Well, I'll make this snappy.

Well, I'll make this snappy. It's always SO nice to have two p-days so close together on these weeks. We were going to go to Salem again today to take advantage of the good weather and go explore some shops, but the zone leaders talked us into going and playing a rousing game of bowling in Malden. It was pretty fun :)

 

 

This short week has been rather uneventful except for the arrival of a new missionary to our branch - Elder Hanberg. He's a true Vernalite and apparently knows Allie. He seems really nice - he's excited to work hard even though he's a little bit lost with the whole language barrier - I know EXACTLY how that feels! It feels like just yesterday I was struggling to know how to greet people and how to make appointments and all that great stuff. He'll learn fast - Elder Swasey is SO good at Spanish! He's six weeks behind Sis. Hildenbrand and I but he's a couple months ahead in Spanish I think.

 

I got a surprise late-valentine package from Terry Marshall! It made me super happy :) It is so cheerful to get a fun surprise on Saturday because Sunday we obviously don't get any mail.

 

This week we haven't really had much going on with investigators. This next week is definitely going to be a finding week because our investigators are just losing interest and not keeping appointments. A lot of our work this last week was with inactives and less actives - It's so exciting to keep meeting more of them and to really start to help them want to come back to church. The best experience this week was when we met with a woman that we meet with once a week or so but she NEVER comes to church because she says she's too busy and lives to far away (in Salem) and she doesn't have her own car. We tried SO hard to get her a ride and get her to come to church last week but she didn't come. But, we went to her house on Saturday and while we were there we met 3 or her 4 daughters! They all just randomly showed up because they live close by. They're all inactive memebers and two of them just stayed in the lesson and really seemed interested in coming back. None of them came on Sunday, but we have hopes to meet with them more and help come back in the near future. Sunday was hard because of the time change - it's hard to start a meeting ontime with Hispanics anyway - take away an hour of sleep...we were much fewer in numbers this last Sunday - let's just say that :)

 

One really great blessing in disguise about being on a mission is that it's very easy to see your own faults... So, lately I've been really working on developing patience. It's been super cool to study about it in the scriptures and to look for examples. The hard thing is that developing patience requires patience. There's really no other way to develop it other than the trying of it. I really loved looking back at Elder Hales' talk from this last October general conference to learn more about it.

 

Speaking of General Conference - I'M SO EXCITED that it's coming in a couple of weeks!!! It's going to be so fun!!! If we can get some investigators to come we might even get to watch it in Spanish! Woohoo!!

 

I love ya'll!!! Gotta go!

 

LOVES!

Hna. Palmer