Called to Serve: week 29: somos las hermanas FUERTES

hola hola!!

It is officially summertime, because we helped 2 families move this weekend and spent 3 hours moving boxes all over Springville with the other missionaries. It was a blast and my arms and back are soooore now haha! But the elders quorum was v impressive when we showed up and were the only girls lol, so strong is the word for the week!

Being in Utah, I feel very lucky to have never really been yelled at when knocking doors...that is until Thursday night when we were hitting every apartment door with no clue who we would get. We knock and were waiting and talking when all of a sudden the door swings open and this man just starts screaming at us. I had absolutely no clue what had happened and just stood there. Finally, I asked his name and then introduced myself and my companion. The guy, Victor, starts to laugh and told us that he had yelled at us in Japanese. In my head I was like ok weird, but out loud I just said, "Well sadly the only other language I speak is Spanish, but I can write my name in Japanese!" He laughed and then went on to tell us he was 13% Japanese, grew up in Peru, met his wife when she was a missionary in his ward, yadda yadda, anyways he was a member in our ward and we just had no idea. Super nice family in the end, but sure made for a funny first impression!! (Also his wife is making us ceviche and bistec del pobre so we're excited to try some authentic Peruvian food bc apparently it's the best food in the WORLD! we'll see if it beats ribs

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Our other funny for the week was Friday morning at the Provo City Center temple. We had extra miles for the month and decided to use some to go up to Provo and do studies on the grounds up there. It was so awesome to be at the temple and the weather was PERFECT! So perfect in fact, that the sprinklers went off on the grass halfway through comp study! We heard them coming up and grabbed our stuff as fast as we could, but still got pretty soaked. It felt pretty good ngl, but it was sooo funny and the elders got a good laugh when they came over after their studies and saw us all wet. Good times!

Ok and update on the prank war w the elders!! They are not the most creative bunch haha. They confettied our car this week while we were on a walk to get back at us for the confetti we threw on them...silly. We talked w the Spanish elders in our district and got some good ideas, but then found out they had a hard day and decided to send them some happy balloons filled w candy and encouraging letters instead. They gave us Chic Fil A cookies as a thank you, so things were getting too nice. We had a meeting w bishop and told him about our prank wars and he laughed so hard it made my whole week!! He told us he wanted to help, so we told him we would send the unsuspecting elders his way. We made an investigators profile for bishop right on the spot and sent it to the elders a couple days later and told them to stop by sometime. Bishop was out of town all weekend, but there will be good updates to come in the next weekly(and hopefully a video too if bishop can pull it off haha).

Now to introduce some of our new friends...

MARIO: We started teaching him this week and he is a homie G. He loves to clean his red car and I always sing his name when I see him haha, "mario kart Wii!" We knocked his door probably 2 weeks ago and gave him a book of Mormon and got his number, but couldn't get ahold of him to set up a lesson. We stopped by his house and his wife said he was busy, so we just figured it was another nice Hispanic guy. Last Saturday, we were on a walk and saw Mario was outside(cleaning the car haha), so we stopped and talked for a bit. We were on out way to a lesson, so we cut the convo short and just asked if we could come back the following night to talk more. Well it worked!! We taught him the restoration this week and are planning to teach the plan of salvation soon!

PAULO: I love teaching YSA and we started teaching a guy our age who is so awesome!! He came to English connect with us a couple weeks ago and we started a group chat with him and his cousin. He ended up making a new chat with just us and asked if he could meet with us!! We taught him the restoration and invited him to be baptized on may 29 and he accepted! And crazy thing is that he may be going back to Peru on may 30!!! So mega prayers for him and that everything goes well so he can be baptized before he leaves!!

And the miracle for the week...

Anyone remember Jerry, our miracle man, from a couple months ago? Probably not because that was all it was and then he ghosted us for a hot sec. Well, we were on a walk this week and talking to a member outside her house and saw Jerry walk out to his car. We quickly ended the convo and told her we had to chase him down haha. We ran up to him and he was like "Sisters!! I've been wanting to meet with you! My life is a mess and I'm trying to get things together!" Talk about right time, right place moment!! We called him the next day and got ahold of his brother who scheduled for us to go back for a lesson tonight!! Wish us luck!

love y'all!!

hermana dougall :)