Merida - Week 11

Hola!

D&C 4: "The field is white all ready for the harvest!"
 

This week we had a baptism! The day finally came for Christian, the 10 year old of the less active we have been teaching. It was really cool because there  were tons of people. The room was overflowing! Some of it may have had to do with everything running late and having people who were showing up for the activity, come watch the baptism. I was super happy that day too because we had lots of investigators come- I think about 6!

Christian's Baptism!

Church was really awesome for that reason too, lots of investigators. Even though all of them couldn't come that normally do, we still had lots. 5 of them are super steady and come on their own, have friends and everything. One of them is Maria, who is 23 and is going to be baptized this Friday with another super cute little eight year old in the ward. Another is Jesus. We met him in the street, but he is super into understanding truths and was all over what we have to teach. He is one of our favorites! Jesus always gives us little herbal things and today actually we're going to go eat  with him! His nick-name for me is "double H" since he discovered my first name is Hilary, haha.
 

The other steady investigators are, this young couple Georgina and Julio. They bring their sister with them, who's my age and as of recently their other younger brother who's 11. Besides these steady investigators, we also had 2 more who I'm super excited about.

We found this family a week ago in the street and they are GOLDEN. The mom, Monica, and the daughter, also Monica (10 yrs), were the ones that came to church. A couple hours after church we taught the entire family and both the mom and dad said they're looking for a church that is more family appropriate and fills them up. They said a lot of the big religions here just don't feel right because they feel empty. The mom and daughter both had really good experiences at church and loved having us there to teach them!  During the lesson, when my companion would be teaching, I was just thinking in my head how cool of an experience this is. It’s the beginning of their journey. A year from now I can totally picture them super strong in the church, with awesome callings, going to the temple... And here we are right at the beginning! Ohhh, and also something else big. Because we're doing so well in our area, we now have 2 more missionaries who are helping us. They already split the area and elders are working in the half that we hardly ever visit. Its super fun to work with them and watch their progress too. In no time we're going to double the size of our  ward! :)

Old  House!

On a less-religious note. We finally had a bunch of things fixed in the house we're living in, so its more livable. Still isn't super pretty, but it's definitely better. We still have ants EVERYWHERE. I swear they find every little crumb. Haha. We told our mission leader we have this problem, and he told us if we really needed him to, he would be willing to find a way to kill them, but it made him really sad. He's so funny. He told us in his house he hates to kill bugs, and like when he starts to do the dishes and there's ants he just tells them "Alright chicas, I'm about to start doing the dishes!" and he says they always just leave. So funny.

New House!

Other random thing. There are surprisingly a lot of Americans that live here. Lots of Americans buy cheap houses and re-do them really pretty. I wish i could take pictures of all them because they're super luxurious inside. Especially when they landscape the backyard. We ran into this cooky old lady a couple days ago who is looking at real-estate because she's got lots of money. She told us how she doesn't speak Spanish at all, so we were like, how do you get around?? She said there's this app she always uses and she talks into it and it translates for the person. Super hilarious. Americans are so dorky sometimes, haha!  The other day I heard a guy trying to ask for directions and it was super sad...to say excuse me, he said, "escu-se-muah," like in french. We grabbed him pretty fast after to help him out, haha. Americans for some reason never think to ask us, not sure why!

Thanks for your love and support,
Hermana Harper

Hermana Hilary Harper and her Fruit!