In-Field Week 3 - Bilingual?

First week out of the hospital! We're not confined to a prison cell anymore! As awesome as that's been, it's been a rough week for me. Homesickness has finally set in and it's been quite difficult. And I've started getting dizzy spells! Such fun. So...what happened after we escaped from the hospital?

Monday after the hospital, the mission office had a car that needed to be taken down to an area close to ours so we did. GPS kept trying to take us through a tunnel that was closed because of an accident. So we had to keep rerouting back to different routes. Finally dropped the car off and did our shopping for the week (well, what you can do when you haven't been in your apartment for five days). That was a very short P-day.

Tuesday we chilled in our apartment to make sure Elder Blackburn wasn't going to need to go back.

Wednesday we went out (yay) and taught our guy who's getting ready for baptism. We then went looking for a member of ours but they'd moved out of the apartment address we had. So we gave the guy that was there a Book of Mormon.

Thursday was zone conference! During role plays, they asked us to share a message about faith in 1½ minutes. Then they changed it to 30 seconds. I think that's the fastest I've ever spoke in Spanish. We also learned about the technology of vacuums and two sisters couldn't stop laughing. They thought it was so funny that we had to talk about how to keep a vacuum cleaner clean.
Afterward, we met with a very inactive member that I didn't even know existed. Then we went to a part member family and we taught about the important of prayer, having faith and what faith is.

Friday we had district council so we stole the sister's car. Not really, but we did borrow their car and they rode with some other sisters. Then we had Wendy's! Afterwards, in the rain, we went back to an area looking for some interested referrals we had. None we there :( but this lady stopped in an intersection and thanked us for sharing the gospel.
Then we found two guys who were smoking cigarettes that were really interested in learning more about the church.
Finally, I got my first 'proper' haircut. I'm not sure how to feel about having hair like this yet.

Saturday I found out about the wonders of hair gel and conditioner. Yay. I also had my first proper rainstorm that day, with lightning and slight flooding of our street. We visited our very inactive member again. Her name is Esmeralda and she fed us dinner! She is so sweet.
Later that night as we were bouncing around our area narrowing down our interested persons list, we came up to a house that the note in our directory said "He was kinda baked when we met him but super nice guy. He said to come by sometime and talk with him." Well, he had a huge picture of Jesus that was cemented into his front yard. We could tell he was a hardcore Catholic right there and we decided not to knock on that door.
Then later, we were double checking the address we were headed to when a pack of dogs appeared out of nowhere and almost got us. Luckily, we spend out of there as Elder Blackburn is yelling "Go, go, go, go!"
Our last appointment for that day started out promising. The lady there asked us to give her son a blessing so we did. She then told us that she wasn't going to be attending church anymore because it's causing contention between her and the rest of her family, which is Catholic. So that kinda sucks but everyone has their agency.

Sunday we talked to a Jehovah's witness. He spoke English at first so we were having a conversation and he suddenly switched to Spanish. So we switched to Spanish also because a lot of people here are somewhat bilingual and one language is better than the other for most. He didn't like that, and told us he understands like three words in Spanish, and promptly ended our conversation after that.
Then we had a bomb dinner with some members who were so nice to help us with our Spanish. It was awesome because we had small grammar lessons throughout the actual lesson.

Yea, and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers had taught them.
Alma 57:21

I love all of you, have a great week! Remember, that God loves you no matter what happens. Reach out to Him and he will show you the love He has for you.

--
Elder Thacker