Week #12

Cadenas and I

My new zone in Magnolias

 

 

This ice cream was amazing!!!

Its funny how happy a little American tasting ice cream can make you!

 

 

Hola Familia!

There is always just too much to share! I cant believe that it is already p'day again! Time flies by sooo fast! Where did the week even go? So much has happened but I''ll share a couple of my favorite parts of the week.

Highlight of the week:

The highlight of the week was making prayer rocks! We baptised Lydia last week and now we are teaching her daughter Stephanie. Stephanie is 11 year's old and is your typical sassy teenager. When we come to teach the lessons she normally  just gets bored and wants to liten to music so Cadenas and I were trying to think of fun ways to catch her attention. I remembered making prayer rocks in primary! A prayer rock is simple, you take a smallish to medium rock paint it, and write the word PRAYER )ORACION= on it. Then you put it on your pillow so when you go to sleep at night your head will hit the rock so you remember to pray. Then when your done you put the rock on the floor so that when you wake up the next morning you step on the rock and remember to pray! Stephanie and her friends were pretty excited about this idea.  We immediatley went searching for cool looking rocks outside. I found one in the shape of a heart. Then we painted them all sorts of colors and wrote the word Oracion on it. It was a good activity and I think it really captured stephanies attention! If nothing else, she is going to remember to pray now. If you have any more fun ideas for teaching young kids let me know because we are constantly trying to think of ideas!

Downfall:

The downfall this week was on Sunday. We got a reference from Nilton, a member, to teach a girl names Beatrice. We were super pumped about the lesson and had high expectations. So after lunch on Sunday we went with Nilton to go visit his friend. We had no idea where she lived. Of course this was the one day when I decided to where those cute little red heels. We ended up having to walk for about an hour to get to her house!!!!! The worst part was when we got there she wasn't even home. It was the biggest disappointment of the entire week. So then we had to walk home and by the time we got back my feet were raw, ouch!

Funny Experiences:

We ate these extremely hot peppers that are only found in the jungle in Peru. They are really, small, yellow and innocent looking but boy are they spicy. One of the members gave us a whole bag of these little peppers, and at lunch we all tried one. I can't even describe to you how hot this little thing was. My mouth literally had flames shooting out, my tongue was even a  bit numb! It was crazy! So the funny part is that not only did I eat one but I ended up taking down 13!!!! Me and Elder Barrientes had a competition to see who could eat more. Every time some one would pop one in their mouth the family we were eating with would cheer, and the mom would sprint to go get us water or milk or something to cool us down. It was crazy both our faces were red, both of us were sweating, and both of our mouths were just straight up numb. Pride had the best of both of us because we both wanted to win. At seven we were dying and agreed to a tie but the family and Hermana Cadenas and Elder Gomez pressured us to keep going. So at this point neither one of us wanted the other to eat one because that meant the other person had to. But some how the group pressured us into eating 6 more for a total at 13. At that point neither of us could take it any more so we made an oath to tie at 13. I know it doesn't sound that much fun to suffer through all that pain, but it actually was pretty fun and I think Elder Barrientes  and I will be legends in Magnolia's now.

Spiritual Experience:

The most spiritual experience this week was general conference! I have only had a month in the mission and I still don't understand tons of Spanish yet. Normally its takes about 4 months to be able to understand everything. So when general conference came I was really nervous that I wouldn't be able to understand anything the prophet and apostles were saying. I have never prayer harder for the gift of tongues to be able to understand the words of our leaders. I didn't understand a word they said but somehow I understood everything that I needed to hear from each talk. It was amazing!

 

Hermana Zarates Birthday!

So Hermana Cadenas and I live with the two other Hermana's in our zone. The sister leaders Hermana Goulding and Hermana Zarate. Saturday was Hermana Zarates 20th birthday! So we decided to make it really special for her! Friday night we made a big sign that said FELIZ CUMPLE! and then we blew up 20 balloons. After she went to bed we snuck into her room and hung up the sign and put the balloons all over the floor! In the morning our mamasita brought her a chocolate cake! It reminded me so much of our family tradition back home for birthdays! Decorate the birthday person's room in the night, and eat cake in the morning for breakfast! I think she felt really special. I'm so happy that we were able to do that for her. We also had a small zone party with a cake as well!. Then that night we had our own little special pizza party. Hermana Goulding bought Hawaiian Pizza and we all just hung out that night and ate pizza and stuff, and got to know each other better. It was sweet!

Teaching:

Hermana Lorenza is the Bomb.com! She was a menos activo and we found her when I first came into the area. We have helped her completely changed her life! She was totally inactive before and now she is active in everything! It is truly amazing. We teach her the lessons and give her commitments. She goes above and beyond on all of her commitments. For example, she reads the Book of Mormon like a mad women, and has good questions for us. And on top of that she came to every session of general conference, and even went back to the temple! I'm so thrilled that we were able to help her get her life straightened out and back to church. Now we are working with her daughter and her husband to try and help them as well!

I love you all!

See you next summer!

Hermana Huish