E-Mail on 10/28/13

This week was better as far as actually doing stuff, I think.  I don’t really know though, let’s be real here.

I’m trying not to pop my knuckles at all because it’s a bad habit.  It’s not going so well because I pop them when I get anxious and that just so happens to be everytime I encounter Spanish which just happens to be every time I walk outside.  I’ll get there eventually.

I have made more paper cranes in the past month than I have ever in my whole life.  The ward loves it.  The little kids don’t even care as much as the parents do!  Kinda funny.  It definitely is a good time waster whilst I try to (unsuccessfully) understand the talks and such.  I understand more than week one but it’s still really rough.  But anyway, thanks Mom for teaching my this skill!  Super helpful!

Okay so there is this one family…. the mom is Camila and she literally lives right next door.  We found her because her daughter, Patti, was in our Antiguos (old) lists.   We thought Patti was an investigator and she gave us Camila as a reference so we originally thought Camila was an investigator too.  BUT, both are inactive members.  Patti has two kids and I don’t think either of them are baptized so we’re working on that.  Patti also has a sister and a brother here, Grover and Mariela (both members as well but definitely inactive).  Well we basically run into SOME member of this family every day on the street or the metro or something.  It’s crazy!  God is trying to tell us something.  We NEED to work on this family.  He’s got it worked out, we just need to listen.  It’s cool to see how that all works out.

The other day there was a little bit of commotion going on across the street.  By commotion I mean a piso was on fire.  By on fire I mean…well just that.  Completely on fire.  Totally destroyed.  But let’s start from the beginning of this day.  The father of the Elders Quorum president passed away this week so we decided to make brownies and bring them over.  Just after making brownies, while eating lunch, we heard a loud pop and saw a bunch of people on the street calling on their phones and pointing and getting all worried.  We went outside and the piso across the street was on fire!  A whole piso was just burning away and I just kept praying that no one would be hurt.  There was a lot of commotion.  We saw a man talking to a bunch of the police officers and we assumed he was the owner of the house because he was just crying and crying.  Since we were about to leave to take brownies to the members, we decided to wrap up a couple and give them (along with our card, of course) to this man.  We said a quick pray before crossing the street asking that we would be able to deliver this to him because he was kind of wrapped up in talking to the police.  By the time we reached him, the officer talking to him turned away.  This man’s name is Victor, he’s from Honduras.  I hope he ends up calling us because we offered to help him with anything.  Otherwise, I’m just glad that we could have reached out to him in the smallest way possible.  It felt good to be able to offer some token of consolation and comfort.  I know it’s not his house or his belongings, but he did smile through his tears and that smile was a miracle for me.  Oh and I don’t think anyone was hurt in the fire.  So yeah.  That was interesting.

We invited an almost missionary to go to a cita with us.  The person ended up being a no show so we decided to show this cute little thing all about contacting.  We got some good work done.  THEN she actually ended up listening to a prompting to talk to a couple sitting on the grass.  It ended with a phone number, two copies of the Book of Mormon handed out, and two new investigators.  CHAMP!  She will be great in Madrid.

I attended a Relief Society planned and hosted Despedida de Soledad (maybe that’s what it is?).  Yeah.  I was at a Bachelorette Party on Saturday.  Missionary work has it’s perks because we were totally there to take care of the Elders’ investigator and that is totally justifiable because we also totally needed to meet more of the Relief Society since Hermana Tuttle hasn’t met any of them.  It was pretty stinking adorable and certainly harmless.  Nothing crazy.  It was at the church for crying out loud!  They dressed up the bride to be as Snow White and a woman was dressed as the witch and she passed out little apple shaped tags.  The place was decorated with Snow White and then the 7 dwarves and her fiancés’ face photo-shopped on there.  Not bad, Relief Society.  Not bad.

Yesterday after church, which was at 3 instead of at 9 because another stake was using it for their stake conference, we went over to the Bishop’s house to just have a treat and talk about the ward.  It turned out to be like Christmas.  We had fruit cake and hot chocolate and they played Christmas music.  It was quite sweet.  Angela, the bishops wife, is like my best friend by the  way.  When she is feeling funny she uses what little English she knows by saying things like “I’m crazy, baby” and “It’s not true”.  She also occasionally dances and sings “I don’t care, I love it” from that one popular song back home.  They are truly the most awesome people in the whole of Spain.  I can’t imagine what it’d be like without them.  I LOVE THEM to pieces.  They are the bomb and they are leading a very strong ward now.  I am hopeful about the success of the missionary efforts here.

So yeah.  I love it here!  Everyone is really just awesome!  Minus the not awesome parts of course.  But it’s all pretty awesome.  I also read this really great talk that I highly recommend to EVERYONE ON THE PLANET called “His Grace is Sufficient” by Brad Wilcox.  Totally go check it out.

Love you all to pieces!  Keep up the good work back home as I know you are!  Besos!

Hermana Durham