Hola!!

 

First of all ¨HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANTHONY!!!¨

 

It was awesome to hear from all of you this week. Before I forget, no we do not have a Wal-Mart in our area. We do our shopping at a local supermarket. 

 

That is so exciting for Garrett and his family. I remember very well when we went to the temple to be sealed. Thank you for letting me be there even though I did not need to be.  It has strengthened my testimony of the temple even more. I hope with all my heart that you are going to the temple every week and that you are going together every week. I cannot tell you how much I long to go to the temple. It´s not in our mission and is under construction right now until the middle of the year so I pretty much have to wait until I get home to go to the temple again. I don´t want you to feel this way. Please make it a goal and a priority to go to the temple together every week. It is an indescribable blessing to have the temple only 10 minutes away. I truly cannot wait until I can go again.

 

This week has been an interesting one. The bite on my leg that was infected is now down to a scab and I am so glad not to be taking 3 pills a day. Of course I find one or two new bites every other day, but the allegra is helping a lot. I just don´t have a lot of it and it´s expensive. Hopefully my body has become accustomed to mosquitoes now so I don´t need the allegra any more. There is an ant infestation still, but we have that even at home and they don´t usually bother us (I don´t think). I have found a few more spiders in our apartment, but I have been able to kill those ones with no problem. Such is the life with insects around.

 

Now, about the rest of the week. The weather has been a little rough. The heat and the humidity has gotten so bad that during the hours of 3-5pm, we have been given permission to go to a member´s house and share a spiritual thought with them. The heat doesn´t bother me so much, but humidity is hard. I"m wet almost all the time and when I do get home, I´m all sticky. Oh, well. It´s definitly interesting and keeps life fun.

 

We are working with a young girl named Monica and she came to church yesterday and loved primary. She is very interested in the Gospel and loves to read about Jesus Christ. She is in a tough situation, and there is not much that we can do for her, but we pray for her everyday and help where we can.

 

I really do need to take pictures of the area and our investigators, but it is hard because you don´t want your camera to get stolen and pretty much taking it out makes you a target. I will do my best though.

 

Friday, we had another open house, this time in our zone leaders´ area. It was an amazing success. They had 80 people show up, 17 were not members, we don´t know how many were menos activos (less active) and even received 5 baptismal dates. The ward was so active and helped out a lot. The Hermanas took the people through the tour while the elders and some of the members found people on the street and did the closing in the baptismal area. It was so much fun. We are working hard every day, but because we are not doing the normal things that missionaries do, our numbers don´t look that good. We are finding wonderful people, receiving many baptismal dates, and having wonderful service projects. The only thing is, the wonderful people are in other areas, the ones with the baptismal dates work in our areas, but live in other areas, and the service projects don´t have a key indicator and so do not show up in our numbers. I know that numbers are important, and yet not. We are doing great things in our ward and area, but a lot of people don´t know that. Luckily God does and so does our President.

 

We have been moving forward with the ward efforts and are working very closely with the Bishop. The ward is even more accepting of us and we are doing all we can to help them. We have found some difficulties along the way, and are praying every day for inspiration to work through these difficulties. They are all wonderful people who are all very human just like I am. We are working together. The work with the menos activos is progressing ever stronger and ever faster. Yesterday, we set up appointments with 4 of our menos activos for the week and plan to set up 3 more today for later this week. We are trying to build the foundation of the ward and the people who are already in it before we bring in more.

 

As I said, it has been an intersting week filled with ups and downs, but that is the week of a missionary. I truly am so happy to hear from all of you. It brings me great joy every week. My time has run out again, but I just want to tell you that I love you all veeeeeeery much.

 

Love

Jessica