Please Pass the Empanadas!

 making empanadas with the flia veldarde!

we were walking around trying to pick people up for church on sunday and we passed this hideous house.
there are little windows and two dogs had their heads sticking out.

this little girl and her little brother were walking down the sidewalk with these little homemade "toys"--a stick that they stuck in some old stroller wheels.  they were walking their stick/wheels like you walk a dog.  they were pretty cute.  whenever i take pictures with little kids i give them stickers.  i make their day and they make mine!

we went to contact a reference and on their door is a simon dewy picture.
when we talked to the lady, i told her that i knew the name of the artist.
she was not really impressed.   

all the kids in one of the neighborhoods where we work have these cool wooden tops.  they wind them up with string and wrap the string around their finger and then they throw/fling it and it spins like crazy. and then they can do cool tricks with them, like make them jump.  i finally bought one (only 3 pesos!!!!) with the help of rosita (converso reciente) and her hermanito, carlos.  i still can´t get mine to spin, but i´m really close.  me and hna buchanan were practicing today.

yay yay yay for the emails from betsy, ma, sis. parkinson, rachel, sam, gee, and jmag!  loved all the photos.

this week was a good week.  felt like we had some quality lessons with some promising people.  i feel like my comp and i are working better together--always takes a bit to work in sync with a new comp.

every week in the district meeting we have a little training session and i was asked to prepare something for this last week.  i taught about asking inspired questions (see chapt 10 in PMG).  i think that´s the key to a good lesson--you gotta figure out what´s in their head if you´re going to teach according to their needs.  it was fun.  i think i just like standing in front of the room with a chalkboard.

we´re working with a couple innactive families--dad´s that have soooo much potential.  the ward/church needs priesthood holders to grow.  hno. cardona was in the branch presidency (when our ward was just a branch), but started smoking again and can´t stop.  he´s  tried in the past and i feel good that he´s making an effort with us.  he invited a coworker to our last lesson with him.  i like having menos activos host lessons with their friends in their homes because they get all fired up about the church again.  

hno velarde is the other dad we´re working with.  i really really like him.  we´re teaching his nonmember niece and nephew that live with his family.  not sure how long it´s been since he´s come to church, but he finally came this sunday!  i wanted to hug him when i saw him, but instead i just shook his hand really really vigorously and told him how happy i was.  and he was happy too.  his niece and nephew (leila and efrain) are going to visit their family for two weeks (winter break just started).  hopefully they come back.  efrain was almost baptized once before, but the dad came and snatched him away because he was opposed to it.  the parents work in the campo far far away and can´t provide for all their seven kids so they shipped them out to other family members.  leila is 15 and started smoking recently.  she´s had a little bit of a hard life, but confessed to us that she likes to go to church because she feels good there and she doesn´t feel good when she´s hanging out with her friends.

we eat lunch with the family velarde every friday.  this friday we made empanadas--with deer meat ("this meat is so good for you, hermana!  there´s not a single piece of fat on it!"....and then they fried the empanadas.  funny.)  empanadas are good, but it´s a looooong process to make it all.

had 8 investigators at church on sunday!  so great.  the key was getting members to invite their friends and then bring them with them.  of course we invite members to do that every week, but this week everyone followed through.  good day.

had some good experiences where it was obvious that we were led by the spirit.  had some empty time one day so we planned to contact some kids we pass all the time.  they all live on the street Gobelli, so we call them our gobelli fan club.  they´re always hanging out in a huge group in the street every night and every time we pass them, they yell stuff to us in english, and if we have time we teach them some new words or phrases.  really funny.  they all like us.  and i could only remember one girl´s name and where she lived so we went there.  but she wasn´t home.  but her friend/next door neighbor was.  so we asked to talk to her mom.  and so we give our little door schpiel to the mom and she says she doesn´t have time right then and so we chit chat a little more.  and then she tells us that her husband died suddenly 7 years ago and just feels so empty.  and so we switch gears from "restauración" to "plan de salvación" and she gets a little misty-eyed and tells us that she is really looking forward to talking to us on thursday.  so great!  glad we were guided to visit the gobelli fan club that day.

had a lesson with a kid, rodrigo, that got baptized a few months ago.  he´s 10, and we had a first lesson with his 13 yr old sister.  he has a fantastic memory (like, almost has the 1st vision memorized) and he´s stinkin´ hilarious.  he´s one of my favorite people here.  we were teaching about the apostacy and we said something like, "well, if jesus had already died, and the apostles that had the priesthood were all killed, who was left that had the priesthood?"  answer that we were looking for: nobody.  rodrigo thinks hard for two seconds and pipes up, "NEPHI!"

the church is true!

hermana magnusson