B9er

Well I just got back from a thrilling game of BINGO with my friends, the San Jose seniors. They were really on something today - must be some new meds but they were repeating EVERYTHING I was saying in beeps and squawks. It sounded like the Muppet Show takes over the Salvation Army. It was hilarious. I wish I could record it for all to enjoy. I was dying. I mean, I guess sometimes I sound like a Muppet, but you never really know how others hear you until they all sing it back to you in chorus. Glorious.

 

Speaking of chorus, I am going to be singing this Sunday in church...in Spanish. It was the only way I could get out of giving a talk in Spanish. It's going to be something for sure. I hope I don't start mumbling or crying. Sometimes in lessons when people stop paying attention to my terrible Spanish I just start mumbling and fading off into nothingness. They never notice. Maybe I can do that in song too.

 

I love Latinos. They are so nice. They say yes to everything! Other missionaries complain about getting 'no' to appointments, commitments or even to take pass along cards. We always get a "yes", would you like this picture of Christ, yes, would you like to have us come over and teach you more, yes. Would you like to get baptized, yes. It's so great! I mean, they don't really do it, but I love not getting no's, it makes me feel like da bomb missionary. The Elders told me that if I wanted to be even better and be fluent in Spanish in no time I should eat some hot sauce. Desperate as I am, I did it. I immediately regretted that decision as my mouth burst into flames. I cried for the next 15 min while they all laughed at me. I don't speak any better. You know what else makes me cry. Mormon Messages. I never paid any attention to those things before, but they are my most favorite things ever. We have a disk of a dozen or so and I just watch them over and over and since I'm already filled to the gills with spiritual goodness anytime I watch one I burst into tears. It's spirit overload and it's awesome! Everyone needs a good spirit cry.

 

My current Mormon Message favorite is from Elder Neslon. He is telling a story about a near airplane crash he experienced. The lady next to him was hysterical and he was totally calm. At first I was like pffft, yeah of course he's calm, he's Elder Nelson, but he goes on to explain the comfort that comes when we understand things in terms of forever. He said that today peoples' hearts are failing, failing because of fear and failure as a result of lack of perspective. He reminds us that perfection does not come in this life and we would do good to not be so hard on ourselves and remember who we are and what we really are doing here. I can remember many times in my life when I could feel my heart failing - fear, disappointment, failure, and pain can bring a cloud of darkness and remove all peace and comfort. Every time it took a pause, a refocus to lift the cloud over my heart and head. That refocus is so much more simple and so much more effective when it is on our Savior. As we look to Him, leave our burdens at His feet and move forward, trying again, we will find that we truly have nothing to fear in this world...well except a plane crash, I'm still afraid of those. ha. j/k. Yay Jesus!

 

xoxo,

Hermana Hall

Freaky Friday

So, I just have to say this how it was, our investigator totally got possessed this week. Yeah, that happened. The Elders had to give him, his apartment and his friend a blessing and then we had to get rid of the possessed trolls he had collected from a Satanic shop. Oh yeah, that turned out to be a terrible purchase. Thank goodness for the Priesthood, it saved his life and it was super intense. I felt like I was in a movie. That crap is no joke. On the upside, after the exorcism, I told him he was going to need to get baptized in two weeks...he agreed. Phew. Glad we got that cleared up. Talk about crazy town...I've been experiencing a lot of wackadoo going down in SJ town. I think I'm discovering that my people, the Latinos, have a lot of experiences those other white people just don't have - like they see stuff. Stuff that would make me scream and then wet my pants. It's unreal. Sometimes I don't believe them, I just nod and open my eyes real big, but after this week, uh yeah...they are not kidding.

 

Anyway...after our victory over demons, a member asked me to dye her hair. I figure if I can speak Spanish I can probably also dump color on someone's head. So now I'm a vampire slayer and a beautician. Take that Buffy.

 

We also had an encounter with a free mason. Apparently there are several out here. He showed me his fancy, secret ring. Awesome. He knows more than all of us.Then I tried to give a Mormon.org card to a guy, he took it from me so I was like it's super great and it's about Jesus! He gave it back saying "ew no."  Wow, that guy is gonna be in trouble. Later that night, I discovered my real skill out here was to help a 9 yr old read fairy tales...in English. It was the best day ever. To top it all off her dad asked me how to say words in English. I was so on it. I rocked that day.

 

Sometimes I'm in a lesson and I can't stay awake. That's a confession. It's also the end of the story. Our ward has been going through some serious changes recently and we have a new ward mission leader, who is awesome, and a new Elder who eats the rest of my food when I can't and will drink the nasty juices for me. I'm pretty close to being Latina though. Maybe just like another month or two. I put Tajin on my fruit now - that's how I know. Sometimes the members trick me though, we'll be talking in Spanish and all of a sudden I'll understand everything we're talking about and I'll get really excited that I have the gift of tongues and now my mission is really going to explode and then I realize, they switched to English. Tricksters.

 

Anyway, a few weeks ago I got a letter from an awesome friend. He said he's been working on replacing the word 'lucky' in his vocabulary with 'blessed'. I love that. My blessing vision has gotten so much better as a missionary and those little tricks like changing a word, a perspective, an attitude have made all the difference. We know we get blessings every single day so it's only a matter of looking for them and trust me, they are everywhere. It blows my mind sometimes, well all the time. Being blessed is not a condition, it's a decision. Today I decide to be blessed, come decide to be blessed with me! Blessing party!!

 

xoxo,

Hermana Hall

Not the sprinklers!

We just got back from Zone croquet and kickball. I beat everyone at croquet because it's a fancy sport and I'm fancy. I opted out of the kickball, and chose to be team support but then they brought out a ginormous exercise ball to play with. Oh man, that had to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. People kicking and catching a ball bigger than them. Elders come up with some rather interesting 'safe' activities. It was hilarious. Then later, the Elders were blowing up carrots in the microwave. So. Yeah.

 

Let's see, more adventures on the streets this week. For the record, I am SO grateful we don't have to knock on doors for investigators in this mission. The other day we were stopping by a slippery investigator and they yelled, 'Who is it?" The Sister Missionaries. Pause..."No one is here!" Oh ok. Got it. So then we headed over to a recent convert's home. The lights were on, all things looked good. Knock, knock. Lights off. Oh ok. Got it. 10 seconds later. Sprinklers. What? Seriously. We got the message. You really can only laugh in those situations. At least I haven't been chased by dogs. Yet.

 

On non rejection days, the BINGO folks love me. I had to miss one day for a meeting and when I came back they were clapping and cheering. It was so adorable. They've started repeating how I call most numbers now. It's so awesome. I'm so popular with old people. We are kindred spirits. One of my biggest fans, mainly because I put his daily eye drops in for him, called me over and asked where I was the other day. He said the skinny one was there, but that I, the not skinny one (yes he said that) wasn't. And then gave me a lemon tart. It was good. I think he knew I would like it more than the skinny one. He is from the Philippines, is like 90, rides a wheelchair and announces his coming with 'meep meep,' like a Muppet. He's my favorite.

 

This week I had some rocking experiences with prayer. I've never been really good at praying, let's face it I'm not really good at a lot of spiritual things - how did they let me wear this name tag?! But, we had a zone meeting this week and they put all of our numbers up on the board for everyone to see. I was mortified. I felt like we'd been working really hard and doing really well and then I saw the numbers of the other companionships in our zone. Wow. They wasted us, by like a lot. Now, we had the only baptism in the zone so that made up for a lot, but the rest of our numbers were abysmal, and not Joey's definition of the word. I told my comp we can't let that happen again so we started to pray that we could meet our weekly goals. It was Friday and were down by 10 lessons and we had 3 hours left in the day and a dinner appointment with one of my favorite families but they are just never ready on time and we end up being there forever. We said a pleading prayer that we could find people to teach and that dinner could be ready on time for us to find more. Five minutes after we got out of the car we had a lesson with a member's neighbor. Sure, he was saying crazy things like he could tell in my eyes that I was intelligent so he wanted to know who birthed God, but still, it was a lesson. When we got to the members' home the food was on the table. It was a Christmas miracle! Long story short, we miraculously met our lesson goal this week. I know this was an answer to our sincere prayer to a loving Heavenly Father.

 

Prayer is absolutely vital to missionary work (and life, of course) and I'm quickly gaining a testimony of it's power that I never really bothered to notice before. As we kneel down in humble prayer recognizing our weaknesses, thanking for all the tender mercies we receive and ask for our Father to guide us, to comfort us, to help us, I know He will. I have seen this a billion times already in just 4 months and just this week I received another huge testimony of the power of prayer. I found a recent Ensign article about the power of prayer. The author was a Bishop at one point and when people would come to him in trouble the first thing he would ask about is their relationship with prayer. Many would say yes, I know I need to work on prayer, now how do I fix my problems. I chuckled as I read this because I think that is how I felt most of my life. I just didn't see the value in this thing that is, in reality, so precious. Satan doesn't help, he doesn't want us to pray, which should only add to the convincing evidence of its power. Day by day, I'm learning how to better communicate with my Father in Heaven and I'm seeing the change in my life and in my heart. There is never a time when our Heavenly Father does not want to hear from us. He is waiting to bless us, but because of our gift of agency, we must come to Him and ask in prayer. There is nothing sweeter than watching an investigator pray to their Father for the first time and we can have this sweet experience all the time. If you feel as I did: "yeah yeah prayer...now let's fix my problems" - please believe me that the answer really, truly can be found in humble prayer. It may not be immediate, but as we practice this relationship and as we search for the answers our hearts and minds will be filled. It's pretty sweet.

 

xoxo,

Hermana Hall

Elder ladies

Yesterday was Labor Day so to celebrate our zone went to play the nation's pastime...wiffle ball. It was pretty fun, but this morning I was reminded that I'm not 20 and I've been walking around like a hunchback all morning. Classy. Speaking of being old, yes every where I go they ask how old we are. I think it's just because they are curious what we are doing with our lives. People usually guess 22. I enjoy that. And they never believe my real age, which I enjoy even more. The other day we were at a members home (English) and they were asking about my family and my siblings. I have four brothers. "So they are all older than you?" No, actually I'm the oldest. Oh. Ok. "So how old is the oldest one?" He's 29. The mother is out of the room and I can see the daughter perplexed in the corner. The mother yells, so how many older brothers do you have? The daughter says no mom she is the oldest. The mother replies, "no she can't be she said she has a 29 yr old brother." Oh...cricket, cricket. Anyway...

 

We had a wide variety of interesting lessons this week as usual. We were teaching the Restoration and Joseph Smith to a new investigator at a member's home when right in the middle in walks two Elders...then two more. And there they sat, all four of them in the corner while we proceeded to teach this poor guy about the church with the power of 6 missionaries in one living room. It worked though because he agreed to be baptized. The Elders were there for another appointment with the member's other friend and were really embarrassed to crash our lesson. As they should be. haha. We've been trying to stalk, I mean find, another investigator who is really good at hiding, but the other day we walked up to her door and found a Mormon picture of Jesus taped to her front door. We felt like this was a solid victory then I glanced over and saw the Virgin Mary and 10 other Jesuses in the window. Oh rats. Hey at least the Mormon Jesus made it to the door!

 

We had a lesson with a member family about the Plan of Salvation and somehow it moved to random question hour where we had to answer things about judgement day and whether or not they were going to have to live with their annoying little brother FOREVER?! NO!!!  We reminded them we'd all be perfect by then and then asked for a closing prayer. The cute little boy forgot our names and called us Elder ladies. It was adorable.

 

Speaking of Elders, ours had a baptism this past week. Yay! He was 30 min late - standard time - but he got baptized. We even had an investigator there, sure he happened to get a call right before the guy got dunked (Satan is a jerk) but he still got to experience the glorious baptismal spirit. He's a for sure Mormon in the near future. We also got to attend my first real Latin wedding. It. Was. Amazing! They had a real live mariachi band, lots of food and it was like 10 hours long. It was in the cultural hall so it gave us a good opportunity to talk to people about the church, but it was too hard not to dance so we couldn't stay long.

 

This week I've been thinking a lot about the blessings we get from keeping our covenants, the promises we make with Heavenly Father. As Latter-day Saints, we are a covenant people, a people of action and thank goodness because the protection and blessings are what sustain us in this life. I've learned really quickly out here the benefit of obedience and I am so grateful for the covenants of baptism and those from the temple that I've made that give me even more protection, guidance and support of the Holy Ghost. I can feel the power that comes from clinging to the covenants we make with our Heavenly Father. He is wanting and waiting to give us these blessings, He wants to protect us from that jerkstore Satan and the other follies of the world all we have to do is follow Him. We need the sustaining power of our covenants, let us all hold on tightly and remember our purpose here is to obtain everlasting life, something we can only get with the power of these covenants. Hooray for covenants!

 

xoxo,

Hermana Hall

Power Prayer

Ah the mission life, another week full of random, strange, miraculous and awkward events crammed together in a glorious mesh. Our recent converts have been having some serious trials recently. This past week their son was shot in the street and it made the news, so I heard. He's alive and now in jail. So that's you know, totally normal. Since he's alive, we are hoping this might be kind of an Alma the Younger tale where he has some sense knocked back into him and becomes the world's best missionary. That would be awesome! Then the other day she finally got some really great news at the court, was so happy and then came home to an eviction notice - because of her crazy son. Yikes. I get nervous every time we go over to their house that something else bad has happened. They must have some big blessings ahead of them. They are still so strong, faithful and optimistic, if nothing else they have been a huge example to me in some serious trials, not just the kind of trials I have like when the cereal I want to buy is not on sale. Are you kidding me?!

 

Let's see, we were asked if we could cast out demons this week. I pulled out my wand and was ready to take care of business. But it turns out he was serious so we set him up with the Elders and we got the heck out of there. I got attack hugged by a drunk guy - he just wanted a birthday hug! Ick. I gave him a picture of Jesus and told him to go pray. He wanted a picture of the virgin Mary. Speaking of virgins, (awkward transition) we found this awesome video of the parable of the 10 Virgins. It's really captivating...until the end and all of a sudden it busts into this awesome 80's ballad talking about saving drops of oil and shows cheesy shots of people doing 'good' things. I busted out laughing the first time I watched it, then made my comp watch it and of course we took it to a family that night for FHE. I couldn't wait until that part to see the reaction of the 13 yr old. It was worth it. Oh and I think they learned something gospelly too.

 

The other day we had a lesson with a member referral and it was super awkward. They were happy to see us and invited us in, but didn't offer us to sit down. So us being polite and ladylike we patiently waited and commenced with pleasantries. Before I knew it my comp is busting out the Restoration and we are all still standing! And there we were, all 4 of us standing in front of couches for an hour. Several times I thought, it's probably ok if I just sit down, but I kept thinking I'll wait for a break to ask. Then I couldn't remember how to ask. Then the longer the standing went on the more awkward it became to say something. At one point I thought the investigator was about to sit down and I felt so relieved, but no, she just put her leg up on the couch. What?! How are you not super uncomfortable right now with all four of us standing in the middle of a couch filled room talking about Jesus! Ahh. Needless to say they didn't invite us back - my guess is they don't want to join a church they think they have to stand through. Me neither.

 

This week has been the week of prayer miracles. We pray like a billion times a day as a missionary. I am not going to lie, sometimes I don't want to pray in the car with my companion, but we do and we need to. This past week we have really seen the blessings and miracles that have come from our prayers as well as prayers from you, my family, the ward here and those in the temple. We've been struggling with several inactive families who love our visits but can't seem to make it back to church. The other day we did our usual stop by and at the door, their non-member, adult son announced he was going to take his parents to church on Sunday. What?! Yes, please. And thank you. Yesterday, a part member family we'd been working with invited us for dinner and afterward we were able to share a wonderful message on prayer with the non-member father who didn't run from us this time and at the end he committed to pray with his family every day. What?! Yeah, these are miracles from prayers. It's also very timely because my comp and I have been talking a lot about Alma the Younger recently and how the angel appeared to him to snap him back into gear because of the faithful prayers of his father and the whole town. This week I want to add my testimony to this amazing Book of Mormon story of prayer. I have never been very good with prayers, basically a prayer slacker, but I have gained such a great appreciation for them as I can see first hand everyday how Heavenly Father answers them. He never answers in expected ways, because he's God and he knows better, but he always answers with more blessings than we could imagine. I also want to thank all of you praying for me, my brothers and all the missionaries around the world. It is by the faith of your prayers that angels are truly visiting people and changing their lives - in fact, saving their souls. Thank you and never stop believing in the power of the prayer.

 

Oh and just so everyone can be at ease, I have mastered the art of parallel parking once again. It's hilarious how tedious backing up can get on the mission so you really only want to do that once. Now if only I could master backing up out of a lesson that just went an hour too long...

 

xoxo,

Hermana Hall

Yeah, we can see you there.

The overfeeding of the short, chubby redhead has begun. This is what happens when you start becoming popular in a ward, people want to express their love with food. I love me some food, but man. I tried to be careful in my prayers about this, we really want to have dinners with members, but I also don't want to die from bean overdose. It's a rough line. I'm walking it. Also I drank oatmeal water. Exactly that, oatmeal...in water. It was a real drink. I enjoy me some aqua frescas but this was a new one. It wasn't as bad as it sounds but it does taste exactly as it sounds. Weird. After the dinner, the member wanted us, just the two of us lovely missionaries to sing hymns to her. So we did. I'm sure it was angelic to all who hearkened upon it.

 

The past week our investigators started scattering from us like roaches in the light. I just compared our investigators to roaches. My bad. But you get the idea. The other day we got stood up so as we drove off we saw him hanging out at his spot by the payphone on the corner. He saw us, we parked and he RAN! No joke. He ran from us. bahaha. That was a first for me. I couldn't stop laughing. So yeah, it's hilarious when people try to hide from the missionaries as if they think they are magically invisible. Even if we didn't have the power of sight, we have the power of God, we can feel you there. Nice try, we'll stalk you down another day. We stalked down another investigator last night and it ended up being an awesome lesson, we made her cry - the good kind - and picked up three of her family members as new investigators. Bam, bam bam!

 

We finally got to visit with our bird loving friend yesterday as well. He's a young single guy so I obviously felt it best to try a little "flirt to convert" only I remembered I can't do that so I asked the cute, single girl in our ward to come along. mwahaha. She's a little shy, but agreed. Towards the end of the lesson I felt really strongly that I should ask her to share her testimony of the Book of Mormon. I talked back to myself in my head saying that was just cruel to put her on the spot like that, but I did it, I opened my mouth and I threw her under the bus...and it was amazing! Her testimony was so sweet and so powerful. It was a perfect way to end the lesson. After she thanked me for making her do it and said she wants to do that more. Phew. I'm not telling her about the flirting thing though. That's my secret plan.

 

The highlight of the week was another baptism!! It feels a little like cheating because it was a 9 yr old girl of an recently reactivated family that we haven't taught much, but still we had a baptism on Saturday and it was awesome. We got a few potential investigators there too. Miracles!

 

Last week I had to teach district meeting again with last minute notice. I think the district leader likes taunting me. Shocking. As I was preparing for it I kept thinking man I wish I had a computer and could Google some articles about this. The closest thing we have to LDS.org google is a stack of old Liahonas so I went there. I pulled out one Ensign hiding in there and obviously the perfect article was right there! Who needs Google when you have the spirit?! Anyway, the topic was on goal setting and planning, A Time to Prepare by Elder Ian S. Arden. He happened to mention some time suckers like catapulting birds...my answer was clear - I needed to have an Angry Birds game/analogy. So I did. It was awesome. The gist, if our goal is to knock down those bricks to get the pigs (comparing investigators to pigs, I should think these things through a little more) then we must use the tools we have (different types of birds for scriptures, prayer, planning, etc) to achieve our goals. The Elders loved it and I quite enjoyed it as well. Making goals was not something I was good at before the mission. There is an awesome quote in Preach My Gospel from someone important that basically says if we don't set good goals we will one day look back on our lives and realize we didn't reach our potential (that's Hna Hall interpretation). I feel that way about my pre-mission life and I struggle with some feelings of regret by not setting better (more spiritually based) goals for my life. It's very clear on a mission how important setting goals and planning are, but I'm starting to really see the value of this in every aspect of life. If we don't set good goals with a gospel perspective in mind - goals that make us stretch a little bit - then we will never truly find our potential. What a shame. I want to be more awesome, so that is my new goal. Come be awesome with me...spiritually speaking of course. Yay!

 

xoxo,

Hermana Hall

 

P.S. more people should write me. Probably. :)

BINGO

Whelp this was a weird week. We must have smelled really bad because we got cancelled on a ton like we were way out of style...which just couldn't be true. We just started getting popular at church too and our dinner calendar was filling up...but then they all cancelled on us. ha! The Elders were super jealous of our dinner calendar. They only had like 3 days. haha. Suckers. Yesterday was awesome though and some how we got 5 lessons so that fixed our numbers for the week and they weren't totally embarrassing to report anymore.

 

Finally people are noticing my hair around here - geez! One lady we were visiting shouted out during my companion's testimony, has your hair always been red? haha. Yes. Then she talked about how amazing it was for 10 minutes. I enjoyed that. Later in the week someone else asked me what color I use. Uh...no girl, this is for realz. She was super jealous. I enjoyed that as well. Maybe they are a little color blind in Cali.

 

This week was a disaster at the old folks Bingo game. I guess I'm now the new caller for reals. I don't mind, except for how cranky they can be! They don't like it when you get fancy or try to make jokes. The other day I was asking if they were ready for black out and they were like 'mehhh' which is old person for 'yes'. And I shouted back all cute 'me too!' Well they thought I said B2 and it was a huge to do. Later I started spinning the balls and the latch popped open and they went EVERYWHERE! I thought the seniors were going to kill me the way they glared at me in disgust. Later though, I realized they didn't hate me when they started repeating the way I said numbers, which is just hilarious. Also they like it when I say 'niner'. ha! Later an old lady came up to talk to me about God, but for some reason she had to be really up in my bubble so much so that she kept spitting all over my face. It was so gross, but I played it cool and then I ran to wash my face trying not to think about what was dripping on my face at the moment. Ahh good times with the oldies.

 

So, I'm driving now and I feel much safer. I'm very confused with all the freeways, but slowly getting around. Thank goodness for GPS! I also feel bad for making fun of my companion with her parallel parking skills because it turns out, our parking spot at the apt is really really hard and I'm not good at it either! Maybe it's been so long I don't remember how. Someone Google and send me a diagram...or tips for dummies. ha. Speaking of cars, I keep seeing twins of Red Dragon around town. I miss her and then I remember one of them could be her! She only lives like 15 min away! How fun. 

 

I got a hilarious letter from my old college roomy, C. Oh man. That was a gem. She mentioned her first Sunday in Uruguay and how she had to conduct the music and how interesting it was. I laughed because I have the same problem. No one can play the piano or lead...or sing. Music on Sundays is very interesting. Not only that but the hymns in Spanish are different, for one I don't know the words, for two the rhythms are slightly off so when I'm leading it's...well it's a disaster. So I just smile. I find that works for almost everything. Thank heavens. 

 

This week I've been thinking a lot about grace. Since we have nothing to study but the gospel it's all I know right now. I heard there was something called the 'olympics' going on - what's that? Rebekah mentioned recently in one of her letters about the rapid learning rate on the mission. It's so true! Mainly because that is our focus all the time, but the Lord really blesses you when you focus on His word and His children. Thank heavens because I need it. But anyway, grace. We listened to this awesome talk recently about grace and I really liked it. We hear a lot of people talking about how they are saved by grace, but he pointed out yeah, we are all saved by grace but more importantly have you been changed by grace? I thought about this for quite some time and realized I don't exactly know what that means. ha. I think I'm learning a little more about it and how we are not sent here to be passive in this life, but everything we learn, accomplish and care about comes as a result of the grace of Christ. As we learn to accept his grace or follow his example, we gain more and this is how grace changes us. Simple enough right? ha. In the mornings before we study, we are told to get up, exercise, shower, pray and sit at a desk before we begin. This helps us be alert and ready and not drift off back to sleep. Most of the time it works. But I'm seeing more how this is in life too...there are several steps we should take before we start to 'study' so that we can get the most out of it and don't drift back to sleep letting all the opportunities for growth pass on by. I think I had a lot of dozing off before the mission...oopsy. I'm trying to catch up now! Lesson learned: praying while you're still in bed is just more sleeping. My bad.

xoxo,

Hermana Hall