Meagan's a missionary!: "My mom only cooks weird stuff sometimes...and by weird I mean random body parts. "

To explain my subject line...Selena, the 16-yr old girl in the branch I told you about last week, told us this the other day when here mom invited us over for dinner. Yeah, the appointment is this week so I'll let you know how that goes. Oh, and on Saturday night, I definitely ate cow tailbone. Yep...Dominicans have some great ideas for cooking. :)

This week was definitely a wild one. Our key investigators, Maria and Alberto, dropped on us suddenly and didn't want to get baptized anymore or even talk to us. It was really hard. But we finally got in to see them yesterday. Alberto was way cold to us at first but then after we prayed and got to talking, he just let out all his doubts! It basically all led back to that he wasn't there when we taught Maria the first lesson so he had questions about prophets and Joseph Smith and everything, which we can definitely help him with. So we have an appointment with them this week. I am so grateful for this second chance he is giving us to try to help clear up his doubts.

Maria Del Valle (the one who is learning Spanish) committed to baptism! We don't have a date set yet but she came to church yesterday and was like, "Thank you so much for those 'Questions of the Soul' (out of Preach My Gospel)! I looked up the reference it said for how to make my family more united and have more peace and it was the first time in 6 years of investigating the church that I have really felt like the Book of Mormon was the word of God speaking to me! I want to get baptized!" Love it. But she's having a baby soon so we aren't quite sure what her baptismal date will be yet...she's praying about that. Anyway, that was a huge miracle.

The RS broadcast was good...I think. I didn't really understand a ton because they dubbed the Spanish over but I know that President Eyring was talking a lot about charity. Hey, like I said, comoprehension isn't my best thing yet. :)

On Saturday, the entire mission gathered in a city called Dover to do what is called a Blitz. We all were assigned 2 streets to basically conquer and contact every door looking for possible members who had converted in their home countries and not transferred their records properly when they moved or something. So they put us all in Spanglish companionships (one English and one Spanish) so I was with Sis Strommer, who is a sister serving in Jersey City. It was pretty sweet and pretty hardcore when we found a Spanish house because it was all me while she just looked on. But it was fun. Lots of slammed doors but then this Unitarian lady invited us in for cookies so you know, life is good. :)

And probably the coolest thing of this week was yesterday. I gave a talk in church! Haha, the theme for sacrament meeting was all about missionary work and so they asked me to speak. The Familia Soto (the people who we do language study with) came up to me afterward and they were like, "Wonderful! We understood everything you said! And you only made 2 mistakes!" Haha, they were counting? Uh-oh! :) But it was good. And then we had a fireside last night with all the ex-missionaries of the branch speaking abd sharing things from their missions, which was fun. So now I have some pictures to attach of the members of the branch at the fireside!

Ok, I think that's about it for this week. I know I said we might be moving but we're not after all. The story behind that was that we are living in the basement of an inactive lady's house...but she was living with her boyfriend (whom she had been married to before) and the branch president didn't like the idea of us living there so he called her (Emma is her name) and basically told her that if she didn't get married, we would have to move out. So guess what? She got married on Saturday night and we were the only other ones there so we got to be witnesses! Haha, the mission is great. And now they're not living in sin anymore so we can try to teach her husband. :)

I love you all. Thank you so much for you love and support and prayers. I can really feel the strength from them as I go throughout my time here in NJ. There are times when it's rough but other times when it is just all made up for 100x better. I'm excited to hear from you all again. I miss you tons but I love you more.

Love,
Hermana Jackson

Pictures: 692 - me and Hna Bushman standing on Ellis Island with the NYC skyline behind us
703 - me and Selena. Love that girl.
705 - Carmen, Hna Socorro, and me (Carmen was the one who fed us the cow tailbone :)

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