Can I just say that it is so hard to have so much stuff to say to y’all and to have to say it in some order knowing that you want to hear it in another order and..... anyways, here we go again!
Last week we learned that someone had thrown boiling water on the poor dog that follows us everywhere and burned him really badly. The locutorio on the corner was kind of healing and taking care of him, but Alejo 2 decided to accompany all of the members to church on Saturday when we had a leadership meeting. I don´t know how he got in, but hey, he was inside the church and inside the meeting--in the chapel and all. If that isn´t enough, he showed up and made his way into SACRAMENT meeting on Sunday. We just let him enjoy the meeting and the Bishop announced for everyone to just leave him alone because he was hurt. After church we had to coax him out of the chapel and into the car of a member who decided to really adopt and heal him...and they kept the name we had given him! It was a joke getting him in the car. You can´t even imagine.
So on my birthday our lunch called that morning at 9 and said not to come because it would just be too inconvenient for her. But she said, “happy birthday.” I´m not going to lie, I was bummed. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and brought oranges and begged a table from a member and ate our little picnic in her house. It turned out fine, but it was no birthday feast. I decided to think that the Lord had made that sister cancel on us, because if not we might have been badly burned in a grease fire helping her fry the milanesas and we wouldn´t have been able to work. So it was really a blessing in disguise… who knows. I choose to see it that way.
Right after that phone call, Presdient Benton called and he and all of the office elders sang to me. It was special...how sweet! He then proceeded to tell me that he had prayed a lot and had decided to CLOSE San Antonio de Padua because they aren't ready for the work. Instead of just taking me out, he rescued us both. I knew he had been inspired to do it—and another lovely event that went down on Sunday only confirmed it. Instead of taking it hard, I just thought to myself… I´m getting out of here tomorrow, so say all you want. I asked President Benton if we had done well with the white wash and all, or if it had been a failure and he assured me that we had done well. We had baptized 4 when there had only been 1 in the last 12 month period. We had to leave the wonderfully located apartment and say goodbye. It took forever to make sure everything was crystal clear in the area book for the next companionship that will eventually get white washed into Padua and we did our very best to give them a good head start. We shared our testimonies in church, packed up, had a goodbye FHE with Santiago and the family and the next morning we were gone.
The transfer meeting was awesome, but we didn´t hit our goal of 200. We came super close though. 192. I couldn´t help but feel bad because I had committed to get 3 and then only got 1. The number would have been 194 if I hadn´t missed my goal, but I can´t let it get me down. When the transfers came up on the screen I could hardly believe it. I´m training the new missionary… in Las Heras – an area that had been closed for a month when we went short on sister missionaries. So I am resurrecting an area and training. It´s called a a resurrect an area/white wash/ train. They only way it could be harder is if we were opening an area for the first time. Now that would be a trip. But even still, this is enough of a load for me. Any extra prayers you want to offer in our behalf will be well invested. Not only do I not know where I am, who the members are, or how to help the investigators… but it´s an area that consists in 2 other villages that you have to take buses to get to. I don´t know how to get there, but I do know that the bus to get there is expensive. I bet we will eat very little this transfer because we will spend about 200 pesos or more in train and bus fares. Great diet though.
My new missionary is named Brittany Michelle Godfrey. She´s 21 from Pennsylvania and a music major at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. She´s amazing and speaks the best of all the new missionaries. I am so proud of her. She is very positive, a lovely person and very diligent and we are going to get along great. She is going to be a lifelong friend of mine and I am striving every moment to be the best trainer I can be.
We had a trainer and the reinforcement meeting and then around 7:15 at night we headed out to the mission van with the assistants to drive the hour and a half to Las Heras – campo de campo! (the middle of nowhere) When we got there she and I went up the stairs to find the pench locked – which it should be, but the bad part is that the keys we had were one key short. You guessed it, the key that opens the pench door. Elder Woodmansee and Elder Fox were really cool about it all and we eventually got the landlord to come, who called a locksmith, who changed the lock and we got in--about 10:20. The poor Elders had a good hour and a half drive ahead of them and I felt sad, but it wasn´t our fault about the key thing. We took pictures of it all. My poor new missionary was exhausted and we gave in and all spoke English so that she didn't feel totally isolated. I felt bad not speaking in Castellano because it´s a rule, but I think that there is the spirit of the law that said not to make her first night miserable and lonely.
Being the trainer and having so little to work with on the map and all, we still haven´t even finished unpacking and I am behind in my journal (gasp!) The sacrifices have only just begun, like today when I ate nothing for breakfast and gave her all that we had… a little bit of cereal and a pear. My stomach growled and growled during study, but I felt good inside knowing that I could go hungry and let her eat.
The funny thing about all this resurrect white wash training stuff is that I´m super stressed out, but at the same time the Spirit is so strong that 95% of the time I don´t feel it. It´s like Joseph Smith said – I feel as calm as a summer morning. I am aware of the numbers we don´t have and the distance that separates us from baptizing in 3 weeks. It would be really great to do that, but I am forcing my mind to just not internalize it. Each moment is like, “I´m just going to worry about right now… about finding this street and walking on it until I find this house and knock this door. After that I´ll worry about....” and then when that moment comes I start over, “I´m just going to think about finding a grocery store and then I´ll worry about something else.” It´s like this all day long, but the Lord is really helping me.
One of the little problems I have is that my body has stopped letting me sleep past 5:45 in the morning – even with the herbs that are about to run out (but don´t worry) I use that time to pray and tell my Father that I am in over my head, but He can keep me afloat. And He does. I may be lost, have no food and accidentally street contact the branch president, but I am not alone! (PS I haven´t accidentally street contacted the branch president… not yet anyways!)
But yeah, the weight of the assignment has about taken care of my appetite and I´m fine with that. It gives me 12 minutes more at night to try and get some things in order. The map was not as well kept as I would have expected being as there were sisters here before, but it´s all good.
Mom – I sent home an envelope of letters and 3 CD's of pictures with Sister Johns. When you see her at the airport or later in Church… will you please get them from her? I figured it would get to you much safer and faster than through the mail. Enjoy!
PS – Elder Thompson and I met in the meeting with all the trainers and new missionaries. His trainer is a really good Elder-- Elder Evans. Apparently Elder Thompson had only really good things to say about me to his district – they all knew beforehand that we were neighbors and I think he painted me to be some kind of a hero or something. He seems like a sincere Elder and my companion said that he has a strong testimony. His Castellano is good. I pray that he gets off to a great start!
Nata – yes I got your postcard and loved it. Thanks a bunch!
Jason – thanks for your advice on training – I am reviewing it and putting it all into practice.
Daddy – yeah, it was a tough situation, but we got out, actually we were delivered out.
Now for some random stuff:
It was super hot for a week (like on my birthday) and now it´s cold and rainy again. When it´s hot outside all of the young boys, men and old men decide to walk around shirtless and it just makes me uncomfortable. Who wants to stop and street contact a guy that has no shirt on? Exactly. I wish they would all just keep their clothes on… and the poor Elders I don´t know how they do it… the girls walk around here in next to nothing. I tell ya, the return to virtue is way important. Bring it on!
I have this HUGE sense of urgency like never before. I almost started crying today as it hit me that this is one day less that I have as a missionary. Knowing that I am in my last area, with my last companion, searching for my last converts… it about brings tears to my eyes just to type it. I know you all miss me and are anxious for me to come home, and I am too, but I just die when I think about not being able to wear this name tag anymore. I don´t know how I´m going to take it. I don´t want to lose a single minute and that makes this a little complicated with the details of our new area. We barely started working the week on Wednesday and it isn´t even a full day of work because we´re writing email (with permission) and had to buy food and stuff. I feel like I need to stop time and do all the missionary work and then start it again and let the day end itself. This hurry feeling that I have makes you want to win the lottery and not invest (you want to find those totally ready for the harvest investigators… you don´t want to find those that are waiting for a divorce because you know you´re not going to see it come to fruition. It is weird to feel so much pressure to get it done, and get it done NOW. And it´s all internal, the President hasn´t even mentioned a word to me about needing to step it up, push on the gas and floor it to the finish… it just comes naturally. I don´t know how you could get trunky at this stage… it´s like the last few games of the football season… you´re SAD to see them go, you´re not counting down. This is why it´s hard for me to invest time in doing missionary things instead of missionary work. Missionary things are like meetings, cleaning the apartment, weekly planning, eating, sleeping… stuff that you´ve just gotta do because you´re alive and you´re a missionary. But missionary work is the teaching and baptizing part. That´s what I want to do all day long. If I had my way, I would tell my body to not need lunch and work through it. Sometimes I feel bad when I enjoy missionary things because I see that it´s not missionary work. Like last night when we were talking with the assistants about all the areas we had served in and stuff that happens in the mission… it was fine to do it because there´s no one to teach in the van, but I felt bad because it´s like, “wait, I´m a missionary… I shouldn´t find joy in anything but teaching and baptizing.” But that´s not true. We should find joy in everything… in the road trip to the new area, in the wasted time trying to get the door open… in everything. In buying groceries when you want to proselyte… We must find joy. But I feel like there is so little time left.
My big goal this transfer is to purify myself. I have selected 3 things to eliminate completely. 1. Worldly music. You hear it and it gets stuck in your head, but I´ve got to push it out. 2. Complaining and gossiping. It gets you nowhere and is a poor use of words. And 3. Comparing myself to others. I want SO BADLY to be like the Elders of Rafael Castillo 2 that baptized 13 last transfer, but I just can´t compare myself to them. I just can´t. I need to remember that my Heavenly Father compares me to no one. We are doing this whole purifying ourselves thing as a mission and I know that if we work hard, it will bring us a ton of miracles this transfer. I need all the miracles I can get here in Las Heras.
I love you all so much and feel like in the blink of an eye I will see you all again. Please pray for my missionary. She speaks quite well, but I remember what a struggle it was. Pray for me to give her room to grow. It is so much easier to just do our 20 contacts each day, but I´ve got to let her fly. Let her try. Let her get rejected, even though I don´t want to see her get rejected. I wanted to take all the bad and carry it for her, but I can´t do that. This must be what parenting is like.
Pray for the mission… we are very far out of the bubble where most of us grew up.
Love you all so much,
~~~~~~~~~~~
1 COMMENTS:
ajohns37 said...
You wonderful, amazing friend and fellow missionary mom. Thank you so much for capuring such a special and memorable time for us. Thank you for your super support and love. We will be there for you. Te amo mucho! The familia Johns
SEPTEMBER 5, 2009 9:50 AM
