Well, I'm going to start this out with a few "fun" facts about my new area...haha.
Zona Cholula - Barrio Ameyal
- We live in the middle of a giant mountain farm. Everyone here either raises animals, grows corn or makes bricks.
- It rains every day. I'll tell my fun story a bit later :)
- Because it rains every day, it is SUPER green...and also SUPER DUPER muddy. I kinda feel like I'm camping.
- This ward was the first ward here in the state of PUEBLA. It's a blessing...and kind of a curse.
- The pigs, goats and cows that live across the street from our house snore really loud at night.
- Around 6.00 every morning, the drunk man downstairs starts making up songs.
- The dogs here are vicious. And super scary. I'll tell about that fun little story too.
- Our area is HUGE. We have 6 little pueblitos in our area that are all super spread out...and have I mentioned that no one lives here??
- It's so cold here. The first 2 days I really thought I was going to freeze to death. They say it never snows, but I'm not too sure...
- My comp is amazing! Her name is Hermana Rookstool (and she's American if you can't tell, haha!) She's from American Fork, and she just finished her training. Thank goodness she trained here though, or we would be super lost all the time!
- We have 0 Baptismal Dates, 0 Progressing Investigators, 0 Other Investigators and 0 People that want to listen
Well...what do y'all think? :)
I'll start from the beginning. Cambios. On Tuesday, we went to Puebla, found out President Reeves would be leaving 2 DAYS after, and I got my new companion. :) She's super cute and funny. She's 19, goes to BYU too (whoo!) and has 3 months here in the field. We hitched a ride with our district to Cholula (where I thought our area was...) and another memeber picked us up. and then we started driving. and driving. Further and further into the mountains. And then we took this little tiny dirt road and then we got to our house. I like the house, it's really colorful and cute. We then went to ward council...and no one talked to us. they didn't ask us anything about how the work was going and it was kinda weird.
Then Wednesday, we had our district meeting - 6 hermanas and 2 elders :) then after that...we started walking. and walking. and walking. My companion knows of 10 less actives in our area (and they've almost reactivated 6 of them) and we don't have anyone to teach.
And on Friday, we spent 3 hours "contacting" which consisted of walking around for 3 hours without stopping and talking to only 3 people (because there isn't anyone who lives here.) and everytime I see a person, I get SO excited...and then my comp always tells me that they're already a member. -_- It's a little bit like Utah here.
Saturday was super fun because all of the other days, it only rained during the night. But Saturday was a bit special! We were about 1 miles from our house (and about 2 miles from the nearest person that we could visit.) And then came part of a tropical storm. It started out slowly...and then out of no where came down POURING. And we just started running for our house. We were in the middle of a dirt road and it got a lot more difficult when the water got about 6 inches high. We ran into the house laughing and freaking out because we were soaked, covered in mud, and our scriptures were soaked...but it was definitely an experience to remember :)
And yesterday, we almost died! We were walking back to our house last night, and we had to go a different way to avoid a group of drunks....but then we ran into a pack of 7 very angry dogs. we picked up some rocks, which usually does the trick and scares them off, but these ones decided that wasn't scary enough, and started running towards us! we started running in the other direction until they stopped following, but really we were stuck. we spent a coulple minutes trying to decided which route would be worse, when a young man came up to us, and offered to help us get pass the dogs. He told us that as soon as we could just to start running so we started toward them again, and when they went to attack the man, we just took off running, yelling "gracias!" behind us! When we got to the bottom of the hill we looked back, the young man was walking away, so at least he's ok and didn't die for our sake!
All in all...there's a lot of work to do here. And the Lord definitely put us here for a reason, and we're going to figure it out! We decided that no matter what happens, we're still going to be 100% obedient and give the Lord everything we have. Hermana Rookstool shared a quote with me this morning from Elder Perry's talk this conference. He said: "Strong, proactive obedience is anything but weak or passive. It is the means by which we declare our faith in God and qualify ourselves to receive the powers of heaven. Obedience is a choice. It is a choice between our own limited knowledge and power and God’s unlimited wisdom and omnipotence. According to the lesson my grandfather gave to me, it is a choice to sense the spiritual bit in our mouths and follow the driver’s lead." I know that through our constant obedience and faith, we're going to see the influence of heaven in this area and in our lives.
Thank you for all of your love and prayers :) You all are in my hearts, and I hope you have a great week this week!! I LOVE YOU!!!
Love always,
Hermana Smith
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