Bit Of Chill, Bit Of Fire, And Everything Between

Buenas Tardes Todos! This week is FULL of emotions for me. Like the title, there's a lot of range of the things I have felt about the events that happened this week. 

This area is so different from my last area. 

1) All of the ways that I used to spot houses with latinos in them do not work anymore. All of the Latinos here work in bougee houses. I went up to a door and it had that "Your door is wrapped like a Christmas present" vibe with the biggest tree ever, and they were Latino!??! My stereotypes are out the door now (which is partly a good thing for me but difficult to find work) 

2) so the Latinos I have met are bilingual so the English missionaries have been what we call in our mission "poaching" which means they have been stealing people from us because they think they are the default if they speak even a bit of broken English. We were able to get the Zone Leaders to check the companionships area books and one of the companionships told us about one of their recent converts whose name was "Bella Maria Garcia Barragan" and her preferred language was Spanish. I am glad they finally notified us but it's infuriating that we have this problem. 

3) We have been making rounds to all of the Stake President's to update their Latino Maps (they send maps to us so that we can knock doors and find out if they are interested) and one of the Stake president's believes we shouldn't even have a Spanish Ward because having a Spanish Ward makes it difficult for them to know their neighbors I guess...... which is really wrong. We are going to try to work out these prejudices with him and if not we are going to have our Mission President talk to him. And his area has one of the most populated Latino concentration in our area. 

So we have a lot of issues we are finding out but I know that through our efforts and help from our leaders we can turn this area around. There are a lot of positive things in our area that's happening too!

1) Our ward is working on reactivating members that have been missing from church. I saw 5 Inactive families that came back to church this week! 

2) We had this 19 year old girl ask if she can join us for our Lessons! I am so excited to work with her because I know that going on splits with the missionaries made a huge difference for me in my decision to serve a mission. 

3) The worldwide Young Adult devotional was awesome. I loves the call to simplify my life. I am making plans to simplify the way I go about teaching (because it's a constant source of stress for me) and i'm excited to have more peace in my life again.

We have had only one non-member lesson this week, and the rest of the doors we have knocked have been not interested. If this was the beginning of my mission I would be pretty upset and disappointed about it, but I am satisfied with the effort we have been putting in and the work that is happening here. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for us in this area and I am so glad to be here on the Lord’s Errand. 

Other things that happened this week:

1) we visited a person that was celebrating un "Día de los Reyes" which is the last day of the Christmas Celebrations and they cut open this fruitcake but the fruits are cactus and if you get the baby inside you have to make Tamales on February 1st. I got the baby! Now I just need to figure out how to make tamales...

2) I spoke on Sunday! It went well. The Spanish is going well Too. I'm starting to write in my journal and one time I didn't even realize that I was writing in Spanish. I realized the Key to language Study is at first yeah know the rules, but really letting those rules become a part of how you speak the language, and think less about those rules. Or to better explain it that "Mesa" is not a translation of "Table" but "Mesa" is the "Table" and merging it with your language. 

4) Next week I will be out of Physical Therapy! I know I have been saying that for about a month now but it's happening this time 

5) We saw a chupacabra. We were screaming in the car. It was fun times.

Please let me know if you want me to explain these complicated mission terms! 

Hermana Vestel 

1) Beware of those Chickens!

2) Cutting this massive fruit cake

3) Found the baby!

4) My comp showing me how to use a choncla for these English missionaries 

5 & 6) Gorgeous views!!

7&8) This is the view we get every day of the mountains. It makes me feel part of a rom-com (jkjk) just because it's soooo pretty