Time is flying, flying, flying by.

Hey Hey Hey Buen Dia familia! :)

       Can you believe we are already in our second week in november? I seriously cannot! soooo loco! time is flying flying flying by. I read Chris's letter and holy cow gave me a haert attack almost....him talking about how long he's been out....do you know that after this transfer on the 22nd of november I will only have 3 more left? One year ago today I entered the mission field.....so weird. They say that the last 6 months are some of the most imporant months on a mission because those are the months that you will remember the most. and starting tomorrow I begin reading one chapter of the doctrine and covenants because I only have 140 days left. 140! so disgusting. man just not fair that time is going by so fast

       As for things I want for christmas mom and dad i really dont need any packages due to the fact that ill just be sending them home like 2 months later anyways...so i was thinking what i want for christmas is to be able to come back here to chicago so i can show you what my life has been for the past 18 months....show you where my mexican spanish heart is :) 

       And as for miracles that happened this week! well do i have some!

first of all Karla and Carlos got BAPTIZED!!!!! :) weeeee!!!! it was awesome. there dad (Carlos) was nervous but he did a great job baptizing his children. it was a really awesome baptism.

       On sunday Soltero finally came to church again! and he was so happy to be there. it was really awesome. So as of now he is still on date to be baptized next saturday :) We have started to teach his other son, and the missionaries in Mexico are teaching Solteros wife :) and she has been going to church so God is really working with this family! and it has been really neat to be a part of it all.

       Another awesome miracle that happeend this week is that 2 weeks ago it was a Sunday and all of our plans had fallen through and we both did not know what to do. So we prayed and both felt like we needed to go try and find this less active that we hadn't seen in forever. It was a weird impression because logically it did not make sense. It would take a bit to drive there since it was not the area we were working in but we went and tryed to find him. He wasnt home, so we pulled out our area book and decided to see if we could find some former investigators and nothing. it was getting late and it was really cold so we were debating on whether we should head home or not and we decided that we were gonna try one more, so we did. Her name: edalith. she actually answered the door but told us that she was really busy (of course) and it would be better if we came by another day. so we set up and appointment to come back. the day of the appt she called us and cancelled...rescheduled for the next week. Next week came by and she cancelled and rescheduled again. so the third time we were expecting her to cancel but we stopped by and she  and her cute family were home! She has a daughter that is 9, a son who is 6, and a daughter who is 2. The missionaries hadn't been to their house in over eighteen months and so we just asked what they remembered from the missionaries.... and the 9 year old proceeds to tell us alllllll of the plan of salvation in detail. The mom tells us about Joseph Smith, and it was seriously so awesome. They are excited and want to learn more.

       This week we had set the goal that we were going to have 4 new investigators for the week and we still needed two. so we were going through our area book and checking out some of the former investigators. I wrote 17 in the agenda to go see. They had moved, definatley had no interest in learning more or they just weren't home. It was 8:30. had to be home in 30 minutes...we were walking in the parking lot of the apt complex where we had been contacting and we saw in one of the windows the lights were on at a members house. I had the strong feeling that we needed to go see them so we stopped by and they let us we read a bit from the scriptures and were talking to them about what we were trying to do that night. Hermana Solana then told us--oh the missionaries were seeing Rigo y Ana and they live around here (the bishop Monarrez married them and everything in the church and idk what happened but maybe you should stop by and see if they're home. Well Rigo and Ana were the first names that I had put in my planner of who we wanted to go see. I even had a * next to them because I felt really good about them. We had gone by and the people who lived there told us that they had moved. Well she gave us their phone numbers and knew their new direction. so we said a prayer and left and went and stopped by their apt. and sure enough they were home! and they let us in and we had a short little lesson with them and will be seeing them next sunday! :)

      Yesterday we went and had a family home evening with a family in the english ward who have a son that just married a girl named Medalith from Peru. They have the most beautiful baby named Isabela and the family invited us over so that we could get to know Medalith since spanish is her first language and she is still learning english. She has been to the english ward 2 times but doesn't really understand what is going on. She lived in Utah for a bit and her best friend had the missionaries visiting her and she actually got baptized. We had an awesome discussion on the importance of families, we watched the movie families can be together forever, and we have a return appt for next monday :) yaaaay!

         Monday we went on exchanges with some other Hermanas and It was me and Hermana Alvarez who has only been out in the mission for 2 weeks now and we taught 7 lessons on Monday together. 4 of them fed us; one at 3, one at 4, and one at 7. oh man! one thing the mission has taught my body is how to strech a stomach so you can fit everything. bleh.....man was it hard. food, food and more food, in fact I'm still full from 2 days ago! Hermana Alvarez and I were laughing so hard at just how much food we had to eat and how much of a struggle was to put one more bite of food in our mouths...pero asi es la vida de la mision! :)

       Yesterday we also had zone meeting and it was a really spiritually uplifting meeting...i made ties and flowers for everyone in the zone along with the scripture mosiah 18:21 :) and we also learned that our prep day will be changing on Jan 9th to a monday just like elder maughans :)

       So we are seeing awesome things happen here in Aurora. I love this area, I love the people, I love the work. It truly is amazing and I wish I had another year left to keep going in the Lords work because there really is nothing like it.

I sure love you guys a lot and hope you have a great week! Cruz is taking us to the city today and I AM SO EXCITED! oh how i love the city! :) abrazos!

paz y amor
Hermana Maughan