We have been able to have some good lessons and contacts with people we are teaching as well!
We started the week with going on ministering visits with one of our members (because we were carless and she was awesome enough to drive us around) and we had a great lesson with Olga and her four daughters! We taught them the importance of the gospel of jesus christ, and it has been a little challenging because they are all different ages and Olga has a hard time remembering things we have taught in the last lessons, but we are figuring it out :) Later in the week we were doing service proselyting and we had a prompting to go to her house and offer to give them service! It was great timing because they had just finished cleaning their whole house haha but we were able to help her oldest daughter with homework and it was awesome. We also talked to the girls about their favorite sports and the second youngest told us her favorite was soccer, so immediately I was so pumped! It was even more pefect that my awesome aunt Aliza sent me a package the next day and in it were a few soccer balls of different sizes, and so last night when we went back to Asherton we stopped by their house and just like usual, they have been going through some hard stuff but we were able to testify of the peace and happiness of the gospel! Then we gave the family a soccer ball and they were all so excited! It has been a hard time of year for Olga because she isn't working and she even told us that the girls don't have blankets to sleep with at night, so we are working on calling all of the shelters around here and finding them some.. It has been super humbling serving here in Carrizo Springs, that is for sure. Olga and her daughters backed out of coming to church at the last minute again and we were super sad :( But we still have high hopes for them and we hope they follow through with coming to our branch potluck this week and also to our special service on Sunday! We just have so much love for this family, it is crazy.
While we were out with our member we also went by Ashley and Janelle and we taught them the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ while standing on their porch and the two little boys were running everywhere haha but they understood it well and liked the message! Neither of them have ever been super religious so we are just focusing on helping them realize the importance of religion and all the blessings that can come to their family by believing in Jesus Christ and striving to follow Him. We also went by last night to see if we could have another lesson with them but they were about to head out so we invited them to church again and they said they will hopefully come! That used to get me excited when people would say that, but now I've realized that everybody just says that here haha.
We went by Esmeralda with our member as well and followed up on how she liked church, and she liked it! But she didn't have time for a lesson, so we decided we would go and give a spiritual message to our members husband, which is the same guy that we have been encouraged to limit our contact with, but we were also told we could visit with him if his wife was there and she keeps telling us she really wants us to keep having lessons with them so we finally agreed to it haha. I cannot even explain how crappy I felt as soon as we drove onto their property though.. We drove up to their trailer and I just had the most creepy and sketchy feeling.. Their trailer door was open and all of the lights were off, and there was stuff on the table that made it apparent that he is having problems with the word of wisdom and then when he wasn't there we drove around the ranch to find him (on the way we saw the cute new puppies they have) and we went back to the trailer and he was there and wow, I don't know exactly why but both my companion and I got the impression that we should never go back on that property again.. I am still confused about it, but I am also super thankful that we are so in tune with the spirit because something was definitely off about him, and he just isn't making the best decisions, and as a missionary it's super hard to see people like that because we just want to help them, especially when they are one of our members, but right now we aren't supposed to help him..
TUESDAY was such an interesting day! Other than Monday night when our member took us to our visits, this was the first day we were without our car... and bikes! We planned on having one of our members drive us from Carrizo to Crystal (because it would take all day to ride bikes there) but the sad thing was they didn't have a bike rack, soooo we were in Crystal without bikes, which meant we were walking... suuuuuuper fun let me tell you haha. We literally felt homeless the whole time. We had our members drop us off at one of our lessons, but then they told us they didn't have time for a lesson and just by our luck, we were on the outskirts of town.. so we walked, in the rain, to the middle of town haha. We called everybody we knew but nobody answered haha so we went to the dollar store, and we started buying stuff to prepare for the PARADE that we were going to be in!! I forgot to mention that haha. Tuesday morning we were thinking about what we can do down here in our area to promote light the world, because missionaries in San Antonio and Austin have so many events and big places they can go, but we literally have nothing haha but we found out there was going to be a parade and so we put ourselves in it! We told the members about it and they were all for it!! It took us all week to prepare for haha so we used some spare time we had in Crystal and started making our awesome posters! That night we went to one of our members houses and she sets up BIG TIME for Christmas, like she has SIX trees in her living room haha so we helped her set up for XMAS while listening to XMAS music and it was the best. It made us quite homesick and miss our families a lot, but it was so fun nonetheless.
Wednesday we had to film our introduction video to send to a group chat with other sisters, just to introduce ourselves and our drafts are super funny haha I'll attach one! We also weekly planned that day and while we were weekly planning, the people from the car body shop called us and told us our car was done! We were so thrilled because being without a car is so hard haha so we were super thankful!
Thursday we headed to Eagle Pass for our district council and we thought we were going to be having interviews with our president but he had something come up so they are now this week! But our awesome member drove us to Eagle Pass and napped during our meeting haha then we went and had lunch at WingStop and it was soooo good haha it's the closest thing we have to Buffalo Wild Wings and it's not as good as BWW but I dealt with it haha. Our member then took us to DQ for a blizzard and then we came back home!
After we got home we changed and went out to do some pros ball, and by that we went to one of our members house named Pearl (I mentioned her last week) and a couple of her boys asked us to play basketball with them when we have extra time, so we went and played with them! It was fun and it was even better because one of Pearls kids that isn't a member (her two oldest aren't) played with us so we had a good contact with him and it was nice for them to also see that missionaries are also normal people haha. He did almost break my ankles so that was pretty embarrassing.
That night we got home and I have to tell this story because it makes me laugh every time I think about it, just like when my companion fell on her bike.. Well we have this cool pull up bar in the door of our room, and my companion has to jump to reach it, well she went to jump once and pushed it off the top of the door and so it fell, and she also fell... she left a huge scratch on the door and it was quite the sight to see! We laughed for a solid ten minutes hahah it was the best.
Friday was a day full of fast food haha we had lunch with some members and they usually always cook a great home made meal, but this time they got pizza hut and we were still super grateful, it's just hard to always be eating fast food haha. Then we didn't originally have plans for dinner so we stopped at HEB and I grabbed a small salad, and then we got a call from one of our members and they asked if we had plans for dinner so we told them not really and they asked if they could buy us burgers haha so needless to say, i ate wayyy too much fast food that day.
We were able to stop by the Morales and chat with the wife that we are teaching and we have been wanting to serve her for the longest time and she finally let us haha so we did her dishes! They said they would come to church, but they didn't :( But we are still working on helping her understand that even though the women don't hold the priesthood, women in the church are still so important and so valued!
We got home that night and I had a few packages waiting for me, and I just have to thank everybody for their generosity!! I have definitely needed the uplifting messages and emails and packages lately, so I hope you all know how much I love and appreciate them!! Even better is they they have stuff I can give to other people, and I just love that :) so thank you all!!!
Saturday we had our parade!! It was sooo awesome!! We weren't ever able to find a truck to pull a trailer, so we just decorated one of our members cars, and put lots of signs on it and then streamed it with lights and our member even put a speaker on top and played music! We were also able to have the Elders come down from Eagle Pass and help us out! We all walked in the parade and we had hundreds of pass along cards that were promoting light the world and we handed them all out! We had two members walking holding lighttheworld.org signs as well, and then quite a few other members came and walked with us as well! It was so fun and there were soooo many people there! We even made it on the news is what it sounds like!! Then after the parade was over, there was an area downtown that there were a ton of tables set up and all of the different organizations had a table, and we were able to hand out lots of Book of Mormons and goodie bags with light the world on it and so many light the world calendars, and it was super duper awesome :) We are praying that something good comes out of the parade!
We had church yesterday, and it was kind of a bummer church :( We had absoluely zero nonmembers come to church.. We were counting all of the possibilities that we could have come, which adds up to 16 people that we are teaching that have told us they will "hopefully" come to church, and none of them came.. It was just a hard day all around yesterday haha and so if anyone has any encouraging or inspiring words about how to stay motivated even when people don't follow through on commitments, I would appreciate all of them!!
This week is looking to be pretty exciting! We have our branch potluck this week, as well as exchanges, as well as zone conference, as well as the special come and see sunday, so we are really really really hoping we have a good turn out for that!!
Thanks again to everybody for all of your love and support. I know that I am so blessed to have you all! I am so very grateful for all that I have been blessed with, especially with loving older brother, Jesus Christ and for the knowledge and testimony that I have been able to grow throughout my mission. I am very lucky to have this gospel in my life and the knowledge that I will never be alone no matter what I'm going through.
I love you all so much!
Have an amazing week!!
Con amor,
Hermana Griffin
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