Sister Heather Crofts

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