Please send you email addresses

Hello,

This is an update from Debbi.  Marie's mission president has asked that the missionaries' emails not be posted verbatim onto their blogs.  Since I find it highly unlikely that I will rewrite her email each week, I am suggesting that, if you wish you receive her emails, you send me your email address at bardsleyclan6@comcast.net.  I will then forward her emails to you for the next two months (!) until she gets home. We are allowed to forward on her emails, just not post them to a public blog.

Thanks!  Here's looking forward to November 11th!

Debbi

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




Sent from my iPad

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




Sent from my iPad

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

Sent from my iPad

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