FUSHI FUSHI!!!

Hey hey!! Happy week after the fourth of July! (I dunno) This week was SO long, but so so good. We had a lot of chaos and a lot of random stuff go down haha, it was awesome. 

JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAs of the week:

• We had Zone Conference this week, with our new mission president (I'll talk more about that later) but our mission president and his wife have 6 kids (!!!!) And they're SO seriously cute. For lunch after we sat next to them, and we just chatted and had a sprite chugging challenge (sorry pres.) And ate as many quesadillas as we could. These kids lived in China for 3 years and speak fluent mandarin, and are now about to learn Spanish. They are seriously so mature but also hilarious and I wanna hang out with them forever. They taught me their favorite word in Mandarin "fushi fushi" which means study. Remind me when I'm older to move to China with all my children, cause a bunch of tiny red heads speaking mandarin amongst themselves is quite possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen. ALSO they told us that one time they made a slip n slide out of bubble wrap, and so because its warm where all yall are, and its not warm here, I am inviting every one of you to make a slip n slide of bubblewrap, cause HOW FUN IS THAT??

• Hna Gentry found her soul mate this week. It's a tiny lil dog, that she named Pues (means "...well" or "um" in Spanish, kinds just a filler word) Anyway so she found this dog and it followed us almost all the way home, and then he disappeared, but then the next day we were walking down the street and THERE WAS PUES!! So essentially we're besties now and he follows us everywhere. 

• The phrase diddly squat. That's all. 

• There is a member we have been trying to get in contact with for forever, cause everyone keeps telling us she wants to talk to the missionaries and we finally got her number and called her and it want a lil something like this. "Hi who are you" "We're the missionaries!" "I can't walk" "Oh okay, well, how have you been?" "I'm in a wheelchair" "Oh we're sorry! Um... well if you want, we can come visit you and say hi" "I'm old" "Um. Okay! Well-" *phone hangs up* 

• We visited another lady (she's literally 99, almost 100) and she talks for literal HOURS and we were sitting there trying to figure out how to share a spiritual thought cause she didn't stop talking ahah and she is a lil deaf so she can't hear us and she goes "yeah I can't go outside cause I'll fall and then I won't be able to get up and then the dogs will eat me and I'll die" and I literally choked on my water i was DYING so anyway. If you're old and scared of falling and not getting up, don't move to Uruguay. The dogs will eat you, and that doesn't feel like a fun add on to the situation. 

• We get a lot of voice messages from people here, cause no one likes to type, and we got one from one of our friends and she was telling us a story about something, I don't actually remember, but about ten seconds in, the loudest cuckoo clock I've ever heard just goes OFF to the point where you couldn't hear her, and it was going off for a solid 30 seconds and she just kept talking like nothing was happening. I don't know how to explain how funny it was, but anyway turns out people actually have cuckoo clocks. 

MILAGRITOS:

• We had zone conference, and our new mission president and his wife are AMAZING!! I do not have words for how good they are. They seriously are the biggest power couple, learning Spanish, taking care of 150 missionaries, raising 6 kids, and doing everything with love and goodness, while still having high expectations for us. They're pretty awesome, and I'm pretty grateful for them. 

• We had a couple of our friends come to church! There's really nothing better as a missionary than waiting at church and seeing some of your friends walk in. God is good. 

• We had pretty much every lesson this week cancel on us, but we had a good lesson with our friends Rosana and Daniel. Daniels dad (Rosana's husband) is always there, but hes never really paying attention, and the TV is usually blasting. The last couple of times hes turned the TV down for us when we start, and this time he muted it, so I decided to ask him as part of the lesson how he had seen Gods hand in his life. And I dunno, you had to be there. This man, who has been through so much, and has a whole lot of hard in his eyes, to hear him testifying of God, and how He has changed him. I think it shocked his fam too cause they both had a little bit of a jaw drop going on, but it really is way cool to watch hearts change and the spirit take over. I love my life. 

• One of our friends in the ward, who we go over to her house twice a week, her birthday was on Saturday. So you best believe we blew up some balloons and bought her some marker tab things for her scriptures and marked up a Book of Mormon for her, with all our favorite scriptures. She seriously loved it, and considering she doesn't have a lot of friends, it was so good to help her feel loved and to see her reaction. She has such a deep testimony and its incredible to watch her faith. It was so fun to be able to give back just a little bit of the joy she's given me. She called us too after we left to tell us thank you again, it was so fun. Happy Birthday Isabel!!

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: 

Guys. Kindness. Its so good. I love kindness, and I am working every day to have more of it. I was reading a talk by Joseph B. Wirthlin, called The Virtue of Kindness. First off, recommend reading that. Its incredible. In it he says "kindness is the essence of greatness and the fundamental characteristic of the noblest men and women I have known." First off, how tender??? Second off, lets all be kind. Then, he shared a thought about how Kindness is helping others reach their potential. What?? How cool is that? Kindness is showing people their true potential and helping them reach that! Are we doing good at that? How much are we showing people that potential, and letting them know that they CAN reach that! So first off, we gotta be showing other people that kindness. Second off, do you know who is infinitely kind? God. He is so very good at showing us our potential, and showing us how we can reach it. He knows our potential, He sees us as our best selves, and knows how good we will be one day, and helps us realize that for ourselves. Hes so good. And sometimes its hard to lose sight of that, but as we turn to Him, over and over and over (although sometimes its so hard to do that) He blesses us. And is kind. Infinitely kind. Individually kind. And so so good. And where would we be without that kindness? Not where we are, that's for sure. We truly need Him every hour. I'm so grateful for His kindness, and I know that it is real and that He is real. That in the grandest act of kindness, He sent His Son, to give us a path directly to our divine potential. What a good plan He has for us. God loves YOU. 

And I love you too!! Have a great week!!

- hermana allen