Hey family! How are you all doing? I haven't heard from many of you in a while so I'm just hoping things are going well. I've heard from Mom and Dad that Michael and Cari are heading to Oregon? That's way fun. I loved being in the northwest when I was there and I could see you two just loving it as well. Have fun and take lots of pictures!
So this week was gorgeous weather! (except today, of course, which is raining). But I got back out the short sleeve shirts and we used the air conditioning for the first time in months in the car. What a blessing! :) People are out wandering the streets and everyone is a little more upbeat. But of course, the downside of the nice weather is that all our little men we've been teaching that have been out of jobs all winter have just started up again with their gardening companies so they're a little harder to catch home. Oh well, we'll just track them down somehow.
Yesterday at church was AMAZING! Miguel and Darwin came and loved it! Miguel just knows so much about the Book of Mormon now. He got up in Gospel Principles class and started answering someone's question about it...he drew a map of the world and showed how the Bible came from Jerusalem and the Book of Mormon from the American continent and was just going on and on. It was awesome! And then he told about how God is so aware of all his children and about when he was taking out the garbage and we were walking by and stopped to talk with him the first time. The branch mission leader just came up to us afterward and asked if he was an inactive member or an investigator or what. Haha, I am so glad they had such a good experience. He won't let us set him with a baptismal date yet but we'll keep working for that.
I feel like along with the start of spring this week I've gained about 500 pounds because everyone is just happier and wanting to give us more food...or something. I ate a PB&J sandwhich on Wednesday before heading out and felt sick afterward for some reason. So then we went to an appointment with a new investigator, Claudia, from El Salvador, and found she was preparing lunch for us (people always do that without telling us...and then they stare at us as we eat and get offended if we don't eat their food). So I told her, "Oh Hermana, I don't know what's wrong but I'm just not feeling good today." Mistake #1, don't tell a Hispanic you're sick. She comforted me by saying, "Oh that's ok, I've got something you can take. It's from my country." Uh-oh. Then she pulls out a thing of alka-selzer (which luckily is NOT from her country but still...GROSS!) and gives it to me. As soon as I'm done downing that, she asked if I felt better. I, of course, said yes, in the hopes that she wouldn't make me drink another glass of alka-selzer. That was mistake #2 because then, she brought over to the table a full plate of food for each of us...fried chicken, rice, beans, tortillas, and a tall glass of some nasty Salvadorian drink that tasted like grits and coffee. Mmmm. Love the mission. :)
Then the rest of the week people just kept giving us all sorts of randoms sweets and foods and such, enough to keep making us sick. So we came up with some little sayings for how to fit it all in. If you've ever heard of the Samoan sway or the Tongan twist, we now have our own. Columbian crunch (a couple crunches between meals never felt better). Mexican mash (to them, it just looks like you're dancing, and they love to dance), the Honduranian hide (the real reason we carry such big bags...), and the Guatemalan grab-n-go (oh no, we're late to our next appointment! Can we wrap this in foil and take it home?). But really, we eat it all and are just so grateful to them. These people give their best for us every time. I always remember that when we had the missionaries over to our house for dinner growing up, Mom would always say that she hoped that one day in the future, people would take care of her kids the same way on their missions. That, for sure, is happening.
Well, I hope everyone has a great week. Enjoy the spring time. I miss you tons but I love you more!
Love,
Hermana Jackson
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