Monday, June 20, 2016

Week 35--Another Week Has Passed Already?!


 Beautiful sunsets



I had a LOT of fun after emailing last week on P-day. The elders brought a Frisbee and we played Ultimate Frisbee. We had so much fun. At first I thought that I might have injured myself again on monday evening, but fortunately I didn't. Whew! I'm going to make sure to stretch and warm up extra well this week just in case. I love playing sports with the elders!

 My injuries from P-day. I got kicked by accident!



Monday night we visited Juan Oldeda. He's the one that just had open heart surgery a few weeks ago. He's not doing too well, It was kind of sad because he's like a different person, he used to be tall and strong and active, but now he has to walk with a walker. We also had a lesson with Larissa that didn't go as planned! Hna. M and I played too hard at P-day I guess, because she fell asleep in the lesson! She was totally exhausted! We're going to be extra careful to not play too long so that won't happen today. We also got a couple of pretty exciting referrals front the Hood River Hermanas on Monday, so it will be exciting to see how those go. We've already contacted 2 of them and had a lesson with one. It’s great that the work is slowly picking back up here. 

Tuesday was kind of scary in the morning because Hna. M lost her wallet! We couldn't find it anywhere. So I ended up driving us around that day, until we finally found it that evening. I don't mind driving, but it was sad during our district meeting, because it was really distracting for Hna. M! She was so worried, so I'm really glad we found it.

After District council on Tuesday we picked up Larissa at her house and headed for Trout Lake to visit her non-member friend, Lisa. It was so awesome! I love it when people share their friends with us, it is so much less intimidating and makes us not seem like salespeople like we do when we go door to door or talk to people on our own. If you have friends you think might be interested, please introduce them to your local missionaries! It makes everything go so much smoother.

It was pretty funny because we walked in at 2pm for our appointment, and there were actually a couple of Kirby vacuum salesmen there doing their little presentation! It was cool because we sat and listened to the end of it, and then we asked if they would like to sit in for ours!! We ended up getting a couple of extra OYM's out of it, and since they were both from Portland we got their contact information and are going to figure out how to get it to the Portland mission. How cool is that? Sometimes the Lord works in very funny ways. Plus the vacuum salespeople got a sale out of it, so we both got a win. 

Wednesday- the search continues for the mysterious Idela! We met her last week and started teaching her, she was AWESOME but then she just disappeared off the face of the planet! We went back to her house for one of our lessons and she wasn’t there. We asked the family that talked to us, and they were like, "Yeah, we don't know who that is, are you sure this is the right house?" So we thought maybe we heard her name wrong, since it was in Spanish, so we described her. They just said, "yeah sorry, we don't know who that is. Good luck though ladies!" So we double checked the house, and it was the right one. But just in case we knocked all the neighbors, and none of them knew who Idela was! It was so strange! I was like, did we meet a ghost?! So that's weird and sad...

Then we did some service for an elderly lady who is moving into a nursing home, and turns out she's actually a hoarder! We went over to "help tidy up" and ended up going back home to change into service clothes and get gloves and masks because it was horrifyingly bad! Like dead mice bad! Whew... that wasn't fun, but it was pretty fulfilling afterwards to see how much progress we made. We're going back on Wednesday to work on it some more with Hna. Luevano and Hna. Dee, because they will be coming down here for exchanges. 

Thursday was pretty fun because one of our members, Randy Colton, came out knocking with us! It was so cute he's only 12 but is like a little adult, he just came up to us and was like, "Hey, we need to go knocking together!" He already can't wait to be a missionary. What an awesome kid. Then we had a great member dinner with the Kendalls. It was fun, because she's the sister who has a twin sister that lives in Royal City. After dinner we went out to Snowden and visited a less active family who has the most gorgeous “ranchion” ever! (ranch with a mansion—Alison’s dream home). Wooden ceilings, dormer windows, stained glass, palominos in the yard! It was perfection... 

Planning on Friday actually went really well. I didn't even hardly stress at all! We got a call mid-planning from Tacho, our returning less-active Spanish member, and he sounded really stressed and a little panicked about his Sunday school lesson  on Sunday. He asked if there was any way we could come over and help him before church on Sunday to prepare his lesson. So we told him we'd check and get back to him. He lives in a reeeeaaaaaalllly sketchy part of our area, so we have been told to not go there alone. We have to get a member to go with us. So we called around and were trying hard to find someone to go with us. Finally, Miguel said he could go, which was so kind of him, because he was going to be running a half-marathon Saturday morning and was just planning on sleeping the rest of the day. But he said he would come.

Then, we got there on Saturday and Tacho was just like "Oh, yeah my lesson is fine, its good, whatevs, etc." and we were like... um we thought you were frantically looking for help. Then he just started talking about all this food he's been making. So pretty much he was just trying to trick us into coming over. We were pretty frustrated. Especially because Miguel was sacrificing sleep to come! Then we stopped by some other Spanish investigators in that trailer park, since we had Miguel with us anyways. He was such a good sport. It turns out he finally got his mission call! He is going to Guatemala, speaking Kektchi, a Mayan language! Pretty crazy! 

We've been role playing a lot lately, and on Saturday morning something funny that we did was practice teaching with distractions. So I was pretending to do an exercise video while Hna. M taught me about the restoration. It was so funny! Then she was a busy mom. We've done a lot more ideas, too. Those were just the main funny ones. It's so helpful. I'm really beginning to appreciate role playing. 
Saturday night we went out knocking with Megan Tew. She's another one of our awesome youth at church, and she's actually going on a mission pretty soon, too! She’s three days older than my sister, Libbie, but she's not doing a year of school first. She's so awesome! We were trying to come up with new and unique things to say at door approaches. It actually went pretty well. We usually don't knock this much, but Megan and Randy offered. We met a really cute little man named Filipe from Michoacán.

Sunday- Happy Father’s day!! It was a great day! We were surprised when Max and Josiah and Britney Merrill (one of our investigating families) showed up at church!! It was so exciting. They really liked it! And, Emma came, too, so that made four investigators at church. That never happens! We're really starting to see great results coming from focusing on quality instead of quantity. Miracles! We also got to help out in Primary with all the Father's day festivities. It was fun to be back in Primary again. I taught the four-year-old class before my mission. It brought back good memories.  Sunday night we practice-taught the Abkens. We have been doing that lately to get even more practice in and really sharpen our teaching skills. It's been really fun, and they thought of some amazing questions! 

Well, It's been a good week, Can y'all believe I'm turning 8 months old tomorrow? I'm almost halfway through my mission! Wow! 


Love and miss you all! 

 Beautiful rainy day in Washington





 Playing "Pictionary" with our Spanish
vocabulary for language practice



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