Ohhhshoooot I keep leaving the best area ever and then finding the REAL best one, and I just found HEAVEN AND ZION ON EARTH. This place is so great. Can I just sum it up to say my companion is the funniest thing since Ned and his turtle and I haven't breathed since Tuesday. We spend most of our time in the house talking in British accents and Harry Potter or Airbender quotes. So that's happy.
This ward is ZION. I've never seen anything like it! I mean, KIND OF, at home, but everyone in the ward is either our mother or our best friend, the bishop is a fireball of young energy and profound gospel knowledge and love--He knows our investigators better than we do and just splits his face smiling and hugs them so hard when they walk into church and plays the piano professionally and gets things down every week in ward council like I've never seen in my life. HOLYCOW. AND, all the members visit our investigators without being asked and know everything about them. We could do nothing and this place would just keep elevating itself to heaven!
Satan seems to know that and so has attacked the other sisters in our ward with health issues. One has been down most of the last two transfers, first with her hip and then I guess two days before I got here got super sick, so I arrived to find two other hermanas I knew waiting for me, and we went all over town with luggages and stuff until we could get to the hospital to pick up my real companion who was caring for the sister. Being Sister Training Leaders means when people are sick like that, we don't really work either because we spent the week passing by, covering their area, and one night when the companion was going crazy because she hadn't slept in several days I went over to cover for her and got to spend the night with Sister Westbrook, the sick one :( She is an ANGEL, she came with me and I've always loved her like CRAZY. So we had a nice time. We finally one day shipped them off to Tuxtla to get better taken care of and had more opportunities to work, though still covering two areas.
So. There's this family. OH THIS FAMILY. They're perfect. So wonderful. I can't even handle it. They were a referral from another family named the J., and have been to church three times, though I guess these past few weeks they didn't go since the J.'s didn't either. It was really interesting, S., the mom of the family of members started to get attacked by depression and a crazy neighbor upstairs who is now visiting her every day and showing her awful anti-mormon cult stuff from the internet and has really shaken up her faith. We went by one day to talk to her and started helping answering her questions. Then. CRAZY NEIGHBOR LADY WALKS IN. Dun dun dun. Turns out she was passing by to take S., the mom, to her church, so thank goodness above we were there. S. told her she's asking questions, and crazy neighbor lady says, "Good. It's good to ask direct questions, and get--" intense glare at us "direct answers." Glare intensens (?) even more. She then pulled out her phone and decided to present us with one herself. She said "Let's use my Bible, I have 16 versions of it on my phone right here," and then proceeds to read a verse about one gospel and how you must reject all that varies from that one gospel or something like that, it wasn't even recognizable in our Bible, and then she glares at us again and leaves. Which is probably a good thing because I was about to confusedly ask her how many gospels and HOW many bibles again were on her phone right there, but whatever. That's one she'll have to figure out. My companion was so mad. She looked at me and said, "I'm so mad." So I took control and gently told S. that it had been really interesting what her friend had said, and of her 16 bibles. I started talking a lot about confusion of doctrine and whether it sounded more right that God would give us 16 Bibles to figure out, or one prophet, one Book of Mormon, etc. She started nodding and we talked about the spirit and how to discern truth, finally kneeling down and inviting her to offer a prayer and ask HIM! And she did. And it was beautiful. She started crying and saying she didn't want to be sad anymore and please help her know if this church is true, if Joseph Smith is a prophet, etc. Afterwards we all just looked at each other, and she said she felt peace, and joy. And we all started hugging and telling her to ask HIM, not the neighbor. Always ask Him. So special.
Anyway, BACK to the family, her referral, they are amazing. All but one daughter have come three times, the daughter I guess used to just glare and leave the room, but we went this weekend and she was jumping up and down, so excited to learn and had her Book of Mormon in her hands. She'd decided to give it a chance and had been reading all week. And now she was so happy. The whole family. We taught the Plan of Salvation and they were SO CUTE. It's a mom, a dad, and three teenage girls who are all super peppy and happy and adorable, two are 18 and one is 14. It was so funny how they all stared at us intensely as we explained something, and when one expressed a concern they would all nod and start murmuring in agreement. And once we answered and it clicked, it was a whole roomful of "OOOOH"s and everyone smiling and looking at each other and bouncing in excitement. The dad is stellar. Sofía the member neighbor had tried to show him some of the anti-mormon videos she'd been shown and was being all weird and he got mad at her and wouldn't look and told her to stop attacking what we believe in! He even used we! And on Sunday they came alone all happy and together, it was the oldest's first time and she was smiling her face off. They're perfect.
Well, to end I'll stick in a quote from the comp. We went to buy food at the beginning of the week, at a supermarket, and after finishing realized we hadn't seen the eggs. So we made another circle and then asked a worker, and they said "oh we're out." She was like, "Oh thank you." then to me, "They're out. That explains why we didn't see them. There are none. There are no eggs. It's only a STAPLE or something, I THOUGHT. That's like saying 'We're out of air. Sorry. Trees are on strike!' THE HENS ARE ON STRIKE FOLKS!" and I was dying.
Welp, that's all folks! It's not too cold here. Just a lot. President George's wife came down with another gringa to go shopping in San Cristóbal so we're going to go join them because apparently it's ridiculously cool here.
Over and out, love you all!!!
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