Wait...tacos actually exist?

Hey!! Happy Monday!! Hope yall had a great week. I'm currently laying on the floor dying of the sheer amount of heat that is in this country. Enjoy the snow over there! 

MILAGRITOS:

• We saw SO many miracles this week. Our main miracle was our good friend Damian. We were walking down the street and I saw a dude pretty far away that I felt like we should talk to him. So we walked towards him and started to talk and he wanted to learn more. Well, we planned a lesson and on Saturday we had that lesson. And boy howdy I loved it. We taught him the restoration of the gospel, and the spirit was THERE. Sometimes as a missionary teaching the same thing over and over gets a little repetitive, but we were teaching him and I just felt the whole time the truth of the words my companion and I were saying. Damian was pretty intrigued and he even told us halfway through "yeah but you can tell me this stuff all day long but I've got to learn it for myself like I've got to feel God telling me it's true. I'm gonna talk to Him tonight". It was pretty awesome. I know that Jesus Christ lives. And that Joseph Smith really did see Him. And talked to Him. And that the Book of Mormon is a book that truly changes lives because it is from God. And boy am I grateful for it. Damian really really wanted to come to church but his work schedule got changed last minute. Next week folks, next week. 

• We stopped by a "punto" that we felt like we should stop by. Well, the son let us in and just thanked us a million times for coming, and as we walked in the house we met his mom, who is really pretty sick. She is quite old and in a wheelchair and probably one of the skinniest people I've seen in my life. He explained that she had Parkinsons and about 20 other illnesses and her body was just giving up pretty much. Well we sat there and talked with her for an hour, and she was working so hard to just tell us a story about a miracle in her life and her testimony. Just talking made her exhausted, and she talked really really quiet and super slow and took a lot of breaks. But she just said over and over how much she loved Christ, and how much she needed Him in her life. I watched as this woman, who had been a true disciple of Christ her whole life, with more difficulties than I can imagine, using quite literally all her strength to testify of Christ. And it made me just say a prayer in my heart about a hundred times. We sang her favorite hymn with her, and she held my hand and mouthed the words cause she couldn't quite muster singing. As we talked to the son after, we found out that he lives in Spain with his wife and son, but that he flew here to Uruguay to be with his mom cause she was slowly getting worse and worse and also his dad had cancer. It was so interesting to be in that room so filled with pain, and yet there was a quiet peace to it all. The spirit was heavy (the good kind of heavy). And as the son said a prayer to his Father at the end, it was full of nothing but gratitude. Through his tears (and mine too) he just thanked God over and over for all that he had. And wow. I can be a better follower of Christ after the example of those two.

• Sometimes much needed answers to prayers come in the middle of 5 page long chapters about trees. 

JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAs of the week:

• We were walking down the street and we saw a black thing on the ground beeping. At first I thought it was a bomb but then as we got closer (yes I thought it was a bomb and yes I did keep walking towards it oops) I realized it was a house arrest anklet. I genuinely laughed out loud and then me and my companion practically RAN cause we did not wanna be there when the police showed up for that one. 

• My comp had tacos for the first time this week. I have no idea who raised this chick. 

• We had a lesson with an hermana in the ward, and we started by just reading a verse in the book of Mormon, and 5 minutes after, I don't even know how we got there, the hermana was reading the Book of Luke in the Bible and was trying to prove a point (I forget what she was trying to tell us) but speed read as fast as she could, gasping for breath every 5 verses, the entirety of Luke 1-3. It was intense. 

SHPIRITUAL SHPEEL: 

In a lesson we had this week, our friend said something that I haven't stopped thinking about. He said "God made this world perfectly. With perfect rules and perfect creations and a whole lot of perfection. If you jump up, you come back down. If you close your eyes, you can't see. Trees grow up, not sideways. All those rules that God put in place. So why would I expect Him to break those perfect rules that He has put in place, with me in mind, just for me?"

Sometimes we pray for miracles. And I think that's okay. Sometimes we want to feel God's love more clearly, or watch someone be healed in an instant, or have the dead live again or watch the blind see or have angels appear or whatever it may be. We want "heavenly manifestations" or "miracles" or "proof that God exists". But maybe the rules and the nature and the things God put in place from the beginning are those heavenly manifestations and those miracles and that proof that God exists. What if we're praying to be able to heal our sight, but God has taught doctors how to make glasses and do eye surgeries? What if we're praying for the dead to live again but God has literally taught doctors how to restart a heart and to fix a broken bone and do stitches and do a kidney transplant? What if we're praying for an angel to come but God let your neighbor know that she needed to visit you today? What if you want to see God's hand in your life and that night God paints the sky and clouds full of pinks and oranges and yellows? Why are we expecting God to break His already perfect rules when He made those rules with us in mind?

I think it's okay to pray for miracles. I think ingrained in those rules were little Godly *asterisk* with tiny script saying that He was gonna break those rules every once in a while with a sparkle in His eye and watch as we were amazed.

But I think that the miracles are found in the rules of the universe. God's rules. Cause who knows? Maybe God made a rule of the universe just for YOU. Cause He knew you'd love it so much. 

And I think the "miracles" that we hear about in testimony meeting or on the news are that much more awe inspiring if we think about it this way. God set up a whole universe full of rules and the way it should work, but He decided to break those rules just for you.

So maybe we shouldn't expect the rule breaking miracles. (But absolutely we should be completely grateful when they come along) but I think we should expect miracles every day. In the way a tree grows. And the neighbor who stops by your house. And the glasses we put on every morning. And the emergency room we go to, and the books that we read, and the couch that we sit on and the sunset that we see and the mountain that we climb and the water that falls from the sky, and the, and the and the... 

And the all of it.

Cause all of the great and huge and sometimes tiny and insignificant things we've got on this earth are pretty dang miraculous, no? 

Love you all!!!

- hermana allen