BINGO Remix

From a baptism last week with Hna Bradshaw and Hna Raney.

I got to spend a day back in my first area this week which meant I got to call BINGO again. It was the best feeling ever when I walked in the door and half of the room passed out on the floor. Wendy, the Asian ring leader then came, grabbed my hand and escorted me around the room so I could say hello to everyone as they all clapped and chanted "9er, 9er". I swear, I'm not even making this up. If it wasn't so darn hilarious I would have been crying my eyes out I was so touched. As old and as terrible as their memories must be, they remember me over 8 months later. That's so cool. I'm so famous. To old people. Anywhooo...it was so great to see some of the families that I loved so much. Those that put up with me when I really couldn't speak a lick of Spanish. That's true love. It was so nice to see that people really did remember me and that I made an impact on their life. I had to be pried away from a few moms that burst into tears the moment I walked into the door. Wow. I had no idea I meant so much. Then I remembered why. I'm a missionary for the Lord. The love that I have expressed to these families is just a portion of the love the Lord has for them. No wonder they love missionaries so much. What a blessing it is to me that I even get to be a part of that. Ah love. It's the best.

 

We've had a mini missionary here this week. She just graduated high school and is with us to get a feel for how mission life is. She was just going to be with us 1 week but she is loving it so much she asked to stay a few more days. It's been really nice having her here...her and my new companion are the same age so they get along really well and I've just been making them give all the lessons. It's a little break. Speaking of break...when I went off on exchanges last week, she rolled her ankle so she's been gimping around now for the past several days. We look like quite the spectacle carrying around with us everywhere we go our own little mini missionary. Her mom is going to kill me when she gets her back, I specifically promised she would not be injured. Oops.

 

As usual, we've had a string of random and/or hilarious events occur this past week. We got a call during our studies last week to go help out this women who fell but couldn't get up. I told the Elder on the phone that maybe she should call 911 instead of the missionaries. Well, he said, I think she's alright, she just wants company. Oh. Ok. That we can do as long as she also wants to get baptized. We went over and as soon as she saw us she just began to weep. Then she held on to each of us for about 10 min a piece. I thought to myself, only on a mission would I hug a stranger that was crying alligator tears and for sure some snot all over my dress. Wow. We sure are blessed with the ability to love just about anyone. Not everyone, but pretty close. Later we ran into a cute old Indian lady who informed us that Jesus said to never let anyone kick you in the butt. Then she demonstrated by bending over. I love Indians. The rest of my week felt a lot again like a mother duck...I've got 2 cute ducklings waddling behind me at all times. The best is when I stop and they ram right into me. Maybe that's more like Lemmings. Man, I loved that game!

 

The hot item right now in the mission is the 2013 EFY album. Any missionary that has it is now the most popular missionary in the area. Instant cool. Missionary life is so weird.

 

xoxo,

Hermana Hall

The Perfect Baptism

The perfect baptism was had this past Saturday. It was perfect because it started basically on time, they only had to be dunked once and there wasn't a dry eye in the whole room! Woohoo! Making people feel the spirit so hard their eyes can't hold it in! It was a really special day. I didn't even have any panic that it wasn't going to happen or that something crazy was for sure about to happen. It was just perfect. What a relief. No crazies this time! Of course yesterday during the confirmation the man that was supposed to do one of the confirmations decided that he had the right and privilege to do them both so he wouldn't move out of the way for the Elder to do the second one. That was a little awkward to watch. The Elder was really good about it and just let him go. Oh well. At least it happened. 

Now that I've gotten used to living with 4 sisters in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment, it's really quiet and lonely with only the 2 of us there now. I'm sure it won't last long...but then again, I don't have much longer! Ahhhh!

We picked up a new investigator last week. We would be baptizing her but she's going back to Mexico in 2 weeks and thinks it would be too fast. I told her it would be but it'd also be an adventure and who doesn't love an adventure! She didn't fall for it. Anyway, she was so presh. She said she'd been wanting to have a Bible in her house for the longest time to keep away the evil spirits...which I know now are totes real...and she was overjoyed when we gave her the Book of Mormon. She said it's not the Bible, but I know it's from God and that keeps all the bad out. haha. So true. Now if only I could trick her into missing her flight...

I went on an English exchange last week. It's always super weird to me now to teach the gospel in English. Also, it's way harder. I feel bad for them. It was a really great experience and the Sisters were in awe at how 'easy' and 'quickly' they saw me invite someone at a service we were doing to be baptized. They were like how do we do that?! Uh...you just tell them. Of course we talked about it a little more...there is a lot of fear in sharing the gospel and inviting people to be baptized. Thankfully I learned pretty early on in my mission that what we have, the gospel of Jesus Christ, is something that everyone needs. They need to be baptized, they just don't know it yet. When I changed the way I looked at that, it was so much easier for me just to straight up ask something. Also...having this badge, speaking broken Spanish and working with humble Latinos has really helped. But the fear for that is gone. I only hope that I can do my part when I get back in the world. I remember real life. I remember not sharing the gospel...there were a million understandable reasons. However, the truth doesn't change. We have what EVERYONE needs. We have to share it and we should not be shy about it. You don't have to go around and invite people to be baptized every day like we do, but please remember there are simple things that we can do that will open the window or door even just a crack to something getting a little closer to the one thing they must absolutely have. So there's that. 

xoxo, 

Hna Hall

Starburst Missionary

Well things didn't turn out at all like I expected last week. Shocking. We went from 4 sister missionaries in the ward to 2. I lost 1 companion then another and then 2 roommates. It's a little weird that I lost a bunch of sisters around me when there are about 5 million that just came in. I'm now in a zone with 16 Elders and just us two in dresses. I have no idea how that happened, there are some zones now with more Sisters than Elders.  Apparently it's time to work with the boys. Good thing I've had a ton of practice.

 

We had a zone meeting the other day and I was in charge of a presentation on finding new investigators. There have been some interesting things going on in other zones in the mission and ours has the worst numbers right now...except for the Sisters...we hold them afloat. Ahem, humility. There is a zone that has a goal to get 21 baptisms this month and they are doing some crazy things to make that happen and it's totally working. We don't have any investigators...except ours...in the entire zone. So we have a tiny problem. I look around at these poor Elders and they are just so discouraged, they don't know what to do and they feel awful. I had a long chat about our situation here with Zone Leaders and we have to change things up. So I decided to pump them up with sugar! Then I rambled on, using the example of Nefi breaking his bow. We had an awesome discussion about how we really can do this with what we have. We can make a bow out of wood and the Lord will guide us.  We can find food, I mean investigators! We can be super stoked and happy missionaries! We can turn this zone around! We can do things to make this area shine! We can be Starburst Missionaries! Then I threw a bunch of Starbursts at them as we all screamed and pumped our fists up in the air with excitement! "I want to be a STARBURST MISSIONARY!" It was epic. We set some good zone goals and hopefully we can move forward with a more positive outlook. Satan loves it when the missionaries are discouraged...we're going to punch him in the face with Starbursts!

 

Other things that went down this week in Santa Clara...I spent a lot of time distracting kittens while my companion taught the good word of God. It wasn't the hardest thing I've had to do, but I did get a few scars out of it. 

 

I love seeing little miracles, or I guess some people say tender mercies, but really to me they are miracles. I love that on a mission since our focus is the gospel, we get to see them everywhere. I think it's a lot harder to see the little miracles in normal life, when there is so much other noise and concern. Each little miracle gives me a smile and it just adds another pebble to my collection of testimony that tells me God loves us and He made a way for us to come back and that way is Jesus Christ. Looking for those miracles can often be tedious, but I've seen them and when we find them they are so worth it. Find some of your own this week. I promise they are there. It will brighten up your day. It's just as my crazy convert would always sing to me in voicemail: miracles can happen if you just believe. True that.

 

xoxo,

Hna Hall

Trio

Whelp, I'm gonna be in a trio this next transfer. That'll be interesting. I'm gonna get a new missionary too. I'm sure she will be 19 and we'll see how long it takes before she finds out how ancient I am and freaks out. We are going to have some great adventures! I am really sad to be losing my current companion, we've laughed so much. It's been such a treat.

 

Yesterday during testimony meeting someone got up and asked for help finding housing and then gave everyone his phone number...over the pulpit. I think I'm going to to try that when I get home except that I'll be looking for a husband. I had to give our investigators a head's up that this meeting would be a little different that then rest since anyone can get up and talk. At least we keep things interesting in Latino wards!

 

I had an all day meeting last Friday and it was pretty random, but I did find a way to pull out a theme. It seemed to be working well with others and listening to the Holy Ghost. Of course my part of the day was the interactive part where I had a bunch of Elders come up front, I tied their hands together with ribbon and made them tie a tie around someone's neck. It was so hilarious. Hopefully they got the idea that you have to work together even when stuck in pretty awkward or uncomfortable situations but it was at least entertaining. Due to the increase arrival of missionaries, our mission and I'm sure others are suffering from some growing pains and we've had to do things a bit differently. There are a lot of new sisters coming in that are co-covering multiple areas. The drama has just increased. Missionaries are having to learn new levels of compromise and humility. It's been a bumpy road. It's really hard to change your way of thinking and remember that this is the Lord's work so it doesn't really matter who gets credit, who has the most lessons, who has the most baptisms. We have to think of these people first. Always think of others first. Leave your pride at the door and beg for help each day from our Father in Heaven. That's a tough lesson for these young kids. But the Lord has called them, he will qualify them and the work really is rolling forward like a gigantic rock thing they talk about in the scriptures. Nothing can stop it.

 

xoxo,

Hna Hall

Buns, the hot dog kind

We are already in the last week of this transfer. It has flown by. My last two transfers are going to be lightning speed. Cyn just reminded me that I'm going to be home 3 months from today. Holy guacamole! Man, I wish we had guacamole here, but they don't really do that. And if they do smash up avocados they put it with haberno peppers and you just start sweating out your eyeballs.

 

This past week we had to do more outdoor service. This is going to be the death of me. Let's put a 30 something yr old pale face redhead out in the sun for 3 hours and just watch what happens. It's not pretty people! We were cutting off dead flowers from a mile long row off plants. I thought I was going to die, I think I even passed out at one point. The 19 yr old missionaries don't quite get that your body literally shuts down at some point. They get super confused when I complain about my back and feet hurting. Back pain? What's that. Ugh. Kids these days!

 

We had a really interesting week. I sure know how to find the crazies or they sure know how to find me so we had some really draining encounters. My companion and I have spent a lot of time laughing about all the craziness and just keep ourselves really positive about, honestly, some pretty scary stuff. The topic that keeps coming up is fear. Recently, we were teaching a lesson about fear and faith and how faith can not exist where there is fear but faith can cast out fear. It's interesting how opposite and yet closely connected these two things are. It's so very hard to have enough faith to cast out fear and yet we know from everything the scriptures and prophets teach us that faith is so much more powerful than fear. When it comes to ourselves, we've been working on being warriors of faith. Everyday we remind ourselves that we are better than fear. We will have no fear opening our mouths, we will have no fear speaking the language, we will have no fear to share our testimonies. As we've put more focus on doing the things we've been asked to do, fearlessly, as missionaries...we are finding greater faith which in turn kills our fear. It's a never ending battle, but it's a battle we've been promised from on high that we can win. Never settle, never back down, never surrender to fear. Let our faith shield and protect us through the battles of every day life.

 

xoxo,

Hna Hall