Buenos Dias!
Well, the crazy life just keeps continue to get crazier... Both of our bikes this week are out of commision and we're borrowing other bikes (since they're our only source of transportation!!) until we can get them fixed and everything. Elder Johnson had to order a whole bunch of new parts and my gear changer literally fell off after I got a couple massive holes in my tube. It's just one thing after another! But "the truth of God will go forth, boldly, nobly, and indepent" - we are definitelty not slowing down in any way, and we're working as hard as ever. We haven't had a ton of success this week and it was a definite wake up call. We realized that we need to change up a little bit how we do everything and how we're finding new people. we haven't had enough new investigators and we really have to keep on expanding our investigator pool because so many of our new investigators fall through and don't work out. Elder Johnson is definitely keeping me on my toes and reminding me of how important it is to take advantage of every single second of the day. We're going to start cutting time off of lunch and making our lessons a lot more shorter and focused, so that we're fulfilling our purpose as focused efficient missionaries. It's easy for missionaries to get too used to everything and in the same old schedule/routine. They easily lose that fire and sense of urgency that we all need to have on a daily basis! This message is a big deal and every single person needs it. There's never a reason to not talk to somebody we pass on the street or see anywhere.
We had a really good zone conference this past week (my first one actually) and so we got a lot of training from the AP's and the President. It was really cool to learn about how we can be better, how we can start lessons better and be more powerful missionaries. We're still really studying the "Fundamentals of Preach My Gospel", which really focuses on the Spirit, and being led in our lessons. Our President is amazing and I learn so much from him all of the time. He talked a lot about the blessings that our Heavenly Father has for us and every single one of His children. If we saw or knew what these gifts were, it would be so powerful that it would literally take our agency away and we would do everything we could. So much comes from obedience and from doing everything we can to follow the Savior and become more like him. Everyday we come to the Savior and every day He asks us if we're willing to give ALL. There are blessings predicated for every degree of our obedience and when we do give our all, we're promised everything the Father hath. The Savior gave every bit of himself - didn't leave out the tiniest little bit. It has to be the same way with us! We can't leave out the tiniest bit or try to get by and only have some things we fall back on. It has to be 100%
We also had a pretty intense training by the AP's on how we can better use our language and have more effective Spanish studies. I know that I could be a lot better about practicing Spanish. Elder Johnson and I have started to try and just talk Spanish to each other, and it's still kind of shaky (esp since our vocabulary's aren't massive yet) but it's coming :) I've gotten compliments on my Spanish lately from random people so that's always exciting, but I feel so incredibly inadequate at times and get frustrated when I don't understand 100% of what people are saying. A lot of it just takes time I guess so it'll come. I think it's kind of funny - I've totally noticed a lot of changes in my English now, and I'm scared that my English is going to be horrible when I get back to college!
I literally don't know where all of the time goes... It seems like every day I don't have near enough time to do everything I want to. Every night I want to write a bunch in my journal about the day, but I have so many things to do that I barely get around to maybe writing a little bit.
Oh, and we have had a couple new investigators the past couple weeks that are way solid! We'll see what happens, but we've given Book of Mormon's and they promised they would read. We've passed by a couple times and they're actually reading and praying! I'm kind of excited and can't wait to teach them more. Being a missionary can definitely be addicting - I know teaching is addicting. I love it!
So it looks like we're just e-mailing today and taking our P-day tomorrow, since so many people are busy and can't do lessons tomorrow. I'm excited to have a legitimate P-day! Last week I spent the entire time doing a traffic class online and staring at a computer screen for hours. By the way, I did get all of that stuff done and took the test, so I'm pretty sure I'm done with all of it. We're having a big Thanksgiving lunch tomorrow and then we're going to one of our investigators to have a very Mexican meal a little bit later for dinner. I'm kind of excited to see what a Mexican Thanksgiving is like - apparently with them Thanksgiving isn't quite as big of a deal as it is to us, but hey if it's a reason to party they're all about it!
Speaking of giving thanks, I learned something really cool this last Sunday at a fireside we had. When you really think about it, EVERY single thing in our lives, EVERY single thing that happens to us is a gift and blessing from God regardless of how we look at it. I had always heard that trials are good for us and it's the only way to grow but I guess I had never really fully understood that. So as I'm going through every day here, I'm definitely going to thank the Lord for everything - no matter what happens.
One thing that's also is pretty sweet is that we just got a free membership to a gym here! A member owns one and we went there this morning. SO nice to have all that equipment and I'm going to be super sore. But with that and all the biking that we do, I'm actually staying in surprisingly pretty good shape - despite how much people feed us. Good thing we don't have a car!
We're still working hard with everyone, and hopefully there'll be a couple baptisms within the next couple weeks - I'll be baptizing an 8-year old girl and then hopefully Hna Amparo and the Barraza's will follow soon after.
Les quiero a todos y estoy trabajando tan fuerte como posible!
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