Rollercoaster'ing 1/26

Is today REALLY the 26th of January????? Oh my good golly gee whittickers, I just might just freak out.

So like, HI!

Time is ticking and it's stressing me out.

This week was so good.

And that stresses me out.

My good friend JayQ once said that at the end of your mission is when you FINALLY start to feel like you are getting the hang of things, and thats when they send you home.

JayQ is right.

Like, I am having so much fun. haha. And everytime I'm like, "WOW, this is so fun! I'm so glad I just got here!" I remember that I have ACTUALLY been a legit set-apart missionary for 18 months and 2 days now and I DIDNT just start. And then it becomes a sad day.

But at the same time, I am so tired.

Evidence:
 Pday last week consisted of a 3 hour nap by the fireplace. And that didnt even cut it.

But then I remember that I love this place and I love being a missionary and I love teaching people the gospel.

Evidence:

District Meeting the other week when we set our yearly goals for the mission. Oh wait, what do you mean I wont be here for 90% of 2015? Sister Cutler (the mission presidents wife) happened to be sitting next to me and I said, "Sister Cutler, I dont ever want to leave!" To which she very happily reminded me that I can sign up again in 6 months!

I started to get sick on Tuesday this week.

Which is hilarious.

Because I went on exchanges on Tuesday.

Translation: I am ALWAYS sick on exchanges. I'm pretty sure every exchange I go on, I look like the worst missionary in the world because I'm always just coming down with something. 

#ithappens

But the good news is that is was just a cold and I am feeling much better and it didnt prevent me from working.

We've done some super great things. We've been tracting a lot. And its been pretty hilarious.

Last night we went out with a goal to get four other lessons in a short amount of time. So we were just doing everything we could to get people to talk to us. At one door, a man answers and opens the screen door. I smile real big (but not cheesily) and reach out my hand and say, "Hi! My name is Sister Butler. What is your name?" ............ AND THERE IS SILENCE. Just this big dude staring at me. In silence. With my hand, nice and warm and toasty in my big pink mitten, just hanging there, juuuuuuuust chillin'. For like what was probably 5 minutes. When I realize that he was NOT going reciprocate my handshake, I awkwardly said, "ooookay, I wont shake your hand.... Well, Sir. We are missionaries...." And he says, "we're eating dinner" and closes the door. Then Escobar and I proceeded to laugh our faces off. 

We kinda laid down the law with Tessa. She is not progressing and she is lying to us about a bunch of things and its really awkward because we KNOW she is lying, but she refuses to tell the truth, even when we ask her about it and teach the principle and everything. So we have been praying really hard to know how to help her. We made the sweetest baptismal calendar eveeerrrr. We used sticky notes and wrote all the lessons we need to teach and scheduled lessons for them. This way she knows what we'll be teaching and that if she cancels or doesnt show up, its going to push her date back again. Its been suuuuuppppper helpful so far.


Oh. I should probably explain my picture and the comment about almost being shot...(: I like to joke and say that I almost got shot this week. But its kinda not funny cause it could have happened. We went to visit our friend Tessa this week. We pull up next to her house (I always feel awkward in her neighborhood and other parts of the "hood" cause we drive a new white 2013 Ford Fusion and we always wear skirts or dresses, and I'm just a total white girl and it just looks bad..haha) So. We pull up and there are like 20 shady looking characters pointing and yelling and pretended to shoot a gun toward her house. I'm like, "Sister Escobar, we are about to get shot!" (and she laughs cause she aint scared of nothing here {excuse my grammar...it's just what happens when you live in the hood} and thinks it would be fun to get shot. She's crazy and wants to be a cop or something.) But, we have an appointment and important things to talk about, so we get out of the car and walk through the crazy and knock on her front door. She opens it like an inch and tells us, "you dont wanna be here right now. LEAVE. People here gots guns. You two pretty white girls gotta leave. It aint safe for you. Dont stay in the part of town." So...we walk back and get in the car and laugh and drive away. The end.

Fred is still awesome. We asked him to sing for us this week when we were at his house with Sister Dalley and it was crazy good. Like.... he opened his mouth and we all like....jumped, it was so good.

OH! I gave a talk in spanish! It was the proudest day of my life. I have been working on it for a little bit now. I decided to write as much of it in spanish as I could and then have Hermana Calderwood help me edit it. I was soooo surprised at how little corrections she made. I spoke on, "sacrificios de uno por Cristo" (sacrifices we make for Christ, essentially). It was so fun. Everyone told me it was so good and that I can't get away with saying that I dont speak it anymore. So...now I guess I have to actually talk to people in spanish now. I also volunteered to translate for Bro Warner when he goes home teaching this week. So.....I'm terrified about that. I'm not THAT good.

This is what I just told my mission president about this week, "This week was good! We have been focusing on finding. We havent had a bunch of success yet, but we will! Its been fun to see how much I have grown in my ability to talk to people and to testify. Testifying makes me happy. It reminds me of what I know and why I came here. Its been a fun week to be a missionary."

oh! My homecoming talk will be of Feb 15th! Uhm, I dont know what time or where...but I'm sure you can ask my dad or you already know because you are in my ward anyway. But if not, ask el Padre gue see llama Shane. Hope to see you all there!