Monday, January 2, 2017

Week Fifty-Two: Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve. We look like crazy people!
 Area: Arvin Spanish Group
Companion: Hermana Luquette

This week was fun. We spent a lot of time on exchanges with the different hermanas from the mission and we were able to do a lot of working out here in good old Arvin, so all was good!

We have been working a lot with our investigator Julio and we have been seeing a lot of progress during this last week. We had been having a hard time knowing how to help him to progress, so we didn't really know what we were going to do going into the lesson. When we got there, we started talking to him and he told us that he had a dream where someone told him not to get baptized or to join our church. We asked him if that made him have any doubts and he informed us that it only strengthened his resolve to get baptized and to learn more about what we teach. I don't really know how, but it certainly was a miracle of sorts! He is super fun to teach.

Right after that, we had exchanges with the hermanas down in Little Rock. We decided to meet up halfway in a little town called Mojave. On the drive through the mountains that we took to get up there, I saw snow for the first time in a year. It was a little bizarre! When we got to Mojave, it was super strange. It is just a little old town out in the middle of the desert. I don't know if we caught it on a bad day or what, but everyone was staring at us like we were a couple of aliens who hopped out of our UFO. It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone! We met up with the hermanas and I headed back to Arvin with one of the Hermanas who just got out on her mission, Hermana Dye. She is super fun and SUPER tall. I think that she said that she was 6' 3" or something like that. I felt like a midget next to her, but it was super fun to go on exchanges with her.

While we were on exchanges, we were able to talk to the son of one of our recent converts. It was a really cool experience. The whole time that Jesse was learning before his baptism, he told us that he was doing it so that he could be a better person for his children. It was nice to be able to teach his son a little bit and to hopefully be able to make a difference in the entire family.

On Thursday, we went on exchanges with the Hermanas that are in Buena Vista now. It was a blast. They are currently in a trio, so I was able to go and third wheel with Hermana Martineau and with Hermana Latimer. It was super fun. I love working in Arvin, but Buena Vista still has a little piece of my heart! While we were down there, we knocked on the house of a ton of Punjabi speaking truck drivers. One of them spoke english pretty well, so we were talking to him and he was translating for all of his friends. Hermana Martineau asked them how we can say "Can I give you our card?" in Punjabi, so he wrote it out on a card. He took a video of Hermana Martineau saying it and put it on Snap Chat. Who knows, maybe Hermana Martineau will soon become famous in the some sort of Punjabi social realm.

This week, it was raining a lot. It is hard to believe that we are in the middle of a desert-ish climate. I feel like it hasn't rained for months, but it sure is pouring now! Being in the rain makes me feel like more of an actual missionary. It is an adventure.

New Years was fun here in Arvin. At the beginning of the week, we were told to go in and to do planning at 6 o'clock on New Years Eve instead of going out and working. The entire time that we were inside, we heard giant fireworks going on outside. At midnight, a lot of people go outside and fire their guns up into the air, so that was fun!

The new year has allowed me to feel a lot of introspection. I feel like I have grown so much since the beginning of the year. It is hard to believe that I am going to be hitting my one year mark in just a little bit. I don't think that I am the same person at all that I was just a while ago. I can't remember what my resolutions were at this time last year, but I am sure that I was able to accomplish them :) I am excited to see what this year has in store for me!

I hope that you all have a good week at home and that you are able to do good wherever you are! I love you all!

Hermana Blau

Hermana Luquette and me in the Arvin Group building after church.

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