there's someone YAKKING outside

Howdy!! Here's a hefty week. We witnessed a lot more miracles than can fit in one email and laughed harder than I have in a while. Life is pretty dang good. 

MILAGRITOS:

• Here we have a milagrito that made me laugh. There's a lot of people here who are learning English, and I always ask them what their favorite word is in English. It's my favorite question cause their answers are just so random. I ask Sarita what her favorite word was (she's 8 years old and just the cutest in the world) and she thinks for a second and then gets a huge smile on her face and yells "I LUB YOU" and honestly it was one of the best moment of my life. Lets make "I lub you" all of our favorite words. 

• We have been talking ALL week about miracles. Me and Hermana Gentry have decided that every day we just pick a different scripture and that's our scripture of the day, and everyone we come in contact with that day, we share that with them. And we've watched as the Lord has guided us with every scripture. And for some random reason (aka the Lord teaching us things we needed to learn) our scriptures for like 4 different days this week were about MIRACLES and how we need to have faith if we want to see miracles. And boy. Did we see miracles. On Tuesday night we just had a night FULL of them. It was one of those days in the mission and I guess in life where you just go to bed with your heart singing and your soul rejoicing. Kinda awesome. We had three different phone calls, quite literally back to back, and we didn't think a single one of them would pick up. But they did and we watched as the Lord worked wonders. 

• First was Richard, who is a member of the church but hasn't come in a LOT of years. One of our friends told us about him so we gave him a call and had the most random lesson in the world, talking about miracles, and the spirit world, and the Restoration of the church, and so many things. And as I was talking and as Hermana Gentry was talking we both said things that we were like "uhhh what?? Why did we just say that?" But he let us know that he was super grateful to talk to us about all those specific things. MILAGROS!! 

• Next was Jonatan. Dude is so cool. Me and Hermana Cabrera found him in a miracle way a few weeks ago, we were street contacting and it was one of my first street contacts in this area, and it was just downright awful. I said all the wrong things and still he gave us his number and said he wanted to learn more about Jesus. Thanks Heavenly Father. Then this week we stopped trying to contact him cause he wasn't responding to any of our texts, and then the literal next day we saw him in the street, and he was like "hey I'm so sorry I haven't been responding to your texts do you think you could call me tonight though it's my first free night in a while" so we did just that. And he told us that when he was a kid he went to our church a few times with his fam, and then they stopped going. He knows a lot of people in the ward, and remembers a little little about the gospel, but loves it all when we teach it to him. He has seen so many miracles in his life and has so much faith. He came to our sports night on Friday and became friends with one of the members in the ward who really needs friends (and apparently turns out they know each other from wayyy long ago) so anyway this dude is a whole miracle and he didn't come to church cause he slept in, but I have so much faith that the Lord didn't just give us this many miracles for it to stop here, so please please please keep Jonatan in your prayers!! 

• Next we had Jennifer, whos information was passed to us by some other missionaries, and she is so amazing. We explained the restoration and she literally said. That's so cool. How do I get one of those books of Mormon that you're talking about? And we said great question, we can help you with that. Her biggest concern was that we believed in witches. She kept asking us if we believed in them cause apparently one of her coworkers is a witch. So that's cool. We told her we weren't witches and she seemed pretty content with that. 

• Also keep in mind all those calls were in the span of an hour and a half. If I had room or time to write all the miracles that happened in every other hour and a half, I would. But this seems pretty sufficient for now. 

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• We have our party night every week, with drunk people screaming all night, and this week at about 1am someone was violently puking outside our window and Hermana Gentry just full volume goes "there's someone YAKKING outside" anyway so you can laugh or you can cry. We laughed at that one. 

• Also in the middle of the night at about 4am there was a truck backing up and very loudly BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEPing and Hermana Gentry literally laughed out loud at it. Why was she laughing at the truck beeping? No one knows. But did I definitely wake up and was I definitely confused? Yes. I just don't sleep anymore it's great fun. 

Other good quotes:

1. "OKAY dr. sueSS!!" - hna salcedo 
2. "do NOT honk me" - me
3. "I get friends cause I have multiple personalities" - hna gentry 
4. "Less cigarettes!! More.... vinaigrettes!!" - hna gentry
5. "puh fact puh fact puh fact puh fact" "get it? Cause I'm spittin facts!" - hna gentry
6. "Careful that chicken nugget is really hot" -hna gentry "that's okay so am i" -me *me bites chicken nugget and immediately burns my tongue* 

• These emojis

• We have learned this week that when just two white girls walk down the street, you get catcalled quite a bit. Quite fun to either try to teach them the gospel or just intimidate them or just sometimes pretend you don't speak any Spanish. Really fun game we play every day. Boosts my self esteem tbh. 

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: 

Okay yet again we've had another week of miracles and knowledge building and so much good. So to condense it into one spiritual thought is SO HARD but here we are. I finished the Book of Mormon this week, and started it again, and it was SO fun. I just have so much love for that book and for our Savior who made it possible. When I was reading in 1 Nefi 3:7 (a scripture that gets read a whole lot) it said "I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them." And we always focus on the "go and do" part. But I started thinking about the fact that the Lord HAS provided a way. And more specifically, in Spanish it says a way as in a path, a camino. He's provided a path for us. And it got me thinking, that is not an easy path to create. A path for every one of us to walk on so that we can follow the commandments, but it's there. He's set it before us, before He even commanded anything of us. But what is that path?? And then my brain went to a scripture that I had read just a few days earlier, in Ether 12:11 that says "in the Gift of His Son, God that prepared a more excellent way" and I had always thought of that as like a way of doing things, a more excellent manera, if you speak Spanish. But yet again, it says that God prepared a more excellent path. In the gift of His Son, God has prepared us a path to take. A glittery and shiny and pretty path, through an experience in a Garden that was far far less glittery and shiny and pretty. That through His atonement and His grace, the path is paved for us. We don't have to wonder where we're going, we simply have a path, just catered for us. In the gift of His Son. And boy am I grateful for that path. 

I love you all!! Have SUCH a good week!! Party hard and look for miracles!! 

- hermana allen