Challenges and Chinese Food

Satan can be really frustrating sometimes. Well, not sometimes, all the time. Here I'm trying to be like the most obedient and hardworking in the time I've been here, and everything seems to be coming at us this week. I feel like I've had some of the most challenging weeks in this change out of my whole mission...but I made a list of all the challenges and dumb stuff that happened, but then I made a list of all the great things that happened too.

Like on an hourly basis the power was going out, it was pouring rain, our investigator that was going to get baptized moved back to T_____, we ran out of money so fast after needing to travel and use so many taxis, we got locked out of our house, our investigators put so many excuses to not come to church yesterday it wasn’t even funny, and other individuals aren’t good examples and haven’t helped us, they just make things worse and make fun of other people, we ran out of saldo (credit) on the phone, and there’s no way to get to C____ because a bridge broke and it's super dangerous and the sister training leaders want to come and do divisions...not to mention the house flooded...twice.

We went to bed at like 9:40 Friday night after planning and everything. An hour later the phone rings and my companion answers it, then she turns on the light to the room and is like "Hermana, wake up". But I woke up to the sound of water exploding from a pipe...talk about a nightmare! We still don’t really know what happened with the toilet tubing, but we think that there was too much pressure from the heavy rains and all that. I don’t know honestly, I just know we were sweeping the water with brooms until 12:30. We woke up the next morning and finished sweeping the water until about 9. First there’s no water, then there’s too much...

But the next morning we went and had pancakes with a lady in our rama, Hermana G____. She's a widow with a good heart.  I've learned so much lately about how no one should ever make fun of anyone or talk bad about anyone. She lives alone and sells souvenirs to the tourists on the cruise ships. We made pancakes and eggs and salami for everyone while she packed up a few things in her house since she's in the process of moving. The presidente de la rama has been helping her move little by little with a truck. It was fun to be able to be with her even though she tried to give me the burnt pancakes since I apparently didn’t learn how to make pancakes well enough on a comal...haha! She’s a good lady! She likes to put raisins in her pancakes. She about killed me when I tried making a paco (a doughy pancake in the shape of a taco - an old Despain family secret).

I'm in the process of learning more about how to be the secretary for the retention in the Zone. It's exciting, I like it. Little bit stressful but it's cool.

In my personal study I read in Alma 33 and liked how it talked about how we have to have a softened heart when it comes to obedience. It was cool to read about how Moses putting the snake on the staff was a representation, in John, and then turn to the Book of Mormon and be reading about it again! We can't have hard hearts when it comes to obedience or think that we're better than other people or else we become prideful, and they’re always talking about that in the Book of Mormon. We need to "look and live". It is amazing that we have the truth and that we're members of the true church, but as soon as we start to get prideful, things go downhill.
e ate Chinese rice with her on Thursday for Thanksgiving. She just needs some time to talk to people, people who will listen. So maybe it wasn’t a turkey dinner with pie for Thanksgiving, but it was a dinner of Chinese rice with a lonely lady who needed some attention. So that felt good :)  I hope you all had great Thanksgivings though :) The power went out that night so we went and bought ice cream. That was fun, maybe it wasn’t pie, but it was fun to talk and laugh with my companion. But if we need to be in Thanksgiving daily, does that mean we can eat like it's Thanksgiving everyday??? ;)

A few weeks ago we ended up listening to a member ragging on people that go to church in pants or short skirts and how it's not right. I understood where she was coming from but we calmly tried to explain to her that we go to church to take the Sacrament and we focus on ourselves and where we're at, and we serve other people. Because then how are we any better if we're just talking bad about others or looking down on people. After fighting and fighting to invite people to church, I've learned how important it really is and why we go. I'm really trying to take the Sacrament with more meaning and make it something I look forward to every week. I taught the Gospel Principles class on Sunday! We only had four investigators and they were all under the age of 13, so you can imagine how many little comments were being made, but I hope they learned a lot and felt the Spirit.

We're thinking that D______  needs a little more time before she gets baptized. She's serious about it for like a full week, and then Sunday comes and she decides she can't go to church because it was raining and she didn’t have an umbrella..............The wife of the branch president gave a great talk about sacrifice. She mentioned how we all know that it’s the rainy season and that we need to be prepared with umbrellas. If we're prepared, we'll be ready for what comes our way. And if something comes up that we weren’t planning on, we have enough faith that Heavenly Father will help us out.

My travel itinerary came today so that’s pretty exciting. My birthday is on Saturday and I got packages :) Love my family to death. Those packages always come right when I'm at my lowest points. Today we'll be doing a little p-day activity with like 50 poor kids. We initially planned to do the activity with the orphans but the orphanage found out we were Mormons and it got canceled...so we found other kids to make their day :) Me and my companion are going to help kids decorate cookies, should be fun :)

So with all of those setbacks and challenges, I made a list of the good things that happened. We had more lessons after splitting up and doing divisions, we ate pancakes, worked together to get rid of the water in the house, I'm still exercising, we ate lunch at a members house on Sunday, we got gifted a bottle of something that should help our hair to not fall out, I fixed my Christmas tree, we had Chinese rice for Thanksgiving, we'll decorate cookies with kids today, eat pizza tonight with a member here in T_____  who also lives with just her daughter, and I got my packages! And I'm still alive! 2 more months in my mission, I think I can do it. It's still a challenge everyday but there are still blessings everyday. Can't believe I'm turning 21 this Saturday, talk about old! But yeah, its been a challenging few weeks but we've been working so hard and we're so tired and so worn out. But we know we're doing what the Lord wants us to do. I feel like there’s never time to do everything, but it will all work out.

Have a great week everyone :)

Love,
Hermana Despain