Pure Faith. But seriously.

So without any ado at all, I'll just start talking about Zoila, because to be honest, she was my week.

Zoila is A.'s sister, the guy waiting for the go-ahead for his baptism. She used to always quietly kind of peek in from the other room but when we invited her she was shy and didn't come in. Well last Wednesday A. wasn't home and we asked if we could talk to her. So we shared a little message, and were really impressed with her sweet spirit and strong faith. We invited her to baptism in 5 weeks since she has to attend church 5 times first, and she accepted. Well then she told us she used to go to the Mormon church years ago, for about 5 months. We started running through earlier dates in our heads and thinking when she could be ready, and suddenly I just felt this urging to invite her for next week, so I did! And she got a little freaked out, but didn't say no. Oh, I forgot to mention one thing. She was on crutches, broke her foot four months ago and it never healed right, and now she couldn't walk right and had lots of pain. We continued to visit her the rest of the week but weren't sure exactly what would happen; she told us she was going in for some kind of surgery Monday. 

Well, Monday we went and saw her and turns out she had gone to the bone man, not even a doctor, and he rebroke her foot and put it right, without anesthesia or anything. She was lying in her bed in so much pain, and with tears in her eyes, she asked "My baptism was this Saturday, wasn't it?" I promised her that if it was her desire and she had faith, she would be able to be baptized. We prayed lots that week and took a brother to give her a blessing a couple days later and OH MY GOODNESS she was on CRUTCHES again! I was like, are you crazy? But her foot was doing really well and she said she was practicing for Saturday. She got a blessing and loved it, and every day we taught her lessons with everything she needed to know, but she's a retentive little thing (word or not?) and she remembered everything we taught her. On Friday before her interview she said she was studying all her pamphlets for three hours before the elders got there, and she knew everything he asked. He was concerned she hadn't been to real church in 10 years, and maybe we would have been too with any other person but we're like, LOOK AT HER, she's hobbling around and studying all day to be baptized as soon as she can! He called President who gave the go ahead.

Annnnnd, Saturday! Welcome to 101 Problems with a Boiler. She can't be in cold water and we had plans and backup plans to heat up pots of water, buy a couple electric water-heaters and try not to get electrocuted, and then we found out we had a boiler! But...nobody knew how to work it. Don't even worry, said the two gringas and our humble branch president. We'll just figure it out! 

Right.

Lots of button-pushing and spark-flying later, I was like, I'm googling it. So we went on the church computer and looked up the company and ended up calling them and asking how to work it. "When did you buy it?" We don't know, we're from America and we're trying to baptize a cool lady. Finally the nice man walked us through, and after another 30 minutes we got it! We RAN to eat lunch, make copies and get back to the chapel just in time for it to start pouring rain of course, and Jose Luis and Citlaly showed up with Zoila in their car. We got her inside and kept her dry, helped her change, waited another hour for the branch pres to come back, got a chair in the water, and had a beautiful baptism, in which they only had to change chairs once and our mission leader had to go get in the water to hold her legs down. But Zoila was just so happy and undaunted by it all, and after was just crying and saying how wonderful she felt. The next day she was there in the front row before anyone else, ready to be confirmed.

So...that was awesome. 

I know for a fact I've never met anyone like her and hopefully I'm just like her one day. 

This week we also got to go to the TEMPLE! It was positively beautiful. 

It was also my companion's birthday and everyone made us pizzas and gave us referrals, which worked for us. So all in all, it was just a really good one.

I love you all!

[P.S. Kelsi's trainer, Hermana Bastian, is now in her district, and they finally got to wear their matching dresses that they bought back in April.]