Youre the ugliest girls in the world!!

Heyooo!! Hope yall are enjoying the snow. It is in fact not snowing here. But, it was a great week!! Lots of chaotic experiences, lots of exchanges, and lots of helping hermanas who were throwing up for hours on end. Life is good.

MILAGRITOS:

• Honestly this week has been filled with so much goodness and meeting new people and loving those people and celebrating Christmas. If I'm being a hundred percent honest I can't remember a single thing that happened but I do remember several times throughout the week being so grateful to be a missionary and to be able to help people find joy, cause sometimes this world feels like it's lacking a whole lot of that joy.

JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAs of the week:

• I met a capybara. I don't know how many people know this, but ever since I was like 9, capybaras have been my favorite animal. When I got here, I saw one of their coins had a capybara on it which led to me finding out that capybaras exist here. Which led me to the absolute goal of my mission being to see a capybara. Well, we were in the middle of a lesson sitting outside someone's house and all of a sudden my comp goes "what is that?" And points to a field across the street. And there, right before my eyes was a real life capybara. I think I just about fainted. Our friend was laughing at me for my utter excitement and so was Hna Dominguez but truly it was one of the best moments in my life. Her name was Rosy by the way.

• One night, we were walking down the street, and we said "hola" to a big group of old people sitting on the curb in their lawn chairs, and as we passed them, we hear " the ugliest girls in the world are you two for not saying hi to me!!" and we turned around all confused and it was a member who was mad at us cause we didnt go up to her and greet her like you are supposed to do here. So we went back to her and said hi and then she told us we were actually very pretty. But i really wish you had gotten a video of the confusion on me and my comps face as someone screamed down the street that we were the ugliest girls in the world.

NOT JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAs of the week:

• This whole week, the people have been saying "it's 40 degrees!! Isn't that crazy??" And I have no concept of Celsius still, I dont know the transfer rate or whatever, I just know that 12 is really cold and 17 is pretty cold and 25 is kinda good and 30 is pretty hot. That's the scale I've been working on for the last year. But on one of the days this week, we were walking down the street and I was really trying not to be dramatic but I was genuinely thinking I was gonna die. It was SO hot. And I looked down at the street and I kid you not it was MELTING. The literal tar of the street was shiny and dripping all over the place. And these are not new streets folks. I now have a really gnarly weird lookin part of my shoe where I stepped in the tar and it melted my shoe. Oops. Pues, I decided to look up was 40 degrees was. Turns out it's 104 degrees. So I decided I was not being dramatic if I thought that I was gonna die.

SHPIRITUAL SHPEEL:

This week I've been thinking a lot. About life, about the mission, about life before the mission, about life after the mission, about all the things. I'm really super sad to be going home so soon. But I'm actually super excited to go home. I love it here so much, more than I ever thought I would. I kinda never want it to end. And some days, I'm just tired. 2 more months sounds like a lot to ask. The past 16 months have been a whole lot of ups and downs, and a whole lot of in betweens. I'm constantly on a swing set rocking back and forth between a groundhog day version of completely identical events every day for years on end, and so much new information, activities, people, and completely unpredictable and utterly spontaneous events every two seconds. To be honest, I don't think there's a lot of things in life I've kept up with, doing every day for 16 months. In fact, I think eating and sleeping are the only things I've done for longer, on a consistent, every day basis. And I even have gone days without sleeping and days without eating. So maybe this is the only thing in my life I've done for 16 months. That's a long time. I've had two "normal" songs stuck in my head lately. The first one? Les Mis. Obvio. Where it says "to love another person is to see the face of God". (like I shared in my email a couple weeks ago. Yep, it hasn't left) And the other? Tuesdays by Jake Scott. Where it says "love's not only the best days or the worst days, love is the Tuesdays", kinda explaining that love isn't about the big wedding days or giant dates or even that bad, angry days. It's about the days in the middle, the normal, monotonous, take-for-granted kind of days. And I think I realized something this week. I have loved at least one new person (and lots of old people) every single day for 16 months. That's like 500 people. At least. I guess I've seen the face of God about five hundred times over. At least. Because I've watched as God has let me love people for two seconds, let me love people for a couple weeks, and for some good special people, let me love them for eternity. I've watched that miracle happen time and time and time again. And I've let it become normal. I've let it become a Tuesday kind of love. Which is honestly awesome. I'm so incredibly blessed that loving people has become second nature to me. Has become a habit and a thing I do so often I forgot to recognize the beauty in it. But I decided this week I want to start finding the beauty in it every day. The complexity of one human alone blows me away. Their thoughts, their feelings, their combined experiences, their behaviors, the people they love, the people they know, their beliefs, their everything combined, makes up THEM. Every person on this earth is a testament that God is real. Is a testimony that He loves us. And there's a heck of a lot of people on this lil floating rock of ours. And I get the privilege of loving 500 of them. What a beautiful, awe-inspiring, lovely, miraculous, grin-inducing, fairy-dust-and-rainbows-kind-of-happy that is!! what a miracle I get to live every day. And what a miracle I get to love every day. So I guess my shpiritual shpeel of the week is just me bragging about my life, but, as Ammon said "I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom; but behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God." This week, my joy is full. And I'm gonna enjoy every moment I have to see the face of God these next few Tuesdays I have.

Pues, thats all folks. Have a great week!!

- hermana allen