Week 28

Buenos dias familia!

I hope you all had a wonderful week!  My week has been full of lots of fun.  Drum roll for my new area!  I am in El Paso 3rd ward.  So my new area touches my old area.  This area is pretty new.  It was opened last transfer, so we have a lot of work ahead of us.  I am finishing training a new sister.  Her name is Hermana Mitchell and I love her!  She is awesome and we are going to have a great companionship together.  I am so excited to be paired up with Hermana Mitchell we went on exchanges last transfer and after the exchange I had the thought that I would like to be her companion one day.  I didn’t think it would happen so soon, but surprise surprise!  She is from a small town in California.  She is only 19, so my first young companion!  I can’t even tell the difference.

My new area is pretty small but that is conducive to the fact that my new area is a BIKE AREA!!!  Yep I am officially a missionary because I am riding around El Paso on a lovely purple bike in my skirt with my shiny black placa!  We had quite the adventure in walmart picking out our bikes.  Trying to test drive bikes with flat tires in skirts was interesting to say the least.  Finally we found some help to get the bikes in working order.  Then we had the exciting experience of getting all of our food, our bikes and our new helmets all onto the bus.   We were very proud of ourselves for figuring out how to use the bike rake on the front of the bus.  The whole way home we kept reminding ourselves, “now we can’t forget to get our bikes!”  I mean how sad would it be to watch the bus drive away with our brand new bikes?!  Don’t worry we didn’t forget.  We were pretty excited to take our bikes out for the test drive.  We rode about two blocks when the chain popped off Hna Mitchell’s bike and a washer fell off of my seat!  Talk about companion unity!  Our brand new bikes break at the same time! Yay!  Haha.  They were quick easy fixes and we haven’t had any more problems.  The only part that is difficult are all the hills.  Basically our whole area is one big hill.  Which is wonderful when our investigators live downhill, but when we have to go up hills we huff and puff like two out of shape missionaries and wonder if we will ever make it to the top.  Now I don’t want to brag or anything, but if I get to be on a bike for a long time I am going to have a very nice pair of legs! Hehe maybe missionaries can’t say things like that…  So day one was very successful on our bikes, but day two was a different story.  I think people two streets over could hear us moaning and groaning because we were soooo sore!  When we first sat down on our bikes we both had to stand right back up because it hurt to sit!  A week later we are doing much better, but we still have our moments.  I think I have about 6-10 bruises on my legs from varying degrees of terrible dismounts.  My personal favorite is when Hermana Mitchell is up front and I see someone to talk to and then I call stop stop stop stop and then she turns and looks at me like what’s wrong and I just say look someone to talk to.  We found lots of new investigators this week from having the bikes, so I know they are a blessing.  We actually aren’t on bikes all the time.  We have two sets of missionaries in our ward and so every other week we have access to a truck!  I feel pretty cool that I get to drive around in a truck.  We had Zone training this week, so I actually got to drive back into my old area to the Redd chapel and it felt weird to go back.  We also had a special blessing from the Lord because while we were driving back, a golf ball sized rock hit our windshield while we were driving on the freeway.  I know the Lord looks out for his missionaries because my arms didn’t even flinch an inch even though my heart went through the top of my chest.  We were so grateful that we were able to get home safely, but we do have to fix the windshield of the truck this week because there is a pretty big crack in it.  

I am not sure why some weeks are jam packed with interesting things to write about and others take a little more thought to what happened that was new and interesting enough to write about.  Another get the heart pumping story happened on the second day here.  We were walking toward a less active member’s home around 8pm, so it was dark outside.  All of the sudden we hear this mad barking and we see this huge pitbull charging along the fence, but what causes my heart to stop is that there is a huge gaping hole in the fence.  I instantly grabbed Hna Mitchell’s backpack and jerked her backwards away from the angry mass of dog jumping through the fence and while I was mentally thinking what in the world are we going to do the dog’s chain snaps tight.  We both were glad that the chain held and since then we have taken different routes to that sister’s home.

I am so happy to be here right now.  I know there are special people here in this area and we are already working hard.  One experience that I would like to share this week is from one of our new investigators.  This was our first lesson and we were talking about Christ and his ministry on the earth and I don’t really remember what led to this point in the conversation, but I started testifying about prayer and I remembered the scripture in 2 Nephi 32:8-9 that talks about we need to pray always and only Satan would ever tell us not to pray.  I said that we are always worthy to pray and when we don’t feel worthy to pray that is Satan lying and we should pray all the harder.  She started to tear up and then said that she had just been praying about that very question.  She said she had been asking God if she was worthy to pray and she said I answered her question, without even knowing that she had asked it.  I felt very humbled that the Lord was able to answer her prayer through me and it was a testimony builder that the Lord know each and every one of us and that he will always answer our prayers.

I love each and every one of you so much!

Con Amor,

Hermana Klaus