Hola Familia!
I love you so much! You all sound like you're doing great! And Kelley, your talk was so good! I'm so proud of you! You have such a beautiful testimony. You should probably be the one out on a mission right now :) Thank you for sending the package for me! I haven't gotten it yet, but maybe today.
So this past week has been interesting. We set some high goals this week and we were really excited to work hard and reach them, and then things just did not work out. Over half of our appointments cancelled on us, we took some of the Laurels in the ward out with us on Saturday and our other appointments fell through, and we got stood up quite a bit. It was kind of frustrating and we did a lot of knocking. It's okay though, because we're looking for new investigators that are really ready to make and keep commitments. Hopefully we'll find some soon. Our mission is really trying to focus on finding those that are ready and have been prepared by the Lord. We know they're here, we just have to be willing to work to find them. Hermana Wallis and I were talking about that today during companionship study, and how it's the things that we have to work for that are really worth it anyway. I never expected quite how much sacrifice being on a mission would require. I thought that once I had made the decision to come and made those sacrifices things would be a little different. Boy, was I wrong. Being a missionary requires sacrifice on a daily basis, and it really requires giving up the natural man and doing things that we don't want to do. But when we sacrifice, we see miracles, and we learn to recognize the Lord more and more in our lives. And we appreciate that the Lord allows us to witness so many tender mercies, even when we don't deserve them. It's hard, but learning to have this perspective makes it better, because it's part of the Lord's plan. I think of the Savior and the work that He did. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun, but He did it. Why? Because he loved the Lord and because He loved us. So He let go of His own wants and His own personal conveniences because He knew there was something more important. The same is true with us.
This week we also had interviews with President Riggs. I love that man! He is so full of wisdom and love and I feel so blessed to have him as my mission president. We talked a lot about the atonement and about grace and I learned a lot from him.
Some hard things about this week: We have an investigator who has a super machista husband and she dropped us this week. It's really sad because she really wants to learn and progress, but her husband is so against the church. Satan has a really strong grasp on him and we think that he is forbidding her to see us. Our investigator Priscilla has also fallen off the face of the planet--we haven't been able to contact her for almost two weeks, so we're going into detective mode today to try and figure out what's going on. Hopefully we're successful because she is ready for the gospel! IT's very hard to love people. What I mean by that is not that it's hard to actually love them--that comes very easy. Sometimes I wish it was harder, so they wouldn't break my heart so easily. These people mean everything to me. I wish I could explain in words the feelings I have in my heart.
I'm not sure what the best part of the week was. We have a bunch of highs and lows every day. We had a really neat fhe with Jean Paul and his family this week. We also had some menos activos and an old investigator that we visited come to church this week so that was also pretty exciting. And we had a really good lesson with Moises and his mom about the restoration that we tag teamed with the Elders for. Now if only his mom would be more supportive in helping him make the decision to be baptized.
We also had two very interesting experiences and I'm not sure if they fall in the good or hard category. Maybe just the weird category. First, we were driving and we stopped at a light but Hermana Wallis had kind of pulled into the crosswalk a little and there was a guy that was trying to cross the street. He stopped right in front of our car and started making hearts at us with his hands. And then he started walking over to the door. We hurried and pushed the lock key and he was knocking on the window for us to roll it down. Of course we didn't. Then he went and stood in front of our car and even though the light was green, he wouldn't let us drive. We didn't know what to do! Maybe we should have just run him over...It sounds scarier than it actually was. He finally left. Mostly it was just awkward. And speaking of awkward, you'll never guess what a member tried to feed us last night! There's a Bolivian lady in the ward who makes us dinner every Sunday. She's super sweet and we really appreciate. Expect for last night. We didn't really appreciate dinner last night. I'm almost too embarrassed to tell you...but we got home (she makes it to go) and we opened it up. And it was the unmentionables of some animal. It was TRAUMATIZING! We honestly didn't know what to do. Maybe it's a Bolivian delicacy or something, but there was not a chance we were eating that. So we made spaghetti. I guess on the bright side at least she didn't feed it to us at her house.
Anyway family, I love you so much. Be so glad that Mom doesn't make food like that.
xoxo
Hermana Simpson
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