MONTEBELLO WEEK 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, first of all, THANKS FOR THE BIRTHDAY PACKAGE!!!!!!! It was awesome. I wear the shirt every moment that I am not in proselyting clothes. In fact I am wearing it right now because we are playing volleyball in a few minutes. I told my companion all about Living on One and how cool this shirt is because we are supporting Rosa's weaving business in Guatemala so she can go to school and be a nurse. And the book was great! Haha. It was like, exactly me. Hiking, climbing trees, even eating vegetables. Princesses so do wear hiking  boots. Oh and being able to see everyone's birthday facebook messages to me just now was also really great, especially Alberta. I miss that girl. 

Second of all... TELL SOPHAMALOUGHA TO HAVE THE MOST SPLENDIFOROUS BIRTHDAY EVER TOMORROW!!!!! And Ashley Bliss too!!!! I will send you many cockroaches on this very special day. Believe me, I have many to send. Our apartment is infested.

This week was a little bit slower, still AWESOME. However, we are discovering that my companion is probably celiac. So we spent a large portion of the week in our apartment with her stomach in incredible amounts of pain. She stopped eating gluten on Saturday evening and has been perfectly fine since, so we think that's what it is. But anywys, she got to hear lots of my incredibly awesome life stories while she was dying on her bed!!!!! I mean, can it get any greater than that? The pain was definitely worth the stories I'd say. So basically, this was probably her best week yet in the mission. But on that note I would just like to say that the priesthood is awesome. She got a priesthood blessing and, man everytime someone gets one of those you just KNOW that it is God talking and not these 18 year old elders. Our church is the ONLY church that has that power and authority and it is just AMAZING and such a blessing!!! 

But here is something that was super awesome!! We have this investigator named Macaira, I don't know if I have talked about her before, but she has just been a constant one who's progressing and doing great, coming to church, reading and so on. But, she has a hard time getting things when we just teach it to her, and this week we were going to teach the plan of salvation, so we were like... hmmm.... how could we make HER be more involved in the lesson in a way that she'd get it. So what we decided to do was act out the counsel in heaven without saying that we were going to. So after the opening prayer, Hermana Duran was like "I have a plan for all of you guys, I want you guys to be able to progress and be like me, only to do that you have to get bodies and go down to earth and if you do that you will be unclean and nothing unclean can come back to live with me, so what should we do?"

So we talked about it for a little bit with Macaira, and then I was satan, so then I was like "well, I have an idea..." And we brought a girl with us to the lesson who played the part of Christ. And it was great because Macaira's five year old daughter was there too so at the end I got her to agree to my plan even though macaira chose Christ's plan to illustrate what happened and stuff. It was super cool. At first Macaira was super confused, naturally, but then it really got her involved and I think she really understood by the end what the purpose of Christ is and how we need Christ to be able to return to live with God. Because previously she didn't really understand why a mediator was important or why bad things happen to good people. It was a lot of fun, and really awesome. 

But yea! Everything here is going great! Now that we have Hermana Duran all healthy again! We have 2 pretty sure baptisms at the end of the month, hopefully 3, though we are still working on him. MIRACLES HAPPEN EVERYDAY!!!! KEEP UP THE MISSIONARY WORK MAMA!!!!!! :) Oh can you send me some family pictures? I don't have any... and everyone keeps asking to see family pictures. Oh, and some pictures of how beautiful and awesome washington is? I keep telling people about it, but I want to SHOW them that it's the BEST PLACE EVER!!! 

Con Amor,

-Hermana Bardsley

Montebello Week 6! DATS WHATS UP!!

Okay, so I safely survived my first transfer and am still here in Montebello!!! WHOOOO HOOOO. The only change is we lost Hermana Lopez, so now we are just two, which means we are no longer invisible. Because in a threesome you can go anywhere and teach anyone, but now we actually have to be careful about that. 

First off, I am of the opinion that epilepsy must be something in the genetics of Lehi's descendents. I am at that part in the book of mormon where like EVERYONE is feels the spirit by going into a coma for a while. And then they always pop right up like daisies and start preaching. It is great and kind of hilarious. 

But anyways... this last week... was........... MIND BLOWING! MY BRAIN JUST ABOUT EXPLODED BECAUSE OF ALL THE MIRACLES. So, let me just say that fasting ROCKS. We fasted three times this week just kind of by chance because it was just when all these different causes we were part of decided to fast. But man, the miracles just never stopped the entire week. For our mission we have standards of excellence, which are like supposed to be our ultimate goal of what to achieve with how many lessons to teach with members present, how many people to have at sacrament meeting, and so on. Well, we met every single standard of excellence and exceeded many. It was insane. All these things just kept happening that were like crazy.

So, first off, let me talk about Oscar. The miracle boy. So we hadn't seen him in two weeks because every time we tried to contact him he said he was busy or working or something. So this week we were like, "okay, we know this kid is going to get baptized eventually, but we are going to drop him for now and make him want what we have". So we did, and we told him we were going to stop trying to contact him. Well, yesterday out of nowhere we got a call from him asking if we could meet right then, and so we didn't eat dinner and ran out of the house and met with him. He then told us how these last two weeks everyone had started making fun of him for meeting with us. He had his book of mormon with him at work one day and now like no one there likes him and they all make fun of him, and the people he lives with hate him now for meeting with us. So anyways, he stopped reading it, and then everything in his life started going down hill, like REALLY downhill. I can't tell details but his life basically sucked for the last two weeks. And then yesterday he said he came home from work and he tried to sleep, but he couldn't, so he tried to watch tv, but he couldn't, and so he finally picked up the Book of Mormon and he just sat there and read like almost all of 1st Nephi in one sitting. And he said that when he did so he just felt like all his problems disappeared and he just felt so free. And then he called us. And he read the story of Lehis dream in there somewhere and he was saying how it was just like that, all the people were laughing at him and trying to stop him from getting to the fruit and he listened to them for a while, but now he has realized that it doesn't matter what the people laughing think. This kid is amazing. By the end of the lesson he himself came to the conclusion that he wants to prepare to get baptized. This kid has great things in store for him. Satan is trying hard to stop him from achieving them.

There's also Miguel. This guy is my favorite. He lives right by the church. The third day of my mission we were sitting in our car and I saw him from like a block away watching us, so I was like "lets go talk to that guy out there". And so we did, and that first time we talked to him he wouldn't let us talk at all, he was kind of drunk and he just wanted to tell us all these bad things he had heard about our church. But, since he lives right by the church, everytime we would walk by and he'd be outside we would talk to him. Pretty soon we were leaving him with pamphlets. But he still didn't want to be actually taught. But even though he would pretend not to have read at first when we'd see him, it would come out while we were talking to him that he did read the pamphlets. So then, just on his own, we had never given him a Word of Wisdom pamphlet, he stopped drinking. It's so crazy how the spirit teaches people! And then we gave him a book of mormon. And he's reading it! But here's the best part, on Saturday, we finally got to teach him! And it went awesome. He said he would get baptized if he gets an answer that this is true. I love that guy. He's so funny. He always pretends like he's not interested but secretly he is so interested. One time earlier on I even asked him if he had prayed about one of the pamphlets like we had told him to and he said "no". And then I said to him that I know the reason he didn't was because he knew that if he did he would know it's true and he totally admitted it! Hahah. 

Well ANYWAYS!!! I don't have much time, we have to go change our laundry. There were so many other just CRAZY miracles that happened this week. The church is true! Fasting works!! Always work hard and God will bless you! I'm glad you guys had fun at the family reunion! 

I am anxiously awaiting being able to open my package. It's sitting there in my living room kind of killing me. [It's a birthday package that her mother told her she couldn't open until the 8th.]

-Hermana Bardsley

MONTEBELLO WEEK 5!!!!!!!!

First off, did you guys remember to celebrate my cat's birthday? It
was the 24th, I forgot to remind you guys last week. Please give her
some tuna and sing "What Child is This" to her.

So MAN CAN I just tell you guys how many miracles we see?? You just
have to have faith that they will happen, and they start happening
everywhere. One of the coolest things is when the spirit teaches
people and they say something that they haven't even been taught yet,
and it is like WOW, there is NO WAY you could have known that except
by the spirit telling you. My companions are so awesome. Hermana Lopez
has the strongest testimony of the Book of Mormon and Christ coming to
the Americas. She says she can feel that it was her ancestors that he
visited. Those Mayans, they have a special kind of connection with
their ancestors that I don't really feel as a white person haha. But
yea! The book of mormon is SO TRUE guys. Christ REALLY did visit the
people in the Americas and he really did die for EVERYONE in the
world's pains, sicknesses, and sins.

Also, at some point sort of soon could you guys print out and send me
a chart of "port de bras", I think that is how it is spelled. It is
the arm positions for ballet. I might get to teach a dance class!! It
was our mission president's idea. We had our interviews and the first
thing he said to me was how he had this idea that I could teach a
dance class for girls and have other missionaries talk to the parents
as a finding investigators activity. HOW COOL WOULD THAT
BE???!!!!!!!!!!! I dream about dancing almost every night, and my
kitty cat. I often wake up and am in a weird position because I think
she is sleeping in the middle of my bed and then she is not there.

OH SO HERE IS AN AWESOME STORY!!!!!! We are teaching this young girl,
Rachel, who is 8, and she has been ready to get baptized for a while,
but the dad is this very inactive guy who doesn't always bring her to
church and so she hasn't been able to. But he loves his daughter so
much and does want her to get baptized. I think I told you about them.
But anyways this last week he committed to do what he needs to do to
be able to baptize her on Aug. 25th!!!!!!! Which is SUPER exciting. He
has had some word of wisdom problems but he committed to live the word
of wisdom. Aug 25th is going to be the best day EVER!!!!! We have two
baptisms scheduled for that day.

Oh for all you Argentines/wanna be Argentines, the only Argentine I
have met down here is crazy. Actually. haha. He was baptized as a kid
and so he desperately wants to get ex-communicated so that he can take
the discussions and get rebaptized. Only an Argentine. I guess maybe
we should explain to him what the sacrament is haha.

Well, I'm still loving it out here! Have fun at the family reunion.
And at girls camp. Don't forget to give my cat tuna.