I love you so much. It was so good to talk to you (Mom and Nathan) on Wednesday. I miss seeing you everyday and it was nice to hear your voices again. I finally made it to DC!!! Well kind of. We have exactly 0% of DC in our mission. But I'm glad you got the email from President Riggs. He did indeed take us to George Mason University and we did street contacting. That was the very first thing we did after leaving the airport. And it was terrifying! As soon as we got there and he told us what we were doing, I wanted to jump back into the car, lock the doors and hide under the seat. I was so scared! But, since that wasn't really an option, we companioned up and started talking to the gente. And they were so nice! The first person we talked to was totally interested. I just opened my mouth and words came out. It was a miracle. But we gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he'd read it and that he'd like to meet with the missionaries! Yay! That night it was so cold. Even when it's only a little cold here, it's freezing. I don' think I like that very much. After GMU we went to the mission home and ate some yummy food (way better than the MTC) and had some meetings and had an interview with President Riggs. I've never met a person so full of love. I'm excited to get to know him and work with him more!
Thursday we had a transfer meeting and I got my new companion! Her name is Hermana Allie Stewart, she's from the Mesa/Gilbert area and she's awesome! We hit it off right away. She actually reminds me a lot of Liz, so we have a lot of fun together.
Thursday night we had a neat experience. We stopped at a McDonalds for a bathroom break. As I when in there Hermana Stewart started talking to a big black man. I came out and thought we were going to leave. Nope. We talked to him for another 45 minutes. We talked a lot about why we are serving missions when we could be doing pretty much anything else, and we also talked about the atonement. He was very interested and he said he liked being around us. He also said he'd love for his kids to meet us (he is divorced and has three kids). Unfortunately, he doesn't live in our zone. Boo. But we gave him a mormon.org card and got his number and gave him ours. He put the card inside his cell phone holder because he said that's where he puts the things that are important to him. If he didn't care about it, he said he would have put it in his back pocket and probably washed it. Woohoo, he liked what we had to say. He also told us that if we ever needed help in talking to people he would like to help us out. He said that a lot of "young guys" wouldn't listen to us because they were too hard and too tough and the wouldn't respect us. He then proceeded to tell me that part of my problem was that I look like "I'm from the burbs." But those young kids would respect him because he's OG. Don't know what that means? I didn't either. Apparently it means original gangster. Like the real kind. Not the kind with saggy pants. He's been around the block a time or two and people respect him. I'm learning all sorts of things here. Like the meaning of OG. But also that no matter how rough around the edges someone seems to be, they can always use the gospel. And a lot more people than I've expected are receptive to it.
Saturday was a bad day. All of our appointments fell through. As we were heading to the bishop's house to give ask his family if they had received revelation for anyone that we could help, we got into an accident. Before you panic, don't. Here's what happened: We were heading down the street and the person three cars ahead of us tried to make an illegal left turn. Bad. And then the car behind her slammed on it's breaks and the car behind that car swerved and then the car in front of us slammed on his breaks. And we slammed on ours. And rear ended the guy in front of us. But no one got hurt and hardly any damage was done to either car. It could have been a lot worse. We're glad it wasn't. But that took up a huge part of our afternoon after we exchanged information and got an accident report and filled out all the paperwork we needed to for the mission and blah blah blah. I'm glad I wasn't driving. In fact, I think I never want to drive here.
On Sunday I met the ward. This ward has so much personality. And it's so diverse. I love it. Also, the people were very surprised at my Spanish. They asked if my family speaks it or if I grew up speaking it. When I told them no, they were even more surprised. Hermana Stewart likes to tell them I'm from Mexico. And sometimes they believe it! Silly. When they ask where I'm actually from, and I tell them Washington, they get really confused. Most people here don't know that Washington is a state. I try to explain that it's on the west coast, close to Canada. Then they start thinking I'm from Canada. It would probably be easier just to tell them that.
As Spanish missionaries, we cover the entire zone. Zones are set up according to stakes. We're in the Mount Vernon Stake, so yes, Mount Vernon is in our mission, as is the Masonic Temple, and TC Williams (as in Remember the Titans!). We have some fun Pday plans! Our zone covers all of Alexandria and half of Arlington. But not the cemetery half. We're about 10 miles outside of DC and we're allowed to go to DC every other transfer. We're planning on going closer to Christmas. Could you find out from Phyllis where Dustin is at? I thought she said he's in Alexandria, but I can't remember. And does he still speak Spanish? We're always looking to have members present at our appointments.
I really love it here. We definitely don't live in the classy part of town, but that's okay. The people here are amazing. They are being prepared by the Lord. Sometimes I feel like Buddy the Elf because I just love everything so much! I love the people, I love my companion and I love sharing the gospel.
One of the scariest most exciting thing we do is knock doors. I never want to because it's scary, but when people open their doors and want to learn more, it's so exciting. Anyone that's looking for an adrenaline rush should probably just go on a mission. We've had some really neat things happen when we've knocked the last few days. On Sunday we were at an apartment complex and a women answered the door. She's from the Congo! I taught the entire first lesson by myself! Of course, we had to give her a watered down version because neither of us had English scriptures with us so we had to paraphrase. Luckily we had an English Book of Mormon in the car that we gave her and she said she would read it and wants to learn more. She speaks better French than English so we're looking for someone that can go with the English Elders that speaks French. I'm meeting and teaching people from all over the place. I'm keeping a list. So far I've met people from El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Venzuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, China and the Congo. And I haven't even been here a whole week! Last night we also had a neat knocking experience. We had about 30 minutes before it was time to head home and so we picked an apartment building to knock. We prayed that we would be able to find people and we did! We made four return appointments! The best part was that one girl answered the door and she was on the phone with her dad. I thought she was going to shoo us away, but she didn't. Instead she said "I'm just talking to my dad about my brother that is having some problems. It's so perfect that you stopped by!" And then she said to her dad, "Dad, some women from a church just stopped by and they want to talk about it, isn't that good timing!" We're going back to teach us the first lesson tonight. And we also met a family from Honduras that wants to learn more. I'm so excited.
We have a couple of golden investigators. One of them is so close to being ready to be baptized. He was on date once, and then got scared so we pushed it back. But I asked him again the other night if he would be baptized and he said yes, now we just need to get him back on date. The only problem is his girlfriend. She's not supportive and she's really not making his life easy right now. We all think he would be much happier if he would break up with her. But he's too nice to do that. Hopefully though we'll continue to make progress.
I love you all so much and I hope that you are all doing well. You're the best!
xoxo
Hermana Simpson
Man! Jessica hit the ground running didn't she?!?! Wonderful!
ReplyDelete