March 16th

March 16

Hola mi bonita familia!!! Como estan? Espero que todo esta bien!!  How was your week? Sounds like you´ve all been busy from what I could gather from your emails! But busy is good...most of the time!  It is better than being bored and having nothing to do!

Well, this was the best week yet...it only took a month! Ha,ha- but looks like we are going to end this partnership as friends at least!  It has been the hardest and yet I still can’t believe how fast time has passed! We only have this week left together, we think, we have transfers this weekend--on Sunday we will find out what is going to happen! We both think she will go because she was born here in Rio Bamba and this is her third transfer here, exactly like my first sector, so we think that she will be leaving, but as you said we don’t know what president and Heavenly Father have in store!

Well, this week we had a visit with a part active named Milli Cherez, and we were talking with her and she is 19, I think…if not she´s 18, but we asked her if she´d ever thought about serving a mission, and she said no, but by the end of the night she was asking us what she would have to do to serve and such, so I think she might actually be considering it now…that will be cool!

We had our zone conference this last Wednesday!!  It was awesome!  They had a bunch of activities planned to keep us awake, haha!  We had an English activity and my comp and I got to help with it, they had a person, well, stick-figure drawn on the board, and she had to write as many body parts as she could in English, only receiving help from those whose first language is Spanish, and I...yup, you guessed it, had to write all the body parts that I knew in Spanish, and I didn’t do too bad!  It was kind of fun, then they had all of the native English speakers teach head, shoulders, knees, and toes, then they taught it to us in Spanish!  It was fun and nice that we could be up and move and not just sit-since our conference was from 11-5! We went outside and they had chairs set up- it was probably the width of a basket ball court, and they had a chair on either side, on each side was a bowl, in one bowl there were beans, and we each had a straw...we had to, using only our straws, carry each bean over to the other bowl. And if it fell we had to pick it up off the ground using the straw...eww! But it was really fun and then they had us relate it to missionary work and how sometimes we give our all at the beginning and forget that there is still a long ways to go and even though we get some all the way across, many fall, and we have to go back and look for them to help them make it to the ¨finish line-¨ even though baptism is only the first step!  It was really fun! Then we had lunch, we had pizza and cola, and it was super funny cause Pres. Christensen was being so nice and going to pour us cola, but opened the first bottle and it had gotten shaken up and it exploded and luckily didn’t stain his shirt, but it was so funny to watch the reactions! After lunch we had a great couple of lessons by the assistants and the other by Pres. Christensen.

This last Saturday was the anniversary of the RS, and I don’t know if you guys did anything, but here they went full out!! It was amazing! There are 4 branches here in Rio Bamba, and each branch prepared a dance, like a native dance and had the full costumes and everything-- it was super, super, cool!!!  I have videos and pictures, but my card won’t register to attach them this week!  Have you ever thought of creating a drop box?  That way I can put more pictures and videos on there since they are very difficult to send...the videos that is! :)   It was really cool to be able to see some native dances and see everyone so excited!  We had a bunch of MA that were there and we had a new investigator, that said she was going to come to church with us yesterday, but when we called and knocked on her door no one answered!:(

Well, that about sums up my week! Not too bad!

It is so true, when we don’t have the Savior on our side, when we aren´t doing everything that we need to, everything that is hard, is even harder!  It is something that we are continually trying to teach people-- even though they say…no, I’m happy, we have unity in my family, we don’t need anything else...bull.  Give it a shot and see how much happier you could be, how much more unity you could have in your family!

It is crazy how much the mission changes people!  Well, hopefully you will be able to say the same thing about me when I get home!

Well, I hope you all have a spectacular week! Don’t forget to read and to say your prayers! They are incredibly powerful tools that are often to easily forgotten!!

Oh, and you will have to sign up to have the missionaries over for dinner another time! Ask them what kind of food they want...or you can surprise them... love you lots and lots and lots, for ever and ever and ever

Love always and forever

KarleeJo