THANKSGIVING IN CHINO!!!!!!

Okay, so, I may be on my mission, but that does not mean that I have learned how to eat yet. I try, really hard, I just have really bad luck.... You can probably find a picture of me tagged on facebook with a GINORMIC stain going down the skirt. My new skirt. That you just sent me. My first time wearing it haha. So here is the story. I was sitting there, talking, I hadn't even started eating, with my plate on my lap, and then I looked down and the plate had been slightly slanted and the sandwhich thing was really really greasy, so once again I had this stream of grease just running down off the plate onto my lap. I just don't know what to do with myself; I'm just a food disaster; I don't even know how it happens! And then the family put on a dvd of the "luz de las naciones" show that is like a big show they do at the conference center celebrating latin cultures. And living legends and byu folk dance in it. I don't even like watching folk dancing but that just about killed me. As missionaries say, it made me "trunky" (as in you want to pack your trunks and go home, but mainly this just made me want to pack my trunks and go to dancesport).

But besides that this week has been SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. I just love being a missionary. The message is so true. If God loved the people enough in the olden days to send prophets, OF COURSE he'd send them now because the world needs that guidance more than ever. Not only does it feel true, but it just MAKES SENSE. I think that if just about anyone who hadn't grown up in any particular religion but believed in God just sat down and thought for a good while, what theyd come up with is our church. We have prophets. God loves everyone so he taught the people not only in Jerusalem, but in other places of the world how to be close to him, thus we have the Book of Mormon, the writings of the people in the Americas about their experiences with God and waiting for the Messiah to come. To me it just seems like "WELL DUH!". God is EVERYONE's heavenly father, and as such he loves ALL of us just as much, no matter where we live, or when we live.

Oh so funny story!!! Here is why you shouldn't white lie. Okay, we never lied, but just because of the circumstances we are in a pretty funny situation. So there is this less active member named Luis who isn't doing all the right things, but LOVES the gospel and sharing it and he gave us his friend named Pedro as a referral. However he didn't want us to tell Pedro that he sent us, he just wanted us to knock the door as if we were knocking doors (probably because he doesn't want Pedro to know he is a Mormon and judge Mormons off of that since he doesn't live all the rules). So we did, only the wife answered the door. She was super nice, didn't seem super interested though, but we couldn't ask for Pedro because of the whole thing with Luis. But anyways, we were determined to contact the actual referral so we kept coming back. And everytime, she would be right by the door or outside so we never could actually contact him. Well, so we decided we would just try to teach her and her daughters since they were always there. So we did, and they loved it. But, we had still never met Pedro. We had seen him super quickly once but never met him. And then on Thanksgiving actually, we were at Luis (the less active's) house, and guess who shows up, Pedro. So Luis is like "you guys have to pretend like you don't know who he is or that you know you are teaching his family because I don't want him to know I sent you guys!" So we did, so we talked to Pedro as if we knew nothing about him and as if we didn't know his family. He knew who we were of course, and knew that we were teaching his family, but he never mentioned that because I don't think he wanted us to be teaching his family haha. So anyways, we had already told his wife that we were going to come by that Friday because she was going to be home, so we asked Pedro if we could stop by and meet his family on Friday, and he said that they were going out of town that evening as a family haha. Well, anyways, we went by on Friday to see his wife and her and some of the kids were there so we taught them, but of course we couldn't tell them that we had met her husband the day before haha. So anyways we are just in this web now. Because now one day it is going to be SOOOO AWKWARD when we are there teaching his family and he walks in!!!! We don't really know what to do about that. Super funny though. We should have just told Luis from the beginning that we have to tell them he sent us.

AND THEN, at that same lesson with Pedro and Luis, Luis left for a few minutes and came back with a goat on a leash!!!!!!!!!!!! So then we are trying to like teach a lesson and there is a goat walking around munching on the bushes (we were teaching them outside). It was probably one of the funniest most awkward lessons for just multiple reasons hahaaha.

But yea, we have still been just finding SO MANY AWESOME FAMILIES!!! The Gandara fam, (Jorge and Sonya and kids) are still super awesome, only she is too scared to even try something else, to try praying to see if what we are saying is true, because she has been so super Catholic her whole life. And he is such just a nice sweet guy, last night he was like "well, ya know really the wife controls what we do as a family and a marriage, she is the brains" which was meaning to say that even though he may believe everything we are saying, if she wants to stay super catholic they will stay super catholic as a family. I don't know that he was ever super into Catholicism in itself, and he still never fails to tell us about how awesome our religion is and how awesome he thinks we are as missionaries and how awesome his friend who converted is, but he just is SOO nice and respectful and supportive of his wife that he'd never do anything that would cause their family to be divided
, like him joining a different church. So keep praying for that!

Have a good week! The church is true!

love,  Hermana Bardsley