Birthday cake and mason jars.

Hello!

Sorry for last week. We decided to throw an impromptu party for a recent convert, but it got lost in translation that we would only have an hour to write. I´ll attach a picture of the Hermano with his cake  :) He was baptized about 6 months ago, and is one of the friendliest people you could ever meet. He lives very humbly, and has family who lives nearby. But none of his children or siblings did anything for his birthday, and no one except for the Hermanas who are in his area remembered. We had a wonderful little fiesta, and ate a cake that´s called Tres Leches. 

Otherwise this week has been pretty normal. We were working hard and trying not to melt! Right now we are teaching a lot of people. This past week I feel like we figured out how to set goals better and work more efficiently. In the week to come, we almost don´t have any time unscheduled!  With the amount of people we have to visit in the coming week, I think we could use another pair of missionaries. But at the same time, our area is going to be pretty small!

This week we started teaching a really sweet girl named Z. Her aunt´s family are always inviting us over and are one of our favorite to have meals with. Z married into the family and her husband served a mission in California. She has a christian background and is very interested to learn more about our beliefs. I love how many questions she has, and am usually able to understand almost all of them to be able to help answer! I prefer questions so much more, but many people here arejust happy to hear the palabras de Dios. 

This past transfer I feel like I´ve really made a huge improvement in actually forming logical sentences. As much as I don´t feel like I´ve made the same improvement in new words, this is equally as important. Its hard to have to limit yourself to more simple scentences when your expressing ideas, but its a lot easier to communicate in a new language like that. 

These past few weeks my companion has been using an AMAZING example that I want to share with you. 

Take a Mason jar, and fill it with golf balls. And then, fill it with beans. Try to fill it as full as possible, and then close the lid. Now, empty it all out and put the beans in first. Then put in the golfballs, and try to close the lid.

This is like so many things in the gospel, and in the world. The first, is that as we put the things of the gospel first, we are always able to find time to get everything else you need to done. One of my favourite sayings is ¨If you are to busy for God, then you are busier than God ever intended you to be¨

Hermana Crawford

Service, Birthdays and Teaching

We´re throwing an impromptu birthday party for a recent convert, and I didn't know we were only going to have just a little bit of time to write.... So I wasn't able to budget my time accordingly.

Were teaching twins right now, and they are the only ones who came to church. But their mum and a boyfriend might be coming with them next week. We also are teaching a less active member's husband who is very very interested. We set a baptismal date, but they were all sick and he couldn't come to church yesterday. You have to attend church 5 times here to be able to get baptized. 

Otherwise, we had a nice amount of rain this week, so it wasn't too hot.  Please apologize to my bloggers :P haha  (for the very short message this week.)

Priesthood Blessings and sacrament talks

This week was hard, simply because I wasn´t able to go out to work for most of it! But from the moment I recieved my blessing, any and all of the problems I had been having with my health stopped. I wasn't able to see the doctor till the day after, but in that time I didn't have a single problem with my nose. Who would´ve thought that a nose could have caused so many problems! But I´m so grateful for priesthood blessings.

This week I gave my first (Spanish) talk in church! We got a call on Friday asking us to speak about missionary work. So I wrote my ten minute talk, and only had a few corrections by my companion and Hermana M! I really have felt a lot better this week about being able to express myself. Apparently my sentences and all are much better formed, and I'm generally able to conjugate fairly well. (in only two of the tenses...) After sharing a message with a menos activo, my companion actually congrajulated me for speaking such good Spanish. It was pretty exciting! The gift of tongues is most definetly real. I can hardly believe how little time I´ve had here yet how much I´ve learned. 

Hermana Crawford

for more about Priesthood Blessings 
https://www.lds.org/youth/article/importance-of-priesthood-blessings?lang=eng

la Semana de Reposo, Parte 2‏

So my nose has been giving me a lot of troubles again, and we went back to the ENT doctor. We call him doctor bigote (Moustache) because his black moustache is very contrasting to his very white hair. He cauterized my nose for the 3rd time, and said this is it. He said I can´t do anything for a week. No exercise, dust, time in the sun, nothing. When we asked him to speak with the President´s wife, he said that he wasn't going to ask for a yes or no answer. We were a little taken aback by his boldness. None of us would ever consider speaking to her in that way! But she´s also very sweet, we´re so lucky to have a wonderful President.

I got a blessing the day before we went to the clinic, and I felt very confident that I´ll be able to return to everything after this time, without problems. I'm so grateful that the authority to act in God´s name has been restored to the earth. And that Heavenly Father really does want us to have blessings, we just have to have the courage to ask for them! 

 So to say the least, we´ve been a little bored!  We found lots of different ways to be able to still keep our appointments. My companion was able to do intercambios with the other Hermanas in our area a few times, and we did splits with some our members. We have a wonderful family who lives down the street from us who are always willing to help with anything. And it just so happens that the 2 kids speak English, so we´re able to have a bit more of a friendship. Its really hard to get to know people with a language barrier!

And with a language barrier, I didn't understand that I was going to be at this members house while their son opened his mission call. He´s off to Pennsylvania in a month, Spanish speaking. Its pretty cool, because we are basically trading places! We also have been able to bring a sweet girl with us a lot lately who is thinking about starting her papers.

Otherwise all is well here in the land of J.  We don't really have any progressing investigators at the moment, but we have about 7 people who seem to be generically seeking the truth, and are open to hearing more. I can´t wait to get back out and actually meeting with them again.

Hermana Crawford

The week I couldn't speak

Hermana H. and I have been making an effort to speak more Spanish together. Its just so easy to go back to English because I don´t always understand her, and she often can´t understand my Spanish! Learning a new language is fun in lots of ways.

I can´t really remember almost any of my french, except for the typical e,es,e,ons,ez,ent that they drill into you in middle school, or random phrases like "Je brosse me dents." "Je parle un pue de francais" And then my English feels like it is just awful. So I apologize to everyone I have written this week, it's probably only going to get worse from here! jaja

I can usually understand conversations a lot more often, and I knew what was going on basically the entire time at church this week. I can understand the talks pretty well, and know more about the lessons. I've had a few people tell me that I am learning pretty quickly, and that my accent isn't too awful!

We had a really cool moment this week. We had an investigator bring out a little yellow book that is meant to help people understand the bible. She was explaining how it has really helped her. So I talked a bit about how the bible is kind of confusing, which is why there is so many different religions, and so many different books to help us interpret it. But so with so many different interpretations, we need someone to have the proper means to do so. God is well aware of this, and doesn't want us all to live in confusion. That is why he brought forth the Book of Mormon, to help us to clarify what His will is. But the cool thing about this book, is how we came to have it, and that we can pray to know if its true.

It was kind of an eye opening moment for me, because I knew that the Book of Mormon was meant to help us clarify and understand the doctrine taught in the bible, But I hadn't really realized how very much we needed a book of proper authority. And afterwards my companion told me I was speaking very good Spanish. All in all a very enlightening and cool experience!

Heavenly Father really has given us so many things to help us to learn and to grow, all so that we can return to live with Him again. And so that we can truly find happiness and peace in this life. 

...Even when we are walking in the streets at 52 degrees Celsius. It wasn't as bad as I imagined it would be. My companion and I kept joking that the best way to help a Canadian adjust to the climate of Hermosillo is baptism by fire. I feel like I will find 15 Celsius cold now when it finally comes around!

Hermana Crawford