Hey so thanks for the emails and pictures! It's weird to see the ones of Olivia playing lacrosse because she seems way too little to be on the Gilbert High team, but I guess not! I'm glad the new ward is fun and yeah, we should definitely do the Book of Mormon activity sometime. Haha and that's sweet that Olivia's doing a report on Argentina, if she has any questions let me know! I'm definitely lucky to be here, I'm learning a ton. Sorry I don't have any pictures this week though- I do, but the compu won't let me open them.. I guess you'll have to wait till next week :/
This week was an interesting one. To start out we went on Monday to the farewell of a girl in our ward that's going to Santiago Chile on her mission. We didn't stay for the whole thing though because like 50 people came and they gave time for testimonies, so as you can imagine, it probably lasted about 3 hours given the fact that the people here love to talk.. (: Then tuesday my comp had to do her visa stuff and so I got to hang out in the offices with none other than Hna Smith, my MTC comp! It was funny because it was exactly a year ago last tuesday that she and I left the MTC.. so weird. Anyways so I got to catch up with her, and she's doing great even though she still struggles quite a bit with Castellano. Then as we were eating lunch the mission nurse, Hna Ashby, (the one I translated for) called us and asked if we could do her a favor. She wanted us to go visit her friend with her who just recently had foot surgery and help her share the gospel with her. I guess she had asked Pres. Avila for permission and so since we didn't have appts. we agreed. Before we went we got to eat dinner with Hna Ashby in her apartment, which is pretty nice, and she made us veggie soup, fruit salad, juice, and zuchinni bread. We regretted eating so much soon afterwards though because the lady that we visited fed us a ton too. Her name is Julia (she's related to the bishop of our ward, but isn't a member) and is about 75 years old, but looks great for her age. Her apartment was insane, definitely the nicest one I've been inside in the past 13 months besides Pres. Avila's. She showed us around and then we had like a Tea party with herbal tea, and the table was full of crackers, nuts, fruit, cheese, dulce de membrillo, honey, and alfajores from Santa Fe.. we almost died. She was very friendly and loves the bishop and his family, but she doesn't necessarily believe in God and so we shared a few scriptures but she didn't want us to preach to her. It was still fun though and it was worth a shot.
So you're not going to believe what happened on Thursday... we were out working as usual and around 10:30 am I looked at the phone and saw that we had a missed call from Hna Avila, Presidente's wife. We were freaking out for a bit, wondering what we had done wrong, but when I called her all she said was this "Hna Crawford, could you please come meet me downtown at 12pm between the streets Buenos Aires and Lavalle, with socks on?". I was a little confused but I said yes anwyays. So we ran home to grab socks and figure out how to get to the streets she had told us, and then at 12 we arrived at none other than a shoe store... Before I go on, I fill you in on something that happened at the zone conference with president a couple weeks ago. As I was translating, the nurse started talking about feet and how we need to take care of them by washing our shoes daily- she then proceeded to make me take off my shoe, and she held it up in front of everyone. The shoe she held up was the charity one that they had given us in La Punta when the saw how destroyed the white ones were (the story I told you on Skype for X-mas), and after 5-ish months of good use they've gotten a little bit destroyed as well, but I kept using them because they're extremely comfortable and I didn't have time nor did I really want to by a new pair. So anyways, she held the shoe up and Hna Avila was right there watching... Fast forward to this Thursday in the shoe store: Hna Avila is there with her 16 yr old daughter Leticia and she starts showing me shoes and asking me which ones I like, and telling me to choose a pair.. Yep, it happened again people. The 2nd pair of charity shoes. Hahaha. I picked a pair that looked comfortable and match with most of my clothes, and we went back to the pench to plan (after grabbing Subway for lunch). Kind of embarrasing, but I couldn't tell her no, not that she even really asked in the first place. It was sweet though to know that she's looking out for me.
So anyways, on Friday we had exchanges with the sister leaders and I got to go to Dorrego with Hna Enos, who's from Mesa! Her uncle actually teaches Spanish at Gilbert High (Mr. Grover) and he was the volleyball coach when I was there. It was fun getting to know her even though I don't know how they survive in that tiny pench, and we had some interesting lessons with a recent convert who got chewed out by her crazy mormon-hating boss who she lives with as we were teaching, and then one with two little girls (9 and 12 yrs old) and their grandma who's a member. It was a pretty successful exchange. My comp & hna cox had success in our area also- one of our less actives is stopping smoking, another family is really close to coming back to church, and they found a new investigator who's apparently awesome!
Then on Sunday I had to give a talk about testimonies.. It actually went pretty well. Sometimes there talks here are kind of dry and so I tried to make mine a little more interesting by telling them to imagine that after church we're all going to go to the ciclovía (it's a running/biking path that's about 9 kilometers) and run it twice in under 2 hrs, and those that can do it will get 5,000 pesos. Then I used the talk from last conference by elder Maynes and compared it to the race of life and how we need to be in shape by keeping the commandments, etc. They loved it and I got a ton of compliments afterwards!
Ahh I'm out of time but I'm excited for this week- we're having a conference with all of the hnas tomorrow, and then we have general conference!!! Also it's the last week of the transfer. Love you all, have an awesome week!
Hna Crawford
PS- for more pics go to:
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