April 4, 2016

I've never loved beans so much!

I am so sorry for the crazy short email last week! I literally had no time! Anyway, thank you all so much for all the love! I have an address for you all:

419 Park Ave.
Scotch Plains, NJ 07076

Monday:

So I played four square for the first time in like two weeks! I was in heaven! And you better believe I bought a rubber ball! Hahaha! Two miracles for the day: Jenny, a sweet little baptist lady was told by her her pastor to never speak to us again and to give us back the Book of Mormon. After that we decided to let things cool down for like a week and then we recalled her and she said that she had talked to her brother her and he told her not to give us back the book and so she allowed us to go and visit her after her surgery! Miracle number 2: This recent convert named Dayvon actually likes me! When I first met him he was having a bad day and just seemed uninterested and I felt like we were not connecting. When we were visiting with his grandma we were telling them that I wasn't going to be there the next day because of exchanges and he was like, "What?! We were just starting to get to know each other!" But we reassured him that it was just for a day! YES!

Tuesday:

Soooo exchanges happened which meant....SPANISH!!!! I had an incredible lesson with a less active! She says she is a wholehearted member, but refuses to go to church because she feels uncomfortable with the ward and says that they are hypocrites. I asked her, "So do you go to church for the members or for God?" BOLD! She tried to beat around the bush with me...wasn't going to happen though! Don't worry, the lesson ended on good terms! After that another less active member took us out to dinner. His name is Jose and he is PERUVIAN!! And you better believe he took us to a Peruvian restaurant! And then after that I got to meet a woman called Maria! She knows my mom's side of the family! And she's Dominican and she gave us DOMINICAN FOOD!!!! I didn't eat it then...but you better believe I was going to have it for breakfast!

Wednesday:

So had the Dominican food today...I almost cried! Mi comida!! We also did a role play video...took us about 30 tries but we finally got a somewhat decent one!

Thursday:

So today we went to this place called Ellis Island. It's basically like a Family History center, which explains part of my huge desire to do family history work! Check it out! I also had the opportunity to teach a lesson with two members in our ward. One is from Peru and the other is from El Salvador. We have this investigator named Luis who has been taught in English, but wanted a few questions answered in Spanish because he is really taking this seriously which I highly respect him for! This was such a spiritual lesson and I can't even explain it! We all knew that he knew this church is true...but his doubts and billions of questions and holding him back! He's sooooo close!!

Friday:

APRIL FOOLS!!

So today we got to meet a Dominican man named Brother Brito...He's really weird...he was trying to set up Sister Hale and I up with his sons....nope. Something else we did was visited Jenny and we shared a video with her called The Power of Hope. I absolutely love it and invite you all to watch it! We also tried to pull an April Fool's joke on the Elders but it ended up turning into missionary work! Backfire, but not...

Saturday:

CONFERENCE!!!

My favorite talk from the Saturday morning session was Elder Stevenson's talk! Beautiful way to explain the importance of the priesthood! My favorite Saturday afternoon talk was definitely Elder Bednar's. I love how he calls the Holy Ghost the 3rd member of the Godhead. I feel like a lot of the time we forget just how important he really is. Also we were finding and as we approached a house we heard screaming...I told my companion that I wasn't feeling quite right and she said that we should just knock on the door. Two minutes later these people started running down the street. We asked why they were running and they told us to turn around because the house behind us was on fire! We turned around and the house was spitting out smoke everywhere!!! Two seconds after that there were like 3 firetrucks trucking down the street! INSANEEEEE!

Sunday:

Conference once again was a killer! My favorite talk from the Sunday morning session was definitely D. Todd Christofferson's. My favorite talk from the sunday afternoon one was definitely Elder Holland's! "The first great truth is that God loves us."

I love you all so very much! I hope you all enjoyed conference and I hope you all are having so much fun! I invite you all to choose one of these talks from conference and see how you can apply it in your lives. New Jersey is a crazzzyy place, but it's my crazy place!

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Arevalo (: