Tuesday, August 12, 2014

El Monte week 17!!


Well, thanks for all the birthday wishes and stuff.

I will tell you what I did for my birthday. First I woke up at 5:30am
and went with yeni's grandma to the hospital to have surgery. Her mom
couldn't go and so she called us to see if we could. We had to get
special permission. So we went and then sat there for three hours. But
the good news is now yeni's mom loooooves us. She even agreed to be
taught. And when we go over she gives us all sorts of food and random
stuff. It is pretty funny. Then we went straight from there to go do
service, we dismantled this old play structure for a member. That was
pretty entertaining. It was us and two elders and one of the elders
went like.... Into hulk mode. We were trying to like... Take it down
nicely and unscrew stuff. And he just took the hammer and started
smashing it down. And then he would just like rip chunks off and toss
them across the yard. The slide was the best part. It was still bolted
on and we couldn't get it off and he just walked over and ripped it
off and tossed it over his head. We just kind of stood back after a
while. It was funny. And I got fed like 10 times during the day. I
wanted to throw up.  But it was good.

We also had a suuuuper fantabulous lesson with Cecilia this week. Her
kids are super cool. I don't know if I mentioned this last time after
one lesson the 11 year old boy asked, "so what do we have to do to get
baptized?". But what made this last lesson super good was that we
brought a member with us who we didn't even know but she is like
exactly the same as Cecilia. Her name is Arely, she just got baptized
like four months ago. Everything Cecilia would say, Arely had had like
the exact same experience and would just testify to how the gospel
would help her with that specific problem. It was really cool. The
only problem is even though Cecilia and her fam want to get baptized
we still haven't been able to get them to church for one reason or
another, and if they don't make it this Sunday we will have to drop
them. So pray that they make it to church this Sunday.

Else wise, yeni is doing so awesome. I am so proud of her. She kind of
had a spiritual/emotional crisis this last week, and it was rough and
we were super worried and a lot of people were super angry, but in the
end she showed that she really has learned from the gospel and ended
up apologizing and repenting and making everything better than it was
before. Every one was so happy after including her. Which is bom.
Before she never would have done that, she just would have stayed
angry and the other people would have stayed angry at her. It's so
cool to see people change. I am just so excited to see her go on a
mission one day because she really wants to. Through Christ, we truly
can repent and become better. And change isn't an instantaneous
process, but one that takes years and it is so cool to see her start
that slow but sure process.

Oh yeah, I am learning how to play guitar. I am going to come home
with all these crazy talents.

Have a good week! Oh I sent some of my winter clothes home today.

Love
Hermana bardsley




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El Monte week 16!!!


So, some big news this week. First off, I seem to be lactose
intolerant. It seems to be a common trend here in the Arcadia mission
for missionaries to become lactose intolerant. I know of like five
others who never were before their mission and became so out here.
Strange. I had been eating cereal and milk every morning my entire
mission  but about a month and a half ago I started to get kind of
sick every morning. After about four weeks of that unpleasantness I
switched to eating oatmeal and the problem went away and for the last
two weeks I have been fine. The good news it cheese doesn't seem to be
a problem, just milk.

Secondly, THANK YOU SO MUCH TO GRANDMA!!!! I have been chowing down on
that vodka [pasta] sauce like nobody's business. It is the best.

Thirdly, happy birthday to me. Yay.

Fourthly, we started teaching a family from yucatan. Their last name
is kawich. Which is super Mayan. They all speak Mayan. The mom is
super cool. She prayed about the restoration and felt really good.
Also she is going to make me panuchos.

Fifthly..... And probably most shocking... They sent me my pretrunky
papers. Because of the way transfers work out I will be coming home a
little earlier than expected. I will be coming home November 11th.
They wouldn't let me stay till the next transfer. I tried. When I got
the letter I called the office and told them to change it, but the
computer program the church uses gives each missionary a range of when
they can go home. The December transfer ends December 16th and the
latest it will let them send me is December 14th. They said that a few
weeks ago a missionary tried to extend their date by two days and the
mission president approved it and it went to the first presidency and
they said absolutely not. So, it didn't seem like a battle worth
fighting. I will go home with all the missionaries I came in with, the
difference is they had six weeks in the mtc and I only had two. So I
guess it's kind of fair because we had the same time in the field. BUT
IT WILL BE GOOD! Because there's a lot of missionary work that needs
to happen in Washington. And if I am never home I will never have time
to show up at some of these peoples houses every Sunday and drag them
to church. Hehehehe i have it all figured out. :)

Well this week we went on a lesson with president Villanueva, his wife
and their 8 year old daughter. They are super awesome. They have a
super strong testimony. He was super poor growing up in Oaxaca and had
like nothing, but after they converted his mom always payed their
tithing and because of that they were super blessed and now he is like
the owner of a bus company on Mexico. But yea they are bom. They ended
up coming to Cecilia and her family who have been reading the Book of
Mormon as a family. Whoohoo!!

Well, have a good week. See ya way too soon.

Hermana bardsley




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El Monte week 15!!!


So our pday was moved to today since we had interviews with president
Villanueva yesterday. This week has been pretty swell. President
Villanueva is bom. He is coming to a lesson with the roldans tonight.

We had a super awesome tour this week. It was with a lady named
Cecilia and her two kids. First off. Those kids are bomb. We taught
them the plan of salvation earlier in the week and afterwards the kids
who are like 8 and 11 took the pamphlet and were talking to each other
not to us and were like "we will read this tomorrow in the morning
when we get up". We didn't even tell them to read it. So anyways, at
the tour we gave the whole thing and then at the end we showed them
the bible video of Jesus Christ getting baptized and invited them and
they were all like "yea, I think so." And then the closing prayer was
the best part. In the closing prayer, she was like "god, hopefully I
can be part of this church so that my family can have blessings". It
was awesome.

Ummm.... Besides that... Everything is SUPER! This gospel really does
bring happiness. True happiness. And if someone isn't happy it is
because they aren't living the gospel. It's the truth! And I have been
thinking about this week how we should always let people see how happy
it makes us. And smile and be happy and say hi to people and stuff.
And when we do that it makes us even happier!

Well... Have a good week!

Love,
Hermana bardsley

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