1 year down

Hola!

This week has been a good week. Big news! Yesterday I completed one year on the mission. It is strange that it is supposedly all down hill from here because I still feel new on the mission. I still have a ton of things to learn and I still don´t know anything. It is strange to be a girl and go home 6 months earlier than the elders. This week we had some really good moments. We had an activity with our district. We called people in our ward to do divisions with us and then we went out to contact. And it was a very successful activity. We found a lot of people and the great thing about it is that members don´t really like contacting so, they gave references of friends so that they didn´t have to go contacting for 2 hours. So, we had enough work before and now we have a ton of work. During this activity, we contacted a man that is a friend of a member. He said that he is Buddhist. That is not very common here so I had to ask, ¨Where is the Buddhist church here?¨ Then he had to remind me that buddhism is not a religion it´s a practice. Well, at least we had a good laugh about it. He is a very strange person but willing to listen and says that he is not against changing his life. We have to be careful because someone people only will listen to us because they are curious and not because they want to learn. We have to maintain the eye of a hawk.

Another funny thing happened the next day that I hope I can explain. We visited some people and the mom said that someone was a ¨patologo¨. I thought about it for a little while thinking what is a patologo. And then it came to me, the word ¨pata¨ is a foot of an animal so he must be a foot doctor. And so I asked if it was a foot doctor and everyone started laughing. I thought it was very logical and they understood where I got that. But then they clearly explained to me what a pathologist is and the worst thing is that I know what a pathologist is and I know Claudia (our investigator) is a pathologist and tests tumors to see if they are cancerous. Well, it was a good laugh.

This week has been filled with meetings and waiting around for people. For Christmas, each zone has to make a video so we have been planning that a little bit in the mornings. Then we also had to go to immigration so that Hermana Salazar isn´t a tourist. I thought about it and I have gone to immigration 6 times on the mission! That is a lot of times. And I hope it will be the last time. We are working hard with our investigators. Laura (the daughter of an inactive guy) is progressing but when we talk to her she just doesn´t understand the importance of our message. She doesn´t understand God´s love and that Jesus Christ is our Savior. It is frustrating because we can be the best missionaries but people have to convert themselves and they have to put in the effort to accept our message. Sometimes I just want to shove it down their throats and then I remember that every one has there free agency. We are teaching this lady named Clara and she is so great. We found her contacting but she had gone to church before with her ex boyfriend. We taught her the plan of salvation and it was great because she understood everything perfectly. Every investigator should be like Clara (except that she can´t go to church this week). It is so funny because there are so many emotions in the mission. Right now when I was thinking about investigators I was filled with every emotion: happiness, sadness,

frustration... Hermana Salazar and I get along really great. She loves to laugh and so she always laughs at my jokes or the dumb things that I say. She is really nice and a hard worker. We are continuing the work here in Miramonte. I love you all very much. And Happy Thanksgiving.

Hermana Bush