These chicken nuggies are lookin' pretty chicken nuggie-y

Sup yall!! Yeesh. This was a WILD week. It's weeks like this that just make me SO grateful to be a missionary, so grateful for the area I'm in, so grateful for good people, and most especially, SO grateful for this gospel that we have, and for a God who loves us so infinitely and for a Redeemer who gives us the ability to hope. Life is so good. 

We had transfers this week, which was kinda wild. I was living in a house with 4 hermanas, all sharing a ward (and having the first and second biggest areas in the mission) and what happened with transfers is that one hermana from each companionship stayed here, and one from each went to a different area. So Hermana Gentry and I got ditched by our comps this week, and we now have an ENOURMOUS area, and are in charge of a whole ward. Let's just say we're a little busy. 

MILAGRITOS:

• First, I miss my comp Hermana Cabrera so much, she is seriously so incredible and hilarious and all things good in this world. In addition, it is a whole miracle I'm comps with Hna Gentry. I'm so seriously grateful for that woman, she is genuinely one of the funniest people I've ever met and SUCH a hard worker and also our brains work the same to the point its a little scary. That's all. This is boutta be a SICK transfer and us being comps is a testament that God is good and He knows EXACTLY what we need when we need it. 

• We had stake conference this week, which was so amazing. A few area seventy were there, and it was so good. Definitely so spirit led and spirit filling. But what was a milagro to me, even more so than the actual meeting, was beforehand. You should know two things about the people of Uruguay. 1. They can't handle winter and the whole world shuts down once it's even a little bit cold. 2. They don't do mornings. SO when I heard that we were all meeting at the church at 8:30am to take a bus to the stake center, I panicked a little. But at about 9am (cause everyone is late just always) there they all were, in their Sunday best just talking and laughing and complaining about the cold, and I just stepped back and was just FILLED with gratitude for the goodness of this ward, and for how good this gospel is and how much joy it brings. Because I don't know even close to everything, but I know a lot of the heartache that each individual person there has had, and YET! They were smiling, they were loving each other, and exciting to go to stake conference so early in the morning. THEN we got to the conference, and all the missionaries were greeting people so every person who walked in, I got to shake their hand or fist bump them or do one of those cheek kiss things, and again I was just hit with this feeling that I had no idea who any of these people were, but God does. And He loves them so much. And so I just wanted to sit and hear every one of their stories and their testimonies and hard things and guilty pleasures and everything. Gah. There is so much good in this world, I'm obsessed with it. 

• We got to teach so many lessons this week, some of them my friends, and others the friends of Hermana Gentry so I got to meet so many new people. My favorite being Laura's family. My word, they're so amazing. Laura and her husband have 5 kids, and are taking care of a niece and a nephew too, and aren't in the best situation when it comes to money (it's pretty bad, please send prayers if you can) and they just have so much faith. Laura has been through it, the kids don't understand fully what is going on, but Laura has seen so much hard in her life, and just wants SO bad to follow God and do His will. They live pretty far away, so when they can, we walk with them 45 minutes to the church, and they are just so incredibly cute and tiny and oh my gosh. I'm obsessed with them. Thiago is the oldest and all he wants to do is be a missionary in another country. :,) And we got to teach them the plan of salvation and you just saw the hope spark in their eyes. Ugh. I love this gospel. 

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• I've eaten more chicken nuggets dipped in just mayo at 8am these last 4 days than I ever have in my life. Thanks Hna G. 

• Out of context quotes that happened this week (this is narrowing them down cause there were SO many) - 

1. "You want a BAGGED HORSE??" 
2. "okay so who puts BANANA. in BREAD???"
3. "HE BODYSLAMMED MY MoThER"
4. "say no to drugs, say yes to hugs"
5. "Tortuga que dice aaaaaaah" 
6. An old lady was telling us about her friend and said "she's so fat she's not gonna fit in her clothes anymore" and we said "......um"

• a friend was telling us a story about an elder, but we also both don't speak Spanish, so what WE got from the story was there was an Elder who was rollerblading with a bunch of street dogs, and then he rolled up at her house, and she was showering, and he started throwing hens at her, while she was showering and then he was like "hey Hermana!!" And then he was running around pretending to be a dog. I kid you not that is what both me and Hermana Gentry understood from the story which makes me wonder if that's actually the story? Or if we just got really confused? Literally no idea and it's too late to ask now. But I'd like to meet this elder and ask where he got his roller skates from cause I need some of those. And the hens. Don't know where they came from either. 

• in two days, I got hard-core bullied for how I cut a banana (apparently there's only one wrong way to do it, and its the way I did it) and learned how to eat an orange right, cause apparently you don't peel oranges here. People look at you weird. 

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

This week was a spiritual HIGH my goodness. One of my favorites was the scripture that in English says "feast upon the words of Christ" in Spanish says "delight in the words of Christ" which was pretty mind blowing. Are we feasting, knowing we're going to be sick after, but just eating to eat? Or are we DELIGHTING in the word of God? Cause there's a difference in feasting in all your favorite foods, and feasting at Chuckarama. And it's not that the words of God change from good food to not, it's our attitude that lets us DELIGHT. So go be like Nephi and DELIGHT in the words of God. Delight in His councils and promises and hope and joy and love. Cause delighting sounds way more fun than moping, no? 

I LOVE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!! GO OUT THERE AND LOVE OTHERS!! 

- hermana allen