Mexico Week 25 -- Go! Go! Go, Joseph!

To all of my favorite people in the world! 

In all honesty, this week was a little rougher. We are really struggling to find people to teach and visit.  We are walking .. walking .. walking for days! I have a great story that will make you all laugh! So I end up with these big blisters, one under each ball of my foot, right? One day we’re walking and they’re really killing me. All of the sudden POP! There goes one! Pus filled sock and I’m wimpering in the street, but we’re missionaries and so we keep going! About 10 minutes later POP! There goes the other one and I begin wimpering in the street again. Ha! Ha!  All I could think was que bueno que I wasn’t a pioneer!  Seriously, I think I would have died half way!

There is a WalMart in my area .. I have never been so excited to enter a WalMart in my life!!  Seriously, it is HEAVEN!!

My area is also so beautiful. The whole area isn’t like these pictures, but really, it’s beautiful! We also found some Mariachi band members today! 

Okay, now for the good stuff. This precious señora is the mom of one of our less active members we found this week. She has Alzheimer’s and is literally my favorite. She reminds me a lot of working in the nursing homes when I was in high school! She always holds my hand and is always talking. Sometimes during lessons, she just puts her head on my shoulder. Her daughter is a member and literally loves to learn. She’s also a nurse! She took care of her dad until he died and now she’s been taking care of her mom.  She’s starting to get worse as the disease progresses and can’t go to church. She says all is good, but she just has this look sometimes like she’s just sad. It stuck with me all week and we need to really work and pray so we can find out how to help her! 

We found another less active member that also just needs a lot of help. She wants to come back to church and I honestly love working with those that have stopped going. They have testimonies, sometimes they just help to repent, or they need someone to listen, or they just need representatives of the Lord to help them out. I love it. 

The Lord always has a purpose. I have started reading the Bible and remember how the Old Testament always put me to sleep? Well now I’m kind of loving it! I have been reading about Joseph this week.  True confessions, I’ve been singing the Donny Osmond songs from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat! Ha! Ha!  It really helps my study when my brain breaks out in song part way through the scripture .. Go! Go! Go! Joseph, you know what they say! Go! Go! Go! Joseph, you’ll make it someday!

But really, there are some verses where we says to his brothers, you guys didn’t send me here (to Egypt). God sent me here, He had a purpose, you guys aren’t guilty of anything. God needed me here to interpret these dreams and prepare us for the famine. First things first, he spent two years (well probably more) in jail for something he didn’t even do. Can you imagine that type of patience? That type of long suffering? I feel like the Lord really worked on him there and helped him prepare for more of what was to come in his life. Then he’s face to face with brothers and completely forgives them, saying that they’re not guilty of anything. He looks for the hand of the Lord and eventually understood the plan. I think we should be more like that. He is my new hero! I really am going to accomplish my goal of reading the whole Bible in the mission! 

We visited another less active member. We have gone by there two or three times and they don’t receive us, or they’re not home or stuff like that. We had been walking for a long time and I just started praying.  Praying that they would open the door, praying that they would receive us. We knocked and after a long time, her son opened. Then about ten minutes later she came downstairs and was kind of mad because she had been resting and started telling us everything she didn’t like about the church. We started talking about our Heavenly Father and her whole face changed. She tells us that she felt hope like we had planted a little seed and told us when she would be home and everything. She tells us, it’s really a miracle you found me here today and even more of a miracle that we opened the door and I came downstairs. My son never answers the door, and I had no intention of getting up, but something made me get up. WOW! The Lord does work with us. 

I love you lots and you're always in my prayers!! Love you almost as much as the Lord does!