Dear family and friends,
So this week had a lot of interesting happenings. First off, Hermana Ihler and I are professionals at planning fun group games. The zone leaders know this so they put our special pday (when the whole zone gets together once a transfer) into our hands. Everything minus the food. Yes, we had to find the movie as well. And so we played four square in pairs (super fun because I was with this random elder and boy could he play. We rocked it), lover´s leap (but with a lot of different actions that you had to find your companion to do.), mafia (classic), and a chair game that uses rock, paper, scissors. Basically it was a blast and everyone was sore the next day. Yes, we´re all terribly out of shape. And we watched frozen! I loved it. But the elders not so much. Everytime a new song came on they groaned. This is what happens when you leave the movie up to us!
And then monday night we had our zone meeting. So we spent all day with the zone. The meeting was good but at the end there was a huge rain storm. Crazy. And we got left at the church with 6 elders. We called 3 taxis and only one came so the four of us left. On the way home the taxi was drowning but we did make it after lots of prayers. Funny thing is that the elders had to wait at the church until 12:30. Good thing we left first because that couldn´t have happened with elders and sisters together.
Tuesday and Wednesday we contacted all day. Not one lesson. They were hard days.
Manuel, the old man that came to conference with his brother is progressing. We went with the patriarch and his wife and he read the evangelio de Jesucristo folleto. Little, but it´s progress. We might have to drop him though because he doesn´t want to come to church. If he doesn´t come this week it´s the end. But he just loves us so much and feels so much better after we come that it´s hard to drop him.
We couldn´t see Jonathan this week because of work but we saw Andrea. She wants to marry him! And he won his court case so now he gets to have his son wed, fri, and sunday for a few hours. He was super excited on sunday when we saw him!
It´s getting cold. I wore tights yesterday. And no one came to church. It´s a sign that we´re getting into winter. I forgot how cold the churches get. I don´t know why all of the heaters are always broken at church. It´s miserable.
We´ve found some great new people. One´s Pilar who´s absolutely golden and we´ve already had a lesson with her. Unfortunately, she only works in our area. That´s what happens when your area´s the rich area. All the good people only work here. So we´re going to get with the elders and have a lesson with the four of us to pass her on. The other is Augustina and she has depression and she´s 17. Serious depression that she´s getting over. She´s sweet but her mom´s never home. And then we have Isabel that´s moving to the elders area. dang. And then we have Angela that we found last night. She´s old and she was going into a panic attack when we knocked on her door. We said a prayer with her and then shared a little of the plan of salvation. She said the prayer at the end and then just bawled and thanked us. It was a super special experience. We have an appointment with her on wednesday right before augustina. So things are looking up a bit!
Contacting´s crazy though. We run into all sorts of people. Yesterday a crazy man let us in. I only asked if we could come in because we saw a girl walking in there 5 minutes before so we were sure there were women in the house. When we walked in we felt bad. There was a bedroom with newspaper on the walls and spray painted words over the newspaper. Like what the killers do in scary movies. We handed him a folleto, said a prayer and booked it out of there. And then we met a really friendly testigo de jehova. Not really, she just yelled at us and told us we knew nothing of the bible. I kindly invited her to read 1 peter 3 when she said that there is nothing after death until the resurrection but in her bible it is probably translated so differently that it will make no sense. Shame that others don´t have the book of mormon. The bible is so confusing with all of its translations!
Today I studied esperanza in chapter 6 of predicad. I learned that the way that it shows that we have hope is by being optimistic, among other things. I read in Alma about Ammon right before he cuts the arms and how he turned the situation into a blessing. His fellow servants began to cry because they were afraid when they lost the rebaños, but Ammon saw it as an opportunity to show God´s power that he had with him. To be able to preach the gospel. That to me was a great example of looking at a situation with optimism.
Oh and friday and saturday brought crazy wind and rain!
Love you all and good luck with finals those of you at BYU!
Hermana Borup
Pictures: the chair game, and our zone. The elder that was with me during four square is the one at the end that got cut out. Other than that, I think everyone made it into the picture!
