Hermana Grondel: Feb. 3rd

Wow, the Lord has been listening to my thoughts and prayers this week, which has been both good and bad.

A couple of Examples...

We had lunch planned with a member and had an appointment right before it and right after it. Well, in the appointment before, we were served a huge lunch and were running late for the appointment after lunch. Well, I was praying "Please, let Hermana Nolvia forget we have lunch with her today." Well, we went to lunch, and she had completely forgotten! I hoped certain people would not be home (terrible, right? I wanted to visit some other people) and they weren't there when we passed by! I jokingly said we should teach about Eternal Marriage to one of the recent converts in the branch ( We really just wanted to help him understand the Book of Mormon better) and he started asking all sorts of questions about eternal marriage in our lesson! I had been talking about how much I missed going to a sit-down restaurant, and today we went to Denny's! (Okay, that one was planned, ahaha!) But it has been interesting. So, pretty much Heavenly Father and I are on the same page for a lot of things.

I have felt so blessed this week with my companion. Almost all of our citas fell through this weekend, but we still felt so happy! Hermana Porter says it is because we put patience as one of our goals for the week, haha!

GUESS WHAT?! So, I still sleeptalk sometimes. And this week, Hermana Porter told me I had been sleeptalking EN ESPAÑOL!!!!!! ÉXITO!!!!!!!

Other funny story. So, remember Daniel, whom I mentioned last week? Well, this week we had planned to teach him the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity. When he came to the lesson, he just happened to have his girlfriend with us. I thought we were doing alright, making our way through the law of chastity, when he mentioned that Hermana Porter and I were both bright red. Hahaha, even when I feel comfortable, my face still gives me away!

Okay. So. We had a baptism last week, right? Well, one of the things we do as missionaries is fill out baptismal records. We thought we were covered when we noticed one very important thing missing: the signature of Jaline's grandmother. We were supposed to turn in the records on Tuesday, but asked if we could give the Zone Leaders our records on Thursday because we had an appointment on Wednesday, and the grandmother could sign it then. Todo Cheque (It's all good). Fast forward about 20 minutes when they called to say that Hermana John (who works in the office) said that she needs the record Wednesday, so we need to have the record signed by about 9 in the morning Wednesday so we could run to the elders' house and give it to the AP who was doing exchanges with the elders in the ward. Puchika. Jaline lives in an area called Campisa, a richer part of our area where we need them to call ahead to the guards to let us in. In addition, it is about 30 minutes by foot to reach her house, and Julissa was working that day, so she couldn't give us a ride. Okay, that's alright, we thought, we don't have anything firmly planned until 4, we can head over there in the afternoon. We call Julissa. The Grandmother won't be home until 5:30, and she is going to call us later to confirm she called the guards. At this point, we are freaking out a bit, but figure we can move some things around and get there before dinner at 6 and our meeting with the ward council at 7, where we canNOT be late. Fast forward to 5 when we walked around for an hour trying to find someone with a cell phone that has salgo (something like minutes. People pay for minutes, not with a monthly plan). NO ONE HAD SALGO! Al fin, at 6, we found a phone and called Julissa. She said the grandmother was home and the guards knew we were coming. Because of a lack of time, we grabbed a taxi and started to drive for Campisa. When we got there, we were shocked to discover that our taxi man had forgotten his license, so we had a bit of trouble entering the neighborhood, but we got there. PHEW. So, we called the elders at night to find out when Elder Loyo (the AP) would be going back to his area. They said to pass by their house the next morning. As we were trying to cross the street, the national police stopped in front of us. That turned out to be a blessing. They stopped traffic for us so we could pass! I was SO grateful to get that baptismal record out of our hands and to the AP. So. Stressful. A Testimony that we always need to double check what we need!

So, we went to the house of a member this week, and this person has cats. The last time we visited them, they had two kittens, but this time, they only had one. While there, they told us one of the kittens had died. They then told us that one of the big cats ate the other kitten...wow.

Other than that, an incredible miracle happened on Friday. We called our amazing Zone Leaders at 11 to see if they could come with us to an appointment at 1. They came and made all the difference. They helped two of our investigators, Elizabet and Julissa, set a baptismal date for this Saturday, the 8th!!! It was a marvelous lesson, and I am SO grateful! I am also a bit sad because transfers are this week, and I think I am going to go to a new area. However, I will not know until later tonight or tomorrow morning. AHHHHHHHH! I JUST WANT TO KNOW! okay. That is all. :)

Today, Hermana Whittle, Hermana Bahr, Hermana Porter and I all went out to DENNY'S! It was delicious and so fun. Later we had water balloons, ice cream sandwiches and homemade guacamole and homemade tortilla chips. YUM!

I LOVE YOU ALL SO VERYYYYY MUCH!!!!!!!!!!

SIGUE ADELANTE!

LOVE,

Hermana Grondel :)