Week 11

Happy 2014!!

How crazy is that? 2014?? It's weird to me. Considering I was looking forward to 2012 my whole life as the year I graduated, I thought the world ended after that. Apparently, that's not the case and life just keeps getting better.

So New Year's was pretty uneventful, actually.  We had to be indoors doing something "productive" by 8:00pm - that was pretty much it. We did have a lot of people drop appointments though. During that hour of productivity before we planned, we (my comp and our roommates) drank sparkling cider, tried to make random noises, made cookies, and put glow sticks on the fan to make it look like a fire work. It was actually pretty cool. It worked well. Then, we went to bed early - we were tired. It's funny how the world keeps going, even if you don't celebrate a holiday. It's a little weird. I kept wanting to schedule appointments for New Years, because that is my life, but then I realized that everyone else does not focus on teaching the gospel 24/7 and they weren't going to be home. Whoops! As for the Spanish culture celebrating holidays, they really don't do that much. A lot of it is just being inside with their families...or partying hard core like the rest of the world. Nothing too different. They do shoot off guns from 12:00-12:20 though. Our roomies woke up and listened to it, but because our door was shut they didn't come wake us up. So we missed it! Next year.

 

We were supposed to have 3 baptisms on Saturday...but that didn't happen. Randy and Jennifer (the brother and sister) were supposed to be baptized as well as Oscar (Julieta's husband). Jennifer left for California unexpectedly, Randy dropped us, and we found out that Oscar was already a member. What?! It was so crazy. But, I guess that's missionary work. So, now we're looking for new investigators. It's slow, but kind of exciting for me. Now I get to start off brand new with people and I don't feel like I'm just filling the previous missionaries spots. We starting teaching a lady named Ofelia. She's pretty interesting. She's been on date to be baptized twice, but still hasn't done it. She has some doubts about Joseph Smith. I decided we were the right missionaries for her and this was her time. Hopefully, the Lord wants the same thing! We haven't found out yet. We've taught her a couple times and she said she was still interested, but we'll see what happens. We've talked to a lot of interesting people, but the catch with the Hispanic culture is that they're too nice to say no. So they either ignore you, or never call you. It's kind of like a game and I haven't figured out how to best strategize it yet.

 

This week will hopefully bring more success. We have our zone conference on Thursday and Saturday we get to be with Elder Holland. I'm way excited for it. Thank you for all of your prayers and support - I feel it every day! Happy 2014!