple was so amazing. I had not been to the temple in a year, and as soon as I walked in I felt so much peace. Sister Dees and I had not been expecting to be able to participate in baptisms, we thought we would only be able to watch. Turns out they changed the rule, and we were able to do baptisms as well. We all got changed, and were waiting in the chapel when the temple president came to speak to us and the other group of youth we ended up with. He was going around asking who everyone was being baptized for, then he noticed Patricia. We translated between the two of them, and when he found out that it was her first time in the temple and that she was being baptized for her grandmother he started to cry. The spirit was so amazing. Patricia could not stop smiling, and neither could I! She said she had never felt so peaceful or so happy. Sister Dees came out of the temple rejuvenated and so happy. I just love that place.
On Wednesday we had interviews with President Garns. It was so awesome to get to know him a little better. He is so easy to talk to, and I really appreciate the way he views missionary work. He talked to Sister Dees and I a lot about simply following the spirit as we are teaching. Sometimes we get it in our heads that there is one way to do missionary work, and if we aren't doing it that way we are not being good missionaries. However, he assured us that as long as we are following the Spirit, we are doing what the Lord would have us do. It takes a lot of stress off when you think about it that way. Plus, President Garns likes tennis too, so he is a pretty cool guy.
On Thursday all of our appointments fell through, so we ended up making lots of unexpected visits to people.
Friday we went on a full day exchange with our STLs. I got to go with Sister Dimond, I lived with her last transfer, so we had a ton of fun! We started off the day doing service at a place called Flamingo Gardens. It is the most rainforesty zoo/peacock preserve/dinosaur museum ever! It was DOWNPOURING rain, so we just took two umbrellas and felt like adventurists as we walked through the rainforest picking up trash and peacock feathers. It was awesome. We also ended up talking to this adorable old paleontologist that was very excited to show us his dinosaur bones and even more excited when he found out we were Mormons. He had lived in Utah for a long time, so we invited him to church! After that we made a visit to a sweet old lady from our branch named Virginia Rodriguez. We were supposed to be eating dinner with her, but first we asked her if she would take us to visit her friend who was a former investigator living in the same apartment complex. She was overjoyed that we had remember her friend "Blancita." Turns out Blanca was the most adorable 80 year old lady ever, and she could hardly talk. When we arrived there was another visitor named Sylvia, the fanciest and craziest little old Cuban lady I've ever met with an abundance of blue eye shadow and a HUGE ring on each finger. The three of them ended up in an adorable argument about whether or not Blanca should be moved to a nursing home. Blanca was insisting that was where she should go, at the same time that Sister Rodriguez was insisting that she stay in her apartment, meanwhile Sylvia was talking louder than them all and insisting that Blanca could just use her spare electric chair. She was even demonstrating how easy it was to use her electric chair by yelling "Adelante!" and "A tras!" While propelling herself forward and backward. Sister Dimond and I were cracking up. 45 minutes later we finally managed to sneak out of there, and we decided to treat ourselves to a place called Bolay for dinner. It was the weirdest combination of sweet potatoes, cilantro noodles, and tofu you could put in a bowl, but it was absolutely delicious. That night we did some normal knocking and visits, nothing too exciting happened though.
On Saturday we switched back and Sister Dees and I continued our ongoing search for new investigators. We did not find anyone, but we did get to visit Patricia. We showed her the video of the Restoration, which she loved, and then downloaded Meet the Mormons for her which she loved too. We then helped her to pack up some boxes because she is going to be moving apartments next weekend. She will still be living close, just in the next building over.
On Sunday morning we had a great day at church. I love going to church and seeing all of the members, that is one of my favorite parts of the week. Other than that we had a lot of appointments fall through, so we got to continue looking for new investigators. We have not seen a lot of success with that this week, but we have definitely planted a lot of seeds! One thing that was cool was while we were knocking doors yesterday we saw two women sitting on their porch a little ways away, we went over to talk to them, before we could do more than introduce ourselves one of them hurriedly excused herself to go inside. The other one declined a message or a prayer, but after talking to her for a minute she changed her mind and conceded that she really could use a prayer. She spent the next 30 minutes telling us about some very hard things that she is going through right now including a restraining order on her x boyfriend, drug addictions, unemployment, and trying to raise her 9 year old daughter. She was so moved by the prayer, and said she knew that God had sent us there at that time. We were so glad to be able to be in the right place at the right moment to help one of God's children. She speaks English, so we passed her information to the English missionaries. Hopefully they will continue teaching her.
I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you!
Love, Hermana Monson
Temple visit with Patricia!
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