So Many Friends

Hello wonderful family and friends!

 

Another week has gone by, yet it has felt like an eternity. Nothing terribly exciting happened this week, but we did get two new 'investigators'. Both of our teachers became investigators and we teach one a day. One of my teachers is Hermano Brown. We were teaching him a lesson one day when he started to talk about his family. He asked if we wanted to see a picture, and of course we said yes. He showed us his phone which had two little kids on it wearing, guess what, Hill Cumorah Pageant t-shirts. I just about died. I had to control myself as we finished teaching. But after our lesson when he came back in our room, I excitedly asked him when his family had gone. They were there this summer, and he had been in Hannah's cast team. Craziness. We talked about Hannah and other fun pageant things before dinner. It was so nice to talk to someone about something close to home. The next day he told me that my sister had said hello, and that the Miller's (who were his mission presidents) told him to give me extra TLC. It absolutly made my day.

 

Also relating to knowing people, my companions have been making fun of me for how many people I know or find people I know in common with others. Every time someone mentions where their from and I get excited, they groan and say, why do you know so many people! I guess BYU and pageant just supplied me with endless amounts of people, which is awesome. I love seeing familiar faces or finding with someone that we are friends with the same person. I also re-met my old primary classmate this week from San Juan Capistrano, Spencer Manning. It was fun to talk about old people and places I haven't seen for a very long time. We said goodbye to all of our Mexican friends this week. A ton of them asked for our emails and pictures, two or three of them confessed their love for Hermana Baumgart, and one sent a friend to tell me I was pretty. We are really going to miss our very fun friends, who love to make fun of our spanish. I love that wherever you go, there will always be memebers of the church and you will always have the gospel in common. The gospel is all about friendship. How wonderful!

 

The food continues to be delicious, and the weather has been very sunny and warm, with an occational torrential downpour just for fun. We also got to use the earthquake circles once when the alarm went off. I thought it wouldn't ever happen. I got three bugs caught in my hair yesterday. The best was early in the morning, Hermana Baumgart started to play with my hair and told me not to freak out. I thought she was just brushing it untill I heard I very loud buzzing noise right next to my ear and I freaked out. My district looked at me like I was crazy as I inwardly sobbed and rapidly put my head down as I waited for her to get it out. I saw the huge moth fly around the room, that had been in my hair. Nasty. Soccer is coming along well, and I even found one of my BYU tennis club friends here, so we play tennis together sometimes when my companions dont feel like working out.

 

We had TRC this week which is just sitting in with natives and talking. We talked with one sister, who was very nice. I couldn't understand a thing she said, but I could feel her spirit as strongly as I ever have. I knew that God loved her. She told us her conversion story and asked us why she didn't get a lot of answers from God. We told her that we knew God loved her, she just needed to be patient, and maybe the answer she was looking for wasn't the right time or the right thing. Afterwards, I saw two little kids walking with the parents from the TRC lessons. One little boy looked like a Mexican version of Jeremiah, and one looked like a Mexican version of Lily. I broke down. I missed my family so much in that instant it was really hard to think or move. So, I thought of my testimony of eternal families, and I knew I would always be with my family. It was an amazing feeling.

 

I love you all, but I love what I'm doing, and I can not wait until I get to teach people that have been prepared for me in Antofagasta Chile. What a wonderful knowledge we have of this Gospel! We will always have family and friends and love.

So much love!

 

Hermana Richardson