Hola Familia!
I am sorry to hear that so many of you were sick this week. Hopefully you will be all back to normal soon. Hermana Cruz was sick yesterday, so we had to stay in the apartment all day. It was kind of a bummer because we didn't get to see our investigators or the ward members at church. She was feeling pretty good by about 4pm, but per mission rules we have to stay in the apartment for 24 hours after being sick. So we watched some of the old LDS videos and munched on some popcorn. Hermana Cruz probably thinks I am weird because I went through about 60 Ensign magazines yesterday looking for pictures and reading different articles. She was going a little stir-crazy by the evening with boredom, but apparently I am good at entertaining myself or I just have so much more stuff to study and prepare still, so I wasn't too bored yesterday. Anyway, this week was a little short because of the late email last week and then not being able to go out yesterday.
I think a good way to describe Spanish right now is that I am floating. I think the stages of learning a language are drowning, floating, swimming and finally Michael Phelps style. So for floating, I can follow conversations and I am not completely lost, but I haven't reached the point where I just jump in and participate fully. When I feel like I can communicate and say what I want to say when I want to say it then I will be swimming. When I can sell 4 stake girls camp leaders a log in Spanish for their first born son then I will have reached Michael Phelps status! :-D I think the hardest part is understanding and then not having the right words of comfort to be able to respond. So right now I'll have to just listen and Hermana Cruz will offer the words of comfort.
So... my little enemigo. The cockroach has gone into hiding. He was chillin up on the ceiling the last time I saw him (of course out of my reach) and he hasn't been seen in a few days. I think he is just lulling me into a false sense of security before him and his buddies try to take over the apartment! I did win one this week. There was a huge roach on the wall in our living room. The biggest one I have seen. I manned up took my shoe off and gave it a good whack. A disgusting, but satisfying crunching sound followed. I guess the bright side is that there are no spiders. (knock on wood)
We do different types of service throughout the week. It feels good just to help someone do their dishes or vacuum their floors. Every Monday we have breakfast with a member in our stake. He is very nice and feeds 6 missionaries and we in turn provide different types of services for him. This week we helped organize some of the names from his family history. He has drawers and drawers filled with names. I was very impressed.
Being a missionary you get to experience lots of different things. I had a good laugh this week with someone trying to hide from us. We made contact with a lady and set up a return appointment. She wasn't there for the appointment, so later that evening we stopped by again. She has a son who is probably about 13 or so. When we walked up the lane, we could see him in the living room. When we knocked on the door, we heard the lady talking on the phone and saying that she would call them back later. The lights were on in this room and the blinds were closed looking from the inside, but open enough from the outside that we could see into the room. The son walked into the same room and then proceeded to crawl to the window and then look from the bottom cracks to see who it was. We were doing our best to not laugh and to pretend not to see him crawl away from the window and tell his mother who was at the door. He then came and answered the door and we asked if his mom was there. He said that she wasn't there right now and that she was at the gym. Hermana Cruz asked what time she would be back and he said that she would be back around 11pm and we should come back tomorrow. We said thank you and headed back to our car. We were impressed by her commitment to fitness because it was only 7pm, so she was going to be at the gym for another 4 hours. Oh the excuses people will come up with...you just have to laugh a little and keep on working. :)
I don't think I told you about my little success last week. We had an appointment fall through, so we decided to try and find an old investigator. We couldn't find her address (it didn't exist) so we were knocking on doors in the apartment complex. That is the hardest part for me. I am always a little nervous that they will say something that I won't understand, so Hermana Cruz does most of the talking. We hadn't found anyone so we were getting back into the car to head to our next appointment. I was once again getting the pleasure of backing the car up... I think I should go buy some glow sticks at the dollar store, so one night when I am backing up the car I can do it with glow sticks! I think that would be much more fun! Back to the story... so Hermana Cruz was getting settled and there was a lady throwing away some garbage and I just felt something and I knew I needed to open my mouth. I called over to her and asked her how her day was. We started with a some introductions and I was explaining who we are and the whole time my mind was pleading for Hermana Cruz to quickly get out the car and join me before this nice lady asked me something and I would just smile blankly. Luckily Hermana Cruz did make it out of the car in time and we ended up having a nice 15 or so minute conversation with her. She invited us to back in a few days to share a message with her. I felt good that I had stepped outside my comfort zone and I had been successful. So we went back a few days later. We decided to teach her the Plan of Salvation. She was really interested in the questions of where we came from, why were are here and where we are going. She had some great questions that we were able to answer and it was one of the best lessons that we have taught. The whole time we were teaching her the spirit was so strong. It was like someone was sitting there with us just radiating a warm, peaceful feeling of love. It's in moments like these that you just know that we have a heavenly father who loves us and he wants us to return to live with him some day.
I love all of you so much. Have another fantastic week and smile because there are no cockroaches in your houses!
Con Amor,
Hermana Klaus
"And it came to pass..."
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