El Monte week 14!!!! (with some pictures)

Hermana Bateman, Atziry Banuelos (member family), Yeni (recently baptized), Marie

Marie and her first cousin, Aaron Bardsley.  They were called to the same mission and didn't know each other.  They met in the mission when Elder Bardsley arrived a couple weeks ago.

The joys of bike riding in 100 degrees.

So this Thursday is my cats birthday. If you could please give her
some sort of tasty treat that would be much appreciated. 

So this week we did service for the Roldans and it was pretty great.
We went over in the morning and cleaned up her yard and mopped inside
and stuff. We had the elders come too and they gave her a blessing.
She was super happy by the end. And she was like "hey since you guys
are here do you want to eat something for lunch?" And we said sure.
And then she gets out all this stuff that she had made early in the
morning for us, before we came over. We were super glad we had said yes.
It was super tasty. And she just was like glowing with happiness to
give us food it was pretty fun. She said how happy it made her to have
us in her house and give us food. It was cute.

We have been trying a lot to try to find ways to serve our
investigators. Mostly it's just nice to do something different. Put
jeans on, ya know. But it also just makes them see the purpose of this
whole gospel and feel god's love for them.

We have Atziry Banuelos with us right now. She told us that she wants
to spend the whole day with us today haha. So we are sitting here
typing our emails as she is talking to us. It is pretty funny. Makes
it hard to focus though haha. It was her birthday on Saturday. Her and
Yeni have become like besties. They spent her whole birthday together.
We met up with them for dinner and made them give out pass along cards
to random people at a taco stand. It was awesome. Yeni got someone's
address. Future missionaries right here. One day we were taking out
Yeni, and we got a text from Atziry that was like "you don't have to
take me out too but if you want to I can come I'm ready" hahaha. So
now we just take them both out. Don't want one to feel left out.

Hna Bateman says she is going to send you some pictures. Your lucky day!

She is doing awesome by the way. Her Spanish is really improving which
is really nice, my vocal chords can take a break. But no she doesn't
play piano... Even though she's white and from Utah. I don't know what
happened....

Well, I know more stuff happened but I can't think of anything right
now.... Cheers!

Love
Hermana bardsley

El Monte week 13!!!!!

[Marie's first comment below is in response to us telling her that the Banuelos family had written us, thanking us for our wonderful daughter.]


Ahhhhh man I love the Banuelos fam. They are members, but like the
best members ever. Their daughter atziry is the one who comes out with
us on her bike like everyday. And hermano bañuelos baptized all our
jovencitos who got baptized a few weeks ago. They are the best.

As for this week, this will make you laugh mom. First they asked me
and one of the elders to do a musical number for a meeting we have
this Tuesday. We are practicing for that now. Haha. And then on Sunday
someone came up to me and was like "you are the one in charge of piano
lessons right?" And I was like.... What the?! Who do they think I am!
Just cus I'm white?! Why don't I just play trombone at the next
meeting. Haha. So I'm giving someone a piano lesson tomorrow hahahaha.
Oh how I love Spanish work.

So we started teaching this really cool lady this week. She had seen
us going to the neighbor and she asked if she could join us when we
come give the neighbor lessons. She has had all these crazy dreams
that led her to want to take the lessons from us. She is super cool.
Her name is Luisa.

We also had a bom lesson with the Roldans about the power of the Book
of Mormon. There was this moment where we just like got the super
strong impression that Hna [Hermana, or "Sister"] Roldan already has a testimony of the Book
of Mormon so I was just like "but Hna, you already have a testimony of
this book so your husband is more the one that needs to ask". And she
was just like,"how did you know that?" And I was like..... Uhhhh... I
don't know. It just popped into my head. And then she told us how she
had prayed and asked if it was true once and just saw like this bright
light with her eyes closed and had this tremendous peace for the rest
of the day and nothing bad could get her down that day. So that's
awesome. Sorry if this email is really disjointed I can't even hear
myself think in this room.

Well, I'm going to go because we have to practice. Cheers

-hermana bardsley

Sent from my iPad

El Monte week 12!!!!!!

So to start off with a somewhat unpleasant funny story. Yesterday, we
had one of the most uncomfortable meal appointments of my mission. So,
yesterday was fast Sunday. And then a member decided to feed all of us
missionaries dinner, and it was tinga which is like chicken in this
chipotle sauce that you put on tostadas with lettuce, queso fresco,
and crema. Which is like superbly delicious. And after biking around
all day in 100 degrees and fasting we were pretty hungry, so I ate
quite a bit. But we forgot that someone we were teaching right after
that had also mentioned she wanted to give us a little something when
we came this week. Well, I have the gift of an extremely fast
metabolism, so it is normally not a problem for me to eat two to three
back to back dinners. But so anyways we got to this investigators
house and first, as I normally do with back to back dinners, I used
the restroom. Only... The toilet wouldn't flush. Now, normally if this
happens I just say a quick prayer and everything goes right down. But
not this time. And there was no plunger. I tried my best for 5 minutes
or so to get it unplugged, I even tried using the toilet brush, but
with no success. So eventually i had to come out and be like....
Sooooooo...... Do you have a plunger? Well anyways for the next twenty
minutes she was trying to unclog the toilet. And I we were just
sitting there awkwardly haha. She got it eventually. Apparently, this
is a normal occurrence even if you just put toilet paper in the toilet
and you just have to pour some buckets of water down the toilet while
it is flushing and it works. So that was that. Finally we start eating
and after about 15 minutes I get the sensation that I am going to
throw up. Once again I try to pray it away. "Please Heavenly Father I
just clogged the toilet, no one has even had to use the bathroom since
then, it's going to look really bad if I have to get up and run to the
bathroom now". And as the sensation got worse my answer was this "you
are either going to throw up on the plate, or you are going to run to
the bathroom and throw up there, which would you rather?" Well, I
chose the toilet. So I quickly got out of my seat, made a joke very
quickly about how I won't put any toilet paper in this time and ran to
the bathroom just in time to throw up my meal. By the time we got to
the lesson part I was ready to jump ship and get out of that house
haha.

But ANYWAYS, as for cool stories this week, yeni is probably the
highlite. Whenever we go over to her house she tells us how all her
friends and her family have been asking her all these questions like
why she doesn't drink coffee anymore and she is like "because our body
is a temple and we can't have the Holy Ghost if it is dirty". And all
this other stuff. She has been coming to lessons with us and stuff and
giving these bomb testimonies about how she started to notice the only
time she was happy was when either we were at her house or she was at
church so she was just like, this must be something good. So she's
doing awesome.

Besides that, there's not too much else to say! Things are good here.
I got the package and the pasta sauce was intact. I have already eaten
most of it :) thanks.

Love
Hermana bardsley

El Monte week 11!!!!!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAL!!!!!!!

It has been World Cup madness over here. Mexico lost yesterday though
so things will die down a little bit. Conveniently the game yesterday
was at 9am, yes, our church starts at 9am. The whole week before
bishop spent pretty much all his time making it clear that the
sacrament>soccer. Needless to say, about half the congregation left
after the first hour, after they had taken the sacrament haha. When
Latinos become members of the church they are able to give up most of
their santitos (statues of saints that they pray to) but they never
really give up the soccer god. We all have our flaws.

BUT ANYWAYS!! Guess who came to church?! Hno roldan!! We brought
president and sister becerra to a lesson with them this week and it
was BOM. Got him to come. He only stayed for the first hour but still!
That is huge progress. We are super excited for them.

As for the Banuelos family, those who are actually going to progress
are a starting to make themselves clear. It is going to be interesting
to see what happens because they are such a huge family and some of
them are really into it, and some of them are starting to go the other
way.

But! We found another suuuuper cool family. They are seventh day
Adventists. Which I don't know if you've ever looked into seventh day
Adventists but their beliefs are super similar to ours. The missing
piece is the authority to act in Christ's name. We taught them and the
dad was like, "wow, you are right, I can't believe that I have never
actually prayed to god to ask if I am in the right religion, that is
the difference between you and us, we have never actually asked god.I
need to do that." And then at the end the dad prayed and the Holy
Ghost was super strong, and we asked the son, "why do you think the
Holy Ghost is here?" And he was like, "well, it means god is giving
his blessing to the message, which means it is true". It was one of
the best lessons of my mission. It was super cool. I don't know their
last names, but their first names are genoviva, Mauricio, hector, and
Eduardo. Super cool.

I think that's about it from this week. Things are going well
here! El Monte rocks. My trainee's Spanish is getting... gradually
better. Have a good week!

Love,
Hermana bardsley