"Gracias a Dios!"

ALOHA ALL YOU SUGAR BEETS

Here's how I've seen the hand of God in my life this week!

- We had a volleyball tournament and lost but had fun

- Juan Trinidad got to come to Church this Sunday!

- Our friend Araceli got a tiny baby cow

- We have had really spiritual lessons about el Libro de Mormon

- We got to teach a Noche de Hogar with a bunch of kids

- Hermana Peterson taught me how to pump gas (lol) 

- Every Hispanic, when we ask how they're doing, will say "todo esta bien, gracias a Dios!" 

So Juan Trinidad is this old man who lives in a trailer who got baptized maybe 3 years ago. He has SO much faith and is always smiling and laughing, and has work on Sundays - he hasn't been to church in forever but this week a miracle happened! He got two Sundays off! He showed up to church in this huge Mexican belt and these nuts red and black checkered leather shoes and hugged EVERY person in the Branch and walked into the Relief Society room for class because he didn't know where to go. Me and Hermana Peterson welcomed him and took him to Priesthood and it was SO COOL to see him at Church! He reminds me so much of Grandpa Waha because he wears funky clothes and looooooooves to talk and tell stories! 

Araceli is our friend who is a less-active as well. She is always laughing and always smiling and joking and makes my day - we went to her house and she has like 9 dogs and 4 brand new puppies and now a brand new baby cow! We are going to go shave her dogs on Wednesday as a service project jajaja

Some interesting things about Idaho so far: Apparently there's a huge Meth problem here (which I didn't know before lol) and also we live right across from a Halfway-house (I didn't know about these before either but I think it's where people go when they're like right out of prison? Or right out of rehab? Idk but it's pretty sketch and fun stuff!)

We've had some really powerful lessons this week. Almost none of our appointments fell through which was awesome - we have a lot of investigators but not a lot of them are progressing which is frustrating; we also have a lot of people who are less active because they have been offended by the President of our Branch. It's straight up no bueno. But I was reminded this week that no matter what these people are feeling or if they are progressing super great or not, it's SO important that we continue to visit them and just straight up LOVE them, because that's what the Church is about. I think the most important thing about being a missionary is simply being people's friends and telling them that Jesus Christ is their friend too. Sounds simple, but I think it's so important.

We lost our volleyball tourney to the other Zone but oiiiiiiawoish it was way fun! Everyone thinks I should be good at volleyball cuz I'm from Hawaii and they are wrong jajajajaja 

Oh another funny Hispanic thing is that every visit, they give each of us a plastic water bottle because that's pretty much all they have. So we see how successful our days have been by how many plastic water bottles we have in the backseat of the car jaja. 

Thanks for all the support!

Lots of love,

Hermana Elkington