Heads Carolina...Tails California: If the Atonement Was Easier, It Wouldn't Be As Wonderful....May 27, 2013

WEIRD!!!!!!!! 2 months exactly, today!! hermana porter reminded me, so we are celebrating by going to target! haha we havent been in sooooooooooooo long!! just to go in! i'm excited! haha :)

I wrote a short list of things to email, so hopefully I can answer su (sus?) preguntas tambien! jajaja! :)

this week started off...not great, but not bad. there were just a lot of cancelled appointments or people not being home when they said they would be. but such is missionary life. its also been frustrating because I hardly ever get to use my spanish because practically all the lessons we teach are in english. I try to keep up with using it as much as i can, but it would help if we had spanish people to teach. it makes it harder when i feel like i should understand and speak better because i'm in the field now. it would be easier to do this all en english, but i just remind myself that the Atonement could have been easier, but it wasn't. and it if it was easier, then the Atonement wouldn't be as wonderful as it is. and i also avoid negative thoughts about my lack of spanish, and i remind myself of what i can say, write, y understand. some day it will come, i just have to be patient!!!! :)

okay so when people find out I'm from NC, they ALWAYS without fail say "oh you don't have the accent of a north carolinian." (jennifer, don't be sad!! I still say y'all everyday!!!!!) i think they expect us to all talk like Larry the Cable Guy or something....haha.

oh and this past week, we were knocking on doors and we knocked on this one door. C. lives there. He invited us to his church, and then we invited him to ours. He said he would come. so we went to his church yesterday. it was.....different. a lot of old people. but we left early because he ended up not showing up. we found out it was because he got in a bicycle accident. he messed up his knee and his face (his words!).

oh and thank you for the package!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm wearing some of the clothes from it! (the banana republic shirt with the neat collar, the black skirt with the eyelet or lacey thing, and the offwhite cardigan from the sweater set. and with my black and white shoes that are cute).

oh we're not teaching gospel principles anymore. the guy teaching it is preparing to go on a mission. SWEET! but we still go to the class!

oh and i found a thing in my study journal from the MTC. it's a list of mormon messages that i watched, that if you have time you should watch too!!! mountains to climb (i think this one is narrated by president eyring. if not, look for that one too because thats really good! its got three different families with three different struggles. really good!!!!). "none were with him." "mens hearts shall fail them" "come what may, and love it" "hope you know, we had a hard time" and "courage."

highlight of my week: for the most part every day is really really great! i think meeting g. d's wife. d. is an investigator, and his teaching record said nothing about g.!!! what the what! she seems like she'll be a really solid investigator! she even starting reading the Book of Mormon and she's always wanted to! plus she's not happy with things that are going on with her current church. she has a TON of faith, but temporal things that have gone on with it have bothered her.

good stories: hahaha i can expound more in snail mail. we have a ton of fun as a companionship and as an apartment. oh we joke that "oh its 80 degrees, we need a jacket" haha we eventually end up turning the AC down in the car because its too cold, in the car.

I'll find out if I'll be in Bakersfield or Ventura after this next transfer. 3 more weeks, including this one.

we will have exchanges this week!

investigators, not much new. we're working on getting more investigators (yay knocking!!) but we visit less active a lot, well we tried to this past week.

I'm going to try sending a picture or two, so I'll snail mail the rest!!!

love y'all!!!!!!!

love

hermana rubow!!!!! :)