Hola familia!
It is way stormy outside but hey, it's warm enogh to rain! I am definitely starting to feel the humidity coming back... :)
Wow, what a week. The Lord has really just been blessing us this week as we have been learning to rely even more on Him and His guidance through the Spirit. We found several of inactives that we didn't even have on any lists, so that was neat. And all of them gave us referrals for more people to go by for. One day, we had every one of our appointments fall through, but everyone of our back-ups was there so that was definitely a blessing. It's just had to describe all the blessings that we receive every day, big and small. I haven't quite figured out if the Lord always blesses people and they just don't recognize it or if the more we recognize it, the more he blesses us. I think it's a little bit of both.
So we went to teach Lady the other night. Still haven't received permission from her husband to get baptized but she is going strong in the church. She'll probably have to wait until October when he is out of prison. Anyway, her children are crazy. Valeria is 2 and Stephen is 3 and they just think it is hilarious to smack people and scream at the top of their lungs during our lesson and steal our stuff...so it's always a bit of an adventure. Anyway, we were over there on Friday night and Lady started saying the closing prayer. She has just learned to completely tune out her kids, especially when she's praying, but we always have to keep an eye on the scene. So Valeria comes up to me and discovered that if the pulled my jacket open, all the snaps would come apart. She started doing that and so I clasped my hands over my jacket. She then starts hitting my hands and then took a lunge and bit them! (Hna Evens was just laughing through all this and Lady was praying her heart out). I kind of shoved her away as best a missionary can and then she bit my knee! Haha, so I extended my legs out so she couldn't get to my knee and then she started kicking my legs and took another lunge and bit my shoe! Oh man, it was funny...and odd. A couple phrases later, Lady finished the prayer and gave us our besitos goodbye, and so did Valeria, and we walked out the door and Lady never knew the difference. Oh the life. :)
One night we were up in Parsippany and we had a little bit of extra time so we decided to go visit Maria (the lady who is completely obsessed with the virgen Maria and sings us her songs about it). I figured it would be a good experience for Hna Evens. She re-told us all her stories about commanding the tornadoes like Moses and seeing the virgen Guadalupe save her family in Mexico and sure enough, got up to get her guitar and sing us her songs again. Her son, Jerry (about 49 yrs old, being taught by the English sisters, and has a baptismal date) comes in the room and was like, "Mom, they don't believe in the virgen maria!" We have told her this before but she forgets things a lot. She just paused in her tracks and looked at us and said, "What do you mean you don't believe in the virgen maria? She was the mother of Jesus. You have a mother, I have a mother, we all have mothers. She was a saint! I'll sing you my song." And she went to fetch her guitar. I was trying so hard not to laugh at the look of utter confusion on Hna Evens face. It reminded me of in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when he tells the family he's vegetarian and she says, "What do you mean you don't eat meat?...That's ok, I'll make lamb." So maybe kind of worldly but now you can imagine Maria a little better. :)
That's about it for my random experiences for this week. Life is going well and we are teaching a ton, so I'm really grateful for that. Before my mission, teaching was probably the thing I was the most scared about because I had never taught a lesson before but now, teaching is my favorite thing! If I could just spend all day in teaching appointments with people, I would. :)
Anyway, thanks so much for all the love and support from back home. I hope everyone is doing well and recognizing the blessings of the Lord, big and small, in your lives every day. I miss you tons but I love you more!
Love,
Hermana Jackson
No comments:
Post a Comment