I feel like a rock star when I walk into the senior center at the Salvation Army for Bingo, I'm not going to lie, it might be going to my head. I walk in and they stomp their walkers, they clap for joy, they start shouting "B9er" and "BINGO". I high five them all as I strut up to the front and start a rip roaring game of BINGO. It's great! One of the highlights of my week for sure. I'm so cool...to old people.
This past week was a busy week, we got to take a trip to the temple, then we had zone conference all day and then we finished off the week with General Conference. How bout those mission age changes? That's all the buzz in the mission world. I can't stop thinking about how much older that just made me. There was a lot of mission talk this Conference, or at least that's what stood out being that I'm a missionary right now. I did start feeling a little sweat bead up on my brow when Elder Nelson kept telling people to talk to the missionaries. Talk about pressure! But yes, that is what we want. Please talk to us.
We got to see several miracles this week, my favorite is a cute little lady we ran into during some service at a clothing donation site. This was our first time there and we were about to leave when she heard us speaking Spanish and was really shocked to see two white girls doing it. She came up and asked us about our name tags and we talked a little about what we do and our church. My companion mentioned the fact that we had a prophet and her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. So I told her she could come see the Prophet speak this weekend and she agreed! And she actually came. We picked her up from the train station and walked the half-mile to the chapel with her as she talked about how she hadn't planned to come to the shelter that day but something told her to. We talked about many gospel related topics and just as the spirit does, as we sat and watched Conference each and every one of her concerns was directly addressed. Her mouth was open the entire time, it was awesome - just straight miracles from heaven, no big deal. As one of the speakers talked about the Book of Mormon she turned to us and asked how she could get one, she just felt like she needed to read it. We chuckled and assured her that would be no problem. Needless to say this was an answer to prayer, fasting and obedience. We are teaching her tonight and pray things keep going this golden.
I ate a jalapeno. I'm not going to belittle myself and say it was a dare, but it was a challenge of faith. I did it and now I know I have faith. Also I'm getting more Latina every day. I even had a nice dark tan the other day (yes, dark is relative) but it's all peeling off now. Bummer. In other news, humorous events of this past week include, watching the Joseph Smith movie with an investigator and the phone ringing right as Joseph kneels down for the his first, world changing, prayer (obviously). Who was it you ask, oh just their pastor. Curse you Satan - using Pastors to thwart our efforts! We re-round the clip and made him watch it again. ha. Then the other day we were with another investigator chatting about the Word of Wisdom and how wackadoo California is with it's legal pot, just as he was talking about how common and even normal around here that stuff is, the aroma of skunk filled the room. Classy. One of our investigators has a HUGE statue of the virgin Mary in her living room, sometimes I can't help but stare at it. The other day we gave her a photo of the Salt Lake Temple and when we went back to visit a few days later, there was the temple at Mary's feet, right above Jesus! It was the best thing ever.
Well, I hope everyone enjoyed Conference. For the record, I did not fall asleep and I even had to watch some in Spanish. There were many powerful talks as usual and I was particularly struck by the discussion of Peter and the Apostles after Christ's death. They knew not what to do, but the Lord patiently reminded them the job of followers of Christ is to feed his sheep. I feel lucky to be doing that full time right now. It's totally weird and we see some crazy crap, but we also get to see the Lord's hands working miracles in countless lives as he lifts, changes and blesses his sheep...all of them. We work with a lot of His sheep that have strayed and it can be some of the hardest work, but it's also a great blessing to see the light come back into their eyes when we enter their house and remind them of the covenants they made and the happiness they can have again. Just as the Lord did not give up on his apostles, he does not give up on us, instead he asks us to follow him, follow that perfect example and think not of fishing fish for ourselves, but with his fishes feed those he puts in our path. They are not kidding when they say there is no greater work...it's for sure work, but it's so worth it.
xoxo,
Hermana Hall
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