God knows all that

15 June 2015

This week has been so....interesting and busy! Busily interesting, and interestingly busy! The lady who got married two Saturdays ago was baptized on the 13, with her son, so I went and gave the talk about the Holy Ghost. I was super nervous, but Hna. Mensinger said I did good, so yay. It was all in Spanish, too! :) It was really sweet to see that family come together. The dad baptized the son, and they were both crying when they bore their testimonies afterward. The daughter was crying, too. It was a very powerful, very spiritual event.

We had gone on the Metro to get to the baptism, and then a nice sister gave us a ride back. It took us 2 hours to get there by Metro, 30 minutes back...Aw, well. What do you do?

There was also another baptism yesterday that the mom asked me to play piano in, so we went. It was a really good experience, but let me tell you, it is hard to scroll sheet music on an I-pad while trying to play it at the same time. But, it worked out, so life's good!

We just got done with doing service for the World Police and Fire games. I worked up a sweat. All we did was stuff bags for the participants, but we worked so fast! We put in a booklet, several papers about the Fairfax area, a fyler for Piasanos, a carabineer, and a thing you can wrap ear-buds around. Pop quiz (this one's for dad): How long does it take 30 missionaries to fill 3000 bags, given that, on average, it takes 1 missionary 1.5 minutes to fill 1 bag? Answer: 1 hour and 45 minutes. We're proud of it. :) We worked hard. And then there was pizza at the end, so, you know, that helped too! :) We did it on Saturday, as well, from 9-1, and we did about 6000 bags. There were about 70 of us, then.

I had a brain-blowing thought yesterday. I thought about all the languages, all the professions, all the sports, all the technology, all the history in every single country, all the animals, all the plants, every climate, and I thought about how God knows all of that. Wow. And then I thought about how we are children of God and have the potential to become like Him. Which means we have the brain capacity enough to remember all of that! We just have to keep learning!

Plancakes

8 June 2015

You see, what had happened with the towing was is that we had parked in the visitor parking, then we went to our appointment. We came out at 8:30 and Hna. Mensinger pressed the button. There was no sound! We thought, for a brief moment, we thought someone had stolen the car, but there was a man sitting right in front of where our car had been, so we went up and asked him if he has seen the grua come by (grua means tow-truck.) he said, "Yeah, there was a white car here, but someone came out of a house and pointed to the car and the grua took it away about 15 minutes ago. It was really weird because the car was in visitor parking, and it wasn't when the grua usually comes by." Ay, ay, ay. So we went to the front of the complex that has a sign about "if you're towed, call this number." so we called that number, and sure enough, our car was there. We went back to our appointment's house and asked them if they could drive us to the lot, and they took us. It was $160. We split the cost, though. So we each paid $80. It wasn't too bad.

We did not find the apartment keys. What we did there was the office elders got the spare set from the office and drove to our apartment, they gave us the keys, then waited to take them back after we were done opening the door. However, when we explained the situation, they said, "OK. You can keep the keys until you get the new ones. Then get us a set of the new keys when you have them." So that's what we did. We now have new locks on our door and on our mailbox. :) Pretty fancy. :)

This week, we had lots of dinner appointments. That was awesome! I let the members know about my allergies, and so they fed us mostly rice and chicken. I love rice, though, so I was happy. One of the dinner appointments we went to was in beautiful house. The walls looked nice, there were antique-looking statues, staircases all over the place, going up and down. I loved it!

We went to another appointment on Wednesday night to a house that had a cat. My companion is allergic to cats, so she told me, "You need to take charge of this lesson because I will be useless." So I did, but one of the girls asked her, "Are you allergic to animals?" She said, "Yeah, I'm allergic to cats." The girl said, "Man, you're allergies must be going crazy because we've got six cats in the house right now."  Six cats! No wonder her allergies were going nuts! Turns out their cat had a litter of 5 kittens. We didn't look at them because we weren't sure of how the momma would've reacted, but knowing that they were there made me so happy!

We also spent a lot of time cleaning our apartment. To misquote Gandalf "There are older and fouler things than dust bunnies in the deep corners of the apartment." :) We cleaned out the closet of extras and the extra food that members gave us. We're going to give it away. :) But I feel so much better about the apartment. We also got new closet doors on that closet. The old one was too heavy-Maintenance tried to put it back up and the door broke the new pin!-So we got new closet doors. They look good though.

Our sister-training-leaders came over on Friday and made pancakes for our weekly planning. They called them, "plancakes." :)

The most exciting part about the week though is that I got to play piano for a wedding!!!!!!!! It was the wedding of one of my old investigators from Old Town. It was so great! The wedding was beautiful, the ceremony simple, and I was so happy! My cheeks hurt afterward from smiling so big. :) I was so happy! I'm so excited to get married, now. :)  

There's a local heron that stands in the lake we walk around everyday. he makes me smile. I saw some deer a couple nights ago. Also, there are turtles in the lake--we saw a couple of them up on the banks last week. We drive by a few flocks of geese and goslings. The goslings are growing up now, and they don't look quite so cute now... :) They were cute a few weeks ago when they were just balls of feathery fluff, but now they're looking more like adults, and so they aren't so cute. :) But it's ok. We saw some cardinals on our walk around the lake today, too.

Over all, things are good, here. The work is going forward, and life is good. :)

"Los Bendiciones no tienen pies, nosotros si." (Blessings don't have feet, we do!)

1 June 2015

We took the Metro into D.C. Man, I'm getting real good at taking it. :) I have a wedding I'm playing piano at this Friday, and it looks like we'll have to take the Metro to get there, too.

This week was really interesting...we got towed, lost our apartment keys, and one of our most promising investigators dropped us, but we had an AWESOME activity on Saturday with family history!

All the Spanish missionaries in the ward were asked to come help at this activity because there were going to be Spanish classes. So we went and helped out a member with indexing Spanish records, then we watched a video of a talk entitled, "Los Bendiciones no tienen pies, nosotros si." (Blessings don't have feet, we do!) I don't know if it's in English, but it was a very interesting video about family history, how it blesses our lives, and how we can get those blessings. One of the things that interested me most was that the speaker talked about an experience he had while serving in his country. A General Authority came and gave a prophecy about how the sparsely empty chapel would be filled to capacity by the next conference in 6 months. Then, as the man was driving the General Authority back to the airport, the Authority said to him, "If the prophecy is not fulfilled, it's your fault." The man thought about this on the way back to the meeting house and then shared it with the other leaders. They got very excited, worked hard, and by the time the conference rolled around, the little chapel was filled to capacity. It was really cool. Then we helped the members fill out the little Family booklet and open their accounts. I started filling out a little booklet, too, even though all of that work has been done already, but it was amazing to feel the love I have for my family grow as I wrote down memories and stories from their lives. I just love family history. I am anxious to work on it when I get back. We're not connected to Adam and Eve, yet, so there's work to be done! :)

We also got Tiwis this week. We still don't know what the acronym stands for, but the one we came up with was "Trust Issues With Individuals." :) The Tiwi acts as a driving mentor. It tells you when you're driving too fast and marks aggressive driving behavior, like suddenly accelerating or slamming on the brakes or swerving around a corner too fast. It's been tested in 25 missions in the U.S. and Canada, and now the Brethren want it in all missions in the U.S. and Canada. So after 6 hours of installation, we now have a Tiwi! It took 6 hours because the installation team had to plug it into the computer of the car, so if we tamper with it, we get our driving privileges revoked. :D It sounds tough, and it does make us a little nervous, but it's for the better. The church will need to pay less money to purchase vehicles, maintain, and repair them, and put that tithing money to good use, like building temples! :)  

So, yesterday, we practice-taught door approaches, and I did horribly! I've always thought I have about as many social skills as a slug and I couldn't do door approaches because of one thing or another, but this morning, it occurred to me that door approaches and talking to people is only hard and awkward because I make it hard and awkward. So we practice-taught door approaches again today and it went so much better! I just relaxed and the words came out! It was great! It's still slightly awkward, but I'm getting better!

This week, we get to deep clean the apartment :) I love cleaning. It helps me de-stress.

It's gotten hot and humid here. Welcome to June, right? :) 

Besitos

May 25, 2015

We can still go to D.C. We're allowed to go once every transfer, or in other words, once every six weeks. We went today, actually. We went to the Museum of the American Indian. It was really cool, especially to see all their hand-crafted stuff like the bead-weaving and the fabric weaving, etc. 

This week was busy, as usual. We taught lots of lessons, and yesterday we went to a baptism of a son of a member in our ward. 

Also yesterday, we went to church at the English ward for an hour because a less-active was going, so we supported her. That was in the morning, then we went to our own Spanish church in the afternoon. English wards are so strange..you don't have to give besitos (kiss on the cheek) to everybody, there's a lot more people, you can actually fit more than one speaker in between the sacrament and the intermediate hymn..English wards are really weird...it's ok, I'll get over it.

But I was told today that there are three baptisms in my old area this month! One for almost every Saturday! Best part is, they were all my investigators! So I'm going! I'm so excited! 

We're getting TIWIs this week. I have no idea what the acronym stands for, but it's a little gadget that goes in the car and lets you know when your driving gets scary. :D like, if you go more than five over, if you stop or start too suddenly, if you turn too fast, things like that. It'll be good. It'll will teach us good driving habits. Hopefully. 

Library of Congress

May 18, 2015

Things are going well, here. It's a slower area than the one I'm used to, but that's ok. Lots of work keeps me out of trouble. :) It's 3 times bigger than my previous area, and we're the only Hermanas in the ward, and we were stressed very much, but we gave some people to the elders, so we aren't so stressed now.

I wasn't able to go to the wedding on Saturday, but I did go to her baptism yesterday and she looked SO happy! And she was beautiful, all dressed in white. It was nice to see that last year's hopes finally came true. I was so happy for her and she was happy, and I think her husband will get baptized too, eventually.

So, the story of the Library of Congress goes like this: When Hna. Atkinson and I went to the Library of Congress, we ran into a member and he said, "I work in the Hispanic division of the Library of Congress. Come by sometime and I'll give you a tour." and he gave us a referral, so we decided to go visit him that day. We went, met his coworker-who was his referral-and he gave us a tour of the Hispanic division! It was so cool! He showed us this court case that had been painted by the native Americans that Cortez had stewardship over. The natives couldn't read or write a lick of Spanish, so instead, they painted what they wanted back as restitution for the heavy taxes the Spaniards put on them. It was cool. Also, I got to see the first Spanish dictionary and a stainless steel mural, made for Columbus. It was really cool! Also, I learned that there are 93 miles of shelving in the Library of Congress, and they still don't have enough space for all the books. It was cool. :)