Hola a todos!
The past week or so I’ve been waking up with headaches and going to bed with headaches, nothing too crummy, but wow I feel so wiped out and my brain wants to explode sometimes. I think this might be my brain yelling at me for living, breathing, and sleeping in a foreign language. Who knew it would be so hard to just casually start living in another language. 🙂
But we talk a lot about how I’m improving and how I can work on my accent and things like that. My companions gave me some reasonable metas (goals) for my mission with Spanish: at 8 months I can be fluent (for a gringa), at 12 months I can lose my gringa accent, and at 16-18 months I can be practically Latina. 🙂
These are my goals but genuinely I have to work so super hard and basically stop speaking English to achieve these. I’m praying a lot for guidance on how I can achieve these goals, because everything in life has a reason – so if God wants me to be fluent in Spanish I’m going to try my best at it. Como dice nefi: iré y haré. I’m here to do the Lord’s will both for myself and for others.
My companion, Hermana Antonio has a few health problems, so sometimes we’re in the house for a few hours more than usual. Hna Montoya and I usually work in the carpeta and we call people and do house stuff. It’s kind of suffocating and I go stir-crazy a lot. But todavia estoy vivienta.
Last night, after a day mostly in the house we had a lot of energy to get out and I’m pretty sure our neighbors think we’re crazy now 🙂 we spent a while dancing around to MoTab and pillow fights and trying to make banana bread in a toaster oven.
Man I miss music, I miss read human-sized food, and baking and cooking in a real kitchen. Life is good but some comforts of home are still missed. We got a package with homemade cookies and candies from a friend of the family of Hna Antonio this week and we ate them so fast – wow jaja.
I’ve also been painting like usual, super slow and only for like 10 minutes at a time but I’m progressing on a few paintings I’m trying to have done to send out to some friends. Let’s see, what other mundane things about my life can I tell you. Hermana Montoya and I have been talking about anime a lot. I have a whole list to watch when I come back.
My companions are so sweet, I love them, we’ve all agreed that after the mission we’re meeting in Mexico to reunite. I hope this isn’t like high school and they actually mean it when they say we’ll do stuff later. 🙂
Update on my converts and my investigators: Beatriz is a huge influence in her family and I found out that 3 weeks ago, 5 weeks after her baptism the hermanas in Trujillo Alto baptized her mom! It’s exciting because I hope that now the rest of her family can follow in her path. It’s amazing to see what can happen because of one lesson, one shared scripture and one baptism. 🙂
We’re working on three people in specific right now: Mermarie, Julie, and Carmen. Mermarie has been coming to church for almost 2 months now and loves the gospel, but her abuelita wants to know more about the gospel before letting her get baptized. We’re meeting with her tonight to get permission to baptize her on 3 Junio! Hope all goes well! Julie and Carmen are basically ready for baptism too, we just need Carmen to stop drinking café. We’re working on a fun process/strategie to help her. It’s from the church, called Dejar de Fumar. But it works for all addictions.
Honestly, we don’t have many investigators right now, but that’s what street contacting is for. 🙂 We have plans to explore total de Carolina this upcoming week to look for people with a desire to learn.
I miss you all, sorry I don’t have many fotos, but I trust you still remember what I look like.
This is my scripture this week, reading D y C as a missionary is definitely different, just about every chapter is useful to help dar animo in times of frustration or when things aren’t working out. D y C is full of missionary advice.
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su gringa,
Hermana Thelin