A Week in the Life of Hermana Meise

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all doing well. It's been a great week for me. Okay, so I've been getting super into taking a picture every single day and I think for this week, I'm just going to tell you about my week through pictures. I'm going to start with Tuesday because I sent last Monday's picture with last week's email.

TUESDAY:

First of all, we had an amazing lesson with our investigator, San Juana. She is an awesome lady and I love her. We had this whole awesome lesson plan mapped out in order to answer all of the questions that she had about the Plan of Salvation. When we got there, I don't even know what happened but we just started asking her all these questions about different things she was feeling and, by the end of it, we were able to really get down to the heart of what has been keeping her from progressing all these months and months that the missionaries have been visiting her. By the end of the time we spent with her, we were all in tears and I really came to a new level of charity and appreciation for her. Now moving forward, we know much, MUCH better how she is feeling and how we can really help her personally. So awesome.

These pictures are from our dinner appointment that night. We went to eat with an awesome family in the ward and they also invited their friend who just got baptized yesterday. The two little kids in the picture are the kids of the woman who got baptized. The little girl LOVES to give hugs and the little boy is just too cool for any of that. They're awesome. I also want to point out the picture that's above my shoulder in the first picture. EVERY FAMILY has pictures like these, they're called glamour photos. There are special people that come up from LA to do these pictures. They do all your make up and give you the clothes and what not and it's like a BIG THING here.

WEDNESDAY:

These pictures come with a story. Our ward mission leader is this awesome guy who works with the grapes but also has his own blueberry farm in his backyard where he grows and then sells them. He knows that Sister Johnson and I have been struggling to the max with allergies and so at Correlation Meeting on Wednesday he said, "Hermanas, I want you to come over to my house now because i have something to give you." When we got there, he gave us this container of honey that he got from the bees he has (local honey is good for allergies). Then he asked us if we liked blueberries and brought us back into his huge orchard and let us pick that WHOLE BUCKET of blueberries in that picture. He told us this super cool story about how he used to have all kinds of different things growing back there that they would eat as a family like cucumbers, peppers, all kinds of different things. He said one day he just got this impression that he needed to cut down everything he had and replace it all with blueberries. He said he went home that day and removed every plant he had. Once he had done that, he had the impression that blueberries would pay for the mission of his son. At the time, his son was 17. Within those two years before his son left, he had made enough from selling his blueberries that he didn't have to pay anything out of his regular salary. Pretty cool, huh?

THURSDAY:

We taught A LOT of lessons.. It was awesome. We taught a girl named Antonia, someone fairly new to us. Antonia was originally being taught by the English elders because she speaks English but they thought she would do better with us. Plus, her whole family speaks Spanish. So we started teaching her. Then she said she wanted us to teach her dad and mom and brother who also live in McMinnville so we went over yesterday to meet them and they had their granddaughter over who is actually a member. Crazy connections. BUT amid all this teaching, it was 111 degrees. Here's a picture of our car odometer to prove it.

FRIDAY:

We taught a lot on Friday. A lot of contacting with people in the area book. We also had ZTM (Zone Training Meeting), and afterward we went to Wendy's with gift cards that Hermana Johnson's grandma sent us.  We went and got frosty's to cool us off.

SATURDAY:

Saturday was an awesome day! There was an event in a neighboring town that we're technically the missionaries over and we got asked by an English-speaking member over there to come in case there were any Hispanic people. We went in the morning but there were absolutely NO Hispanics so we left pretty early. Afterward, we went and taught and visited a lot of people. We taught a new family we found a while ago that wants to come to church. We also were walking down the street and started talking to this man. It turns out it's our ward mission leader's uncle and he was being taught by elders a while back before he had to go back to Mexico for a little bit.

Then after that, we had dinner with a recent convert named Gustavo (who is going on a mission to Tijuana in September!) and his family. Their family is SO, SO Hispanic so we took pictures in his backyard to prove it. Got our chicken, soccer ball, cactus growing...we even made Gustavo put on his cowboy hat that west-coast Hispanics love. We ate huaraches which are SUPER good so we took a pic of that too because it just all went together.

Our email exchange after me seeing this last picture:

M:  "YOU DRANK MILK?????" (She would NEVER drink milk straight from a glass pre-mission)

H:  hahahaha  It's not milk; it's horchata which is like this rice milk with cinnamon and sweetened condensed milk. It's SO GOOD and it's not like milk! 

SUNDAY:

Sunday was great!  We went to church and had some of the people we're teaching come which is always AWESOME. 

Okay, so this is kind of a long story... There's this super, SUPER cute girl named Sofia and every Sunday we have dinner with her family and a couple other families from the ward. My first Sunday there, we were at one of the family's houses and were reading The Friend. There was something in there about how Best Friend's Day was June 18th.  Sofia said, "Oh my goodness, we should get together on Best Friend's Day and make cake pops and best friend bracelets." We missed it on the 18th because we were busy but we rescheduled it for the 28th because we were going to be together anyway for dinner. So yesterday, we had a "best friend tea party" and we had hot Cheetos and butterscotch chips and we actually did make bracelets and she was SO happy. It was pretty cute. Then we taught some people and went to the baptism. It was a great day.

So, yeah, it was a great week! I hope you liked the stories and the pictures. Have a great week! 

Love,

Hermana Meise

Bonus photo from a member: