OVER HALF WAY THROUGH THE MTC!

Oh man...so much to say! As every week, but I have soooo many emails that are so long and I have no time to read them.

Alright, alright. It has been a great week, AS ALWAYS! Throughout the week I write everything down so that I can remember the things I want to share with you all. I wish I could call you and really let you know the things I am experiencing but it is purely incredible. I know that such things can only come from our loving Heavenly Father. To start off, we went proselyting as always on Saturday. It was great…. SUCH a different area from last time. This place is rich, and I mean rich. Alright, probably not what you guys think of as rich, as in the looks of everything is still not what Utah is... haha but the houses were so big! They were 3 stories tall and all really cool and unique designs. Not that this matters at all, but just so you get a feel for what I am seeing. Instead of dirt roads and tiny shops that are swarming with flies, they had clothing stores, fabric stores, little cute cafes, all sorts of fun stuff. We got really excited, except of course all those things were out of our assigned areas haha. But this area, instead of being full of people in the streets, everyone was indoors, which... of course leads to DOOR KNOCKING! ….. completely new experience hahaha. I haven’t had to deal with that yet.

Let me just mention to you that we woke up that morning and it was pouring. I mean pouring…. like raining cats and dogs. Here they call it aguacena haha (like a combo of water and dinner) no se! (oh gosh, I am speaking Spanish and I don’t even know it! haha “no se” means I don’t know). But we all got bundled up which is weird and went trucking out in the rain. It was intense. We knocked, I’m not kidding, every door. And they have gates on every house and speakers to talk through so no one comes out. It’s hard. Anyone who did come out slammed the door in our face. I have never experienced such a thing! My companion started getting really discouraged and by this time my skirt and shoes were COMPLETELY drenched. I had to literally wring out my skirt later. But I had to keep us together. I just kept saying, keep going! We have to keep going. She was just trudging along. I actually just started laughing at every door slam we got. It was great.

Then we started playing a game like on “Errand of Angels” trying to get as many words into the speaker before people could hang up on us. When they would say “no time, no time,” I would say, “Por favor,” really sweetly, but they would still hang up haha. Finally we get to this house and this girl looks at us through the window. P.S. they do that a lot. They don’t like to really open the door so they just yell from the windows. But she says she will come down for us. Miracle number 1! She actually comes outside and starts talking to us in the rain. Miracle number 2. Then she says she is going to get an umbrella. She wants to KEEP talking to us. Miracle number 3. When she comes out, we slipped an English word and discover that she speaks English too! Miracle number 4. We started teaching her the restoration and it was amazing. She was interested and it was awesome. Right when I get to the part about a pillar of light.... no joke… the rain stops and a pillar of light comes right on us. She puts her umbrella down and looks at the sky. She says... "That’s God. Look... there is no sun except right where we are. He is trying to tell us something." It was so crazy! I know Heavenly Father was with us at that moment. We are going back to teach her on Saturday. And I can’t wait! We gave her a Book of Mormon. Today we had to call her to confirm when she works and she wasn’t there so hence I had my first telephone call completely in Spanish. It was cool! I am getting good, but we still have a long way to go. Our teachers keep telling us in less than a week we´ll be the senior group here and we have to set the example for everyone and then we´re outta here. We are starting to get nervous for the real deal.

I have found my new fav quote. You might think it’s weird but I found it in Preach my Gospel. I wanted to share. "Study, believe, live, love and teach." This is the most perfect thing ever for how we should be living our lives. We should be studying the gospel every day! Believe in Heavenly Father and his words, and believe in Jesus Christ and have faith in him, live the gospel through everything we do and say. Love with every fiber of our being, those we like and those we don’t, at all times, even when someone does something wrong… and teaching others... spreading the good news. Helping everyone. This is our mission. It’s great.

Last night was really hard for my comp. We were teaching the Latinos here and discovered we don’t know everything haha. Apparently it says in the bible to have church on Saturday. We did NOT know how to respond to that. And she broke down. My teacher said she gave us that situation because we will come across things we don’t know out there. We aren’t expected to know everything. We’re young… for crying out loud… and still learning too. But if we humble ourselves and tell these people, "Hey, we don’t know the answer, but we study everyday and we will find out for you for next time." She said they learn to trust us and love us for being humble. I don’t think I ever imagined myself saying I don’t know to someone out here. I thought they would look down on that, but no.

It is sooo crazy to me that literally everything you thought you knew coming here, has to be broken down by Heavenly Father and re-taught to you before you can really KNOW. Every part of your testimony gets tried here, but it’s so great when you pull through because then your testimony is that much stronger and you can say you know for sure this church is true. We have to experience everything our investigator does. We teach them to search the scriptures and that it will answer every question they have, it is the same for us. So we studied that "Sabbath day worship" this morning and we also found in the bible where it changes to Sunday after Christ’s resurrection. Now I know that we can find the answers to anything, any problem in our books of scripture. It’s incredible! I love this gospel, I’m so glad to be here and I love you all so much!

I got a ton of letters today and loved it, but I can’t respond to everything! haha

Keep the faith everyone! I promise it will pull you through! I miss you all immensely, but things are well. “All is well" as Joseph Smith said. Cherish this gospel and cherish each other. We are so blessed. I LOVE YOU!!

Love, Ash