Date
January 26, 2015
Area
Companion
Week 76 - January 26, 2015
Hola familia! Sounds like you all had a good week! Bummer about the ticket though sorry Nicole...Utah is so strict! Well this week was really good and really tough.
Wednesday we were headed to the library when Maricela called us and said she had gotten mixed up and thought we had lunch with her today instead of tomorrow so she had made lunch. Although we had just eaten lunch, we felt bad so we went and ate another plate full of food. Man that woman loves to talk! We always have these awesome lessons planned out for her and then we can never get a word in! It's a bit frustrating but I love her to death! We sped over to Hna Vaca's to ask her to speak at the baptism since she doesn't have a phone and ask Julieta if she could play the violin with us and then had to speed over to Emily's for a quick lesson on prayer. Then we sped over for dinner and ate super fast before speeding to the church to meet Kaely and her dad to show them the baptismal font and explain how everything would go on Sunday. While we were there, the relief society began practicing volleyball. They are having a stake tournament on Saturday and nobody wanted to play so Hna Medina pleaded that we come help them out so I played volleyball in a pencil skirt and boots.
Thursday we had an appointment with Keilyn at 11. We got to the library and she texted us saying she was still at school and asked if we could move the lesson later. So we worked on making Kaely's program and doing 12 week training until she got there. She didn't show up until 1pm! We were starving but by the time we finished her lesson, we had to run to Kelly's for that appointment. When we got there, Kelly asked if we wanted anything to drink or eat. Even though I was STARVING I said no to be polite but then she said she had made us this dessert thing and said if we didn't want to eat it now we could just take it home. Well in that case, I would gladly have some! I think we scarfed down half the pan we were so hungry. We ran home to change and then went to the relief society activity to help them some more with volleyball. They didn't even have a full team with us there! We still needed one more person so I don't know how that's going to work out...then we ran to Ariana's and Amalia's at 8 and helped them do personal progress. That was a lot of fun!
Friday we had an appointment with Natalie and Monica in the morning so we left right after companion study. While coming back from their house, I remembered that the bishop had asked us to pick up something at his house in the morning. They live right by our apartments so I thought we could just swing by and pick up whatever he had for us before going home for lunch. Wrong. Hna Ayala was there and bishop hadn't even bought what we were supposed to pick up so instead we sat and talked to the Hermana until I looked at my watched and realized we had an appointment in 10 minutes! So much for lunch again. We went to Marina's and had a lesson on the Holy Ghost with her. She is the funniest old lady but she drives me crazy with her off-topic stories! I always think that her stories will tie in at the end with what we are talking about but nope! Never does. Next was dinner. We were sooo hungry! We sat down to eat and not longer than 10 minutes later we got a call from the mission office asking us to go pick up the English sisters from the apartment immediately. We jumped up and apologized to the Hermana that we had to go because we had an emergency. I had no idea what was happening but in my mind I came up with all the worst possible scenarios of course. We got there and apparently the Sisters had mentioned to Elder Schweider in the mission office that they had a gas leak that has been there forever in their garage. He freaked out and told them to pack up and that they needed to leave immediately. So we got there and they packed all their stuff in our car. In the meantime, the mechanic guy arrived and we showed them were the leak was. In less than 10 minutes he had it fixed and everything was fine. Goodness! Talk about overreaction!!! Now we had to unload everything we had just put into our car and I was still hungry. We went through the drive through at Panera but it took so long that we were already late for our next appointment with Kaely and I didn't even get the chance to eat. We had a great lesson with Kaely and Miriam and her daughter Jasmine who both just got baptized. Then we were off again to our ward coordination meeting. I ate a little bit there but felt super awkward because everyone was waiting for me so I packed it all up again and we started the meeting. Our ward mission leader decided today was critique the sisters day. He asked if we'd be prepared to teach relief society in Spanish if asked to do so right beforehand and I responded, "Well, we would do our best!" Then he proceeded to tell us how we didn't speak enough Spanish and that my greenie was never going to learn how to speak Spanish because I'm not teaching her. She's only been out in the field 4 weeks!! It went on for about 15 minutes in front of the Elders whose planners are completely blank and hold district meeting in English even though we are supposed to do it in Spanish...as well as the ward missionaries. I wanted to cry but made it until the end of the meeting when I got in the car. We both just silently cried on the way home. We had worked harder than ever before this week, we were having a baptism this Sunday for heavens sakes and still it wasn't enough. We got back to the apartment to plan and I started speaking purely in Spanish explaining that we needed to plan in Spanish from now on. I looked at Hna Whitten and she looked like she was about to cry. I asked her if she understood anything I'd just said and she sobbed, "No!" It broke my heart as she explained how worthless she felt and how humiliated she was during the meeting when she could tell everyone was talking about her but couldn't understand what they were saying. It was a rough night and I finally was able to eat my sandwich at 10:15. I was glad for this day to be over.
Saturday I woke with a sore throat. I had felt it a little last night and the sisters had brought over some EmergenC packs. I drank one during studies praying that it was a fluke and would go away soon. We had a missionary activity at our ward mission leader's house at 2:00 and I had to pray real hard to not have hard feelings towards him. I know he didn't mean for his advice to hurt us and that he probably had no idea what he'd said had been so harsh. I did my best to help where I could. We were outside for the entire thing and it was FREEZING. If I wasn't sick before, I was now. We got home, did some weekly planning, went to dinner, then came back and had planned to finish weekly planning but I was feeling horrible so I took some Niquil and called it a night. Sunday
Well I officially caught the bug. :( I really thought I might make it the whole way without getting sick because everyone else had already caught it except me! Until now ha. We went to ward council, did a short practice with the sisters for the musical number we were singing for the baptism then went to class. After church we had a meeting with the bishop so we literally had only 5 minutes to run home, grab something to eat, bring all the baptismal stuff and then run back to the church to fill the font. The elders had the keys and they had left so we had to run around the building asking for someone that had a key to the font. Once we got that running, we started setting up all the chairs. Hno Reyes brought us sandwiches to eat for dinner...I had a total of three bites I think in between helping Kaely change, chasing down the sisters to practice the music one more time with Julieta on the violin, etc. We were about to start when I realized we hadn't even taken any pictures with her! So we ran out to the front real quick to get a picture. From there it went quite well until we got to the actual baptism part. Hno Gonzalez was supposed to help Kaely and her dad practice how the baptism would go but it was apparent that he never did as the Hermano awkwardly tried to lower his daughter into the water holding only her wrists. She hit her head on the side of the font and they had to do it again. For 10 minutes, different people tried to explain to him how to hold her and how to do the baptism while they sat there in the water. He never really figured it out so he awkwardly baptized her again and we called it good. Oh goodness! We thought we had everything planned out...but the actual baptism! Minor details ha. Nevertheless, the baptism did go through so that, I was grateful for. After she was all changed, she was sitting there for a bit while her dad bore his testimony and then when Hermana Hernandez got up to welcome her to primary she was gone! Her mom said she'd gone to the bathroom! Oh my word. I ran out of the room and she was walking back and asked, "Can we eat yet?" She was completely in her own world. I told her, "Not yet, there's a few more people that want to talk to you...hurry come back!" Hermana Hernandez gave her little shpeel (totally made up that spelling) and then the bishop talked real quick. We finished with a song and a prayer and then went to the kitchen to eat tamales...wait, no! Pizza!!! Ahhhh We had specifically asked that they not bring pizza because it was the Sabbath and so they had said they were going to make tamales. I guess that didn't happen... So we blessed the sinful pizza and finished the night. The Lord definitely was blessing me with good health during the baptism because I felt lousy all day until when I really needed to kick it into gear. I was fine right up until the end. We finished cleaning up and once again had to chase someone down that had library keys because the Elders had left without putting the TV away...the one job we had given to them. Jared, when youâre an elder...PLEASE BE RESPONSIBLE!!! We came home and I crashed with a bottle of Niquil again. What a day!
I'm so sad that my last weeks in the mission I can't even give my all because I'm sick with a cold! Mortal problems ugh! I hope that it goes away quickly so we can get back to work and I can do as much as I possibly can before my time is up! It's been the quickest transfer of my entire mission...I still have so much to do! Speaking of things to do, I would love if anyone who didn't receive my other email, if you have time, to send me a quick email with your testimony and how you gained it. That would help me out a whole lot for my homecoming talk. Thank you everyone for all your prayers and support! They meant more than you'll ever know! Also, We are going to the temple on Thursday so I won't be writing again until next Thursday instead of Monday. Hope you all have a great week and DON'T GET SICK!!! Love you all!!
Con amor,
Hermana Bushman