"If I had to wear ugly clothes, I'd wear that."

Hi all!! I hope you all had a great week! This week was awesome! Mission life is a good life. This week was what we have called our party week! In one week, we have celebrated my birthday on Tuesday, my 2 months of being a missionary, Sister Weight's 8 months of being a missionary, and Sister Weight's birthday, which is today! It's been awesome, and pretty much every morning waking up has consisted of "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!" or "HAPPY __ MONTHS!!" and a balloon bring chucked at the other. We have an absurd amount of balloons in the apartment somehow. But anyway thank you all SO much for all of the emails and messages I got on my birthday, you all are THE sweetest!! Literally made my life just how many people cared and emailed. I love you all! Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY SISTER WEIGHT WOO WOO she's literally amazing and practically has the entirety of the book of Mormon memorized at this point its really insane. She's so cool and I love her. Happy 20!!

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• I've literally never met a state that is proud to be a state besides Texas. Maryland though, is not as proud as Texas, but sure is very proud to be Maryland. In the words of my companion "Maryland just really loves Maryland" I don't know if they love themselves, or if they just love their flag. It's the ugliest flag in America but honestly, it's growing on me. I never ever thought I'd say that. Their flag is on every flagpole, every license plate, every pair of socks, the list goes on and on. Almost every car has a bumper sticker of a crab silhouette with the Maryland flag on it. That's my goal is to get one of those before I leave. But everyone go Google their flag and tell me how ugly it is cause I really kinda love it now. Whoops.

• On Tuesday, we were getting Chipotle and we ran into some other sisters in the mall and stopped to talk, and a few minutes later, this lady came past, does a full on U turn (in her lil mall wheelchair) and pretty much screams for everyone to hear "YALL FROM THAT CHURCH AINT YA??" and thought she was about to kill us but turns out she was just loudly friendly. We gave her a passalong card and told her to call us, and she was busy so she left. Then, a few minutes later we were walking to a car and we hear "OH ITS YALL AGAIN" and it's her, again! So we stopped to chat and she asked us if we could give her a ride to the bus stop, and as missionaries we can't give rides, so we explained why we couldn't, and then she asked if we could show her information for the bus stops and such, but we don't have Google on our phones, so we couldn't help with that either. I felt bad being like "hey join our church but also we can't help you with anything but I swear we're helpful" but hey she didn't seem too upset. Then she continued to talk to us as we walked our separate ways across the parking lot so we just kept yelling back and forth. Good times good times. Also she didn't call us. 

• A group where we pretend to be nephites and lamanites. Wow. This Facebook group. Truly something else. When you're on Facebook like 5 hours a day, and most all your friends are missionaries, some weird recommendations pop up. My new favorite has got to be this group where people pretend to be nephites and lamanites. The people (90% missionaries) just tell stories about their lives but they write it in the wording of the book of Mormon, and all the comments are too. 20% of me thinks these missionaries should spend their time not writing "The Book of Elder Bready" with 8 chapters so far and chapter headings and footnotes, but 80% of me thinks it's funny let's be honest. You can tell you're a bored missionary when this genuinely makes you laugh. Someone send help. 

MILAGRITOS:

• We had Zone Conference this week! Oh my word, it was amazing. There was so much spiritualness and amazing insights that I felt exhausted after. It was awesome. The Lord loves His children! I am so honored to be able to serve Him. 

• I had my first real investigator lesson this week! It was awesome. Joey is SO COOL. He grew up with members of the church living next to him, and they made a huge impact on his life. He has already read the Book of Mormon, and knows a ton about our church. The whole lesson was spent with him asking deep insightful questions and us answering them. It was lowkey terrifying and one time I jumbled up my words and preached false doctrine so that was awkward but it was kinda funny. He is awesome,  and wants to meet with us again. He doesn't seem what we call "golden" where he's ready to get baptized the second we ask, because he knows so much about our church, but has a lot of out of context things he's noticed from his neighbors, with not a lot of full knowledge. Which leads to a million questions. So now we get to teach him the full thing! Can't wait! If you all want, if you could pray that Joey's curiosity about the church turns into a desire to be a part of it, that would be awesome. 

• We went to my favorite place! The St. Camillus food pantry! I barely got to speak spanish at all, cause they put me in a weird spot where I talked to like two people, so I'm not gonna lie I was a little depressed about that, but esta bien. It was still awesome, and I love all the people there. 

• We met our friend Pryncess!! We had heard so much about her and had texted several times, but finally got to meet on Thursday night. Oh my heck, she's amazing. She is SO funny and me and her just vibe and she told me "Oh my gosh I think I saw that same sweater at the store and I thought to myself man if I was a missionary and had to wear ugly clothes I'd wear that" and I DIED it was too funny. Oh man I love her. She has been taught all the lessons like 52 times for the past two years, but has had some struggles and hasn't been able to get baptized so it would truly be A WHOLE MILAGRO if she was able to get baptized soon. SO MANY PRAYERS!! She came to church on Sunday for the first time in forever and said she's been reading the Book of Mormon for the last couple of weeks. She's amazing! 

• Me and Sis. Weight have discovered this Facebook page called Book of Mormon Central. Y'all it's amazing. They have several "evidence" videos of the book of Mormon, and theyre insanely cool. Of course, it's not necessary to have evidence videos of it in order to know it is true, but when you already know it's true, knowing that Lehi and Nephi's travels actually line up exactly with real life places near Jerusalem, it's SO cool!!! 

• We went to Institute for the first time, since we havent been able to go before, and it was so cool! It's obviously for the YSA ward but the missionaries try to come too. It's taught by a guy who taught seminary for a while and taught at Davis High for a few years. He's incredible I want him to have Institute every single night. 

• In my free time, I've been working on a map of the Book of Mormon, and a timeline of it. The map is taking me AGES cause there's no fast way to do it correctly, so it's taking 72 years, but it's so cool. I've already learned so so much. 

Anyway that's about it! I hope you all have an awesome week! If you'd like, please pray for Joey and Pryncess to have some miracles in their lives! Also, I hate asking for this, because I really am genuinely loving it here, but if you could all pray that I could get to Uruguay soon, that would be awesome! They are sending missionaries there at the beginning of next month, which is AMAZING! I'm not a part of that group, but Uruguay needs missionaries. I said this in a few emails earlier, but they're having to turn down interested people because of lack of missionaries. So I seriously love it here and could live here forever, but Uruguay needs the gospel. And I should probably learn Spanish ahaha. Whatever the Lord wants, will happen, but prayers never hurt! Thank you all!!

- Hermana Allen