Disneyland in Maryland!!!

Hey peeps, how's it going? I hope all is well back in Utah and wherever else I'm sending this email. This week was awesome! We partied hard down here in Maryland, or as the Spanish speakers say, Mariatierra. (Noboby says that. Just me.) We definitely had our fair share of disappointments, but we pulled through and finished up the week well. This was the week I realized that I was in a hard area. I thought it was normal to have not taught a single lesson, not found a single interested person, and not met a single member. (Looking back at that sentence that's comedic cause I am in the Young Single Adult ward. So... single? Get it? Nevermind.) So turns out that's not normal. Apparently most of the new missionaries have in fact talked to others. What a wild concept. The end of this week was better about that though. We had some adventures. But yeah so the YSA boundaries are huge, much bigger than other wards, since there's less eligible people to attend. So there's 3 sets of missionaries assigned to this ward right now. They usually give sisters the nicer/richer areas, just for safety reasons, which usually isn't a problem, but none of the young single adults are living in these nice neighborhoods with literal mansions, so we have approximately 30/300 members in our area. The two sets of elders have all the apartment buildings in their area, along with a college. Pretty dope, they're doing some amazing work. We have a few sets of apartments in our area, so we're trying to focus on those and see what we can do there. Anyway, I'll get into laughs and milagros, and explain the rest of it. 

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• The stellar quotes from this week.
  "Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid"
  "Your feet are like your mom, you only appreciate them when they're gone"
  "There's walnuts in my house like. Everywhere"
  "Do you two (me and sis weight) watch Jeopardy? It's on every night at 7:30"
  *lady trying to speak English and me trying to speak spanish* "I want a ..... bubble?" (Still not a clue what she was trying to say, I felt bad)
  "So we've got 3 which means we've got .... 1, 2, 3....."

• When we were getting back one night, this guy was running as fast as he could (I genuinely don't think I've ever seen anyone run that fast) up the lil spiral ramp thing into our parking garage, and he had his dog with him, a lil tiny fluffy white dog, and it was keeping up, but barely. We drove up a bit behind him and once we got into the parking garage the dog was laying in the middle of the aisle/lane/place where you're supposed to drive in a parking lot (not a clue what that's called) this dog was just laying there not moving, so the guy literally DRAGGED this dog to the side, and the dog didn't even flinch. It just mopped the floor the whole way over. We told the guy he was doing great and his dog was cute and tried to give him a pass along card. 

• I talked about this in my last email, but when you drive along the beltway, you can see the whole temple over the tops of the trees. I thought it was a missionary joke that it's called the Maryland Disneyland, but turns out that's what everyone calls it. Not a whole lot of people know it's a temple, it's just the Maryland Disney Castle. Pretty awesome opportunity to live 15 minutes away from Disney!

• The city where our church is, is called Chevy Chase, but for the first long while, I thought it was called Chubby Chase since that's what it sounded like Sis Weight was saying. I kept feeling bad for Chase and wondering why his only quality was him being chubby. Enough so for them to name a whole town after it, but no. I've got no idea what Chevy Chase means though. 

MILAGRITOS:

• We had our first lesson on Saturday!! It was a member lesson, and he's the sweetest. His name is Abdul, and he was so so kind to meet with us. He told us about some struggles he's been having lately, and asked us to pray for him. So prayers for Abdul! He's amazing!

• Saturday was one heck of a day. On Tuesday, Sister Weight had an interview with President Neilson (our mission president, not to be confused with THE President Nelson) and told him about our struggles finding and contacting people. He gave us permission to knock member doors and some formers if we felt like we should! We were super pumped about that, so on Saturday we schedule time to make that happen. We planned out our route, visiting 5 or 6 members. When we got to the first member's house, we realized it was an apartment. And apartments here are all very locked there's no way to get in. And if you can get in, there's no legal parking for like several miles. So we wandered around for a while trying to find parking, gave up, drove to the church (like 10 minutes away) and wandered around that neighborhood, where we didn't say more than hello to anyone. Also it was a rich neighborhood so there was not a lot of YSAs to be found. Eventually we came back to our apartment to teach Abdul, and right after the lesson, our Zone Leaders called us. They live right by where we just were, and told us there were a ton of people out on the street and a bunch of them were YSAs so we needed to drive there asap and go talk to people. They had no idea we were just there, but because we had been, we knew to ask where to park, so they gave us a location, and we drove there. It ended up being some kind of festival and there was a million people, all with a place to go and no time for missionaries. Street contacting is ROUGH! It feels pretty odd to just walk up to someone and say "Hi I'm a missionary, God loves you! Want a Book of Mormon?" I know thats kinda the whole point, but it is a bit strange. The added dilemma was that Sister Weight had never street contacted, along with every sister in this mission, and almost all of them elders, and the ones who have, did for like a few weeks and that's it. So any of you missionaries who have street contacting tipo, hit me up! Also.... the parking ended up being 10 dollars so thanks a lot elders. Essentially Saturday was rough. And it didn't feel like any miracles, but I'm praying and hoping some good came out of it. 

• CHURCH WAS SO GOOD!! This was my first time going to church here, because of General Conference, and it was amazing. It was fast Sunday, and I remember the crazy stuff that went down during testimony meeting in Boston, plus this is a YSA ward, so I was not expecting much if I'm being honest. But it was incredible. Such good people who are doing so much good in the world.

• I met the bishop for the first time today, and he is unreal. He is bishop for like 300 young single adults, with people constantly moving in and out and aging out and getting married so they're kicked out, and so many people becoming inactive, and he loves every one of them. In ward council, any name that got brought up, he had contacted within the last few days, if not gone to their house or spent hours on the phone with them, or he reads the Book of Mormon over the phone EVERY NIGHT with one member of the ward. He knew everything about everyone, and he's just an insanely good guy. I'm so impressed by people who care so much. 

• We got THREE referrals!!!! (A referral is when a member of the church, missionary from another area, or anyone gives us the name and info of someone who may be interested in hearing our message) This is more than has happened in this area for months, so prayers Christian, Hector, and Isabel want to meet with us!

• We served at St. Camillus again! Oh my word I love that place. This week, I got to use even more Spanish, and I loved every second. I would spend every day there if I could. I'm really killer at saying "Do you want flour or oil?" In Spanish. Woo woo!

• A new spiritual thought me and Sis Weight were talking about, is in 1 and 2 Nephi, the whole account is written like 30 years later. He wasn't quite writing in his journal the night he chopped off Laban's head. But it says "and I was led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do". I don't think Nephi realized he was being led by the spirit at the time, and looking back on his life, he recognized the spirit guiding him every step of the way. I sure know I have done that in my life, so I invite each one of you to look back on your life and see how the spirit has guided you, in addition to looking at some things that don't seem to be working out, and looking at them from the perspective that maybe, just maybe (definitely) God is leading you to an even greater path! 

LOVE YOU ALL!!!! 

- Hermana Allen