So I am basically fluent in spanish now! .... haha gotcha! Mom I loved the quote from Pres. Monson from your email this past week "sometimes courage is the little voice that tells us...I'll try again tomorrow!" I am trying to just enjoy the journey of learning this language. I carry around this little notebook to write done words I hear that I don't know and sometimes with some people I have to write a ton! or like during church I write a whole dictionary! But sometimes I just stop writing words and realize the situation that is happening. And just say a little gratitude prayer that I get to learn spanish because It is kind of hilarious that this person is talking and I have no idea what they are saying! Or with hna prince this week I stopped her while we were talking to clarify something and we realized we were talking to each other but we were having two seperate conversations! haha. I am driving now, which is good because I am learning the area better, but it kind of bad for us because I often miss the turn or go the wrong way because I don't know what she is saying!
This week was really random. Some people give missionaries the funniest escuses for not wanting to listen haha. The best we ran into while we were knocking this week was this old lady who had her door open a crack so we just said hello instead of knocking and she just talked back but didn't move to come talk to us or anything, then finally she said she was naked so she didn't want to talk to us right then. There is this lady who we have set an appt with every week and she calls and cancels last minute every time...this week her excuse was that she just had a surgery (we were like oh sad but perfect we can come help her!)...her surgery was getting a mole removed from her armpit! haha. Our apt is infested with lil ants! I know that word in spanish now! hormigas! we call them our hormiga amigas. But they are EVERYWHERE! Haha we were in a lesson and we had our scriptures open reading from the book of mormon I had given mine to the investigator so hna prince and I were sharing her scriptures when this little hormiga comes crawling out of the side of the case across the page. haha it was really hard not to laugh.
I also met my new boyfriend this week....he is 2 years old named Alan...haha his mom and dad are recent converts and their daughter just got baptized yesterday! When his mom realized I was learning spanish she had him go get childrens books and tell me stories in spanish. We filmed them so I can use them for language study. I don't know why, but it is so adorable when little kids speak spanish, that motivates me to learn because I wish I could communicate with them! The baptism was really special to attend. There is such a special spirit at baptisms! It really inspired me and motivated me to want to be a better missionary and help someone get there.
We had a really cool lesson this week. We were knocking doors in this apartment complex and this guy told us he was definately not intersested in what we had to say, so we asked if he knew anyone that we could visit that would be. He wanted us to go talk to these punk kids that always sit outside the complex. He said several times, ya go talk to them. We saw them on our way up but we were both nervous to talk to them. It was three boys about our age ish with tatoos and just appeared kind of rough. But we decided to go talk to them and it ended up being so cool! We ended up teaching them the whole plan of salvation with all our little pictures (they secretly loved the little pictures) haha on the sidewalk outside their apt. They just kept asking questions and we were able to talk with them for a while and we could feel the spirit and we could tell they felt the spirit. We gave them both book of mormons and they said they'd read and we are going back this week! It was just so cool, first of all because it is so fun to talk to and teach people who actually are interested in what you are saying. And because we both faced a fear, we were scared to talk to them and they ended up being the nicest people we talked to all day, you really cannot ever judge people and you never know who the Lord is preparing. It was also such a reminder to me that so many people don't have the gospel. We are so blessed to live with the knowledge of the restored gospel! .... if you take a second to think about that then you just want to go tell everyone about it!
It is so awesome to be a missionary. I am learning so much from Hna Prince, our ward members, and our investigators. I Love you all so much and seriously am soooo grateful for your support for me and your testimonies you share with me.
Love,
Sha! (Hna Mulliner)
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