It's kind of a long one this time...sorry not sorry haha
[Editor's note: it's even longer because someone hasn't kept up on posting these blogs. Lo siento]
There have been some super cool experiences these past couple days. You can probably tell by the title of this email.
Well to start, we were all able to watch a movie this week as a mission again. We watched Spirit of the Game. It was pretty cheesy and confusing because it’s about missionaries serving in Australia. But they didn’t even have tags on. So red flag...they were just JW’s the whole time I guess. Haha
But they started a basketball league for Australia and started playing teams from all around the world and beat them. One of the games was against France and they beat them by one point.. But then France wanted a rematch because their coach was a sore loser. So they agreed, anyway boring story short they are in this huge arena and they are up by one point with like 15 seconds left on the clock and France had possession. So tFrance literally dribbled down court and scored. Game over. Missionaries lost. And the movie ended basically. I was ticked. What a crappy ending hahaha. It just goes to show that missionaries will always have the hard way out in life and in basketball. Hahaha Al they cared about was the Spirit of the Game. Which they mentioned one time during the last five minutes of the game. Hahaha I’m grateful our Mission president allows us to watch some movies. It’s pretty nice, even if they are cheesy church ones. A blessing is a blessing.
Anyway one thing that I did this week was go through Facebook and found a ton of “friends”( but like not really) friends on Facebook. I took screenshots of like over 45 people and sent them to the missionaries serving in my home ward. I hope they are able to find some people with interest in saving their souls, I know a lot of people in our town need it...KIDDING. Haha
There is a recent convert here named Ruben and he’s pretty old. And funny. Man I love old hispanic men.
But we were finally able to have a lesson with him and his brother Joe. Joe told us that he can’t wait until church opens up again and he can go and then get baptized there too. WOOOHOOO
LETS GO JOE!!!!
He has like 5 teeth. We just kept telling him that he has to stop drinking. He said he knows it’s hard but it will be worth it. So that was pretty awesome.
I have mentioned in previous emails that we have little Spanish lessons with some Hermanas preparing for their missions. A cultural thing they do in the Philippines is when they are learning something that’s difficult they’ll pretend to have a nosebleed. I don’t know if that makes sense. But anyway when these girls aren’t understanding anything they’ll pretend to have a nose bleed and it’s pretty funny because sometimes they’ll just say I have a nosebleed hahaha and we’ll all laugh because they aren’t understanding anything. So we’ll help them out. Anyways it’s a little inside joke now I guess.
But when we started one of the lessons this week we were talking about a random section like...adverbs
And they both were pretending to have nosebleeds and we were kind of ignoring it because it can get a little annoying. So we continued with talking, but then my comp was like Sister Torsak you actually have a nosebleed...her right nostril was all bloody hahah
So we’re kind of laughing about how ironic it was. We told her to just shove something up it like a tampon haha.
BUT THEY FREAKING PRANKED US. She showed us her hands and it was all fake blood. She even had a “bloody napkin” to help her prank us. We were dying laughing. I loved it. They told us that they thought of it when we were dealing with a phat leak in the sprinklers outside. Props to them. I like pranks. I actually did a few on some sisters back in Brownsville. Hahaha Good times. They weren’t super happy with us, but they got over it...I think.
Anyway that was awesome.
We had a lesson with Javier this week and after that we got on the subject of our favorite foods. He started talking to us about Raspas, which are really yummy like shaved ice almost. But his favorite is piccadilly. He explained it to us and it sounded nasty. It's basically a cherry raspa with chopped up pickles and a Kool-aid packet poured onto it and chamoy. There is a layer of pickles at the middle and a ton of pickles, chamoy and Kool-aid at the top. We told him there is a snowball down the road from our house that sells raspas. So after our lesson we drove over there and got a piccadilly raspa. It looked nasty, but it actually was pretty good, you just have to mix it all together. I would actually recommend it. It's funky but yummy!
There are a buttload of bugs here. And they love coming into our apartment, it’s also super easy for them to do that also because our backdoor has literally a two inch gap. It’s basically inviting all bugs to come party in our apartment. So we shove a towel under it but that only does so much you know. But Mario our bug guy has sprayed before and we still get huge cockroaches and camel spiders.
HOLY CRAP DID WE GET A SURPRISE THIS WEEK.
So Hna. Donaldson was taking some clothes out of her laundry bin to do a load of laundry BOOM a phat dead WOLF SPIDER. It was huge with its legs curled up underneath it. So she left it there for a day because she didn’t want to deal with it. Then the next day I asked if she still had it chillin with all her clothes. Yep. So I got my pliers out and grabbed it by one of it’s legs. I then thought of the best way to get rid of it. Light it on fire. I’m pretty sure it was the spirit obviously telling me to do it. We literally wrote down a lighter to buy at the store on p-day, but forgot. So the elders came to the rescue. They brought over a couple of lighters and we got lit in the backyard;) Haha
I put the lighter up to it and the spider legs would fling out and expand, that was pretty creepy. The legs eventually burned off but the body was still crispy and not really doing anything. I then thought back to what I was taught to use growing up...laundry lint. The perfect fire starter. Luckily we had some. So we put the spider body into a ball of laundry lint and lit it on fire. It became a crispy black spider lint ball. That was probably one of the funnest times I have had on my mission. Shout out to my parents for teaching me the best ways to light things on fire.
This week had its ups and downs...like any week as a missionary, but something I’ve been working on is my attitude with this whole situation. Holy cow does regular life sound great. But I’ve been called to this area at this time because the Lord needs me to be here. I’m coming up on my year mark this week, which honestly is crazy to me because I feel like I was at the MTC like 3 months ago let alone a year ago. I have loved my mission this far and I know I‘m here still for a reason. I just have to remind myself that. I am so grateful to be serving the Lord for a year and a half. I wouldn’t want to do another thing during this time in my life. He knows me and loves me. I know he is there for all of us. I know Jesus Christ shared his gospel with everyone and I need to do the same thing. I hope that you guys are able to draw closer to our Savior. He lives. He is with us every step of this mortal journey.
Hey again.
This is coming up on the last week of the transfer. May is already over. These months are honestly going by so fast and I can't believe that I hit a year this past week. I have loved my mission so far, I have had some of the best experiences of my life during this past year. It's crazy that I only have 6 months left to spread his gospel to the wonderful people down here in the south tip of Texas. I'm blessed to be here in the TMM. Wouldn't trade it for anything. But to celebrate my year mark we got Red Robin with the elders and ate it at the church. I missed their food. It's been a while. haha
I have had a pretty good week. We've received some referrals that we are hoping to get in contact with, they haven't answered us like at all. Ian is still trying to figure out a date for his baptism so we're praying that can happen sooner rather than later.
There is a recent convert here who loves us, his name is Javier. He is so amazing and we're teaching his daughter Jill. But he loves to give us tons of stuff. So we got like four watermelons last weekend and then this week we got two watermelons and two pineapples. At the end of Monday night we decided to carve our watermelons. I made a monster face and he was puking watermelon so that was pretty great, it also had watermelon hair that kind of looked like french fries sticking out of the top of it's head. My comp carved a pineapple into her watermelon, she obviously would've rather had a pineapple. He also got us some bags from the flea market he works at. They're full of bright colors and they remind me of the stuff my brothers would take pictures of in Guatemala.
Our mission is transitioning into phase 1 of returning back to normality. So p-days we are allowed to hang out with our district and now we're allowed to have district councils in person. HOLY COW you have no idea how good it felt to finally not have a meeting over flipping zoom. It has been about 2 and a half months since my last district council in person. That's pretty ridiculous. We brought lunch and all ate together. Man, human interaction is my favorite. But as some of the elders were leaving they came back in to tell the other Hermanas that their car had a flat tire and if they wanted them to change it. My comp and I said that we can help them so the elders didn't have to worry about it. So after we were done eating we went out to help them change it. IT STARTED DUMPING RAIN ON US. That felt super good. But we were completely soaked after 30 seconds. The other elders came out to leave and asked for help but we said no. They were like okay good because we don't want to be in the rain hahaha. But we got the tire changed so that was funny.
We started doing different challenges for our zone,the ZL's did one of who can do the most push-ups in a minute. So my compa and I were brainstorming the best way to do them. I already knew that the elders would destroy the sisters. So my comp did a few push ups over a bowl of ice cream and every time she went down she would eat some ice cream. She stopped part way and said push ups are hard and started planking and eating all her ice cream. hahaha everyone thought that was pretty great. But for mine I found a part of our wall with no pictures or anything and I put my hands against the wall to do my push ups. We moved the camera so all you could see is me doing "push ups" with a basic background, as if they were regular ones but then my comp zoomed out after like 15"push-ups" and we both just started laughing because I wasn't on the ground. I was voted second place by my ZL so that felt pretty good. hahahah
Every Friday we have been having devotionals with our whole mission. But we had an awesome opportunity to have a Zoom conference with Elder Soares...again! That's the second time he has talked to our mission. #blessed.
He gave an amazing lesson on how we can cry out to the Lord to help us with our unbelief. To help us gain strength to become better. To cry out and just let him know how we are doing. He talked about some difficult times in his family and how he has had to cry out to the Lord on multiple occasions. The spirit was super strong when he was sharing his experiences with us. I love that man. He is such an amazing apostle of the Lord. But when we finished up he was waving goodbye to all of us. And he looked at a few slides of missionaries and he said "Good-bye Hermanas Darling and Donaldson". AN APOSTLE JUST GAVE US A SHOUTOUT???? That was pretty awesome. We felt pretty cool after that hahaha
Right after that our ZL's texted telling us to not let it get to your heads hahaha we were like oh whatever. They were just jealous about it.
Saturday we had to do a Live stream video for our zone's Facebook page. That was super nerve racking, but it went pretty well I think. We did gospel trivia in Spanish. and every correct answer I got I smashed my comp's face in flour and every incorrect answer I gave I got an egg smashed on my head. There were a couple times that egg didn't crack and my comp literaly hit my with her fist, hahahahaha that hurt. But holy crap was it messy. we both got flour and egg ALL over ourselves and my hair got nasty crunchy from dried egg. But the video was a success...hopefully. We had to clean it up and that took a bit.
My trainer also got married the same day. Congrats Audrey and Trevor!!
Everybody's getting married hahaha
That was pretty fun. We played Guess who/20 questions and during the time when a companionship was discussing who they wanted as their person an elder would sing for us. He sang the theme song to Phineas and Ferb, eventually different companionships would join him. It was hilarious. we've been working on making sure our zone is more unified and they seem to like the challenges and games nights we've been doing so that's a blessing. Another challenge we did this week was a lip sync battle. My comp and I dressed up like elders and were showing off the nice ties we have and obviously just making fools of ourselves. After we sent it in people were reacting to it and an elder commented about the ties and if we wanted to trade. hahaha We had both got our ties from our "Dads" so it's considered a posterity tie and also a gift tie. And if there is one thing I've learned from the elders it's that you don't trade gift ties. They were a little upset when we both said no hahaha.
Also shoutout to Oscar (my brother) and Eloise (my cousin) for getting baptized and confirmed last Monday. I was able to watch it and talk to them about the importance of baptism. It was super cute. And fun to so tons of my family members.
I hope you all have an awesome week. And party hard!
Stay 2 Legit 2 Quit.
Con todo mi amor,
Hermana Darling
PitcherzUs changing a tire in the rain
Chillin on the mailbox thing
Mi compa y yo
ELDER SOARES!!!!
Our lip sync outfits
Us and the floor after our Facebook live!
Piccadilly Raspa
A bug stick bug on our window
The dead wolf spider in the laundry basket
Video of me lighting it on fire
I'll send more pics of the other spiders too.
Picts from Oscar's baptism
