yo soy Sam

Our District...we're special

Well, here I am

I am here

yo soy Sam
Sam yo soy
a mi no me gusta jabon y juevos verdes...haha! 

We started trying to recite Sam I am in Spanish in the car the other day...we're still working on our translation of it.

This week has been great!!! We actually got the "standard of excellence" in our mission of number of lessons taught - we taught 21 lessons! That includes investigators and members. We were really worried about getting our goals this week because we basically had 2 preparation days, but it turned out that we still kept busy. The thing that has really changed the way we are doing the missionary work has been that we are trying super hard to have daily contact with our investigators. It is SO hard to have contact with every person every day, but when we're consciously striving for that, we are always thinking about our investigators and what we can do to help them progress. I know that baptisms are possible this transfer and we are going to work our hardest to help people come unto Christ.

I'm really excited about one of our investigators - Rosa. She is a total sweetheart! Her brother and his family are actually members - she even went to the baptism of the youngest son and kind of took the missionary lessons with them, but she hasn't gotten that answer for herself that this is the church for her. She's attended lots of churches and just never felt that pull to get baptized in any particular church. So, we're really trying to help her receive her own testimony of the Book of Mormon - we were SO excited when we went over yesterday and she had read 3 Nephi 11 where it talks about Christ visiting the Nephites. She remembered a lot of it and we had a really great discussion about it. She seems like she agrees with the things we are teaching, it just remains that she needs to search to find the truth for herself.

I love being on a mission. It's hard. We get tired every day. By the time we get home most days I don't know how we'll even get through our daily planning session, but we do, and then I manage to try and catch up in my journal and fall blissfully asleep. I don't know what I ever did without 8 hours of sleep. I just can't even imagine trying to run on 4 and 5 hours like I've done in college and sometimes in high school.

We are having what the New Englanders call a "Noreaster" which is a rain storm...it's not as bad as I thought it would be - just rain off and on. While we were studying this morning it got pretty heavy, but by the time we left it was just misting. Somehow the power got knocked out in our building for about 15 seconds but it popped back on. No big deal. I don't think it's anything to be too worried about. I've got my rainboots in the car for when it gets bad :)

Good news! I might get a chance to go to Concord to try and scope out some cool literary sites. We're going to try to get permission from the zone leaders to go and Sister Lyon has offered to take us down and show us around - it's her favorite place to go site seeing. I'm excited! I know I saw some ancestors who died in Concord, MA when I was looking through family history stuff online, but I don't know if there's a place I could find out where they were buried...because there are a couple of big cemeteries there (so says Sister Lyon). So, if Mom or Grandpa Carl, if you have more info, be sure to send it this way because I think that would be super fun to scope out. :)

Speaking of Family History - I have really enjoyed reading the account of Drusilla and James Hendricks. It really makes me excited to learn more about family history after the mish. I didn't realize that Drusilla had such a cool experience with the Word of Wisdom - we actually shared her story with an investigator last Wednesday as we taught the Word of Wisdom. It makes me really want to focus on writing important, testimony-building things in my journal. I sometimes get into the habit of just writing the happenings of the day - while that is great, I think it is infinitely more useful to write what I'm learning. I'll be better about that.

I love you all! 

BESTEST wishes and all my love!
Hermana Palmer