April 25, 2016 "SAY WHAT SIX MONTHS?!"

Well its official I’ve been in the mission 6 months... I still feel like I’m the new gringa! haha. Well this week has for sure been one of learning and growing... that’s the positive way to put it. My comp is incredibly nice and sweet and is a really powerful teacher but WOW living with someone else is so WEIRD! Not to mention the solo español. I cannot believe how much I have learned this week not only in my Spanish but also how to be a more self-sufficient missionary. Obviously, Hna Cirne doesn’t know this area only I do so I’ve had to take the lead and remember where all our less actives and investigators live... I’m not gonna lie the first few days I was so incredibly stressed out. I’ve never really taken control of the lessons and been the one to keep the lessons going that had always been Hna Muro and really I was ok with it. But since Hna Cirne doesn’t know the people it was all of a sudden my job. Wow, was I scared my first few times! But really just about 3 days of doing it and it already feels natural! We haven’t had any real problems with the language which has helped me see how much I really know. I am far from perfect but I can basically understand everything and express myself pretty well... in only 6 months I have this confidence with the language. The gift of tongues is real.

We had the great opportunity on Friday for a Conference with just the Hermanas in all the mission in Guadalajara.  Wow, I totally needed this conference at this time. It was a great break and so spiritually uplifting. All the hermanas from Santiago, Tepic and Vallarta all stayed in the offices for 2 nights. Needless to say nobody slept but it was crazy fun to be with every Hermana!

The Hermanas from Tepic, Vallarta and Santiago on our way to a
special mission Women's Conference

The conference was adorable, Hna Clayton ( the pres’s wife ) talked about the women from the scriptures and how we can apply their attributes in our life. And we had Krispy Kreme doughnuts for breakfast (: AND Olive Garden for lunch! Also not to mention all the girly treats we got during the conference. The sister trainers taught lessons on how to better study, exercise and eat. It’s kind of crazy that all the hermanas in the whole mission where in the same room at the same time! And even crazier to look around the room knowing that one of them could be your next companion. Of course I was also able to see Hermana Muro again after like 3 days... it’s weird from going from every second of everyday together and then none... It was nice to see her! She brought me some letters that people had sent to the bishop’s house when I was in Vallarta! I got one from the Watsons! That was signed by some members of the ward although it was for Christmas it was still nice to get it even late!

This week has been a little slow with teaching because we had transfers and almost 3 days of no teaching due to the Women’s conference. Our investigator Isais was sick this last Sunday so have to push back his baptism, but we haven’t finished teaching the lessons to him so it worked out. For a few days he hadn’t been answering our calls and I was super scared that he didn’t want to be taught anymore. Then he called and we made plans to visit with him again. Huge relief! Andrea our recent convert is still the best and adorable. We will be working hard this week to find more people to teach and I’m sure we will get more organized as Hna Cirne and I have more time together.

Service project on our P-day helping to clean up a yard, trash etc.

I ALMOST FORGOT!! I received the package you guys sent me! It got her super quick! I know I’ve said it before but not joke getting a package is like the best thing ever! Not to mention the candy the notes, clothes, cute quotes that were in the package are all perfect, thank you, thank you! And I LOVE all the church music it is seriously perfect and a ton I’m really impressed! Again thank you. Listening to the same 10 songs was starting to get on my nerves J ! I love you guys that’s all I got this week! Know you are always in my prayers and I can’t wait to talk to you on May 8th!!!   

-- con amor

Hermana Acor 

April 18, 2016 "A New Companion and 'solo espanol'!"

Well the day has finally come.... Hna Muro and I are no longer companions): But my new comp is so cute and way nice. I mean I’ve known her for about 3 hours but it’s been a good time so far! She is from Puebla, Mexico and guess what.... she doesn’t speak annyyy English. My days of solo Española have started.

My new companion!

I’m not worried though. I have been doing really good with my Spanish on divisions and I can express myself and I know Hermana Cirne is what i need right now. I know our mission President was inspired to have us together. She has only 2 transfers left so she knows a lot and she has had American companions before so she knows how it is (:

This week has been a very spiritual week. Our investigator Isais, has his baptism date for the 30th of April! Our lessons with him this last week have been some of the most spiritual I have had in my whole mission. Always after our lessons with him the members who help us teach talk about how strongly they could feel the spirit. It’s really amazing. And not to mention he came to church this last Sunday!!! AND he had many spiritual experiences throughout the services. He really is so amazing.

With our new convert Andrea, before going out to teach

Andrea, our recent convert,has been awesome this last week. We have even taken her to make visits with us. We have another investigator who is 26 and really is another awesome one. He actually lived in Springville for 6 months working with his cousin! It was so weird to talk to him and I told him about where we live and he knew where everything was and mentioned all the stores and restaurants, it was so weird! But he knows a lot about Mormons and wants to keep learning more. He read the BOM and even had questions he prepared to ask us about what he had read! The only problem is he works Saturday and Sunday. He is a radiologist.... he is finishing his service hours so hopefully we can help him gain a testimony so he will have more of a desire to go to church and work it into his schedule. But with Andrea, she has loved making visits with us and she shares her testimony and it’s all so awesome! She even says things like “well when I go on a mission”.... ahhh it would be so cool if she decided to go! Since Andrea’s baptism her family has started to show an interest in being taught. Her mom even invited us to go eat on Tuesday with her! She asked us a bunch of question about the church. I think she will soon be a future investigator (:

Mystery Bus! :)

This last week we have been telling our investigators and less actives about transfers and so many shared with us how truly grateful they are for us and some even cried at the thought of us leaving. When they were sharing with us their feelings I could really feel how much they loved us. We left many houses crying because of the love we had felt. Maybe that sounds weird but really this ward and this area have my heart, I love everyone and everything here. I’m so grateful I have a least one more transfer here! I love you all and I hope you all have an amazing week! I can’t wait to hear about it! (: 

-- Con MUCHO amor 

Hermana Acor 

Pie in Spanish is "Pay" !!

By a cocoa tree

April 11, 2016 "Friday Andrea Was Baptized!!

So much has happened this week I don’t even know where to start! As far as all the drama with my stomach... I spent about 5 hours in the hospital on Monday. The Doctor said that my problem is with the food here in Mexico. To say it simply my intestines aren’t working like they should.  

They were causing me a lot of pain and making my stomach swell. So to solve this problem the dr’s were going to give me an IV to help clean out my system and help me get rehydrated. But of course while they were putting in the IV, I passed out.... its official I’m scared of my own blood. Remember when I got my wisdom teeth out and I passed out when I was changing the gauze? Well I guess it really was because of the blood. Ha poor Hna Muro I was holding her hand cause you all know how much I hate needles and she said I looked at them putting in the IV, I did a little weird body twitch, went totally white and passed out. When I woke up I had no idea what had happened. You know in the movies how they have people who wake up in hospitals with the lights super bright and like 5 doctors standing over them? I had one of those moments and it was the weirdest thing! After that I didn’t have any other problems other than feeling sick to my stomach. They put different fluids in my IV and gave me food. After the 5 hours I was tired, they sent me with a bunch of medicine and I slept great.

I haven’t had any pains for about 3 days now so they medicine is working! I had also asked my Zone Leader Elder Brough to give me a blessing and really after the blessing is when I started to feel better. He did a really good job. It was a powerful blessing and he promised that as long as I say working hard I won’t be have any problems so there is more motivation to keep working!

Friday Andrea was baptized!! Everything went reallllly well! We got everything ready Friday morning with the help of the Elders. Everyone showed up more or less on time. Andrea was so excited and visited a lot of her friends and family! But of course something had to go wrong.... the Elders had put the water boiler on and the water was really hot.. so she was having a hard time getting in the font. Ha after when we went to go help her we apologized about the water because really we felt sooooo bad but she just laughed and said it wasn’t important. She was all smiles and so happy to just be baptized, it was adorable! She made us all feel so much better. We actually spent our Pday with Andrea today!

There is a cute bus here that takes you around Tepic and so we invited her to come with us and it was super fun! Not to mention in the morning Hna Valdivia gave us breakfast! She made us crepes and eggs and it was the best breakfast I’ve had in the mission so far (: Hna Valdivia is the best!

I don’t know if you guys remember our investigator Isais, He is about 65 and his a Greek Philosophy teacher so our lessons can be pretty exhausting sometimes. He’s super smart and naturally asks a TON of questions. It’s been hard because he feels he can’t be baptized until he understands everything and that’s just not going to happen. BUT this last lesson we taught him on Saturday he told us that he was done asking questions, he just wants to live the gospel and be baptized! Is that not crazy or what?! We still need to finish teaching the lessons and he needs to come to church 2 more times but the fact that he said that is a huge step! 

Sunday was the confirmation of Andrea and it was all so perfect! She had her family there supporting her even though they aren’t members, she does have 2 cousins and an aunt that are. It was a really pretty blessing they gave her and it’s something I will always remember (:

Oh I did get letters from home this last week! One from Grandpa from the end of February... I love what he shared with me, please tell him that! And one from all the fam at a family home evening! It is funny because the sister trainers brought them to me while I was in the hospital, just kinda funny I was reading letters while in a hospital bed but what a perfect time to get them! We also had zone conference Tuesday! It was great I don’t have time to say much about it sorry! I love you guys so much and I’m so grateful for all of your prayers! Have an amazing week! 

-- con amor

Hermana Acor 

April 4, 2016 "Pres. Monson Was Inspired to Talk About Choices and Their Importance."

Hola Mis Amigos! Como esta? This week has been a pretty good one minus somedays I had to stay home due to stomach pains... ( I’ll be going to the doctor today to try and figure out what’s going on) And not to mention CONFERENCE!

Hna. Muro and I are matching today!

Watching conference as a missionary has a whole new perspective. I really do understand so much more about this gospel and God’s plan for all of us. Before Conference Hna Muro and I took the challenge and wrote down questions that we wanted answers too for ourselves and for the people we are teaching. Every single thing I had a question on was answered and I received so much guidance for how we can better teach our investigators and less actives. Isn’t conference amazing!

All the English speakers in a room watching conference.

Although Pres. Monson only spoke for a short time I think that makes it all the more powerful. He knew he had only a few minutes to share a message and he was inspired to talk about choices and their importance. I couldn’t agree with him more. In the mission I have seen more and more how easy it really is for people to fall way from the church without them ever really knowing why.(really)  It all starts with our choices. Sometimes maybe we say we will read our scriptures tomorrow, then it’s we will pray tomorrow, then it’s we will go to church next week and then little by little we aren’t as strong of members of the church as we use to be. Our choices really do matter, so make the choice today to forever and always follow Christ and his commandments and you will never go astray. (: 

Quick lunch between sessions. Notice the caramel
this is how they eat cookies, by dipping them in the sauce.

Tuesday we had Divisions with our sister trainer leaders! We had to go to Santiago, the hottest place in the whole mission, to meet them for divisions. Honestly, divisions are the best. You get to see what other people’s area is like, meet new people and not to mention how other missionaries do things. This time I was with Hna. Otazu. Shes the perfect sister trainer leader and she teaches with so much power, she’s from Paraguay.

This past week we have been teaching a man named Ruben. I told you he owns the bakery. We have been able to teach him a few times this past week. It’s really interesting to teach him. He has really different beliefs and almost after every point of a lesson he just shakes his head and says “no that’s not the way it is” and goes on the tell us what he thinks and why we are wrong, ha, but he always wants us to come back and he likes going to church. We will keep working with him. We also had a really big break through with a less active family. Ana and Jose. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They love to have us come visit and teach them. Yesterday we taught more about the restoration and didn’t get too much feedback from them, but once Hermana muro started talking about temples and how we can be sealed to our families forever, Ana was really interested. She ALWAYS talks about her cute little boy that passed away a few years ago at 2 years old. She hadn’t been taught about temples in a while and really become all ears after we brought up temples. Now we know what we can teach them to help bring them back (:

Andrea continues to prepare for her BAPTISM! We have been getting everything put together and planning so everything will go smoothly. I’ve never been able to teach the last few lessons before and I have to say they are my favorite. We get to talk about temples, eternal marriage, family history and all that fun stuff! Don’t get me wrong I love all the other lessons but we just don’t get to teach these ones as much! She will be getting baptized on the 8th (:

We have transfers this Sunday, so who knows what will happen! Either way I’m extremely grateful for my time with Hna Muro and my time here in Tepic. I know this church is true and I love it will all my heart! I hope you all have an amazing week! 

-- con amor

Hermana Acor 

March 28, 2016 "This week I got some Christmas letters!"

This week I got some Christmas letters!! haha I got one from the Gammells ( super adorable ) one from Grandma Betty, a card from Grandpa Acor ( one finally got to me!) and the calendar that Shelly and Bryant sent ( which I’ve looked at probably 100 times, I miss you guys!) Not to mention I got a big packet of family history stories from Elder Pieper! I have been reading them all this last week (: And you know now that I’m reading these stories there are things I’ve heard of or heard grandma talk about before! We have some amazing family history!

Yesterday was my favorite Sunday in the mission so far. Some members told us it was day light savings but it actually wasn’t so only us 4 sisters were at church with what we thought was the right time but no... So we practiced a song all together to sing in sacrament. We sang “Oh Mi Padre” to the tune of “Come Thou Fount.”  It sounds really pretty. And not to mention we had TWO investigators in church! I could cry. One was Andrea Arellano. Offically yesterday she decided her baptism will be April 8th at 11am!! Ah Hna Muro and I are soo excited. We will be keeping a close eye on her these next few days and teaching lots. The other was a man named Ruben we  met him a few days ago. We only had time to teach the first two points of lesson one and he still came to church! That never happens. We meet with him later Sunday and he told us that of all the churches he’s ever been to he like ours the most and he even was talking about taking his kids in the next two weeks! We haven’t been able to sit down and teach a full lesson but sometime this week! Oh and did i mention he owns a panaderia? (aka free treats)  And then in sacrament Hna. Valdivia talked and she always does an amazing job and makes us all cry. She talked about how grateful she is for all the missionaries and how amazing the work we are doing is... she’s my favorite and I can understand her Spanish perfectly wahoooo! Hna Muro and i taught the gospel principles class this Sunday too and it went really well! This class is for all the investigators and less actives that come to church. It went a lot better than the first time we taught when we first got here. The Women’s Conference was ok for me... it was only in Spanish but if I listened really closely I could hear the English quietly in the back haha. With that said mom could you send me a file where I could print off Henry B. Eyring’s talk? And maybe one of your other favorites? Don’t worry for conference they will have a room for us English speakers to watch! 

Tomorrow we have divisions with our sister trainers in Santiago! Santiago is the hottest place in the whole mission so we will see how that goes... I don’t have much else to say about this week but I love and miss you guys! Until next week (:  

-- con mucho amor 

Hermana Acor 

March 21, 2016 "I love this gospel and the love and hope it has to offer people"

First I have to say happy birthday to Cooper! I cannot believe you’re going to be 12! And not to mention you’ll get the priesthood! You’re going to be a totally different person when I get home, not to mention I think you’re already taller than me... Anyway happy birthday bud you should write me soon (;

This week has been another good one! No surprise there! For Pday today we went with the Padillas (members in our ward) and they gave us breakfast, let us wash our clothes and all of that!

Then we meet up with the other Hermanas in El Centro to do some shopping and walking around, I found some cute dresses, so score!

As for this week, this last Friday we had a stake Relief Society activity. Each ward in the stake put together a little skit, played songs or whatever together. Our ward, Estadios, did a reenactment of how the relief society came to be through Emma and Joseph Smith. Hna Muro was Emma and sang a little solo at the end of our skit and the other missionaries joined her on the chorus, we sang Fe en cada Paso.. (Faith in Every Footstep) it was a super fun activity. Every ward brought food to share and so there was tostadas, tortillas, basically all really good Mexican food! ha Oh I forgot to mention we all had to dress up as pioneers! I have some good pics :)

Our awesome investigator Ernesto continues to progress but he will be leaving soon to work somewhere else so we won’t be able to teach him. But he talks about getting married in the temple and all of that! He will be here a few more days. We will try to teach him a little here and there. We gave him our contact info so he can tell us when he gets baptized (:

We started teaching a family this last week we met a couple of weeks ago outside their house. Oh my goodness I have so much hope for them. This family, the Castillo’s, are so awesome! They are really open to everything we have to say and the dad knows a lot about the church. He always is talking about temples and Joseph Smith. And they all agreed to be baptized! There are the parents and they have two kids, a daughter that’s 10 and a son that’s 7. So we got three people who hopefully will keep progressing! Our lesson went awesome with them and they said they would read the BOM together. We will see them again Wednesday! Again. lots of hope. I would love nothing more than to help a family go through the temple, what a dream that would be!

 Sunday night we had FHE at the Padilla’s house, they don’t live in our area but they are super close and their son who is less active does live in our area so we all went to their house and watched 17 Miracles and had “Avena”, a super good rice drink. Being able to watch movies is such a luxury thing in the mission.

This Saturday is the Women’s Conference and Hermana Valdivia invited us to eat with her before and go with her to the conference! She’s also going to bring me a tablet so I can watch it in English... ha I hope that works. If not I’ll just have you send me the talks or something (:

I just have to tell you about how grateful I am to the families in this ward here in Tepic! Mainly the Luquin’s ( the bishops fam), the Valdivia’s ( the Relief Society Prez and our ward mission leader) and the Padilla’s ( just really good friends, her daughter is Paola) All three of these families are always feeding us, always making sure we have somewhere to eat, letting us wash our clothes at their houses, inviting us over for breakfast,giving us advice, coming and doing visits with us and so much more! I am so grateful I’ve gotten to get to know these people they have been such a blessing in my life.

Sadly we don’t have tons of progressing investigators; we had a lot that were not progressing so we had to stop visiting them. We have been busy trying to find some. We do have one named Andrea. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about her.  she’s 19 and has been seeing the missionaries for 4 months. She went to church this Sunday and is preparing for the 9th of April for her baptismal date! It is later because of Conference. We have been working hard with her and I hope she keeps progressing so we can watch her be baptized while we are here!

That’s all I can really think of this week! My Spanish really is better and better every day and I’m so grateful for the gifts of tongues, I love being able to talk to people and help them the best I can. I love this gospel and the love and hope it has to offer people. I’m grateful to be on a mission and having these amazing experiences, I feel blessed every day. I LOVE YOU ALL! Have an amazing week! 

Con amor,

Hermana Acor

March 14, 2016 "It's Not Supposed to be COLD in Mexico!"

Oh my has this week been a cold one! Wednesday was the coldest day, like tights,jackets, gloves all of that and it was raining to top it all off. We had investigators tell us from their windows to come back another day cause they were too cold to let us in... not like we were standing outside in the cold or anything (;

Coats in Mexico?

But we went to the local OXXO and bought hot chocolate which wasn't something I thought i would do soon! Its slowly getting warm again but the nights are pretty cold. I'm sure later this week will be so hot. We will wonder if it was ever really cold. This p day has been nice and relaxing. We spent it at Paola Padillas house with her mom. Her mom has a salon in the front of her house and so she told us she would make us lunch and give us a much needed pedicure! My feet are now baby smooth (; I'm sure today is the only time I'll get a pedicure in the mission ha. 

Hard life as a missionary :)

This week are investigators have been all over the place. Our golden investigator Ernesto Barrios has the strongest testimony but his job wont let him go to church on Sunday. He will be done with this job he has now in about 2 weeks and he has a lot of debts he needs to pay off. But he says after these 2 weeks he will be 100% into the church. The sad thing is is he will most likely be living outside of our area so we are really sad about that. He fasted this last Sunday to help him find a job that will allow him to go to church but he says it is hard at his age, he's 64 and doesn't have tons of options. He always feels really bad when he can't come to church and when we tell him how important he is he always says its out of his hands and he gets really sad. It's a sad situation all around. Andrea our investigator who should get baptized this month didn't come to church on Sunday and we can't get ahold of her.... we don't know why she didn't show up but now her baptism day is different. We can't see her till Wednesday so like always we will see what happens. She has a strong testimony she just has to come to church! Another one of our investigators named Isais that was preparing for baptism told us in around about way that he doesn't want visits anymore, but he doesn't remember the restoration lesson so we will be teaching him that tonight hopefully we can say something that will help him see that this is the one and only true church. On the brightside we had 3 less actives in church yesterday! One family who haven't been in about 4 months and our dear friend Rafael. Rafael is the one who went to church 2 weeks ago after almost 7 years, he really likes church just not the last hour because we can't sit with him, he feels really intimidated by the priesthood. Hopefully we can change that. The other two are a mom and a son that we found in Col. Centro that have not been visited in a while so we found them and started teaching them and they came!!! WAhoo but right after sacrament they basically ran out. Not very many people like the last 2 hours of church ha. 

We've been exploring our new area a lot this last week and i love this area more and more everyday! We have more less actives to see and there is one family we found that are less active. They LOVE to have us over and offer us tons of food ha. They haven't been taught the actual lessons in a long time so we will start there with them. The wife Ana says she wishes she was Mormon from the time she was born and how she knows her life would have been more blessed. To me she sounds pretty open to learning more and trying to come back to church. Well that's it for this week nothing to crazy! My testimony has grown everyday and the language is coming more and more cada dia!(; I love you all and cant wait to hear more from you next week! (:

March 7, 2016 "Holding Our Breaths and Hoping People Come"

Well this week has again been a busy one. Hermana Muro and I know our way around the area a lot better now so we know all the shortcuts to each investigator's house!

We have been teaching an investigator named, Ernesto Barrios, he was so prepared by the Lord wow!  He listens and acts and does almost everything we tell him. Sometimes we get so excited to teach him we schedule to see him every day... ha-ha. He is the first investigator I’ve taught this many lessons to! He read 116 pages of the BOM in 2 DAYS! And when we give him a pamphlet to read for the next lesson he actually reads it and asks questions and knows what we are talking about before we say it, it is so nice. He is 56, he is a builder and lives in the houses he is currently working on. The house he is working on now is huge and so pretty. He went to church last Sunday but wasn’t able to go this Sunday because he had to work. It’s hard because he wants to be baptized on the fecha meta we set for him. But how he went last week was he told his boss he had to go shopping for food for the week and he actually went to church. We told him he needs to pray and fast then talk to his boss about allowing him to attend church. His boss is actually really nice we’ve met him a few times and he told us that the church is all he ever talks about at work now. Oh funny story he discovered early this week that there is a Dictionary at the back of the BOM and he has been ready that too and he asks us random facts about the church to see if we know them.. Like the other day he asked us if we knew the day that Joseph Smith’s mom died... it’s the 5th of May if any of you are wondering ha-ha. He has tons of these random dates memorized! Facts about Temples and everything. He is supposed to be done with this job he is now working on in about a month. He told us he can be 100% into the church after that. Right now he is lying to go to church. We’ll see what happens, we hope his boss will let him come to church. But I know if he doesn’t get baptized with us he will with someone else.

I think I said last week, our area we have is now twice as big. We have a colonia called El Centro (downtown) and it has 100s of shops and places to eat. It is so fun. So now when I come back to visit I’ll know my way around one of the only things to do in Tepic!! (; The poor elders that had the area before had 2 really good progressing investigators and now they are ours. I feel bad but I’m happy too. One is named Andrea she is 19 and has been seeing the missionaries for about 4 months. She has had almost all the lessons and is just a little scared of baptism. There’s a member named Isais that came with us to see her and he use to go with the elders, he really likes this investigator, like a lot and let me just say there were times we felt like we were 3rd wheeling in the lesson... he won’t be coming with us again anytime soon mostly because she is shy around him and won’t share her true feelings, but hey she has a friend and he even picks her up for church so whatever works right?(; We have another investigator of the elders  who’s name is also Isais, he is about 62 and is so smart and soft spoken, he loves the Book of Mormon and is a really successful business man. So he almost can never go to church because he travels for work, he also wasn’t able to go this Sunday but he accepted a baptismal date. That’s now different because he didn’t go to church.

Sunday mornings are always days where we just hold our breath and hope people come. We try to pick people up that live close to us but that only ever works every now and again. We had our less active, Cleotilde, come to church with her 3 kids! She showed up for the last hour and we were so happy to see her and to have her kids start going to primary again! Hna Valdivia taught the Relief society lesson and she did such a great job everyone was in tears. I’m grateful Hna Cleotilde was there for that lesson.

We are very busy here in Tepic! I love this area more and more every day! That’s all I have for this week I love guys and I hope you have another amazing fun filled week and remember you’re always in my thoughts and in my prayers! (:  

Con amor

Hermana Acor

February 29, 2016 "Meeting My General Authority Cousin, Elder Pieper!"

Today for Pday we spent it with our favorite... less active! No joke she is the funniest human ever and she took us out to an Italian restaurant.

Probably one of the nicest places I’ll ever be in my whole mission and then she took us to the big mall here in Tepic for Dairy Queen. One of the girls in the threesome was with us for the day so it was 3 missionaries with our less active whose name is Esther. The whole time we made jokes with her about how she never goes to church and that just gives you a taste of our relationship with her. We know she will go soon. She was sick this last week in the hospital actually, so maybe this next week! She lives in a really nice part of our area.

This last Sunday was transfers and it was so stressful for all of us because we all knew that 9 missionaries couldn’t stay in one ward. We all knew someone was leaving. We were all taking pictures with the members after church and our district leader got a call from the zone leader so all the members and missionaries stayed around after church to see who was leaving and who wasn’t. Hermana Muro and I get to stay!!

This last week was my last week of training so I guess you could say I’m a real missionary now! (; The three some of girls that were here only one is staying and she is training her last 2 transfers here so there will be a new missionary in the ward with us. Then 2 Elders left. So it is now 6 missionaries in one ward which is better but still a lot. We are meeting later tonight to talk about our areas because they are all gonna get a little bigger... we’ll see how it works out! I’m excited to finally get the chance to stay in an area longer than 6 weeks! And when the members heard we were staying they all hugged us and were excited, it’s nice to know we are wanted here haha.

We had the conference with Elder Pieper this Friday! Its funny because when I heard his name I told Hna Muro my great grandma’s maiden name was Pieper I wonder if they are related. So when he got here we all took a picture together and we all stood in a line and he shook our hands. When it got to my turn he looked at me and he says you know were related right? And then I remember grandma telling us we had a relative in the seventy and it all came together. It was pretty cool! He called me up in front of everyone and started talking about how important family history is and told everyone I was his cousin and everyone was like ohhhhhhh.

He told a really cool story about our grandpa and how he was only baptized in one day and I can’t remember all of it because it was in Spanish but it was really cool. He told me he is going to give the story to president to give to me! Then after the conference all the zones that came to the conference, four were picked to have and interview with Elder Pieper. I was I was picked from Tepic so we were able to talk more and I asked him questions to about how to help our less actives and investigators keep commitments. Oh and at this conference before I knew we were related they handed out the program and they had me giving the opening prayer... Remember how I ALWAYS pray at like everything? Ya I guess this was no exception, I was way nervous because of course it had to be in Spanish but once I knew we were related I wasn’t scared anymore ha.

As far as investigators goes we have had a lot of opportunities to teach lesson one because of all the new investigators I wrote about last week. Abel the one who was really into our lessons and paid super close attention went A-wall this week and we finally find him yesterday and have another appointment with him today. We will see if he will even be home. He was acting so strange yesterday and we told him if he didn’t want us to come back we wouldn’t but he said he did so we will see. We had a man named Ernesto call us on Tuesday telling us we wanted us to come teach him. He had stopped us on the street and we were running late to an appointment so we just gave him our number and left and he actually called! The first time we tried to teach him he just talked and talked so we actually didn’t teach at all. He has soooo many questions about religion and has a lot of friends of other faiths so he was always asking why one church did this and that and why we don’t. The second time we went to teach him was better. We actually got to teach. But main the lesson was exhausting. He again had 100 questions and for some reason doesn’t take me very seriously. He interrupted me so many times while I was bearing my testimony... he’s a little more interested in the fact that I’m learning Spanish than listening to what I have to say... But with that said he is way nice and always offers to buy us drinks and taxis because of how far his house is. He builds houses and while they are being built he lives in them. The house he is working on now is HUGE and so pretty. And you’ll never guess what happened.......... HE CAME TO CHURCH!! He may have a 101 questions but he is one that says he is going do something and he does it. The bishop was welcoming everyone to church and had mentioned to everyone about donating some extra money when they could on their tithing slips to help the members feed the missionaries.  After sacrament he had to go back to work and as we were leaving he said “oh wait I want to give money to the members to help feed you guys.” It made us so happy to hear him say that!

Our cool New Zealander investigators may have only been a dream... the man from New Zealand is the husband of a less active and she told us the other day that he wants her to tell us not to come back... they have a lot of marriage problems they need to work out, it is the saddest situation.

That’s all I have for this week, a little slower sorry! I love you all and have an amazing week!  

-- con amor

Hermana Acor