Tough Week

December 2, 2013

Last week was the best week ever and this week I learned that there is opposition in all things.

Literally last week was the best and I was on cloud 9 and everything was working out but this week has been interesting. Out of the 6 of us who live together 3 of us have had a mental breakdowns.  I got in a fight with Hermana Talbot who is one of my best friends I haven’t been that angry for a long time.  The house is either full of silence because someone was breaking down which means they won’t talk to anyone or loud sobs cause I guess she can’t deal with the silence. My comp sprained her ankle but ya that’s just the background of this week. I’ve been thinking that last week you could say was a glamorous week and this week so far from glamorous it’s not even funny.  It’s made me realize that sometimes in life we get to be glamorous, but sometimes we just have to push through, help mend those that are broken, do the dirty dishes, go go go on.  Like - no sleep and function with tired eyes.  Even though this week  was so very hard and most of the time I was not feeling happy go lucky haha but the thing was that I did it even when i didn’t want to.  So I guess you could say I am building some character out here and I am still laughing my way through life and even though this week was hard we helped a lot of people and laughed a whole lot to get through the hard times. I thought I would share this story with y’all  just to show you that life is hard for everyone - no one is exempt from hard times, but we all know how to laugh. We all have times when we don’t want to do anything but we all have the choice to do it anyways and use laughter to get through it all. So go out there and make someone laugh and lighten their load this week. 

      Just another Embarrassing story with me mixing up words in Spanish...still...

So funny story so I was telling this Brother how my mom cooks the turkey for Thanksgiving.  Well she puts the turkey breast facedown or on the bottom so the juices will stay in the turkey breast so the turkey isn’t dry.  Well I said pecho (which is boobs....) instead of pechuga (I hope that’s how you spell that in Spanish but that means breast like you would use for talking about a turkey breast).  So I said put the turkey boobs on the bottom so they can soak up the juice... ya after saying turkey boobs like 5 times this Brother raises his hand and was like “Hermana its pechuga.”.... yep we laughed so hard and that is how I do it.. hahhhha

  The miracle of members in this work

It all started when we were sitting on a bench eating some dinner. Yum chilean bread... Hermana Jennings turned to her companion, Hermana Leishman and said “Can we pray cause I really don’t feel like being a missionary right now.”   We then bowed our heads as people passed us by and asked for the strength and desire to continue on. Right after we said amen, we got to our feet and got to work.  We started contacting everyone but no one wanted to listen. Right as Hermana Jennings was about to throw in the towel she contacted one last person, Ylana -  long story short she was looking for the truth but she didn’t know where to find it so the Lord brought us to her. we taught her the main points of lessons 1 through 5.  She had a lot of questions and we were all too eager to give her the answers.  She started reading the Book of Mormon and came to church the next day and that is where she met Tiago.  They both happen to be from Brazil and speak Portuguese , English, and Spanish .  We set up an appointment with Ylana the next week and Tiago asked if he could come too.  This lesson was like none other it was a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, English, and a whole lot of  the spirit. We could even understand the Portuguese.  The spirit was over whelming when Tiago bore his simple testimony in English "I know this book to be true it changed my life and all we are asking  you to do is read it, think about it, and pray about it" Ylana accepted the invitation.  She will be heading back to Brazil in a week, but the miracle is that Tiago has friends in the town she is moving to who will continue fellowshipping Ylana.  We couldn’t have done that without Tiago. Members are essential in this work and as they say in high school musical “We are all in this together. 

I was going to send a picture of our Christmas tree but this computer isn’t working.  I love it cause it has pictures of Christ  on it.  It helps us remember the real meaning of Christmas every time we look at it. I want to tell you  the story of Rada this week. We are teaching this old man and he is so funny -  like the whole lesson he stops after every point to tell us how beautiful we are or to ask us to marry him while his dentures fall down and he puts them back in .... yep he is  a hoot.  He really is searching, but we could use a break from the excessive complements. haha It’s hard to get a word in, but all and all he is reading the Book of Mormon and praying and searching for the truth too.

So we have been teaching a  lady named Adrianna and she is working toward a date to be baptized .  She is so sweet and I love her. Pray that we can find her more than once a week and that she will come to church.It’s hard cause we teach her and she leaves on Sundays only to go to her sisters house.  So it’s like this weird teamwork think with the elders that are there but with the Lord all things are possible.

All and all this week was hard but we smiled our way through it. 

Love ya’ll

Hermana Jennings