Thanks for all the emails and for the letter (I got it yesterday). I really liked the pictures, but the computer couldn't read the file for the video of Jasper for some reason :/ Oh well. It sounds like you had quite the week though with the intense lax game, mom's crazy foot injury, fixing Jakey, Mom's birthday, and driving Jasper around in the car! And it's almost summer too! Don't go on any super fun vacations without me, por favor. I'm pretty excited for summer, though, because I'll finally get some sun! Although I am a little worried about having to walk around in the heat all day. My shoes and stuff are doing fine and I don't think we really want to do the bike thing so there's nothing that I really need you to send me as far as that goes, but I'll let you know if that changes.
I'm excited that it's almost Mothers' Day too. So about Skyping, H. Hales and I kind of already had it figured out and I was planning on doing it around 7:30 pm (Utah time). I know you'll probably be at MJ's but that's the only time that really will work for us. I guess I'll just have to call you or text you before so we can get each others' usernames or whatever. Sorry that might make it kind of difficult, but I'll talk to you guys then!
This week was a pretty fun one. We had exchanges on Wednesday and I was paired up with Hermana Marin for 24 hours up in Pleasant Valley. She's actually in the English program right now even though she's been in the Spanish for most of her mission, so I got to see what it was like to be purely English speaking for a day. Hermana Marin is pretty cool- she's from Mexico but she's lived in Idaho for a while and went to BYU-I. I had a lot of fun hanging out with her even though only a couple of the people that we wanted to visit were home, and we had kind of a rough lesson with this older Catholic couple. We brought two other Sisters with us to the lesson because the couple kind of scares her with their deep-doctrine questions, and one of the Sisters we brought is pretty good at handling tough questions. We went over to this couple and they were pretty nice, but they had our Plan of Salvation pamphlet sitting on their coffee table when we walked in and they started off the gospel conversation by saying, "we read your book (the pamphlet), and we have a lot of problems with it". Then they started asking a bunch of questions about the Fall and all of this different stuff in the pamphlet that they didn't agree with, and they didn't really like many of our answers so it was a little frustrating and didn't really go anywhere. I've had a couple other lessons like that in the past though, so I wasn't too thrown off by it.That's really the only eventful thing that happened during exchanges.
The rest of the week Hermana Hales and I were just doing a ton more knocking. We still have trouble finding Hispanics to teach, but we have a few potentials that we're trying to get lessons with so it's not too bad. Just as an update, the Elders say that Melvin is progressing well and is reading the Book of Mormon often, and the Valeros came to church again this week, which is awesome! H. Marcum had to turn Marixa over to the English elders a while ago and she's been doing well too, but I guess Marcum & Gaines had sort of an unplanned lesson with her and her Spanish-speaking boyfriend and apparently the boyfriend is now committed to baptism too after only having one lesson! I was surprised when I heard that because I had met him once before and he really didn't seem interested at all, but I guess something happened and he's had a change of heart. Crazy stuff.
It's pretty amazing how much the members (not just the ones in our Branch, but the ones we meet while were out tracting) are willing and eager to help us with everything. Tons of times we'll be walking and a member will pull up next to us in their car and ask us if we need a ride. Also, just about every other time we go to eat somewhere a member will insist on paying for our food. We're pretty much celebrities up here, it's crazy. Nothing else too exciting or unusual happened while we were out working. I did go on splits with Herm. Conrad for a couple hours on Friday and it was fun to switch it up for a bit with her. She actually reminds me a ton of Mckenna Crawford because their personalities are really similar and their laughs are exactly the same. It's kind of freaky.
The only other exciting thing that's happened is that we (H. Hales, Conrad, Gaines, and I) decided to go on a short hike with our zone this morning to a place called waterfall canyon in Ogden, and Liz Avila (the 18 year old) gave us a ride and came with us. At the beginning of the trail there was a steep, rocky part that was kind of a short cut that we decided to climb up so that we could get ahead of the Elders. At first just H. Conrad and I were going to do it but the rest of the Hermanas & Liz decided to do it too. So we crawled up this big rocky hill and it was pretty exhausting, but Liz actually slid part of the way down and cut her leg a little bit, so H. Conrad and I waited with her while she recovered and the other two decided to go run and tell the Elders who had passed us. So we sat there for like 10 minutes and then Liz decided she was ready to continue, but she was going pretty slow and she took a bunch of pictures as we were walking. One of the times she like started hiking down this other little trail to get a picture of something and she told us that we should just go ahead because she was going to slow us down. H. Conrad and I started jogging up the trail, expecting to find H. Hales & Gaines along the way, but apparently they had caught up with the Elders but decided to just stick with them and not come back for us (they figured we were still with Liz, who knew the trail pretty well).
Anyways, after a while of being on the trail which had no signs or anything leading us the right way, H. Conrad and I were getting a little worried because we were going downhill and around the other side of the mountain when they had said the hike was pretty short and steep. We kept going though because we hadn't seen any other trails and we were hoping the one we were on might start curving upward. So finally we got to a tiny little stream thing where there was a sign that said that Canyon Waterfall was in the opposite direction than we had been hiking for like half an hour... We turned back around and walked back for a while until we came across some teenagers who showed us where the real trail was, but at that point we figured that the others might have already gone back down to the car looking for us, so we just went back down to the parking lot and told them that if the others were up there that they should tell them that we walked back down already. So of course, when we got to the parking lot no one was there, and about 10 minutes later the Elders and other 3 girls came down and told us that they had been waiting at the waterfall for us for a while until the teenagers told them that we had already turned back. Conrad & I were a little bummed out that we didn't get to see the waterfall, but we still got a good workout and got to enjoy being outdoors, so it was still worth it!
We ate lunch at Zupas after that and an older lady paid for all 5 of our meals, which was awesome. We told her no the first time she asked, but she was persistent and told us that it was ok because her husband was rich haha. That was a first. Anyways that's just about all that happened this week. I really do love being out here even though I'm still not in Argentina and I work 6 and a half days a week. It's so nice not having to worry about anything besides being a missionary. I'm having so many experiences and learning so much that I just would not be able to experience or learn in any other setting than this, I'm really lucky. We've got some fun activities coming up this next week that I'm looking forward too, including Mothers Day, so I'll talk to you guys soon and let you know what else is going on! Stay safe, good luck with finals, and don't work too hard!
I love you.
<3, Hermana Crawford
Also, tell Debbie Finelli thanks for her letter, it was so sweet & thoughtful. And tell Jenna that I'm really sorry I didn't get the chance to finish her letter last P-Day, but I'm going to try and finish it tonight so she'll hopefully get it sometime this week. And I'm glad that Sis. Hirsche approves of how her FS is doing! I'm doing my best to represent my girls of the VV Ward well!
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