Santa Fe, NM Transfer 8 Week 4

Dear Family and friends,

Yet another week has come and gone, and I am officially down to a short six months until I go home. That seems like so little time! But there is so much work still to be done, and I pray that I can continue to be an effective missionary and bless the lives of the people here in New Mexico (and possibly Texas, depending on if there are Sisters in Texas and where I get transferred to--if I get transferred again.) I have 4 short transfers left. It's crazy how time flies! It’s crazy that Lara Bishop will be home like next week. That means that Heidi Josephsen isn’t far behind—if you see when her homecoming is you should go to that. That also means that Whitney and I are the next ones, with Jennie Olsen, Jori Nef, and Shanna Tavenner following close behind.

We’re starting to learn our way around and use our map less each week. I am getting used to the little car, but I still miss the truck. The branch is small with lots of less active members. We teach all in Spanish. There’s Elders for the English ward. There are now 16-18 Sisters in the mission, with 8 being Spanish.

We have five people we are preparing for baptism. Three of them had their interviews this week, and are ready to go except for getting married. The Sister's husband is supportive of the church and the decision she and their two daughters have made to be baptized, but he is taking his time going with her to get their marriage license. We think that will happen this week, and they'll be baptized within the next two weeks. The other two are children in a less-active family. They are on track to be baptized on the 31st, providing they're at church this coming Sunday. They have been several times, but it's been a long time and I don't feel comfortable baptizing them if their parents aren't willing to get them to church. So we're praying for them and that all will go well. Keep them in your prayers also.

Monday: It was p-day, and we did some more deep cleaning in our apartment in the corners and such that we didn't attack when we got here. We do still have to clean the oven--which we're not looking forward to because it's SO caked with food and other grime. But that's about all we've got left to do.

Tuesday: We spent a good portion of the day tracting, and it was very hot--close to 100 degrees. We go nowhere without a bottle of water--or several.

Wednesday: I had a horrible headache all day long. Actually, when one of our appointments was a no-show we went home so I could try to sleep it off with the help of some IB Profin, but even that didn't work. We did have a successful day with lots of lessons. Our last lesson of the day was outside with a single man, and I think I must have been standing on an ant hill, because I came away with 2 bites on one ankle and 1 on the other--and a mosquito bite on my head that I didn't find until I was washing my hair the next morning. By that time it was too late to prevent it from swelling up and had a bump the size of a 50 cent piece on my head.

Thursday: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEVIN AND BRETT! I hope you had a great day! We had district meeting. Our district leader asked us to do a presentation on finding people (we later found out that it's because we have higher numbers than the other 4 companionships in the district combined). After that, our appointments fell through, and we went finding. Or at least tried to. A German Shepherd and Pitbull decided to follow us, so we spent the better part of an hour trying to lose them because people didn't want to talk to us with these two ginormous dogs following us. We finally did lose them, only to have them find us again in less than half an hour. At that point we just gave up.

Friday: We did planning, and had our afternoon plans fall through.

Saturday: EVERYTHING fell through, even our backup plans and dinner appointment, except for our first appointment and our baptismal interview that afternoon. We found a Papa Murphy Pizza, and I was able to fix a pizza craving that I've had for MONTHS! I haven't had PM Pizza in over a year, and boy was I in heaven, and we've still got 2 or 3 meals left of that pizza. Yummy!

Sunday: We had Church, then once again our appointments fell through. We can't figure out what is happening. We're praying that that will change soon or it's going to be a really long week. We did have dinner with our new Relief Society President, who is SO willing to help us out with everything. What a blessing to have her!

Lance, I thought it was funny that Bear ate your cookie. He probably just thought that since you were enjoying it so much that he wanted to try it too. That’s pretty cool that you were on the news. And again with puppy in the pool, he was just hot and wanted to cool off. Kesha, I’m glad you’re enjoying your job. I think I will like Toy Story 3—and I’ll be able to understand Buzz without the help of subtitles—ha ha! I’m sorry your 4th of July was cold. Ours was nice and toasty. I really did enjoy the article Theresa Crawford sent into the New Era.

I hope you all have a great week, and have some great adventures!

Hermana Good