October 30, 2017

It was a Halloween miracle!!! We had 32 people at church besides the missionaries!!! Many of you may be thinking... huh.... that's not very many. But that's the most since I've been here!!!! It was the best meeting ever and we had 4 of our investigators there ahhh it was awesome.

This week was quite the cultural experience for us. We helped throw together a surprise baby shower with all the ladies in the group for Hermana White, the group leader’s wife. Let’s just say Hispanic baby showers are a lot more fun than any baby shower I've been to! What's funny is it started at 6pm and the only people who arrived at 6pm were the Whites. I came outside and was like dang..... can y'all run and grab some ice. Right after Jorge yells hey Hermana, can you help me with the ice. ahhhhhhhh....I sent them to go and grab cups... it was just funny. He was trying to distract his wife for a bit. But it turned out so fun! We played lots and lots of games, ate lots of tamales, and it was just fun!

The other cultural experience was the stake fall festival! It was for the entire stake, which is our entire zone! It was on this huge property that had lots peanut bushes. Anyway, first was the pumpkin chucking. Each ward made a catapult to see how far they could chuck a pumpkin. The company Boeing is in our stake and they made a catapult that could send the pumpkin 700 feet!!!! Neat huh? We also got to judge the trunk or treat which was so fun. There is something about little kids being dressed up that is just so cute. They had a cool spook alley through the forest and some hay rides through the peanut fields. Fun fun. 

We think that both the baby shower and the festival really played a huge part in getting people to church on Sunday!!! Sooooo awesome.

On Thursday, we had just a weird day. We haven't had to do very much finding since I've been here... and so to say my door approach is a little rusty is an understatement hahahahh. We were in this trailer park just knocking doors. We were being followed by this parade of Chihuahuas. There were 4 of them that followed us around the entire time... they were just yapping and tormenting us. We had English class at 8pm and we were doing a follow up visit with Lorena at 6:30... which is always kinda risky if you have an appointment after because she LOVES to talk. A couple weeks ago we asked her if she'd say the closing prayer and she went off for about 10 minutes about how much she loves praying. I'm not kidding when I say cutting her off is impossible. Anyway we were just doing a quick check in before our 7 o'clock lesson. We prayed beforehand that we'd be able to get out on time and that it would be good. So we get out at exactly 7:15, we were bummed because we'd be late, but then they called us and told us they were also going to be late. So we're thinking ahhh Gods so cool. This is great. Then we get a follow up call and they're canceling. We call our back up and they couldn't. It was all just falling through. We could have started driving to English class and been slightly early but decided to try a house on the way. So we went to this area to find an old potential investigator. He had moved..... But instead Pablo answered the door. Pablo is from Mexico and meeting him was such a cool blessing. We was so kind to us at the door and we just talked to him about the gospel and are going to go back this week. His father had just died the week before and he'd been looking for something to cheer him up... little did he know we were too. Pablo was the light at the end of the tunnel that day. 

So something that made me so so happy this week was that Abel and Elias came to church. They started teaching them right before I got here and I just love them a lot. Abel started calling us his sobrinas and so he is our Tio. He really is like this awesome loving Uncle. We went to their house on Saturday and ate some homemade mole. Ohhhhh it was good. But we invited them to come to church, it would be Hermana Raymonds last week since she is going home on Wednesday and we just really tried to get them to come. AND THEY DID!!!!!!!! I saw them walk in and my heart leaped out of my chest. I got to sit by Abel and Elias during sacrament meeting and it was the best. I hope they keep progressing because they have so much potential. 

Another awesome thing is that Raiana and Elmir came to church. They are from Brazil. They are amazing! We invited them to be baptized and they got a little freaked out. Elmir has already been baptized 3 times in different churches and just kept looking at us with wide eyes like "4 TIMES.....4 TIMES." We took Raiana around our church building and found out that she'd had a dream about the chapel. I think that when they get baptized.... because even though they said no... eventually they will recognize their answers.. Anyway when they join the church, it'll be in an English ward. 

Well this week we had my all time fav church marquee signs that I want to share with y'all.

-“Sometimes the only means of transportation is a leap of faith.”

-“If you don't like the way you were born, try being born again.”

Personal fav: “Heaven is no trick, and Hell is no treat.”

Con Mucho Amor

Hermana Crofts

Saturday lunch with Abel & Elias

Judging the Trunk or Treat

The pumpkin chuckin

Hayride

The Whites

October 23, 2017

26 tacos later

Hello, hello! What a good week :)
We had lots of exciting stuff happen this week.
1. We failed apartment check (not because of anything we did... we've just got black mold all over one of the closets and through to the air conditioning closet)
2. The Book of Mormon play came to North Charleston! We went to the play with a bunch of the Elders and handed out real Book of Mormons as the people left. Because the book is always better right? There were a lot of funny people when we came out. I had one guy stay slightly behind and he told me that he was a Roman Catholic and can't believe how much the play mocks Mormons and how we was disgusted. He went on to tell me how impressed he was that we would stand outside and stay true to what we believe. I gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he'd read it. We'll see. He’s English speaking and not in my area.
3. Tacos. We have these 3 investigators that live together and we call them “tres muchachos.” We confirmed our lesson with them and they told us to come hungry. We got there and like all good people dessert was first. Ice cream. Ahh yum. They made the tastiest tacos.... it was like Guacamayas level in Mexico except they were bigger. Ahhh soo so tasty. Anyway they started me out with 5 tacos. I got my plate and thought....wow.....this is A LOT of food. Yummmmm. On my last one, he looks at me and says "quiere mas?" I mean... why not.... I could do maybe 2 more. But he told me that was weak. So then he gives me 2 more of both kinds. Long story short... on taco #8 I thought I couldn't eat any more... one more bite and my stomach would literally explode. But don't worry I ate all 9 of my tacos and the ice cream. Between the 3 of us... We ate 26 tacos! I was still full the next day after that one.

This week, we really had lots of awesome lessons! What's hard is we have awesome lessons and a lot of awesome investigators..... but then people don't keep their commitments and don't really progress. This last week at our district meeting, we made a goal to talk about the importance of church attendance with all of the members and investigators we met with. We tried and everyone promised they'd for sure make it. Sunday morning rolls around and nobody is there. We call one of our investigators who lives with a bunch of people we have taught, they're called “diez hombres”..  to see if he needs a ride or anyone else needs a ride. Well... Long story short... one of our investigators beat up the other investigator at 2 am and put him in the hospital... I think we might need to go over Word of Wisdom again and uhhh... We gave them a pass for church this week. But we tried so hard to get people there and it was the lowest attended sacrament we've had in a while. It's really hard to get people to join a struggling group.. and I have just been fasting and praying for help on how to strengthen the members. Anyway. We're still working on church attendance.

This week we met with the cutest member families. One is Magdalena and her 2 daughters. They're recent converts and are probably the cutest and sassiest little girls I know. The other is the Hernandez fam. They've got 5 of the sweetest kids that love love love the missionaries. We had a birthday party for Jorge and Ramona with all the missionaries in the English ward and Spanish group. It was one of the highlights of the week.  

Tuesday we had our interviews with our mission president. Ahhhhh He is such an inspired man. I love him so much!!! 

I hope everyone is happy and doing so good! Love you all lots! 

Con Mucho Amor

Hermana Crofts

Liselli & Jaclyn

The Hernandez Family for Jorge & Ramona's birthday party

God answers prayers....finally made it to Chick-fil-A

Cookie decorating contest

Bowling for P-day

Handing out the real Book of Mormons outside the "Book of Mormon" play

October 16, 2017

Hellllllo 

This week flew by! This was one of my best weeks and also one of the most stressful. We had exchanges this week and so I served for a day in an English area. Ohhhhhh it was so weird! I heard my first swear word.  This guy just went off for like 5 minutes using every word in the book and I left laughing and thinking oh my gosh.... I gotta go repent or something. What was that?! That night we went to an ASL class. Sign language is not my thing. The day after I was so stoked to just go back to Spanish!

AHHHH, I spoke in church yesterday.... in Spanish. I actually think that it went really well. It was about faith and repentance and I saw some people nodding... So that means they understood right? This weekend was the first time I really felt like I could speak fully and tell my thoughts and experiences and be more involved in the lessons it was cool. Also, one of the ways I know my Spanish has gotten better is I have now started to pick up on when anyone is making fun of me so at least now I know and can follow it up with a rebuttal. 

My companionship had the best week we've had yet. We had a lot of fun together and laughed and that was probably one of the greatest blessings. We have so many investigators that are progressing and they are almost there, they're so close, but then they are not willing to get baptized. They want everything that comes from it, but are too scared to make the leap. That was a little frustrating for me this week.. I just kept wondering.., how can I help them? What can we do? Ahhhhhh seriously what do they need? I thought about it so much this week and was really stressed out because of all of our investigators. I've never wanted something so bad for someone!!! I just know the happiness and the goodness the gospel has blessed me with and I know it can change their life. They just have to let it change their life! 

So just for kicks and giggles.... soccer night. We have soccer night every Friday. For anyone who has ever played soccer with me, you know that it is definitely NOT my sport. Hahahahaah. So every Friday we play with a bunch of Latinos and it's always really competitive and really entertaining for whoever gets to watch me. Really it's bad... several of them have started sending me videos to help me practice hahahah. Ahhhhh.... joy. 

This week in a lesson with some new investigators we have gained some nicknames because our names are just a little too hard to say. We are all 3 at different parts of our missions. I just got here, Hermana Bowers is at 9 months, and Hermana Raymond finishes in 2 weeks. So we are now Hermana Bebe, Hermana Mama, and Hermana Abuelita. You can catch this trio taking Charleston by storm. 

Con mucho Amor

Hermana Crofts 

Biking this week

My companions didn't think the Harry Potter wand was as cool as I did..... 

English class with one of our fav Brazilians

Raina is another of our favorite Brazilians

Pictures in the gym are all from our soccer night on Fridays.