Idaho Girls!

Wednesday was so much fun! I had exchanges with cute Sister Stucki. We got along so well. She is such a cool girl, from Nampa, Idaho, and wants to be a policewoman. She has a beautiful voice which we were able to utilize a ton. We sang the, “O Mi Padre” song to “Come Thou Fount” a few times. As faithful Idaho girls, we ate potatoes for lunch of course! :)

Our lesson with Cuca (we like to spell it Cookah) was fantastic. We set a date for her the 22 of February. It is tricky with her, because she works during the week here but lives in Juarez during the weekend. She is one special woman. She will get baptized in Mexico.  Wednesday she really finally opened up. She was telling us the real doubts she had. It was so neat, because they were doubts as if she really already knew it was true, which she does. She has the doubt of what her family will think when she gets baptized. That is only a doubt if you are seriously considering following through with it. I am just so happy for her. We watched the Joseph Smith movie and she talked about how she felt something nice starting to grow inside of her and then it left. It was the perfect time to talk about gift of the Holy Ghost vs. influence of the Holy Ghost.

A little later in the afternoon, we stopped by Mirna’s but she wasn’t home. We ended up teaching some teenagers that were outside of their house. They were little punks, laughing at us (you know, all that great stuff). We ended up teaching them about the Plan of Salvation. I actually think it went all right. I have really been working on teaching on the spot and with teenage punks, that’s all you can do, because you might not get another chance to talk to them.

We went to go see Hermana Harper for the first time since she moved apartments. We really like this new apartment so much better.  She of course was VERY happy to see us. I am surprised that she didn’t yell at me for something. We may be making progress there. We had dinner with one of my favorite families…the Ochoas. They have the most adorable kids. And because Sister Stucki doesn’t speak Spanish, they spoke their very best broken English that they could. We had some very yummy tostadas. Isaac was as funny as ever showing us all his toys. He is definitely a very smart kid.

The last lesson of the night was with Mirna and her daughter Ana Luisa. It went all right. The sad thing is that she got cold again to us. It was been so long that she is forgetting the feelings she had before as well as the experiences she had before. She also is meeting with some Christian people, but still is a very strong Catholic. She did say once again, that she doesn’t let people like us into her house…ever.  She said that she liked us a lot and that we were different, so that’s why we are teaching her. Then yesterday we called and invited her to come to an FHE with us and she dropped us. It was so weird. She sounded so pleasant and sweet that I thought I misunderstood. I am pretty sad about that, but I guess it just isn’t her time yet.

The next night I had exchanges with Sister Smith, another solid Idaho girl. J It was so much fun! She is such a cutie! They have great members in their ward. I LOVED Sister Hall who came out with us. She is so cute and fun, and she is from Boise, Idaho. We went out to Chaparral. That place is so weird, and it was FREEZING all day. Then we had dinner with them, so I got to know them even better and I felt at home.  I didn’t feel like I was in El Paso which was nice for once. Their youngest son reminded me so much of Hollister with his cute blonde hair and freckles. Brother Hall served his mission in Mississippi and knows Uncle Nate…small world huh? They had a ton of BSU stuff, so we took pics with it. It was cool to see throughout the day how much of an impact Elder Nash had made on the stake. He is influencing a ton.

 

We had a fantastic day at church this week. Janet and Javier showed up! They haven’t come this whole time that I have been here. Janet is a member, but her husband isn’t. They are so very sweet. She is the one that dyed my hair. By the time we got there, about 15 minutes before church started, sweet Mary and her daughter and grandson were already there. They are seriously so awesome! I played the piano again for sacrament meeting. Hermano Gomez came off the stand and walked all the way to us to ask me if I would play an intermediate hymn as well, haha! It is kind of tricky though, because it is really hard to play prelude and postlude when I want and need to be just talking and taking care of my investigators. I hope the pianist starts showing up again. We gave a really nice message during Relief Society, following up on stake conference. The ward seems very excited and willing to help. We were looking for this referral named Luis who apparently has 11 kids.  The apartment we went to wasn’t correct, but a Luis lived there! J We might just start knocking around looking for Maria or Luis, haha.

We had such a cool miracle on Sunday night after dinner. Jesus, our very faithful member, who always comes out with us had told us earlier in the week that he is looking for some information to be able to continue working on his family history. He is a convert of about six years. Anyway, now that you know that you have a background of him. That night we took Jesus to go see Mary Thompson. We had planned to teach her about keeping the Sabbath day holy and tithing, which she had no problem with. Then we started talking about family history and Jesus really wanted to show us his family tree. When he did, Mary starting recognizing some of the names. Turns out that they are related and she had some of the information he needed to keep going…how cool is that? He was so excited and Mary was too. She called someone in Mexico to ask for some names and information. She had some old pictures as well.

Yesterday, we had fun doing some sweet things for the other sisters. We decided to heart attack them. We had dinner with the Rojas. Hermano Rojas is the sweetest guy ever! He is about 58 and has been married to Hermana Rojas for seven years. They are both converts. He had a sweet conversion story. He literally met the missionaries and was baptized literally in less than a week.

We had the SWEETEST lesson with Liz. She is doing so well. We can’t even believe how sweet she is. She loves her two little kids so much, and she just has the sweetest heart ever. We watched the long Joseph Smith movie. At one point when Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith, she asked, “Isn’t that Mormon’s son?” I was so impressed! We hadn’t even talked about Joseph Smith yet. She is reading a ton and just loving it. It was definitely a great start to the week. And to top it off, we taught her other little sister. So now, we are teaching Liz, her two little sisters, her father, her aunt and uncle and cousin…EVERYONE! We met them all in different ways. I truly believe that us meeting them was inspired. It was the perfect way to start off the week.