Thursday, November 20, 2014

Camera malfunction and stolen scriptures! Yikes!

Buying donuts from my sweet recent convert, 
who by the way received the priesthood yesterday and has found a name of a 
deceased ancestor to take to the temple on Saturday!


This week:

Subject: no fotos this week.....

Yeah let's just talk about the saddest story of the week..............
I left my camera with one of our 14 year old converts during an activity so she could take pictures, and she accidentally deleted all of the pictures and videos from my mission................
so no pictures this week.  Here's hoping that mom has been saving my pics for the past 17 months. This would happen the last month of my mission!
But I have a little esperanza because Elder Krueger is all techy and says he can recover the pictures, so he has my camera and will be working on it. PRAYERS. 
This week was interesting.  Lots of divisions and lots of tender mercies.  I am learning that the Lord always blesses us, sometimes we just have the little tender mercies blessings instead of the huge baptizing a family of 5 blessings.  But when we are obedient, he blesses us. :) 

Romans 12:18
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

That was my theme this week.  Patience and do everything within your power to keep the peace. haha.  You are all probably thinking Hermana Moore is falling apart, but no, I'm keeping it together, as much as lieth in me, IM KEEPING IT TOGETHER.  For that reason, the Lord is blessing us.
One of the biggest tender mercies this week was on Tuesday when Hermana Merrill called me out of the blue and goes hey theres a road block and I can't go back to my area in Malacatan for 3 hours, can we come work with you guys in your area for a few hours?  I had been praying that morning that the Lord could bless me with SOMETHING to help me to calm down or make it through another day and I was imagining something else but the Lord sent me what I needed...... MY HERMANA MERRILL. Have I said it before?  I love that girl!  I was with her on divisions for 3 hours and it was so nice to teach with her, someone who is just such an incredible missionary.  We found some new investigators and ended it with some granizadas.   Have I ever mentioned that my tastes have changed here.  I now love granizadas and I love fruit but you have to put lime and salt and consome and pepitoria and chile on it.  I literally ate a watermelon today smothered in chile and lime and salt. and then I drank the juice.  Oh and I can't eat anything without tortillas now.... might be a hard adjustment.  But don't worry.  I bought a comal so I'll be making tortillas every night.  Make sure to have corn flour ready for me because we are going to be making tortillas!!!! :) 
I also went on divisions with Hermana Outsen this week.  She has a lot of time in the mission too, so it was fun and she is pilas!  She started her mission in my area so we spent almost the whole day finding her old investigators and inviting them to come to church again!  They seem like a bunch of cool people and I am really excited. :)
I ALSO went on divisions this week with Hermana Herrera.  She is a mini missionary.  Our mission is doing this super cool thing where they got 34 18 and 19 year old jovenes to come be missionaries with us for 3 weeks.  So our mission has a ton more missionaries right now and we are working so hard!  Most of the zone leaders have two minis and so that means they get to do double the work they normally do!  I was with Hermana Herrera for a day and wow it was so fun!  Even though she's only been a mini for 4 days she was so fun and pilas and FULL of the Spirit.  We saw so many miracles! We were in her area and I don't know anyone there and she didn't either so we basically contacted the whole day and we ended up finding a family of 8! BLESSINGS!  It was funny because I was like hmm I don't know this area so I have no idea where to go... but I want ice cream so let's go look for ice cream and contact the owner.  So we did and she owned a tortilleria too so I had to show her that I can in fact tortillar and then turns out she doesn't go to a church and the missionaries had NEVER stopped by her house!  So she was super positive and prepared by the Lord!  All because I was hungry. Haha. 
This week our activity to shake things up a bit and contact in  NEW FUN WAY was to have a car wash in the chapel parking lot. HAHAHAHAH.  Don't worry I wasn't washing the cars, I was just on the corner of the church for 3 hours sweating my brains out screaming CAR WASH GRATIS to every tuktukero and car that passed by!  Super sun burnt and super lost my voice! (didn't you know, I'm black now.  Seriously I'm tanner than I have ever been in my life.  It's my inner Puerto Rican coming out!  Haha get ready for tan, blonde Erica.)   We got a ton of references.  The cool part was that once they were in the parking lot we took them out of their cars and showed them the chapel in a super cool tour!  We had members inside the chapel to explain every room and then in the last room of the sacrament meeting room we had the video "Gracias a El" playing.  SO COOL.  I really love activities.  We have another cool one this week that involves Minute To Win It games.  Should be hilarious! :) 
Okay funny moment of the week. I have gotten really in to essential oils here on my mission....have I ever talked about that?  Thanks Hermana Cadavieco!..... and they are my cure all to everything.  This week in weekly planning my comp was like I'm so tired that I can't keep my eyes open! So I said, "Oh don't worry, peppermint oil wakes you up.  Let me put it on your forehead." I did and then thought, hey I bet if I put it on her cheeks too, it'll make her more awake.......... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA.  Homegirl couldn't even CLOSE HER EYES for the rest of our planning session!  She said, "It burns hermana!"  Woooops, my bad! 
I think that is it for this week.  Sorry for the lack of pictures. I bet this email will be super boring. Hopefully next week I have my pictures back. :( if not, I hope you saved them all mommy! :)

*note from the editor: Yes I did. And of course most are on this blog:)

love love love,

hermana moore

Last Week:

Subject: tribulations bring PATIENCE.


Romans 5:3

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience.

If I could describe this week in a scripture, it would be that one. 
What the week.  Where do I even begin.  Let's just start with the fact that I cried more this week than I did last week!  And I wasn't even sick!  Sad tears, happy tears, bitter tears, joyful tears....and rain on top of that!  Missions are just wet experiences. ha!
Skinny me. hahah jk!  Street food for the win!  Do you see all of that mayo and ketchup and grease!  Hot diggity dog!  We have to support our investigators.....It's like a mission law.  And that trumps the don't eat street food mission law.  Haha! 

We have been finding a lot of people who want to get baptized lately.  Just people that have been being prepared by the Lord for a long time and we show up to make sure they get an interview and have white clothes, and then baptism!  It's nuts.  I'm telling you, I've seen more miracles like that here in Reu than any other area of my mission.  Here I thought I wouldn't like Reu.  I was so wrong.  I love this place!  But with that comes a lot of crap from the adversary!  It's like a well known fact here in the mission that when you start to have success in an area is when you start to see a ton of tribulation!  Like in your companionship, in your personal life, or other things. and when it rains it pours!  Okay enough of the pity party.... let's get on to the miracles! 
So this week Marisol FINALLY got baptized!  She was ready to get baptized a few weeks ago but on the day of her baptism her mom fell and she lives in the capitol so she had to leave all of a sudden and help her.   She got back finally this Friday night and was baptized the next day.  We had been reading in the Book of Mormon with her and praying at night time over the phone.  She is such a cute girl.  She has so much faith and has started challenging members of her family to get baptized too!   So cute!  I love baptizing jovenes because they are just full of love and excitement to baptize everyone! 

This week I went on divisions with Hermana Mendez, she is from Mexico and is in her training still! She's a newbie!  But she is so incredible!  She taught me so much!  I was amazed with her teaching ability!  She taught me something cool, to challenge someone to baptism in lesson 1 when you teach about the earthly ministry of Jesucristo.  It was the coolest idea ever and eliminates a lot of back tracking and re-teaching!  We did it all day and literally committed 3 new investigators to baptism! Hermana Mendez!  You're amazing!  Cutie. 

Now for the coolest miracle probably ever......
On Saturday we went to a different chapel in the center of Reu for a baptism of some other hermanas in our zone. we were helping to make some drinks when my comp needed to go to the bathroom , so we left and left all our stuff in the kitchen.  As we leave the bathroom we see a man enter into the kitchen.  We were like oh cool the members are showing up!  But then when we get to the kitchen we both just got this really bad feeling.   My comp opened the door and looked inside and we go in and I see this man with his hands IN MY BAG.   He turns around and he looks super caught and my comp was like uhm do you need something?   He was like oh i just came in because I was looking for agua pura.   Me being the gullible person that I am said, "Oh we don't have agua pura here just from the tap."  He was like oh okay then I'll leave.  We just let him leave like idiots.  I thought to myself as he left, how weird it looked like there was something under his shirt... then I was like OH MY GOSH he just tried to rob me!  So I go look in my bags and find that my cell phone, camera and wallet are all there.   I was so relieved like wow good thing we got here quickly!  Then we went on our merry way. It wasn't until 20 minutes later that I realized that my bag felt a little lighter than normal.  I checked in my bag and to my dismay he had stollen my TRIPLE.   My Book of Mormon.  MY MOST PRIZED POSSESSION.  With the ONLY picture I have of my baptism and all the scriptures I have marked for the past 17 months of my life.  My heart was crushed.  We went to our baptism and when we sat down at the church I just broke down.  I know it doesn't seem like that big of a deal but scriptures are the most valuable thing we own.  Then my comp was like, hey let's just pray.   She prayed in English, she's a cutie sometimes, and asked the Lord to soften that man's heart.  Afterwards I felt a little better and we had a beautiful baptism and everything.  When we were going home and I checked the phone and saw a missed call from the zone leaders.  So I call and they go, "Hermana Moore you owe me 20 qutez!"  I'm like wait what why.   I guess the elders were going to a cita in their area when they saw this drunk man on the other side of the street with a Bible in his hand.  They just thought, huh, how weird why would a drunk have a Bible.  Then they recognized my scripture case and were like NO WAY.  So they chase him down and they are like HEY!  That's ours! and the drunk goes, "Nooooooooooo. It's a tall white girl's!"  He had opened my scriptures and looked at all my pics and taken everything out.  So the elders finally got him to sell it to them for 20 quetz.  It smells like alcohol and has some puke on it but its BACK AND ITS ALL MINE. 
What a miracle right?!?  Seriously, God loves me.  He somehow placed the elders in the path of the drunk and got me my scriptures back!  I was reading in Jesus the Christ and found something I loved....

"Miracles cannot be in contravention of natural law, but are wrought through the operation of laws not universally or commonly recognized."
James E. Talmage

Mission 5K!!  Woooooo Woooooo!

Canches!

I ran.  She walked.  But Homegirl finished. So proud!

Best Buddies!

God loves me and I know it because he answered the sweetest and simplest prayer that a drunk man's heart would be softened and that my scriptures would be returned. 
Hermana Ostler said something funny when she found out.... he was looking for water and found living water, or the scriptures!  Funny one..... didn't make me laugh! 

Another sweet moment this week was when we were teaching a joven and we asked him if he believed that what happened with Joseph Smith was true and he said yes I do.  I was like, but why?! And he was like,  I just do, it feels right.  Aw I love my job!

And now, onto another week.  Should be a crazy one, and fun.  Haha

pray for me!

love love love,
hermana moore

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