The Rains Came Down And The Floods Came Up

Mis amigos, I can't express how this was by far the hardest week of my mission. I have never relied on the lord as much as I did this week. 

We got to our apartment on Tuesday, and Wednesday our apartment started flooding. We cleaned the flood up with my one bath towel and some hand towels. But the next 3 days, we were borrowing our neighbors shop vac and cleaning it 3 times a day. Day 4, half of our carpet was soaked, it started seeping into the bedrooms, and our house was HUMID. We had been calling the landlords, handymans, a senior couple over the housing department, but they said it would be better to stay in the apartment than to go and live in the small "shack". We were exhausted, I haven't been able to sleep before 11:30 since the first day until last night. We kept trying to clean because in our heads we thought "This is our responsibility" but we couldn't fulfill our missionary responsibilities and clean the water. On Saturday, they took us to the Holleys to sleep with them for the night and we got to stay another night until they can find us an apartment for us to stay in for a few months.

This was a very difficult adjusting period, if we even have been able to adjust yet. One of us would get sad, the other would comfort, for small moments we would actually be happy, then sometimes both of us would be looking at each other like this but with really mad, angry bird type eyebrows just THIS close to starting a fight. We even expressed wanting to go home and leave the misison. 

But to make it worse, I made some mistakes that really hurt our companionship. I found that I had this habit of making decisions without taking the advice of my companion (wanting to drop some friends, knowing we have to pass off other friends to different missionaries because we can't teach them) and in some of the lessons I would accidentally say or do things that would accidentally bring the spirit away for a moment or I couldn't bring the spirit at all or I accidentally brought the spirit of contenition in because I wanted all of the people in the lesson to participate. My companion told me she wanted Hermana Arriagada back and I felt so inadequate to be a Trainer and a missionary. How could I be a misisonary if I am the one holding her back? On Sunday, I could see her close to giving up on me, and I was close to giving up on myself. I prayed to the Lord to help me. We knocked on the door and We shared a message about the Holy Spirit and with all of my might I testified of the reality of this spirit, and he accepted us when we asked if we could come back. It was the win I needed. 

Saturday morning, we got the chance to go to Saturday Morning General Conference in person, it was so needed. It was a great break from this week of stress and panic. I Had been to General Conference before, so I got to see Hermana Camela's first time goung. The SPARKLE in Hermana Camela's eyes when she saw the Prophet come into the room was priceless for me. The prophets message about Charity was like ooooo we definetly need to do that.

So, yeah thay happened this week. I love J2 and I am glad that I am back, despite this terrible week. Someone gave us these triollion dollar bills (of course jot real) but ok the bavk of it was like "have you been saved by Jesus Christ? Repent now and be baptized!" Kind of thing. It was funny to me. 

Please learn this from me: Don't give up, don't give in. Don’t be afraid to seek earthly and heavenly help. You have so many resources around you.

Hermana Vestel