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Monday, January 13, 2014

"Spanish is so beautiful, and English is...important."

Hollllla!
Sorry I haven't emailed in a while! Lots of craziness going on these past few weeks. We have been teachin' and preachin' like always. Trying to find some Hispanics that we can teach. I have a few cool stories I want to share though!
First was this: yesterday we got home from Church to go eat lunch, and boom, guess what? There's a Mexican guy sitting on the steps to our apartment. He was sitting there with his 4-year-old daughter waiting for her mom to come pick her up. He said he lived in the apartments across the street but he was sitting there because he wanted to sit in the sun. Little did he know, he was really sitting there because we have salvation for him! Woohoo! We talked with him and got a return appointment for tomorrow. Soooollliiiddd. He recognized us because we go to El Nopal ("The Cactus"...it's a Mexican restaurant here) sometimes and he works there. Cool story huh?!
This next one is soooooooooo awesome. Pay attention class.
So, there's this less-active family in our ward right? We see the dad all the time at doctor appointments because we translate for him, but I hadn't met the mom or his kids at all during my first transfer. So this past week we knocked on their door and they happened to be there, and they surprisingly let us in! We had a good night with them getting to know them and befriending them. Then we found out that the next day was the oldest son's 9th birthday. We asked if we could stop by the next day and drop off something for him. So that gave us another chance to get in with them!
Wednesday we went and bought stuff for a cake and made it during our dinner hour, and then we took it over to his house that night and had a little birthday party for him -- just me, Hermana Lawrence, and the family. Then the oldest son (the birthday boy!) came up to Hermana Lawrence and said, "I just really want to thank you...." He then told her that he wasn't going to tell anyone that he was 9 years old now because he didn't have any sort of birthday party that day. He went the whole day without telling anyone it was his birthday, but then he said, "Now I can tell everyone that it was my birthday because you came over and celebrated with me." Our hearts just completely melted. We were just SO grateful that Heavenly Father opened the door for us to find out it was his birthday and that we could do something that seemed so small to us, but Heavenly Father knew it meant everything to him. Heavenly Father loves his kids :)
But yeah that's my life! I don't have much to report again.... lo siento mis hermanos. We have been having a tough time getting our investigators to church these past couple weeks. But we did get our main progressing investigator to go to a fireside with us in Louisville last night. It was so awesome. Lots of testimonies and conversion stories shared. They do these mission-home firesides every month, and the Spanish-speaking missionaries can go if they have an investigator who can come. So the place was full of Hispanic investigators and Spanish-speaking missionaries. It was a blast :)
Spanish and English are so interesting. I feel like with English we have sooooo much for freedom of expression. Like, we can make up words or use them in so many different ways. I'm glad I know English. But Spanish is so simple in the way they phrase things. For example, in English we have like 10 different words for something that stinks -- smelly, stinky, nasty, disgusting, blahhhhh. But in spanish it's just "oile feo" which translates to "it smells bad." There are no words for nasty or smelly.... haha. It's very simple. It's just fun to observe the differences in Spanish in English. English-speakers, we complicate things. I try so hard to translate directly into Spanish and find out that there is no word in Spanish for the one I have in English. Hard to explain. Woooooo for different languages!

It's pretty chilly here, but thank goodness not like last week. BRRRR. 40 degrees is warm to me now haha.
Thank you for all your prayers and help and support! I love you and miss you all and loving hearing from you! I'm soooo excited for Robbie & Michelle too! Congrats on the babyyyy! I will try to find some BYU stuff and send it to him soon! ;) BTW. I saw a car with a Y sticker on it the other day here. WOOOHOO! Utah 0 BYU 1. At least we're winning at something now.
Hermana Porter

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