Hola a todos! <Hello everyone!>
This week is going to be a good one, you know why? Because we’ve been planning a ton of things to help the area of Ponce find more young people. You would think that it shouldn’t be so hard because it’s a young city with a lot of colleges, but alas it’s still a tough thing. We’re going to pull on our limited experiences with YSA (I had a few days working in a YSA ward on exchanges in Cali and Hermana Beard once attended a YSA ward) and we’re going to bring all the young people to church!
And what better week to do this than Semana Santa? I think it’s called Holy Week in English… Everybody loves this week here. You wouldn’t believe how many parades we’ve already seen and it’s only the beginning of the week. Mostly the Catholics get really into celebrating it here, but I think our church should involve itself more in the festivities.
Our lives are full of activities and contacting people in the mountains and honestly, I’m pretty darn happy doing it. Still haven’t really gotten too tan, it’s been raining almost every day we go to the mountains, but I have faith one day I will look less ghost-like.
Other fun news: we have been working with this member on helping her feel less afraid of sharing the gospel and she told us that after reading the copy of Preach My Gospel we gave her she finally built up the courage to talk to her neighbor and we’re going to hopefully see her and the neighbor at dinner tonight to talk about “the blue book.” 🙂
And we found a place recently that makes quesitos that are about a foot long! and they’re soooooo good. Even better news – we met a lady that works as one of those bakery delivery ladies and she offered to bring us quesitos every day. #blessed. We are going to have to work out a lot more if we want to eat foot-long quesitos jaja.
I had a weird experience yesterday in church when a missionary I knew walked in, Hermana Bowers, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember in what area of my mission I met her. I went through all of my areas in Puerto Rico in my mind and I came up blank and then all of a sudden I remembered I MET HER IN CALIFORNIA. Honestly though. It’s gotten so hard to separate my time in CA and PR. The time all mixes together and I can’t separate events/people or places. It was nice to see her though. Her family took a vacation and just so happened to end up coming to one of my wards out of all the possible ones on the island 🙂
And I met a member who was baptized in Chicago around the time my dad was a missionary there. I tried desperately to see if she knew him, but nah. Could’ve been a cool story though. 🙂
And last but not least, one of our investigators decided she wants to be baptized on April 21st! So whoever stays in Ponce next transfer is going to have an awesome baptism! She is an amazing girl. Remind me to tell y’all her story when I get home. (Y’all can wait a few months 🙂 ).
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DLB
Hermana Thelin