October 19

Hi Mom, Dad, brothers and people that read my blog,

We had a good week this week. The bishop asked us to go look for the people that we have in the ward lists, but that no one knows or whom no one has seen in several years. In doing this we found a lot of new investigators. Many of these people seem ready to return to church, but just need an invitation and a bit of help in doing so. They also often have children or other family members who will investigate the church for the first time. For example, we talked to Magali, who hasn´t been to church in at least 15 years. She was anger with the church and with God when her son died, but now has calmed down a lot and is thinking about returning to church. She had to work this Sunday, but she sent her daughter and her neice and a family friend to church with us. 

We are also starting to teach a 12 year old girl named Estela who reminds me so much of myself. Her grandfather is an active member of the church, but lives in Santa Cruz. Estela lives with her aunt and grandmother who are both not active although they are aparently members. Estela started coming to church a few weeks ago and, after some confusion with the elders over who was going to teach her, this week we visited her for the first time. She´s really smart and really curious. When we ask most of our investigators what they want to learn with us, they say that they don´t know or whatever we want to teach is fine. Estela on the other hand said that she wants to know more about the Book of Mormon and wants to learn how to pray better. That made us super happy. 

What else happened this week? We had a really dissapointing Sunday afternoon. No one was home and I was generally stressed. Sundays can be really stressful. Most days of the week, we spend all morning in the house studying and then we go out and teach. On Sundays we sometimes (such as yesterday), need to be ready at 7am, call a few people to invite them to church and then be out the door at 7:15 to pick people up and walk (or take a taxi if we´ve late) to church, which starts at 8. All morning we are in a big group of people, talking, coordinating, helping all the investigators feel confortable and know when to go, talking to members, etc.... Then we have ward council with the ward leaders and yesterday we also had a meeting with the ward mission leader and the member of the stake high council assinged to missionary work to go over what the responsibilties of a ward mission leader are. We should have planned time after lunch to go do our personal study, but there wasn´t time because we had appointments set all afternoon. However, almost all of those appointments fell through and we ended up spending an hour in Hna Loida´s kitchen chatting with her family, because we didn´t have any energy to go looking for someone to teach for the last hour before dinner. However, we got to know her daughter who has recently come back from Peru and we will encourage to also come back to church. 

I have pictures!

But they are loading really slowly.

First, photos from going to the statue of Cristo two weeks ago with the brand new missionaries. I took some pictures with Hna Balderrama and Hna Baird, who was taking the pictures, also took one of her self. I´m trying to be more creative with hair styles. 

Hna Garcia and I when we took Loida and Alfonzo to the temple last week. 

Several photos of Loida and Alfonzo, who does know how to smile, but just doesn´t seem to want to for photos. 

The city at night as we left the temple.

One of the relief society sisters borrowed my camera to take pictures of everyone. I{m so happy to have pictures of almost everyone. 

More cool street art. 

Pday last week.

The bus number 3 passes right by the temple and thus in it´s list of places it goes has: Tplo Mormon, which is templo Mormon. Cool, huh?

Thanks for all the cool pictures. I really loved Grammie´s pictures too and bothered my companion to show her all of them. 

I have not gotten a letter from Dad nor the package Grammie sent me for my birthday. It sounds like you didn´t get my birthday card for Robert either. 

I hope you are all well and are enjoying the fall weather. I miss you all and love you and send hugs for everyone. 

Love,

Natalie

PS Yep, this week I reach 1 year in the mission and also two months until Christmas. :)