May 9, 2011

happy mothers day yesterday!




mothers... congratulations on being awesome. the holiday itself is not as

huge of a thing here, but we still dedicated sacrament meeting to praising

all the moms out there.



it has been six months since i started this journey, looking back on it now

i have so many good memories. i have a deep love for the people and i really

enjoy this missionary work stuff. this transfer has grown my faith a lot. i

think i have realized something through all of the trial, hard times are

like the fertilizer to our little trees of faith. also i have realized that

there truly is so much more to missionary work than baptizing the world. i

love the lessons i am learning, i highly doubt i would have been smart

enough to learn them on my own. through everything i have found great peace,

a love for the savior, a happy heart no matter what, and a deep love for all

people.



some missionaries in the past made a list of "you know you are a missionary

when"... and the ones i liked was,



you know you are a missionary when you do ring checks on everyone, and not

to see if they are single.



when you become best friends with a stranger in a minute conversation.



when that best friend/complete stranger breaks your heart because they

didn't come to church.



when you can bring up a conversation with anyone about anything.



when your companion wakes you up in the middle of the night because they are

bearing their testimony that "Joseph Smith REALLY WAS a true prophet!"



you have one appointment that will never cancel, church!



when you fall asleep the moment you sit still.



i love this mission stuff. i love the people and all of their funny little

traditional things. there are many funny things.



first off, everyone is so good at soccer. we play every saturday morning and

everytime we have these nine year old boys who come, the only thing i can

beat them in is blocking the ball with my face.



there are 8 kinds of animals; goats, horses, cows, donkeys, chickens, dogs,

and a couple cats. they live wherever they want. it is not uncommon to have

a huge traffic jam because the cows are just chillin in the middle of the

road.



you never wear shoes on a carpet



you always wear shoes on concrete floors



you never sit on a floor without something under you



if it rains on a sunday, prepare to have 0 people at church.



there are a million and a half different churches and they all believe

different things, it is like joseph smith described his home prior to the

restoration of the gospel.



people love to talk about Jesus, and they also love to have prayers prayed

for them. sometimes they will stop you on the street because they need

deliverance, so you need to pray for them.



those are all the things i can think of right now.



it is amazing for me to see how the Lord has prepared me to serve my mission

here. all the things i have experienced in my life have prepared me somehow

for this, the greatest thing is that this is preparing me somehow for my

life in the future! it is also amazing how the Lord has prepared these

people for me, i am meeting so many people that i know i knew before i came

to this earth. seriously, it is a miracle. we are teaching a family right

now. they are a young married couple with a 7 month old baby. they live next

door to a recent convert. we started teaching this pastor man who has a

little candy stand in front of the recent converts house. the husband became

interested in what we were saying and started to join us. we gave him the

commitment to pray (he is a muslim) and left him with a plan of salvation

pamphlet. he read the whole thing and prayed about it. we saw him on our way

to another appointment and he asked us if he could have a book of mormon, we

gave it to him. a couple days later he said he had prayed about it and he

even offered a family prayer for the first time in their whole marriage (we

didn't even ask him to, he just felt like he needed to pray with his

family), he also said we needed to teach his wife. we started teaching the

two of them. turns out the husband is a muslim, the wife is a christian.

they got married and started joking about how they needed a church that they

could both go to. they joked for a while, then became serious. they stopped

going to church and started searching a week before they met us. they have

come to church two weeks in a row, they come to every activity, they have

read the book of mormon, and they know that this church was their answer.

they will be baptized the end of this month.

seriously amazing. the Lord is good, i love the gospel, i loved talking to

my family and i will keep being awesome and having a good time!



love you a lot,

sister blum