8-1-11

Monday: Today was a good Pday. We woke up early, so we could get our
apartment cleaned from the rigorous harships of dealing with 20
year-old men. And it pulled through alright! Then, we went over to the
Zone Leader`s house. they were out of town for the day, but they share
a house with LIsonbee and Elder Tavernier. We went over to make
pancakes. Mine and Lisonbee`s comp. sat on a couch to talk about weird
things like basketball and soccer statististics. It was like another
language. Lisonbee and I had fun in the kitchen, trying to coax
various pancakes out of the frying pan (not into the fire) without
being "wrinkled," and failing almost every time. But the flavor was
delicious, and the amorphorous blobs were all a cheerful golden brown.
Sweet! We all pitched in, and bought a Volleyball to play with, as a
Zone. We did, for a while, before it rained, and we had to go eat
lunch at the Mall. We had Churrascos at a place called, "Juan
Jaestro." The meat was seasoned! it was so delicious, my mouth was
having a meltdown. It was awesome! We wrote the family. Devin wrote
for the first time in a while. He`s excited for his Sophomore year
that`s coming up. We got home, and I had a monster migraine that
incapacitated me. ouch.

Tuesday: Today changed the Mission again. Usually, we have a
"Sanctification Week" for the first week of every transfer. During tht
week, we do 200 contacts, instead of 240, so we can find new people to
teach. Now, we`re going to have the Sanctification Week for the first
week of every month, and this week, we have to do 490 contacts. Not
impossible. But talking to 80 people a day, trying to have real
conversations with them, is challenging. After the Distrizona we did
divisions with Elders Gomez and Cotrell in Santa Barbara, so I went
there with Gomez. I got a letter from Alan. He reminded me of some
really precious moments from our friendship. I really feel like he`s
my brother, and will be my best friend forever. We went around, doing
80 contacts throughout the day. There have been so many deaths here,
lately. Their investigator`s uncle hung himself 3 days ago! Crazy! We
met a lot of mean people today. We contacted a lady, and she said
she`d call the cops if we didn`t leave her alone right there. Another
girl started running waway when we started talking to her. Then she
stopped, and said we`d frightened her. Geez. My Sector did 91
contacts. It`s a good start.

Wednesday: I`m exhausted. I mean, "Whew!" We`ve done the whole week`s
worth of work, and then some, in two days. And we`re still not even
halfway done. But I`m loving it. I don`t know why. It`s hard. People
still reject us. But I guess that now that we all have this
crazy-ridiculous goal to achieve, it makes me want to do my part. I
don`t want to let anyone down, least of all, the Lord. So we keep on
going. While I was with Elder Gomez, he told me about his
companionship. He said they were fine now. Elder Cotrell apparently
got upset with me, after I told him that not completing with the
Lord`s standards was "unacceptable." I didn`t WANT to be hard, but he
just doesn`t feel guilty for failing the Lord. It had to be done. We
had lunch with the Rodriguez family. I think they like me. Sis.
Rodriguez family. I think they like me. We did all of our work today,
and saw a miracle. We always pass by this one lady, Blanca. She never
lets us in. But we`re asking God for miracles, in our prayers, and
Blanca let us in, after a month of daily pestering and wants to hear
more.

Thursday: Today was good. It rained a little, but it came in little
spurts that were harmless. We had a great plan in the morning, to
visit all of our investigators that are only available on Thursdays.
Unfortunately, they all told us that they were unavailable. That
sucked...again...like last week. But we had a good weekly planning
session, anyway. We`re gonna try and help the people we`re teaching in
creative, new ways. The things of the Missiopn are to prepare us for
life after. Like how contacts are meant to help us date, and find
worthy women. but something I`ve realized, is that when they tell us
to be creative, that carriews into dating, too. I helped Elder Burch
learn which prepositional phrases are accompanied by which verbs
during our language study. Then, we went out and did contacts all
afternoon. We found some really cool people. That, in itself, is a
neat Miracle. There was a woman from Argentina, who has only been here
for 3 months. She used to live a block away from the Buenos Aires
Temple. Then we found 3 other people who let us in their homes. Lots
of work is getting done this week. Cotrell and Gomez have 301 for the
week.

Friday: With 15 months in the Mission, I`ve only got 9 months left.
Onto the single digits, baby! I`m getting older in the Mission. It`s
interesting talking to mothers who have their sons serving Missions,
getting to know their perspective, and trying to imagine how my Mom
talks to other people about me. Did she ever cry over me? How often
does she thing of me? Entirely selfish thoughts, I know. But hey, who
doesn`t want to feel their mother`s love, after not seeing her for a
year and a half? We trudged around in the rain, and visited some
less-active members. None of them answered their doors. We had lunch
in an enormous mansion. i mean, they had a pool and a soccer field in
their yard. Their bathroom had a one-way mirror-wall, with a view of
the forest. Very disconcerting. Our first contact was funny. We were
greeted by a young 17 year-old boy. He raced up to get his parents and
never returned. We waited 10 minutes by the wide-open door, and they
never came. huh. We were tempted to keep the door open when we left,
but thought better of it. We`re on track with our contacts. We met an
agnostic that believed in reincarnation because he didn`t think it was
fair that someone be born without a leg. We taught about the
Restoration and the Plan of Happiness that we have, because of the
REstored Authority. He said he`s very interested. My Districts`s doing
well, too. They`re seeing their own miracles.

Saturday: Elder Burch and I discovered that I have bags under my eyes.
Well, dang it. That`s not cool. We`re both really tired. He may be
even more tired than I am, seeing as how he has insomnia. But we
figured out why this week has been so hard on our eagerness: we`ve
been doing 4x as many contacts which means we get 4x as many slammed
doors. This sector has just been hardened. We`ve spoken with so many
people this week, with very little success. We got to eat lunch with
Hna. Roa, today. She`s my new favorite Sister in the Ward. We actually
stayed and talked for a while after lunch. She talked to us about
Marriage (I`m not sure why), and it was full of really helpful advice.
But I`ll be darned if I say it didn`t make me miss girls. When we got
home, Burch and I talked about all our past girl experiences. It seems
so surreal, like it was someone else`s life. It`s actually kind of
frustrating, not being able to feel like those things were MINE. It
will be hard to just jump back into the rold of a normal person.
REALLY hard. How can I do that? I wrote a letter to Sis. Black. Her
husband died not long ago. We also heard there was a
"mini-depression." today :O

Sunday: I had a dream that I was back home, at the Christofferson FHE
and I saw Colten, and Aunt Leslie and everyone. I was so happy. Then I
woke up in Chile. I`m not going to say it was a bad thing, but those
kinds of dreams make it really hard to be "here" and happy. Even
thought it feel like another life and everything, I`ve just felt kinda
lonely lately. This Ward hates MIssionaries, spies on us, and judge
us, without even knowing us. My heart just felt a litle heavy this
morning. It hasn`t felt like that in a while, so I can`t really
coplain. A Scripture I`ve found in my personal study to help this, is
in D&C 136:31. It says that the Lord`s people need to be tried
sometimes. The Lord`s people, as well as the non-believers. It`s part
of life. What am I gonna do? call the Waaaaaambulance? Trials are just
easier--as much for others as for yourself--when you take them in
stride, and try to do your best with what you`re given. We met as a
Stake this morning, to listen to a Seventy. I do`t know what his name
is. He gave a good talk about forgiveness. We had chicken and rice
with a less-active member (she works Sundays). We spent the afternoon
finishing our contacts. We did it! Woot! My comp. was feeling sick, so
he`s asleep already.