Hello!

Well, Transfers happened and I ended up in Laredo!

My new companion is Hermana McArthur, and she actually went to SVU. We never had a class together, but I'm pretty sure we saw each other often and we have lots of mutual friends/acquaintances. She and I have lots of similarities and get along swimmingly. We are in a cute apartment with 2 other sisters, and it would be the nicest apartment I've been in, except for the fact that our AC has been broken since I arrived here. Thankfully, there's a lot less humidity in Laredo, so that's nice. But it's been pretty warm at night. It's all good though, it's a great opportunity to prepare for nights without AC in the future, right? :)

We've had some super cool things happen here - the people of Laredo are VERY humble and prepared, and we're always busy. Right now there are only branches in our Zone, but they're getting bigger and it's exciting to see lots of receptive people. I got here on Tuesday, and then on Thursday we had a Zone meeting and afterwards went and ate at a place called Cici's Pizza. I didn't eat a lot, but what I did eat didn't make me feel so great. Lots of grease. Yum. We went home and were going to have a biking day, so we got our bikes and started biking (Laredo has lots of hills, so I'm gonna get nice and fit this transfer). After biking for a while and being in the sun, I didn't feel so great. We tried a couple people that weren't home, and then I realized I wasn't gonna make it. So I went behind a car and vomited all the pizza out, and then I heard my companion contacting a guy walking past on the street. We talked with him for a little bit, and then kept walking, and then saw a guy who was just coming out of his house abd about to leave. He said we could go talk to his blind father, and we did and he was super prepared. We taught him to pray, and when we came back the next day he said "I've been praying the way you taught and I feel a difference! I've been mad at God for taking away my eyesight, but now when I feel mad I start to pray and I feel better!" We went back yesterday and met his wife, and they both are planning on being baptized in a few weeks. Miracles! Also, isn't that beautiful metaphorically? Teaching a blind man the gospel? Love it.

Yesterday we went and talked with a woman who the other companionship of sisters met, and we met her husband. She was super excited about the idea of baptism, and they both are pretty receptive as they're about to be parents (she's like 7 months pregnant). We taught them how to pray, and asked the husband as the head of the household to offer that prayer. He didn't want to, since he said he was shy, but finally offered a very short, simple prayer, and afterward the wife broke down into tears. The spirit was super powerful, and it was really cool to see her recognize that. First prayers are the best! She also then proceeded to pin a clothes pin with blue beads to "counteract the gravity from the foll-moon/eclipse so that her baby wouldn't be born with cleft palette or anything." Cool.

Well, I hope that everything goes splendidly this week!

I love you all!!! 

Love,

Hermanita Reynolds

3319 S Bartlett

Laredo, TX (I don't know my zipcode...)

Well, it's only been a few days since I last emailed so I don't have anything TOO crazy to report. We had 2 exchanges this week, and so there were two days that I went to the STL's area and worked with them in McAllen. I had one exchange on Thursday with Sister Perez (who is going home next week) and then on Saturday I had another one with Sister Pickett (my trainer). It was fun to get to work with both of them separately and have a chance to get advice from sister Perez and work again with sister Pickett, since it's been a while since we were together. While I was sister Pickett, we were walking down the street and we found a woman standing in her driveway, and we went up and started talking with her. She said she grew up Catholic but didn't really go to church anymore (pretty typical), and we taught her a little bit, and she said she didn't really know how to pray, so we asked if we could teach her. She said yes, so we explained it, then I said a prayer to give an example, and then she prayed, and after she had said a couple of sentences she started getting choked up and then ended it and, with tears in her eyes, said "Wow, I'm sorry, it's just that I've never prayed before." It was super cool to see how someone with little religious background could recognize the power behind prayer and the feeling of the Holy Ghost. 

Also this week we experienced our first Flash Flood. We had gone home to eat dinner, and in 1 hour it went from being cloudy to pouring rain and then our street became a river. There was probably a foot or a foot and a half of water, it was crazy! We looked outside our window and thought "oh no! How are we gonna get out of here?" We were on the bikes, and were trying to figure out how we'd go work again. The rain eventually stopped, and we went outside to take pictures of the street, and then we realized that it was only half of our street that flooded, and the other half was totally fine, ha ha. So we didn't end up being stranded, but there WAS a lot of water.

Our Stake also did a cultural celebration this last week, and each ward had their youth prepare a cultural dance of the area. Which basically meant that there were a bunch of line dances and one or two hispanic dances, but it was fun. :)

Okay, well have a great week!

Oh, PS, next week is transfers, so if you mail anything after tuesday t should probably be sent to the Mission Office.

--

Hermana Reynolds

Hey ya'll!

Man, this whole emailing on Wednesday is throwing off my groove - now I have a week and a half of experiences to draw from. 

Hmm. Well, the most exciting thing was that Alan got confirmed, and the ward has been welcoming him splendidly :) Yay! Alan's doing really well - when we went over on Monday he had read up until Mosiah, and he's looking for ways to get the people he knows to read the Book of Mormon.

A couple of weeks ago we were looking through our Area Book and we found a record of a former investigator that looked really interesting and we decided we should try and find him again. We'd tried by his house probably 6 or 7 times in the plan of a couple of weeks, and he was never there. But the other day we FINALLY found him. He came out and at first kind of tried to kindly tell us he wasn't interested, but he mentioned something like "when the other missionaries were teaching me, life was real good, but I just am more comfortable in my baptist beliefs." As as probed a little bit he just started crying. He's a big, African American man, and he just broke down and told us how horrible his life is and how he's at rock bottom and he's been praying and praying to have relief and to find something. Evidently he had been really close to getting baptized before, but his family and friends talked him out of it, and then his life went south pretty hard. He talked with us for 20 minutes or so, and cried the whole time. At one point he got really choked on his emotions, and then looked at us and said "you can see that I need help, right? I just need someone to be there for me." He said he's willing to learn again, and he prayed with us and said a beautiful prayer and I was so humbled to be a part of it. Miracles like that are what make everything worth it :)

We had Zone Conference yesterday and learned a lot. One thing President Maluenda said that I really liked was that the mission is a time to learn lessons, because we'll never have the spiritual support like we do now, so we should use this time to learn through trials the things that we'd have to learn otherwise after our missions and without all the spiritual support. 

Okay, well I love you all!

Have the best week of your lives.

Love,
m

--

Hermana Reynolds