I'm pretty sure Jesus has a BOUGIE porch swing

It was such a good good week full of answered prayers, good lessons, good missionaries, and a good Heavenlh Father. LETS GOOOO!!! 

MILAGRITOS:

• We are teaching a sweet woman named Susana. She is seriously incredible. Hermana Cabrera found her on Facebook and she was all hesitant about talking to strangers (as she should be) but we met in person for the first time this week and she literally walked 30 minutes to be there, in the cold. She's so amazing. We we able to give her a Libro de Mormón which she was SO grateful for. I had marked some scriptures in it, and some chapters I loved, along with wrote her a little note at the front. And she was like "oh you left something in the book here you go" and tried to hand it back to me, but when I explained it was a note for her, she was seriously so touched. She says over and over she just can't believe we pray for her, even though we don't know her (so if anyone wants to pray for Susana, that would be awesome) She's so sweet, and honestly just so lonely. It's pretty evident no one ever listens to her and she doesn't have anyone to talk to, and it makes me want to just spend hours with her just listening about her life. But obviously I get to teach her that Someone IS listening, and also I get to listen for a few minutes, which is actually so fun. 

• A quote from hermana Gentry that blew my mind "Don't call that crazy. Crazy is of men. Miraculous is of God." 

• We were able to visit our friend Darío for the first time in person, cause he lives kinda far away, and we were able to teach him about the Book of Mormón, and give him one. He is so amazing, he has such faith in Jesus Christ and God, but he really has no idea who They are, so we get to teach him everything from scratch. It's really amazing to watch someone's eyes as they realize the true nature of God, that He loves them SO personally and has a plan for them. Kinda amazing. 

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• I have discovered, from my sweet comp, that everyone in South America learns in school that there are only 5 continents. And I'm pretty sure most of the whole world too. Cause they don't count Antarctica and North and South America are just one continent. Just. One WHOLE BIG CONTINENT. Anyway so that blew my mind this week. Apparently that's why there's 5 Olympic rings, for the 5 continents. So we've had a lot of arguments (friendly loving ones of course) over that this week. 

• We are teaching a little 11 year old named Biron. He is SERIOUSLY the cutest kid ever. We had a lesson this week with all 4 hermanas in our ward. And at the end I said to Biron "do you have any questions for the new hermanas" and I was expecting "what's your favorite color" or something like that. But nope. This kid goes "so now we have the world with lots of different lands, but before it was all one big island and then it split up. How did that happen??" And we were like "uhhhh what??" And then we answered it with our limited geography vocabulary that we have in Spanish. I think he got the gist of it ahaha. 

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: 

Okay we're here with TWO spiritual thoughts this week cause I couldn't choose, cause my personal studies have been SO good this week.

1. I was reading the scripture this week "ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you" and I was thinking about the fact that it is literally A PROMISE from the Lord that He will open the door if we knock. He has promised. And He is not a breaker of promises. So why do we sometimes doorbell ditch Christ?? Why do we sometimes get up the courage to knock on the door and ask Him for what we want, or ask Him for help, or just to talk to Him, and then we get scared and run off or get impatient and wander off or think no one is home so we give up? He PROMISED He will answer. So keep on knocking. Keep on praying. Sleep on the porch if you need to, I'm sure He has one of those fancy porch swings that's actually a whole bed. Because maybe He's teaching you something on that porch of His. Maybe someone else is coming to His porch that you need to meet. Maybe there's someone walking down the street you can invite over to sit on the porch with you. I don't know what you need to learn on the porch, but He's gonna come. And I imagine that when we knock, and then give up or get scared or grow impatient and wander off, and He opens that door, ready to greet you and give you a hug and talk for the whole evening, and you're not there anymore, His face falls. And I don't love imagining that. So imagine His face when He opens up the door and you're still there, waiting on His promise. He's probably definitely SO excited. And He's got triple the amount of homemade cookies He had then when you first knocked. So stick it out. Sleep on the porch. And WHEN He answers, thrive in His company. Cause He sure loves you.

2. Wisdom and Knowledge. Woah. So cool. I did like a 3 day deep dive into the difference of wisdom and knowledge. And a lot of it is hard to explain without using Spanish, but I'll do my best. In Spanish, there are two words for the word "know". We have "conocer" and "saber". To conocer something is to know a person, be familiar with a place, or personally KNOW something. (Idk how to explain it) but saber is to know facts. For example "I know Jesus Christ lives" is "saber", but "I know Jesus Christ as my friend is "conocer". BUT get this. The word knowledge is "conocimiento" and wisdom is "sabiduria" aka knowledge is to KNOW something and wisdom is to know something. If yall are picking up what I'm getting at. AKA the literal scriptural definition of knowledge is essentially the divine truths you learn from revelation and the spirit. And the definition of wisdom is the gift from God to know to judge correctly, which is obtained from experience and study. ESSENTIALLY we need to work on developing BOTH wisdom and knowledge and we need to both conocer AND saber the gospel. For all yall who speak Spanish, my favorite thing now is to read the scriptures in English, find the scriptures with the word "know" and then search and see if it uses the word saber or conocer cause it really gives it a whole new meaning. Anyway that was a whole rant and I hope any of that made sense. Essentially wisdom and knowledge are so amazing.

ANYWAY!! GO CHASE YOUR DREAMS AND KEEP ON KNOCKING ON JESUS' PORCH AND SOMEONE GO FIND HOW MANy CONTINENTS THERE REALLY ARE!! LOVE YOU ALL AND CHRIST LOVES YOU MORE!! 

- hermana allen