The Real Week

Dear Family:

And my first full, real week comes to a close. And I think I´m finally getting the hang of everything now. In reality, this week was a little bumpy. A little harder, and a little better than the first week. For one, I´ve been learning the real meaning of Ether 12:27. God likes to show missionaries their weaknesses. But as I´ve seen all my weaknesses kind of come crumbling at my feet this week, after a while of frustration I realized that if God didn´t give us experiences in which we see the things we lack, we would never find them. It´s like leaving a sliver in your hand because it hurts to dig it out. It´s necessary, and in the end, you´re so much for the better. 

So, a little about my area. One of the sisters in the companionship in our area before us was pretty sick for a month or two, and the president decided to "wash the area" with us. So neither of us have been in the area before, and we´re both just exploring and discovering it together. Because the sister was sick for a while, not a lot of work got done during those months, so we step in with no progressing investigators. Also, the ward hasn´t had a baptism for some four or five years, so we have to recent converts either. So we´re basically starting from scratch. Luckily, we have our nifty thrifty area book in which we´ve dug some former investigators from the depths of its pages to visit and teach. 

The first lesson we taught here was with Gisella. She´s an investigator the sisters had been visiting with before the one Hermana got sick. She lives alone in her apartment, and the first time we visited her she told us about her family, and shared about herself. She told us she had lost her book of mormon, so we brought her a new one. As we´ve visited with her we found that she knows there are some things in her life she wants to change, she´s just having a little trouble with taking that first step. 

The hardest thing about this area is that even when we schedule appointments with them, they´re rarely at home when we visit. We go out with lots of different people written down we can visit, and usually end up visiting with only one or two. There are lots of less active families here too, so we visit with them a lot. 

Oh, so kind of a funny story. We went with some sisters from the relief society to visit a non member, Mabel. We all sat down and Mabel showed us how to make these roses with little peices of material, so we all made them together. Afterward we were going to share a message with her. I thought of the scripture I had recently read, (mom´s favorite!) of the lilies in the field, and I was like, perfect! We´re making flowers, here´s this scripture about how we should be like the flowers and stuff, I´ll share that. So I pull out my Libro de Mormon to share it, and I can´t find the right scripture. I finally just shared one I thought was it, 3 Nephi 13:26, and later found out it was 3 Nephi 13:28. Anyway, it was kind of funny cuz verse 26 talks about birds, so the sisters were probably a little confused. 

I did my first batch of laundry by hand this week. Quite the adventure. If you´re ever bored and happen to have a tub of water and laundry soap, I´d definitely reccommend it. It´s kind of relaxing.

Well, I think that´s about it. I´m going to print out your emails and read them at home today. Love you all! 

Hermana Cannon