Semana 61 La Sombra/Hillpointe: Temple Trip!!

What a week! I don't really have an intro because too many cool things happened. But, I do want to ask a favor!! Time is ticking down on my mission and I would love to have any insights of things you wish you recorded or wrote down while you were on your mission or good ideas of how to preserve these awesome memories I'm making. Let me know!! 

Tuesday: Today we finished the night off with breakfast for dinner at the Smith's families house and they helped us print out our family names for our temple trip tomorrow! It felt really good to finally get to go to the temple and it was even better knowing I had prepared and got to do a family name. We finished the day putting final touches on our ad and responding to millions of messages which is always a little repetitive but super fulfilling. 

Wednesday: Today was the best day!! We got to go and do an endowment session at the the temple! It was so haply to feel God's love and to really understand the difference that is there when you have that spiritual uplift and boost. We ended the day with teaching English at HandUp and having correlation with the English ward. 

Thursday: Honestly the morning was pretty uneventful but, the evening was awesome! We had dinner with the Soderberg family and then we went to the Relief Society activity for the branch! It was all about community resources and it was really awesome for all the people in the branch to be a little more informed. The cool part about the activity was that I TRANSLATED!! Ahh!! I was pretty proud of myself, it was Spanish to English which is a lot easier but it was a big step in my language learning and I'm excited to keep progressing. I've really been praying for God's help and I've seen his hand a ton as I've had opportunities to serve. 

Friday: This morning started early with a stake meeting at 7:30am.... that was only a half hour... kinda sad because we didn't get to exercise. After that we studied and then had our first whole lesson in Spanish since being back! It was a little rough, and being the one that knows more Spanish has been hard and weird, but we taught the hardest lesson and it went really well! Beatrice is seriously so awesome and I can't believe no one has found her and taught her yet. The Smith's also took us out for lunch and we talked about school which was scary...! But, also super exciting. Then from there we went and dropped off a packet of all the resources we learned about to our friend Leticia who is seriously so awesome. She's shy but if everyone could pray for her that would be awesome. We also met an amazing new family who is moving into the branch and haven't been to the temple for the first time yet so we have our work cut out for us that's for certain. We ended the night with dinner at the Guzmans house and they made us authentic Dominican soup and it was to die for! All in all a crazy busy and crazy fun day. 

Saturday: This was a day of old fashioned missionary work. We started with studies, then headed out to go tracting! We had a quick appointment with an awesome recent convert family and they are seriously the best! We are hoping they start coming back to church. While we were knocking doors we ran into Anna and Barbra who speak Spanish and were looking for a church! Hopefully they will come tomorrow. Tracting is fun sometimes and that apartment complex we had a lot of success, the next one though not so much.... Literally had the first door slammed in my face in my whole mission, didn't love it, but at least I have a good story now. The funny part is I didn't even knock on their door, they just assumed I was going to and then opened it and slammed it again? I don't really know why people are that annoying, but oh well it's their salvation on the line, not mine. After some more door knocking we headed off to our apartment for studies and a much need dinner. 

Sunday: Pretty uneventful day, sadly none of our friends came to church but we did have a super successful lesson with Romina that went really well. She's slowly inching towards baptism. We had dinner with the Gaspar de Alba family and had some pretty fancy lasagna with prosciutto and spinach and white sauce. Mmmm. They are going to help is with some reels for HandUp! Fingers crossed everything goes well. 

I love you guys! Some fun pictures from this week🥳