Fishers of men, not of fish!

Finally getting settled here in Albuquerque! :) LOVE the ward, LOVE the people, and LOVE the food. There have only been two times that I had to eat NASTY things.  One time was at a member's home and she gave us chicharons with guacamole and lettuce on them.  I thought that was all that was on it, but no there were little pig skins mixed into the lettuce that I did not know about until the next day. It tasted SO WEIRD when we were eating, but I just kept eating it (thank goodness I didn't know what was on it or else I probably would have thrown up)! The next interesting thing I ate was menudo which is a soup with cow intestine chunks in it...yep. The other thing that I just don't like because I am weird is potato salad, but I totally ate it! Other than those times, the food has been WAY TOO GOOD. The corn tortillas rock and it is so cute that every time we are fed, they don't give us water. I want water, but they don't think it is good enough for us so they give us tang or a juice of some sort. One of my other favorite foods has been the gorditos. They remind me of scones. At the ward activity we had carne asada. That is ALWAYS good. Ok, enough about the food.

 

To explain the title of my email, I will have to tell you how awesome my mom is. I told her I needed a GPS because we don't know where any streets are, and one literally showed up from amazon on my doorstep a few days later...you are awesome mom! The funny thing is that it is totally a GPS for a hunter or geocacher! :) I might have to send it back and get more of a road one.

 

City of Albuquerque.

 

 

Most random speed limit sign ever!

 



Since I didn't get to tell you much last week, I am going to start a ways back. There is a family that the other Spanish missionaries teach. They actually fed us all dinner one night (here are three sets of Spanish missionaries for our ward, 2 sets of sisters and 3 elders). We eat dinner together most nights. My companion and I are the only ones on bikes, so it takes us a LOT longer to get places. Luckily the elders have a truck, so sometimes they take us places.  The sisters have a bike rack on their car, so sometimes they take us places too.

 

 

 

The members are just awesome, because they want to help out so much. My favorite family is the Robleros. They are a young couple with one daughter, Arlyn who is 4. We are best friends! :) Hermana Roblero and Arlyn take us shopping every P day. That is such a blessing, because it would be a pain (actually I don't even know how we do it), if we had to bring groceries home on bikes.

 

 

 

Anyway, back to the cute family of investigators. They come to church, activities, and they feed us but they aren't baptized yet. They need more time I guess. They have the most adorable son named Johnathon. He is adorable with the cutest little dimples. :) At the Father's day ward activity, he recited a poem he had written for his dad...it was precious (he is about 10 or 11).

 

 

I have to tell you about the ward activity before I forget. It was hilarious! The women prepared an amazing meal for the dads and they hired a DJ, and had this slideshow playing of pictures of families with their dads.  My favorite part was the little show they put together. I will try and send you some videos. It is such a different culture here. All of the women who performed (the moms) were wearing leggings with shirts. One mom pretended she was Shakira and did this dance with a wig to Shakira's song "Loca."  The little kids did some adorable dances. Then the Young Women did a dance to a J Lo song without the lyrics, but I knew exactly what it was. Their dancing was also very interesting. We had some good laughs.

 

 

Did I tell you my sweet companion left the cell phone at a bus stop? For a few days we didn't have a phone, were on bikes, and didn't know where we were going...funny times! It is so cool though, because every time something horrible like that happened, we would meet someone amazing. I have definitely seen some miracles already.

I have to tell you about one of my favorite stories so far. We were out knocking doors (which is kind of awkward, but if you have confidence about it and your message it is so much better). You have to make sure the people know you are a real person before you start giving them the first lesson. I am just loving how all of my pageant preparation prepared me for a mission than I could imagine! :)

Anyway, people were outside a house but we both chickened out and didn't go in. Then as we were leaving the cul-de-sac I felt very strongly that we needed to go talk to this family, so we did. Her name is Elsa, she is about 50 years old, and so sweet. She invited us in and most of her family was there. We met her daughters that still live with her, her nieces, her husband and her sons. Not everyone decided to listen to us but we gave Elsa a lesson. She opened up about how she had cancer and was so grateful for the opportunity to be alive. I can't even begin to tell you how cool the experience was!  I asked her to be baptized...and she said yes! Of course we will still teach her, but she felt so good about everything. When we came back, she had kept the commitments we left her and were able to teach her ADORABLE little nieces :) She now has a baptismal date for July 13th and we are just hoping to be able to continue teaching the whole family.

Another sweet family we met are Alejandro, Alejandra, and their two kids Dominique and Jonathon. We found them in a really cool way as well. We were out knocking doors and weren't finding Spanish speakers or anyone really who wanted to listen. We decided to pray on the corner. As we were bowing our heads, a Hispanic woman in an SUV drove by. Without saying a word, we both followed her home. To quote my teacher Hermana Vawdrey from the MTC, "You kind of turn into a little creep"! It is true!

Anyway, we literally knocked on her door five seconds after she went in. She let us in and let us teach her and her two boys. Then her husband came home and listened as well. They were so sweet! We taught them the Plan of Salvation using my little pictures I made at the MTC. While we were teaching the Dad quietly told the four year old to get us water bottles. They are just too sweet! They have a really nice house too...and the boys were playing with laser tag guns when I walked in. I felt right at home. Anyway, they accepted a return appointment, but weren't there when we stopped by. We are praying they are home tonight. I don't want this sweet family to slip through the cracks.

 

Another sweet investigator is named Maria Garcia. She was one the elders were teaching before we got here. She had a baptismal date with the elders before, but then chickened out or something. We go by and see her all the time. She is very shy and is always apologizing for everything. I just love her. She works at a hotel and always has to work on Sundays. I am pretty sure that baptism will be the next thing we commit her to doing.

Ok, totally a side note and DO NOT freak out when I tell you this...promise? Well, we kind of live in a pretty sketchy area of town. Our apartment is very safe with gates and codes to get in and we have two locks on the door, but we live right next to what they call, "The War Zone." No joke! Please don't freak out, because we have been totally safe and watched over. Plus on bikes no one can catch us!

 

We now have green slime tires on our bikes so that we don't get flats anymore. I am so glad we don't have to go to Wal-Mart anymore. All of our bike troubles took a lot of time. The guy who helped put on our tires in the Wal-Mart parking lot had "one big teef." Only my fam will get that one. He totally did a horrible job and we had to go back the next day and have the bike builder do it.
 

Sometimes we have to make things fun when we are biking so much, and one of the things I made up that I love is called "Mario Kart." There is this sidewalk on the way to the church that has these pretty big gaps in it and I like to try and jump the cracks, haha. That is called MarioKart.

 

This week we got three investigators on a date. I am so happy for them. We still have a lot to do though.  Yesterday was the first week in our home ward, because last week was stake conference. They had the new missionaries bear their testimonies. It has been so awesome to be able to meet the members, especially because most of them don't know English so we have to speak Spanish.

 

The District.

 

 

The four hermanas...we did not mean to all wear stripes!

I learned a funny tongue twister...see if you can do it Dad. "Parangaricutirimicuaro". I can say that haha! Yesterday we were able to watch the missionary broadcast...so neat. Did you watch it? Oh yeah, one more cool story! Last night we had about an hour left before we were supposed to be home, but we didn't have our bikes (because they were at the church). We decided to walk around and knock a few houses by our apartment. We weren't having a lot of luck, but then we found Lupe. She is from Nebraska and had a ton of Nebraska Huskers stuff. Anyway, at first she really wasn't interested, but then we were persistent in getting to know her and she totally warmed up to us. SHE was the one that asked us to come back! HOW COOL!

I am so happy to be here...it is not easy, but definitely worth it! Thank you for everything!

LOVE YOU ALL!