Hola!!!
This week was a doozy...of AWESOMENESS!!! So first of all, Jahayra and Oliver are getting MARRIED on the 26th!!! We are super excited for them - the whole Relief Society is in on the planning, which is a Relief. :) It was so cool, because they were so excited to tell us. Jahayra really showed us that she understood how important her covenants are going to be when she said "I'm not going to get a really nice dress for it - I'll wait til we get sealed!" :)
On Tuesday we had a service project to rival Hermana Karren's ceiling fiasco - (Hermana Karren is a super awesome lady serving in salem, and she helped someone clean their ceiling when the microwave melted)
We showed up at the Reynold's house, a privately owned and cared-for homeless shelter. The owner of the shelter told us not to talk to any of the families we saw - they were homeless, she said, and didn't need to worry about religion right now. Which was silly, because times of trial are when you need your Father in Heaven the most! We respected her wishes, however, and went inside.
There was grime. There was gunk. There was gum. We were Game!
The walls, the ceiling, the floors, the dressers, the bed frames, the windows, the doors, the blinds - everything, everything was covered in a greasy layer of suciedad!
So we scrubbed. We scraped. We struggled. We Sang!, until they told us to stop. :) I found the chisel very handy. I'm pleased to say, once we got done with our two hours of service, the place looked livable. The lady who was the janitor - mind you, there were 16 rooms made for families of 5-8, and the 5 unoccupied ones were the ones we cleaned - she looked at the rooms and began to cry. She asked us for a pamphlet, because she recognized our nametags. The 4th ward sisters got themselves an appointment with her for the very next day! :) Service softens hearts.
We visited Hermana Valles, a cute single mom in the ward. Before we could ask if there was anyone she knew that we could talk to, she asked, "Do you guys have any of those pamphlets in english? I have this friend..." And she proceeded to tell us all about her friend whom she had been wanting to share the gospel with for some time! :D It was awesome!
We stopped by with Alma Villela, a referral from the Lower Valley Elders. She'd just gone through surgery, and they had given her a priesthood blessing by request of her husband. She was pretty out of it on pain meds, but her husband, her daughter (13) and her mother all sat in on our lesson. We taught them about Joseph Smith and invited them to read the Book of Mormon. They said they would!
So...food. Yes, food. "Hermana Smurthwaite, you're in the United States! You have it easy!" Ah ha, ha ha; that, my friend is where this story begins.
Once upon a time, we had dinner with Hermana Granados. "Vamos a tener Caldo!" She said to us on the phone. 'Caldo,' I thought, pulling out my dictionary. It translated directly to Soup. Helpful. :)
We arrived, unsuspecting, to discover she had concocted a seafood stew. It had crab legs and oyster shells and tiny tentacles in it - it literally looked like she had taken a colossal ladel, dipped it into the ocean, heated it, and served it as-is. For background, I'm not a huge fan of seafood. It smelled good - like heated brine mixed with saltwater - and as I looked at it, and at this sister who had lovingly prepared it, I began to appreciate all the meals that we had hitherto enjoyed. As we ate, she asked if we liked it. With tentacles in my teeth, I smiled and said, "Muy rico!" Because I made a goal before I came out here to love and scarf down anything and everything that was put in front of me. Goal still unbroken!! :)
In our district council, Elder Jones gave the Parable of the UPS guy. He said, "Imagine a UPS guy walks up to your house. You know who he is - you see his uniform, and you see he has a box under his arm. You know the box is for you. The UPS guy then says, "So how's your day going?" You reply "fine." You wait for him to give you the box. He sits and talks to you for twenty minutes. He talks about the box, about his job. Then he says, "Is there another time I can come by with this box?" No! You want your box!"
"We're like the UPS guy. People know who we are - they see the name on our chest. If we go through a lesson and don't extend an invitation to baptism, we're no better than the UPS guy! They want eternal salvation, but they're never gonna get baptized unless we ask!"
It was a good perspective. I liked the analogy.
We had our first real lesson with Cecilia and Fam!! Because they had so many questions, our half-hour lesson plan stretched to two hours! We talked about Joseph Smith, and they asked about keeping the Sabbath Day holy, the Young Womens program, the Second Coming of Christ (we promised to explain more the next time,) the Word of Wisdom, and infant baptism. We tried to answer concisely, using scriptures wherever possible. We invited them to be baptized, and they said yes - all five of them!
A Spanish joke: An American, a Mexican, and a Chinese man were parachuting together for the first time. They were trying to decide who would jump first. They decided whoever had the shortest name would. The Chinese man said, "It's me- my name is O." The American said, "Well, mine's shorter- it's Casio. (Casi O, which being translated means almost O)" The Mexican said, "Well, my name is even shorter than that, it's Nicasio. (Ni Casi O, translated as 'Not even almost O')"
Tune in next week for more....
El Paso: the Final Frontier. :)
Love, Love, Love,
Hermana Smurthwaite
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