Week Forty: Half-Way Done!!!

The cutest moment of my mission! A less active family in our ward has two baby
kittens, and they let me feed them! My face looked like that for the entire time. SO CUTE!

This week was pretty good. We were able to see a lot of miracles. One of the biggest ones is that I completed the first half of my mission! It seems like it was only yesterday that I was just starting out in the MTC. I can hardly believe that I am here! I still feel like I have a ton to learn and that there is so much that I can improve, but I can see that I have changed a lot over the past nine months. Time is crazy!

One of the miracles this week happened when we decided to go contacting in the park. It was only after we got to the park that we realized that it was two in the afternoon on a weekday and that no one was there. We decided to go knocking in the houses around the park instead. In the first house that we knocked on, we met a lady who was super excited to see us. It turns out that she had learned from the missionaries twelve years ago in Los Angeles and that she loved the church. She kept calling us her princesas and  invited us in to eat. Because we were late to our dinner appointment, we made a return appointment and left. When we went back, she invited us right in and we taught the first lesson. In the middle, we were asking her why she stopped meeting with the missionaries. It turns out that she had talked with one of the members and they had told her that the church didn't believe in using medicine and that she should give all of the money that she would have spent of medicine for a really horrible disease that she had and give it to the church. She was upset about that and decided to stop meeting with the missionaries even though she loved them and the church. We were able to tell her that we didn't believe in that. After we told her that, she looked at us with tears in her eyes and told us that we didn't know what a difference that made for her. The spirit was super strong! She is really excited to meet with us now and really wants to move forward.

Me and a bag of Chick Fil A that we found outside of our apartment.
It had two chicken sandwiches and kids toys. We don't know if it was left for us,
so we left it. Nobody came and took it, so it is still a mystery why it was there.
We threw it away in the end. Que triste!

We have been getting a lot of food recently. I don't know what has been happening recently, but every time that we leave someone's house, they give us a giant bag of food to take home. One of the members of the bishopric works for Nabisco, so he gave us a giant bag of crackers and cookies after we left his house. Last night we met a lady who works in la uva and she gave us giant bags of grapes when we left (even though she wasn't super interested in learning from us). We hardly had to spend any money on groceries this week. Que milagro!

All of the sisters in our zone at an In N Out.
One of the benefits of serving on the west coast!

This week, we have had a couple of people chase us down to talk to us. One of them was a person that we talked to at the beginning of last transfer named Reyes. We had gone back to his return appointment and almost gotten eaten by his vicious dog. While we were walking past his house late at night, he was sitting with his friends outside. He chased us down and told us that he hadn't been able to meet with us because he had lost his teeth while he was working and felt embarrassed. He told us that he was still interested in learning, so we went back to talk to him later that week and had a really good lesson.

The other night, we were walking through the area by our house late at night right before going home and I thought that I heard someone call my name. I looked around and didn't see anyone, so we kept walking. Right before we walked in the door of our house, we got a call from a man that we had talked to a couple of weeks ago. It turns out that we had walked right past his house and he wanted to talk to us again. He had called my name, but we didn't realize what had been happening. We were able to go back last night and talk to him and his family. They were super cute and the lesson went pretty well!

I guess that is pretty much it for this week. We have been seeing really good things in the area and we have been working with some super cool people. I have definitely been able to see the hand of the Lord in the work and I love being a missionary!

I hope that you all have a good week and that fall is going well. It is just starting to show up here. I love you all!

Hermana Blau

Our zone after our zone training meeting.