08.11.2014 - Summertime and the living is ... hot? sweaty? amazing?

I can’t believe that it is already August 11^th either! Crazy! My brain just can’t comprehend where all of the time goes. I’m glad to hear that only almost everyone was drinking wine. :)

The moon was really bright, wasn’t it? Jacob gets home the end of September?? That’s crazy that two years have already passed. Remind me again where Monique is going…it seems to have slipped my mind, or maybe you never told me. Either way I don’t know. As for how we teach FHE…we have it with them a few times and teach them how to do it and give them like a basic outline of the responsibilities (prayer, song, lesson, treat, game, etc.) and that’s about it. It’s not too hard a concept and we encourage them to just keep it simple anyways…that way it’s manageable and they are willing to do it because they feel like they can succeed. :) That’s how I’ve done it anyways! The part in Preach My Gospel that talks about it is pretty tiny so we just go by the Spirit.

This week has been a good one! Rene decided to take the lessons again and was at the lesson with Concha on Tuesday night so that was a miracle! Still working on their marriage, but that’s a process I don’t really have a lot of knowledge about. Never really went through a divorce before…

Tuesday afternoon we also went and helped Natividad make sure everything was level, mix cement, lay it down, and put the stone blocks where they needed to be. It was a lot of fun! He has a really high tech leveler…the telescope on it can see in great detail from huge distances!! We were hundreds of feet away from these cows but he told me to focus in on them and so I did and you could see the flies buzzing around their faces! Incredible. We also laid over 30 stones so that was good. :) I’m going to have lots of handy skills when I get home from my mission. We are going to try and go over and bring our whole zone to help him out because he has a lot more to get done! Yay for service.

Wednesday I was going through our texts and there was a referral we had received the day before that we completely missed! So after dinner with Edith (now our recent convert!!! J ) we went to contact her and she was home and it just so happens that Wednesdays are her days off! She was way nice and interested in learning more and coming to church and she said she would read the Book of Mormon! It was awesome. We have an appointment with her this Wednesday too! She said she is going to convince her husband and daughter to meet with us too! Sounds good to me. :)

We had Zone Conference all day Thursday and part of the time we played Preach My Gospel jeopardy and our zone totally killed it!! :) Go Queen Creek! But….we are humble about it? Hahaha I’ll work on that.

Friday was my 15^th month mark which means it was my Quincenera!!! So that means I had to put on all the skirts and dresses I own at the same time. :) I’ll send pictures. So…remember how I came out with 7ish skirts?? I now have 20…plus 1 dress. Not really sure how that happened, but it is what it is! I will definitely be getting rid of some of them before I come though! They are great…but I probably will never want to wear them again.

Saturday I was on exchanges with Sister Woolstenhulme and that went great. She’s awesome. The day was good, but pretty uneventful…until Chuy Carrillo’s baptism that is. We got there early to practice the musical numbers, but we got there and the other missionaries were filling the font up with buckets and bowls of water!!! Funniest sight. We started helping, but then figured that due to Hispanic  Mormon Time…we wouldn’t start on time anyways and that it would be full in time. Plus, he’s only 8 and not that big so it didn’t have to be that deep. Good times! The musical numbers all went well…they didn’t want opening and closing group hymns so Elder Lillywhite sang the opening one and I played the piano and then we switched for the closing hymn and did a group number with all the missionaries for the middle one. The best part was that Chuy was a child of record baptism!!! It’s so cool to think that the rest of the family have been members for over a year now and that now Chuy got baptized! Sister Chavarri was there and we just had a good long hug and talked about all of it is so worth it!!! :)

Things are great here! We are half way through this transfer which is crazy and unbelievable, but it is what it is! Yesterday we had an awesome Ward Council meeting. Best one of my mission. Good things are happening in the ward. We are walking at a faster rate.  :) That’s how Obispo said it anyways. He told us that’s what he wanted to happen…that we needed to push our Ward Mission Leader to do that with us and that’s what we are doing! It’s not like it was hard, the WML is great. We just have to be consistent and follow through!!! Great things are happening.

I love you and hope you have a wonderful week!!

Con amor,

Hermana Baria