Finishing week sixteen as a missionary

HELLO AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! In case any of you are wondering, I love Christmas. I say it every four and a half seconds and the Christmas lights on the millions of dollars mansions are pretty awesome. I love Christmas. Anyway, let's get right into this.

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• So ya know our roach problem? Yeahhhhh so we has pest control come, and IT GOT WORSE. So that's pretty awesome. They said there would be an "slight uptick of activity for 2-3 days" and it's been 6 days and I'm fairly convinced I'm swallowing roaches in my sleep at this point. Only three roaches have been found on my bed so that's good I guess. Right after pest control came we ignored all the missionary work we were supposed to be doing for 30 minutes and since my companions hate roaches apparently more than me I was holding one of my boots in each hand and smacking them whenever I could see them. For 30 minutes straight. While my comps would scream GET THAT ONE RIGHT THERE or HUGE ONE BY THE SINK or just a string of nonsense words and some prancing around cause one was by their foot. The floor and counter were DISGUSTING for a while cause they kinda blend in with the floor and we have a really speckled countertop so it's very hard to see them and when you kill about a hundred in half an hour there's no way to clean them all up. So we didn't really eat for like 3 days cause going into the kitchen was just off limits. (Don't worry we did in fact clean it up we were just paranoid we missed a roach or two and yes mom I did eat this week don't worry) So yeah it was straight up a nightmare and our poor downstairs neighbors who have to listen to a constant slamming of my handy dandy hunter rain boots. But also they gave us sticky traps which have been pretty effective except now we have half dead roaches lining our counters at all times. So yeah. That didn't really make me laugh but the screams from my companions when they're in the bathroom brings me joy.

• We went on exchanges!! I was with Hermana Valenzuela (who I've been with every exchange of my mission) and I LOVE THAT GIRL she's a party and a half and the fact that she's going home in just over a week is the worst thing to ever happen to me. There was a heck of a lot of laughing going on, most of which I don't know how to explain because it made no sense.

• I CAN DRIVE NOW!! As a missionary you need a certain card to log in to drive and they FINALLY gave it to me so now I can drive. I literally missed driving so much. The only issue is that the exact same day I got my card, they installed a "teen driver setting" in our car so we can only turn up the volume halfway up. So essentially I give up ever having any sort of fun. (It's a joke don't worry) 

• My comps are literally hilarious. Some of the sayings we've had that make me laugh this week are: 1. the word "shoes" instead of "shoot" every time a car is about to kill us all. -sister weight 2. Mazel tov!! or masltoff or mazeltof none of us know how to spell it but that word every time something remotely exciting happens -sister winder 3. "I beg to differ" "THEN BEG" -all of us (but mostly me) 4. "thanks babe" to the tiny lil robot car thing that tells us we're driving too fast.

MILAGRITOS:

• LIGHT THE WORLD!!! Oh my heck I'm obsessed with light the world. Light the World World an initiative that the church has created to help people love each each and go out of their way to serve each other for the month of December. If you aren't lighting the world (WITH LOVE) every day go do that. It has been so fun for me and I've loved it, but also we've invited like all our members to do it, and the miracles that have come out of it are amazing. If nothing else, it'll give you some warm lil fuzzies in your heart and that's pretty dang fun. And if you don't do it every day, do it for one day!! Blessing one person's life is seriously so important and this world needs more good and kind people who will go out of their way to serve others. So be that person! If you want the prompts, go to comeuntochrist.org and scroll down to Service Suggestions. I don't know how to express enough just how good Light the World is. You can quite literally share the light of Christ with other people! And everyone needs Christ, so be the one to give that to others!

• We had Zone Conference! Zone conference is always a party and a half. I love it so much. You just feel so spiritually fed and you get to see missionaries you haven't seen in a while, it's awesome. Our mission president invited us to memorize The Living Christ by Christmas. I literally love this Proclamation. It's so cool. So while you may not memorize it (although that'd be sick if you do) I invite ALL of you to read it!! It's amazing and just pick one sentence to remember this holiday season!

• Some lady who worked at crumbl gave us free cookies cause she's a member so essentially I almost cried it was the sweetest thing in the whole entire world.   

• We had some AWESOME member lessons this week. We shared The Living Christ and Light the World with them and DANG lemme tell you, those two things together are powerful. Because God loves us, He sent us Christ. Because we love God, we can share Christ's light. Simple as that.
  

Anyway, just know that God loves you and I love you all!

- Hermana Allen