Abby Lynn

Hello everyone!!

This week it really hit me....I AM HERE. Wow. It has been nothing but an adventure from day one. Something disastrous and crazy happens every day!! Where to even start? Well the little girl I told you all about last week, from the less active family- The Enrique family. She is getting baptized!!!!! They are so awesome. They came to church and are ready to start over. I know they are in it for life now. They are so strong. It was actually a funny story how she committed. So we were planning our lesson for her and my companion Hermana Gillum told me to take the lead and invite her to be baptized...so I practiced the commitment in Spanish ALL MORNING: ´´Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?´´   Nervous, but excited we go over deliver the lesson and when it was time for me to say the commitment ´´someone´´ (alguien) and ´´who´´ (quien) are kind of similar words in Spanish...keep that in mind. Anyway I said: will you follow the example of JC and be baptized(then I forgot what was next because I was nervous so I said) Por quien (by who) instead of Por alguien (by someone) and I knew that the last word was wrong so I said the last word in a question on accident.   Ha-ha, then froze because I realized I messed that up so badly.  My companion took over and re-asked and finish the whole commitment.  We walked out of the lesson and just started cracking up.  Will you follow the example of JC and be baptized....by whom? Is what I said. It was embarrassing! I´ve realized that it's hard to tell funny stories through email, they are all better in person.  Just imagine, I'm there acting it out for you all!

Well anyway her date was for the 28th, but now there is all this confusion because her dad wants to baptize her but doesn't know how long it will be since he was less active for so many years.  She wants him too but the dad is trying to talk her into just doing it sooner and not waiting for him because he knows it's not right to make her wait, so it's really hard and the bishop doesn't like us baptizing this much with all the people we have committed because he is afraid they are going to fall away.  So it's all crazy right now!! But our ward is amazing the bishop and his counselors are the best ever. They all make fun of my Spanish and if you're Latin and serve a mission the church wants you to learn English.  So they all know a kind of a lot of English so they will say things but it's with such a accent I can almost get more of what they are trying to say in Spanish than English...sometimes lol.

One of the counselors Hermano Garcia is so awesome. His family and he are my favorite family here so far. They have us over for lunch every Sunday and the rest of the ward wasn't feeding us but they were feeding the elders.  So Hmo Garcia showed us like 3 chapters in the bible and BOM about servants of the Lord asking for food and how the ward needs to feed us because they get blessings from sacrificing food for servants of the Lord and stuff. He did it all in a joking way, but it was a good lesson. We need to ask and be more up front. I just feel so bad because these people are living in shacks with dirt floors and no car and half a ceiling and to ask them to feed us just seems wrong.  But Hmo Garcia who lives in a house just like that was saying that each times he feeds us they´re week is blessed in every way and the members know that...so lesson learned!!

We have one other investigator committed too his name is Nacho. He is awesome. He is about 26 and super open minded. He got an answer about the Book of Mormon this morning and sent us this crazy excited text message ha-ha.  His bap. date is 3 weeks from yesterday. I'm excited!! People are pretty open minded here.  Its nuts, they say no at first to everything like ´´Can we talk to you for a minute, we're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ´´ ´´no, I'm catholic, thanks.´´ ´´Its very important and its of love and happiness´´ ´´ok come on in´´ you just have to try twice and usually after that they are receptive! But back in the United States...people are not that open minded.

Our water stopped working for 2 days this week and the thought of getting into bed after 24 hours of sweating and walking and riding bikes was not an option... so our creative selves went outside and starting looking for anything to help us. We came up with 2 ideas: the ghetto 2 foot pool our landlord (she lives right next door and we share a yard) has, or a hose. The pool is breaking the rules so we decided hose.  We dragged the hose into our house and put it in our shower and turned it on and then alllllll this mystery black 3 inch chunks starting pouring out. So we turned it off really quick and started to panic...I have never wanted to shower so badly in my life. We threw the hose back in the yard and went to option two the pool to see if we could just use the water without getting in so we didn't break any rules. We open the cover to the pool and look down and the water is BROWN. we close it and laugh and start brainstorming...we go back to option one...the hose. we finally find this other lid thing on the spout part that just let water out and decided to put our work out clothes on and wash off outside.  The thought of the water running through that mystery black hose was nothing compared to how gross and dirty I felt...we were desperate!!  Well now we have water in our house...BUT it's not clean water its public water from ´´the street´´ or something...who knows. all I know is that it's not purified at all and it will be a month until it is fixed with regular water, but we can shower in it, and it's Clear. That's all I ask.

So we had to to stop feeding all the dogs, we have no money as missionaries and each day I would feel worse and worse because I couldn't feed the next dog that was watching me feed the other ones because I ran out. So I was taking more and more food each day and then finally I realized that I was sacrificing my food for these dogs and I was hungry.  So I got my priorities back in order.

Our bikes broke again and again...each day. it's probably the dirt roads with glass, trash, cement chunks, rocks, and dead dogs all over them.  These cheap bikes were not meant for the wear and tear, and distance we put them through.  Well, so much happens every week that I can´t type it all in a letter. we have tons of investigators, The spirit is awesome.   I got pepper sprayed in the face by accident because Hermana Gillum likes to play with the pepper spray.  My legs have over 20 bug bites, I fell on my bike on a main road and Hma. Gillum told the whole ward that story yesterday at church!  Tthe people are really nice..after they break their stare at my hair color.  My companion and I get along really well, teach really well, and laugh a lot together!! I love you all tons and miss you like crazy! xoxo