Cudahy: Translado 5: Semana 2‏ / Aug 3, 2010

Hola mi familia bonita!
 
Its August! Can you believe I'm almost at my halfway point? Sometimes it is still really shocking to me that I'm actually a missionary and I'm actually here, let alone I'm almost halfway done. :P The Visitor's Center is going to open this Saturday, so tomorrow we start training up at the temple. We are going to have to commute for the next couple of days, and then we'll see how much we actually will go to work there this transfer. We are really happy that we get the best of both worlds, because we're not missing out on the Visitor's Center opening, we still get to stay in an awesome area where people listen to us and the ward loves us, and we are away from all of the drama of living with an entire zone full of sisters. My companion and I are the only sisters in our zone, which, to be honest we are pretty happy about. Its kind of sad though because we realized that most of the elders generally do not like sister missionaries. The sisters generally have the reputation of being way too intense and uptight, trying to be like the perfect "robot" missionary, or of being super needy. I've realized that it is because we try so hard to fit the mold of what we feel the perfect missionary would be instead of being ourselves and using and magnifying our personal talents and abilities.
 
My companion, Hermana Garcia, has slowly but surely been helping me to break out of that and realize that i can be a good and obedient missionary, but i can still be myself and act human, and actually have fun and enjoy my mission. So many times i think we fall into the trap of getting to focused on all of our weaknesses and the things we do wrong, and we forget that having that perspective is selfish and wrong. Hermana Garcia flat out told me that I was being selfish because I was beating myself up about some things and some mistakes I'd made. She told me that it wasn't about me, it was about us as a team. I realized that I have spent so much of my life trying to do everything on my own, never needing anyone else or asking for help, and that I was being selfish. Hermana Garcia has helped me a lot. She likes to tease me sometimes that she is working probono as my therapist. She is really honest and blunt, but at the same time she is a great friend, and I know that she would do anything to help me. Yesterday for our zone activity we played "the newlyweds game" as companionships and we got almost all of them right, because we basically know everything about each other. It is such an interesting thing having a companion, because there really is no other situation in your life where you will have to be with someone always, 24-7 within sight and hearing of each other. Its just another one of those mission experiences that I don't think anyone can understand that hasn't lived it for themselves.
 
We got permission to start e-mailing Tuesdays now, because the county libraries all closed on Mondays for tax cuts. Apparently there has been a huge issue in the news here in California because the city of Bell, which is where we live, has municipal employees that are getting paid over 800,000 a year, or something like that. We really only hear bits and pieces. We saw a ton of news people and helicopters and crowds the other day though for a big political rally, which is really strange for such an obscure and remote part of Ls Angeles, and we found out that that was why.
 
The work has started picking up again and has been going really well. We met the most adorable family ever a couple weeks ago and we're helping them get ready to be baptized. They are a couple with four kids, two little girls that are three and five, a seven year old boy, and an eleven year old girl. They are some of the most well behaved children i have ever seen. They all came to sacrament meeting with us last week and they were quiet the whole time. The only challenge that we have with them is helping to get them married. They couldn't for awhile because they had to wait for everything to go through with the immigration papers, but they finally got the ok from their lawyer. Our only worry is that she might want to plan a huge wedding ordeal. We thought it would be fine and we could probably convince them to have a simple wedding and then do something big when they get sealed next year, but then we stopped by the party they had for their little girls' birthday, and it was catered and decorated and they had matching outfits and everything. It was so cute! We're going to have to find a way to become wedding planners. Maybe some of that talent that Aunt Jennifer has will miraculously rub off on me so we can help put something together.
 
I also had another experience of eating something really strange last week- maybe even worse than the pig ear. We were at a dinner appointment, and they had given us some food but then gave the husband something else to eat. It was another kind of soup, and it looked kind of strange, so I asked about it and they said it was a soup with pauta de pollo, which are chicken feet. its an acquired taste even for them, so they didn't offer, but Hermana Garcia decided it would be really funny to make a big joke out of having me try it, so i did. It was awful, so they didn't make me eat it and i didn't feel bad because Hermana Garcia doesn't like it either. It is a really gross texture.
 
This week I also spent some time writing down all of the miracles I've seen here on my mission. It was amazing looking back and realizing how blessed I've been, and how many incredible experiences I've had that are helping to change my life for the better, and helping me to love and understand so many different people. I am so grateful to be here serving a mission. Thank you all for your prayers, love and support.
 
Hermana Dansie