Week 56 (62) February 16, 2014

Where is the world is Hermana Ingram?

What a great week! Hermana Luque and I are really starting to see the blessings here in Polanco. Hard work and obedience really pays off! We have an investigator named Jorge who hasn't been able to be baptized for reasons I won't say. He's 17 and has a two year old son already. I have never met someone with a bigger desire to be baptized... He fasts almost every Sunday hoping for a miracle so that he can be baptized. What faith!! So, I'm going to do everything in my power to help him be baptized!

Sunday I noticed that a homeless guy had come to church the two weeks that I've been here. He literally sleeps on the street. I asked my companion about him and she told me the story: About a year ago he showed up one Sunday to rob the church. He walked in and the members welcomed him, sat him down, and handed him a hymn book. He loved it so much he forgot about robbing the place and hasn't missed a Sunday since!

This week I realized that in the prayers of the people here they almost always say,"Bless us that each day we have at least a taco to eat." For some reason today I realized how weird that sounds. It's something you'd only hear in Mexico; the word "taco" in a prayer.

Thursday I started divisions with Hermana Mercedes. She's from the Dominican Republic and has 16 months in the mission. Her companion Hermana Williams came with my companion. Divisions went really well! I think I'm learning more from each sister than they are from me!

Pics from Hermana Mercedes' house

Friday: !Feliz Día de San Valentín! Or as we like to put it in the mission: Happy Single Awareness Day! We saw all sorts of crazy things Friday...from drunk homeless men mimicking Michael Jackson in the middle of the street to lines of people waiting to get married (weddings were free Friday)...we saw it all. Some members invited us over for dinner and we had the most romantic Valentines dinner ever: pig ear pozole.

My companion loves ringing doorbells. Each house usually has one or two doorbells. But every once in a while we come across an apartment building with about 20. Have you ever seen the movie "Elf" when he's riding in the elevator of the Empire State building and he pushes every single button for the 100+ floors? Well, that's what my comp. does...it's hilarious.

This week we found a ton of new investigators! Recently a convert named Adolfo gave us a reference of a girl he had met the day before named Ana Rosa. She accepted us but the people where she lived didn't want anything to do with us and told us that we weren't welcome back in the building. So we teach her in Adolfo's house. She was REALLY unsure about the whole baptism thing...but later in the week she accepted a baptismal date. I don't know if we've ever had a more powerful lesson . She was in tears and Adolfo finished the lesson by sharing D&C 39:7-12. She started reading the scripture out loud and couldn't finish because she was crying. She paused and said...I want to get baptized. It was amazing!

Sunday was a super successful day! We had a bunch of investigators at church and all of them stayed all 3 hours.

When you knock doors here about 95%of the time someone screams "Quien??!!" (who?!). I don't usually say who I am because if they know we're missionaries they almost never open the door. Normally I reply "Buenas tardes!" which is normally followed by a few more shouts "Quien!?". About half of the time they'll open the door without my response as to who I am. The other half yell "Dígame!!" (tell me!!) in the rudest tone possible. We tell them we're missionaries and immediately they yell one of the following: "No tengo tiempo!" (I don't have time!), "Otra ocasión!" (Another time!), "No gracias!", "Leo La Biblia!" (I read the Bible!), "No hay nadie!" (There isn't anybody!), etc. Sometimes kids answer the door and we send them for their parents and the kids come backing saying, "My mom says that she's not here." On a rare occasion do we find someone who kindly accepts us. Sunday we went looking for one of our investigators. We got to her house and knocked on her door. Like always someone yelled, "Quien!?" We responded, "Good afternoon, is Marisa home?!" Then someone yelled, "Marisa!!!" A few minutes later, and still no one had opened the door so we knocked again. "Quien!?"... "Is Marisa home?!"..."Marisa!!!!!" The same exact thing happened 5 times in a row. I was starting to get annoyed...that's when we realized that we weren't talking to a person...but rather to Marisa's pet parrot. I died laughing! There we were, 2 sister missionaries talking to a bird!