Christianaries

Whelp I jinxed it. I fell off my bike this week, right into the middle of the street!  Thankfully I didn't get run over, but my watch got destroyed so there goes my tan line, I guess. It's okay, this week I'm working on getting a CTR shield tan line on my finger instead 🛡 it'll be so much cooler.

So we pretty much dropped ALL of our investigators this week, but amazingly the work has actually picked up!  Because we dropped everyone that's not really progressing, we had time to visit the 3 or so that are and we taught more lessons than we ever have this week!

One of the investigators that we considered dropping was Janet, but we had a return appointment with her on Friday.  We decided that if she didn't answer the door on Friday for our appointment then we would drop her.  We went to her apartment on Friday and knocked the standard 3 times. We waited for a couple minutes and no one answered. We were about to leave the complex but because we had just biked a TON to get there we decided to sit on the stairs for a second to take a break and contact some people. We sent one text and all of a sudden Janet came walking up!  She had just gotten back from picking her daughter up from school and invited us in even though she didn't have a ton of time.  Our lesson with her was short but went SO well, and she gave us watermelon after!! 🍉

 

Backtracking a little bit here but on Thursday WE WENT TO THE TEMPLE!!!! It was so amazing, I've missed it so much!! And the Houston temple is BEAUTIFUL. I'm so grateful to the member that drove us (even though we almost died multiple times), she even took all of our district out for tacos after!

This week has been a really interesting one. Lots of ups and downs as always. Of course dropping people was a bummer, but our zone has had so many baptisms this week! I'm confident that Hna Hill and I are getting closer to contributing to that. 

My district leader seems to know exactly how to push me out of my comfort zone, because he keeps giving me assignments that I don't like: leading the music at a baptism, giving the closing prayer at said baptism, giving the discussion at district council (that's all in Spanish by the way), he even volunteered Hna Hill and I to speak in sacrament meeting on Sunday. Saturday night came around and neither of us had written our talks yet, so we tried calling a member of the bishopric to see if we could do a musical number instead of speaking. Well that backfired because then he asked us if we could do both 🤦‍♀️ it all worked out though.  I did A LOT of praying, we wiggled our way out of the musical number, and Heavenly Father helped me pull my talk together just in time. As in I finished writing the last word literally 2 seconds before I got up to speak. 

Bonuses of being Spanish speaking missionaries: we came across this guy Faisal this past week, who seemed super cool and interested, but also seemed like he just wanted to bash us. In the middle of our first lesson with him he called his friend and asked him to come over to talk to "those christianaries". We skedaddled around that time-mostly because it was 8 at night and it takes us about an hour to bike home-and then we referred him to the English elders, who gladly taught him. Apparently it went well because Faisal texted us last night and thanked us for sending more missionaries his way. We come across a lot of creepy dudes around here, but I'm super grateful that the elders are always willing to take them off our hands.

Weird experience of the week: a recent convert in the ward threw an acorn at me because I asked him to say the prayer at the end of our lesson. I get it though. Had I had an acorn at the time my district leader asked me to lead and say the prayer at their baptism, I would have thrown it at him 🌰

I'm so grateful for the tender mercies and miracles we've seen this week. There have been SO many, and they all stem from us following promptings from the Holy Ghost (well mostly Hna Hill following promptings and me following her). I can't even explain how cool it is to look back on our week and realize that all the little decisions we made during the day were directed by the hand of God. I really do feel like I'm becoming a tool in His hands.

I also LOVE biking 😄🚴‍♀️ just thought y'all should know. 

-Hermana Thunell

Walk a Mile in My Shoes...or 6

Hi everyone! 

Sorry there was no weekly last week. We went to the museum!  It was SUPER fun but it literally took up our entire P-day. On the bright side, now I have two weeks worth of stories to share!

I'm LOVING the bike area so far! I haven't fallen yet (🚪✊), but somehow I had six bruises on my leg after the first day here. Like GNARLY bruises, but they've all healed by now. Out here in bike-land it's trendy to have a watch tan line and I'd say mine is coming in nicely 🤣

The young women had a garage sale/pupusa sale on Saturday as a fundraiser for girl's camp and we (the missionaries) took shifts as companionships running a Book of Mormon stand where we offered free copies and gave church tours. The elders didn't have much luck with it, but Hna. Hill and I passed out 5 Books of Mormon and gave 1 church tour!  We also got to eat free pupusas, connect with the members, and do lots of service.  After our shift was over we had a lunch appointment with a less-active member, but we didn't have our bikes with us so we ended up walking a mile to get there. When we finally showed up he told us his wife wasn't home.  After about 10 minutes of trying to tell him that it really wouldn't be okay if we broke the rules "just this one time", he finally brought some chairs outside and we ate and talked just outside of his apartment.  Definitely one of the weirdest appointments I've had.  When we were done we walked the mile back to the church where we helped clean everything up from the garage sale. Thankfully we were able to get a ride from a member to our next appointment. 

After that, we still didn't have our bikes and our bus passes are out of money.  We managed to sneak onto one bus that took us most of the way home, but the other one was going to take a half hour to pick us up and Hermana Hill was dying of heat stroke so we walked the rest of the way and made it home at the same time the bus did. 

Yesterday I taught relief society for the first time!  And in Spanish too!  Thankfully members in Spanish wards have LOTS of stories to share, so they pretty much taught the lesson themselves 😊

Favorite Finding Adventure of the Week:

Hna Hill: *knocks door*

No answer. 

Me: *knocks door again a minute later*

20-Something Dude opens the door: *chewing on something* "Hey could y'all stop knocking, thanks." *slams door*

Five minutes later when we're already down the hall

Dude: *opens door again* "And I don't care that my mouth is full!" *slams door again*

I guess I can't blame him though. I'd be grumpy if someone interrupted me while I was eating Chick-fil-a (we have 3 of those in our area so basically I'm in heaven).

I'm learning so much from this area:

- the gift of tongues is SO REAL

-Jimmy John's can make deliveries to the church

-ALWAYS wear good walking shoes, even if you aren't planning to do much walking that day.

And lots more. I've got a great spiritual thought brewing so stay tuned for it in an upcoming email!

I've only been in this area for 2 weeks but I already feel like it's helped me grow so much. I'm so excited to see where else the Lord takes me!

-Hermana Thunell

Saying Goodbye to My Birthplace...and My Car

That's right, I've been transferred to a biking area 🚴 Texas summer, here I come!  I'm just grateful that I have a little bit of an idea of what I'm headed into, so maybe I won't melt completely into a puddle. 

The last week of the transfer (and with Hermana Jensen) has been pretty great. We found lots of cool people, spontaneously invited someone to be baptized on June 2nd (he said yes) and drove ALL OVER the boonies of our area, thankfully with a full tank of gas this time. 

Yesterday we had stake conference with Quentin L. Cook and it was super weird to go to church in English, but it was awesome. Everyone that spoke was so powerful and really invited us to act on the messages being shared. I've decided to take the invitation to have more compassion, because my sarcasm this transfer has been getting unruly. I feel like I'm being refined from this really craggy rough rock, to a super smooth shiny rock, and sometimes it's not super fun and it involves lots of sweaty helmet hair or holding back super funny witty comments, but I'm glad to know that the Lord has something better for me in mind. 

This past transfer has been really hard, but one day President pulled me into his office for an interview to talk about why I'm not happy. I told him all that I felt was going on and when I was finished he just looked at me and said "Hermanita, get off the dumb struggle-bus. You know what you need to do, so do it."  At first that made me even more sad, but after I left his office I realized that he was right.  I don't know everything, but I've been out here for almost six months and instead of being daunted by all that I need to do, I just need to do it the best I can. I've been happier ever since.  And of course as soon as I really started to LOVE my area and throw myself into it, I got transferred. Oh well, now I have a new area and a new companion to love. 

Wish me luck in biking all day every day...in a dress! 

-Hermana Thunell