: I Feel Like an Egg, Frying on the Sidewalk 🍳🍳🍳

 

Hola a todos! 

These week has been one of the best weeks in a while. But I'll get to that in a second. 

First off though, the temperatures here are unbelievable! I know it's going to be hard to believe for my little tiny city up in Washington but we have had temperatures higher than back home in Arizona for several days now! Yesterday was 112 degrees and today it's going to hit 115! So just please pray that none of us get heat stroke or sick or anything. I'm so grateful we have a car but even walking around apartment complexes trying to contact referrals I feel like I'm baking alive. I've been kinda grumpy about it for the past few days because I thought I would escape the AZ heat but it came to me anyways. Hna Hollingsworth has been laughing at meand how upset I've been at the weather, but we're still alive. 

So to the milagro of the week. We have a goal as companionships in this zone to find 7 people a week, one person per day. Well we got to Friday and we hadn't found a single new person to teach which was a bummer because all of our friends have been so lame lately and have been dropping us! So our teaching pool has been shrinking and we desperately wanted to find new people. It wasn't for lack of effort because we also had several referrals that were sent to us on Wednesday which was a miracle in and of itself because our tiny area very rarely gets referrals. So we were going by and trying to find them and no one was home. 

Then on Saturday, the spirit directed my driving and we found one new person! But we were still very far from our goal. Yesterday though we found 6 new people to teach!!!!!!! A family of 4 and 2 roommates at a different apartment. And oh my goodness was it a miracle. We still accomplished our goal and found new people that were willing to listen to us. It was amazing. 

I've never felt or seen more clearly this week blessings that come from hard work and patience. Every time I would pray about what we needed to fix to find more people and teach the elect, the Lord's simple answer was, "Just wait." And He still fulfilled his promise to us and we're were blessed with a huge miracle yesterday. 

Espero que tenga una buena semana!

Hermana Blackburn

About the pics:

- Yes, Elder Carr, one of our APs is conducting the music for the Monday night devotional with a giant sword and it was incredible. 

- The true heat of WA. I wanted to die. 

- All of our district!!! I love the sistrict, we have the best elders too. It's amazing. 

- The Zone Leaders surprised us with this amazing chalk drawing outside our apartment 

Cambios for Daaaaaaays! 😁

Holaaaaaaaaaa,

First off, I am so very sorry I did not send an email last week! It has been a truly crazy week filled with milagros and awesomeness.

JAVIER GOT BAPTIZED! Like literally less than a week before Hna Hollingsworth goes home. And he is doing so good! He is incredibly excited to start working towards the temple and go in soon! He's gonna have an interview soon for his reccomend and I could not be happier for him. He has such energy for the gospel and I am looking forward to helping all of him get to the temple.

And he is truly a miracle because we only met him like 3 weeks ago and yet he has already changed so much! It literally made me so very happy to see him get baptized. 

That day was honestly so very crazy because we went from zone conference to filling the font, to the baptism, to scooping the water out of the font with an empty trash can. So a wild day!!! 

Hna Hollingsworth goes home in less than 24 hours!!!! She is very stressed about going home and I'm trying to help the best I can. I've been with her pretty much my whole mission so that is super insane! But she is the best ever and I'm so pumped for her in this new adventure she's going on.

Also excited news, I am training next transfer!!!! So I will be getting a new missionary on Wednesday which is very wild! I'm gonna be a mission mom! I have just been praying so hard to be able to help her and teach her and to also somehow have my Spanish skills grow and become better so that we're fine. But I'm sure it'll be awesome, I'm just nervous. But the lord is gonna work a miracle and it'll be good.

Pero, espero que tenga un buen día!

Hermana Blackburn 

Considerably?

 

¡Hola!

I am officially halfway through the online MTC! This is so exciting and crazy and at the same time to know that I am getting very close to actually getting to get out in the field and serve. Es un poco loco.

This week has been crazy!!!! I don't even really know where to start. My district started getting reasignaciónes last Friday which has been a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. In addition to that craziness, because el CCM is getting several hundred new online misioneros this week, we have been combined with a new district. So districts 11D and 11C are now one district. Our new group chat has been lovingly named DC, which is appropriate since several people's favorite superhero in our district is Batman. (Marvel is still better, I'm definitely a Captain America or Thor girl, but I can respect the Batman). :)

This merge has brought a whole bunch of new challenges as we have had to suddenly get used to classes with 16 people instead of simplemente 8. It feels a little bit different, not bad, just different. And as with any new group, we have had to get used to new personalities and there have been a few struggles there. But I think this change is going to be really good for all of us. To spend the last 3 weeks of el CCM together will be so fun and I am looking forward to it.  

Now, the story about the word considerably.

This week, mi compañera y yo had the wonderful opportunity to teach Fernanda again. And this lesson was absolutely amazing! We taught about El Libro de Mormón and the power of scripture study that combined with prayer can lead to personal revelation in her life. God does know her and understands her struggles and needs. And compared to how hard the last lesson was, this lesson was like 5 times better! It was not perfect, our Spanish is still a bit rough, but there was such a sweet spirit in that lesson. As we were trying to evaluate our teaching on the MTC teaching survey they send us after every lesson, Hermana Mellow and I could not stray from the option Considerably for each answer. There were two options above, Very Much, and Completely, but we felt like "considerably" adequately expressed how we were feeling. 

To our surprise, Fernanda had put some of her answers for the experience at "Very Much" or "Completely". I was a little bit in shock because I did not quite believe we had done that well. And I can't help but feel like that one word, "considerably", related perfectly to my feelings about myself as a missionary. This week, I have really been studying the talk His Grace is Sufficient for You, by Brad Wilcox. It's amazing, I'll stick the link below so you can read it. But this experience and this talk helped me this week start to realize the fact that as a missionary and a disciple of Jesus Christ, I do not have to be perfect right now. That it is all about effort and commitment, progress vs. perfection. And sometimes, "considerably" is how I feel my efforts compare on some grand eternal scale, measured against the impossibility of earthly perfection. Heavenly Father does not have this scale, this pass or fail system based on if I earned enough perfection points in this life. That's not how it works at all. Instead, He only expects practice, effort, and commitment. His grace is sufficient for me. For you. For everyone. 

Have a wonderful week everyone! Stay safe!

Hermana Blackburn

His Grace is Sufficient

Fotos:

1) Nuevo distrito! The first time being together!

2) Hermano Alcalá teaching us how to make salsa through an amazing cooking video. We beat him at a Spanish game so that was our prize. 

3) District photo! This time we're all smiling and paying attention though :)

Life is Like a Piñata??? 🎉

 

Hola a todos! 

Another week here in Kennewick SP4! We have had kind of an interesting week (as always, I"m not quite sure I've ever had a normal week here in my tiny sorta sketchy area, but it's all good). 

First off, it is SUMMER! And that means that everyone we teach gives us FRUIT! And currently it is cherry season and I am so freaking excited! There are 2 kinds of cherries that grow out in the orchards here: the dark cherries (I think they might be Bing Cherries, but I'm not 100% sure) and Rainer cherries! And Rainer cherries are my favorite and we got a whole bunch of them this week from our friends Armando and then from Yolima! We had so many of the dark cherries though last week that on Monday we made cherry jam and it is so good! So Hermana Hollingsworth and I are debating now making some Rainer Cherry jam. The flavor is pretty different with those cherries so not sure how it'll turn out but I'm excited for the experiment. 

We had lots of tiny milagros around gardening this week! As we were leaving Blanca's house one day this man named Mike waved us over and was just basically like, "Hi sisters, I" m not a member of your church but I"m brother Mike and do you think you could help me with something?" Well we were like of course! So he gave us a tour around his tiny house showing us his garden and asked us if we could come back the next day to pull weeds. And we were like awesome, we can totally do that! So we went back the next day and met his 6 toed cat named Hemingway, and she really liked me which was very fun, and then we pulled weeds and tried to not let the spiders crawl all over us. But it was really sweet to be able to serve him and then to talk with his neighbor Bones who owns one of the most interesting cars I've ever seen and he still drives it even though he's in a wheelchair. He's got this long scraggly white beard and is just about the most interesting person I've ever had a conversation with. So that was pretty wild between the 2 of the,m. 

Then our friend Armando went and toured us around his garden later that week! Which is huge because he would never let us come over to his house because he didn't want anyone to know he was taking the lessons from us and learning. But he is now talking with everyone about the gospel and the difference it's making in his life and is determined to start helping teach his family. And we are just so proud of him because he really is doing so good and is going to be baptized in the next few weeks! I think he's finally got it figured out as long as he can just keep pushing, he's going to do soooooooo good! And he came to church yesterday without telling us and HUGE MILAGRO he already knows Hermana Perez! So they just sat and chatted and it was so precious. 

I really have such an appreciation this week for the small and simple miracles that Heavenly Father gives us to help us see the world through his eyes. And through cherries, and flowers, and gardens, and strawberries, I really have seen how mindful He is of the small and simple things in our lives. As Armando would say, "Life is like a piñata. Except for instead of going for candy, you go for blessings!"

Jaja, he's great. 

Espero que todo vaya bien y su semana fuera muy emocionante!  

Hermana Blackburn 

About the pictures: 

- the flowers are from Armando's garden! Aren't they just beautiful! 

- And yes, that is Bones's car and it is fantastic. I hope you can get a sense of his personality by just looking at that gem 

- Jam and the cherries Armando gave us

- super awkward picture of our elderes and us before they all left because of transfers. Élder Gaytán is in his original assignment in El Salvador and Élder Solbel was transferred down to Boardman! So muy triste, but we have Élder Eyring still and his new companion Élder Insero is awesoooooooome! 

Here we go again!

 Holaaaaaaaaaa,

This week is transfers and surprisingly enough my companionship is the only one that is not changing at all! Hna Hollingsworth and I are going to do another transfer together here in SP4! And this is going to be Hna Hollingsworth's last transfer and then she goes home! So my trainer gets to die with me which is very strange.

Armando didn't get baptized this past week due to some bad habits creeping back in. Gosh darn it Satan, some days I just want to whack him with a broom! But Armando stills wants to be baptized which is so good!!!!! We've just got to wait a little bit longer for him to be fully prepared and committed.

We had zone conference which was super good! I always love zone conferences and this one especially was definitely meant for me. I heard so many things that were specifically for little Hermana Blackburn. Funny how the spirit works through other people to help answer our questions and concerns. But Holy Hannah am I grateful!

Also we went to a graduation for our friend Andres yesterday! 

And his family made us some bomb tacos y horchata! And it was the best I've eaten all week, I was in heaven.

So it's been a tough week but we are disappointed not discouraged. It's going to get better and Heavenly Father always has a perfect plan and he is always in charge.

Les quiero muchísimo!

Hermana Blackburn