Coincidence--I think NOT!!

First things first...
Congrats to my brother Bryce for receiving his call to serve in the "*name of city I can't pronounce and already forgot* Russia" mission! This whole week I felt like I was getting ready to open up my own mission call again I was so excited haha I practically ran to the computer this morning. I don't think you could be going to a mission more completely opposite than the one I am Bryce! I'm so proud of you for making the decision to serve. There's no doubt that you are called to that specific mission for a reason - being that it's the biggest mission in the world and there are only 20-50 missionaries there at a time. Hate to break it to you though...but I don't think you should plan on the family vacationing there post mission haha.

-Let's see, what can I tell you about that was interesting this week...I have some followup book of mormon stories for you! By the way the give at least one book of mormon away every day for the rest of my mission goal is going really well. It's been a month and I haven't missed a day! God's made it possible every day. We have given out more this past month than I have in my entire mission. We almost ran out...that was a close one. One of the very first ladies I gave a book of mormon to out in the street after making this goal was named Francheliz. She is from Puerto Rico and is 25 and has a cute little 5 year old. She said she would want to learn more about the book so we got all her information but since giving her the book of mormon we haven't really been able to have contact with her. So we "dropped her" (meaning we stop trying to contact her, drop her information from our area book) and literally minutes after doing that, she responded to the voicemail we had left her right before dropping her, saying she wanted to learn! So we met with her last week and she is really prepared! I have such a big testimony of dropping people...I know Heavenly Father won't let anyone who is actually ready get away. She wants to be  baptized and now has a date for october. She has been reading in the Book of Mormon and came to church on sunday! So that was pretty exciting. The only discouraging thing about Francheliz is that she's not married to her husband. That's always the hardest thing to find out. She calls her boyfriend "esposo" which is actually normal, everyone calls the person they live with their husband, but she was wearing a ring so I thought that maybe there was hope. hahha nope. But they do want to get married so there is hope!

- Another neat thing was one day it was about 8pm and I realized we still hadn't been able to give away a book of mormon. I was a little worried that we wouldn't be able to do it that day when before our last appointment for the night we ran into a man named Ino we had briefly met and taught about the restoration a few days before. We had given him a pamphlet and he agreed to meet back with us in a week so we could teach him the restoration for real. Well anyways we ran into him and he said "hey! I finished that pamphlet you gave me...it was too small! Do you have a bigger book I can read?" Did you just ask me that? Well of course I do! We were able to give him the book of mormon and explain it a little bit and challenge him to read and pray about it. He is now in 2 Nephi! He came to church sunday too, but is going to north carolina for a few weeks so we won't be able to teach him:( but he said he brought the book of mormon with him so he will probably be finished with it by the time he gets back haha.

- Hahaha funny thing that happened this week. So we left to go on an exchange with some other sisters in Tampa on Thursday. We were both going to be working in their area that day. Hermana Gibson was driving and on the way to the exchange a car swerved into our lane so we had to swerve into the other (while Im honking the horn- Hermana Gibson won't honk a horn for her life!) and hit another car. The lady who caused the crash though stoppoed and took all the blame. I felt really bad for her. But can you guess who was in the other car we had crashed into? The nonmember daughters of one of the members in our ward. Pretty funny how God works sometimes-- of all the people in Tampa we could have hit it was them! Coincidence, I think not! (insert edna mode voice here.) Luckily the crash wasn't our fault so we were on good terms with them and got to know them pretty well. And now we have ALL their information- phone number, insurance, address, you name it haha. Hopefully we can visit them soon and hit them with the spirit and the restored gospel this time around. hahah other funny thing that happened that day? So we finally get to the exchange and I was with a sister named sister rivers and we were biking through this neighborhood and i was following her, obviously not knowing where we were going and she made a turn and I completely crashed into her and we ended up in a ball with our bikes in the middle of this intersection in this neighborhood. Two cars were waiting at the stop signs and saw it all hahah it was pretty embarrassing. Two crashes in one day...pretty exciting.

- We also had the opportunity to teach the family members of a few members of the ward this week. One hermano, hermano Marin invited us over to eat colombian food and to teach his wife and his suegros ( parents in law) while they were visiting from colombia. I love colombians. They are some of my favorite people. And they have the best spanish in my opinion-- Sorry other countries! We were able to teach them about the book of mormon and they were excited about it. I was also able to teach hno Marin and his family how to use a dishwasher...hhahahah none of them had ever used a dishwasher in their life before it was pretty cute, they were so clueless.

- We were also able to teach hna ulloa's husband. She is a sweet older lady from the dominican republic that has been helping us a lot and coming to lessons. Her husband was actually the first one to be interested in the church and invitied the missionaries over but she was the one who actually got a testimony and was baptized and he hasn't wanted to since! It is really sad, being on my mission has made me see how incredibly hard it would be to marry someone who does not have a testimony of the same things you do. You spend your whole life just waiting to see if one day they will have and interest in learning and will do what it takes to gain a testimony of the gospel. We were able to share a message about prayer and hna ulloa wants us to start coming back more and more to see if now is his time to accept the gospel but he didn't seem too interested to me:( She just has so much hope, faith, and patience though I really admire her.

-ahh there was another cool miracle I wanted to tell you about but now there's no time..guess I will just write about it next week and pretend it happened then haha. love you!!! have a great week!!
Hermana Va