Week 44

Hola, I think this has been one of the hardest weeks of my mission yet... And I'm still trying to get over the emotional rollercoaster...

On Monday we had a good Pday. We went over to an investigator's house because we planned to eat barbacoa with her. It's this soupy dish that they make with beans, rice and chicken. It's pretty good :) And this Hermana is super nice. The problem is just getting her to that point where she is taking the lessons seriously for herself because she's really only interested in it for her kids. But we had a good talk with her, about the time she has spent in the U.S. and how I can get permission to live here later… ;)! But it was a cool conversation. I also got a haircut that I'm still trying to get used to what she did with my hair!! I just wanted a trim and a few layers…but here they don't do soft layers!! So this lady cuts off chunks of my hair and it looks really really thin! More thin than normal...:P  I cried so hard and what’s worse is my comp wants me to get a perm because it will make it look better when it’s curly!??!!

The rest of the week was really rough... Because of New Year's everyone is still on vacation or they went to the beach every day. So we had a harder time than normal finding people in their houses, let alone in the street. We did have a couple of good lessons with Pedro and Socorro, some of our investigators. Socorro is still trying to figure out if she wants baptism or not because her husband is super catholic and they're not exactly married. But we had an awesome lesson with her about prayer the other day. We read the story about Enos and we talked about how we don't need to be scared to say a prayer. God is there waiting to listen always. And it was awesome because she willingly gave the prayer at the end. It was pretty great. We also talked with Pedro. He's a 16 year old who absolutely loves listening to us. But it's hard because his parents are very catholic and don't think that it's necessary to be exploring another church. But he has us come anyway. And that was actually our plan this week, to talk with his parents. But he decided to talk to them himself. When we went back he told us that they didn't yell at him this time and they said that we can come to their house and he can go to the church and he accepted a baptism date in the same day and promised to come to church with us. We were on a high all night ! It was so great!

New Year's kind of failed a bit... We had some random check up with our district leader and zone leader... This has never happened before in my mission and they caught us at the wrong time: right when we were about to get changed to start studying. So now they worry that we don't study and aren't following the rules exactly obediently. Just because we weren’t ready to study when they “caught” us! I'll be respectful and not say anything more of what happened... But it’s so hard when we can never find anyone and when we can’t find anyone, we don’t really teach. After they left me and Valverde sat and talked and it turned into this big huge discussion about all the things that I do that bother my companion. Because talk with an American accent, that I do things differently, and when she gives me personal advice I don't follow with it. The entire night I felt like, Crap! Gah! “What more do you want from me?”  This whole companionship has been terrible, I try so hard as the Sr. comp, we pray and fast for things to go smoothly and to find people to teach and have success with—we aren’t seeing improvement. She is so racist against Americans, and she says it aloud. All the time! I don't know...I felt really down. But we're working better because she finally gave me a chance to voice my opinion. 

Saturday was awesome! We didn't teach very much because of the same problem as the entire week, no new people to meet or to teach. It’s a weird area. We had fun with a Hermana, making popcorn for our English class. And when we got to the class, we had around 20 people there! It was so great! :) One of our own investigators was there, one of the elders' investigators, some members, a few less actives and Mario, the police officer who calls me “Hermana Rose” were there. It went really well. We talked about how to greet people and then we ate our popcorn and shared some Mormon messages. But then the rest of the night got really weird. We helped Mario a little bit more with his English and he ended up starting to profess his love for me and what not…only because I look like Rose from Titanic... Gah! I was really freaked out a bit! He said to our faces that ya, he wants to “listen to our message, only because I'll be there giving it to him...” Gah! I freaked and then got scared because I don't know what to do, if he gets mad and he is a Mexican Police officer, a big one...My DL’s are aware of the problem because this has been going on for a few weeks but we made them aware again because they don’t do anything! They are not supportive at all. MP Madsen knows that there is a problem too but it is so hard to be in the situation and feel like there isn’t local support. We have to take care of ourselves. Luckily we are strong. We need the priesthood though and ya we have it with some of the members but we need the support of our elders!! Scary.

Sunday was the worst. None of our investigators came to church. Everyone who went up to bear testimonies went up against their will, which was so sad. My own district leader didn't pay attention at all during a class I gave. No one gave us a chance to talk to them. And Pedro came out slowly and sadly to tell us that we can never come again to his house to teach him... It was the worst feeling in the world and I didn't know whether to cry or not. And I think it was hard because this is all I've seen on the mission and I don't know if it's just the area, the people, or if I need to change so I can see something good. I'm getting really tired of seeing people give up or lose a chance to get baptized. But we also had more "problems" with our district leader that night where our zone leaders called us to see what the deal is between us and the DL.  They didn't have enough proof to give us if we did have a problem anyway. So that made me even more on edge with what I'm doing here.... But luckily our district leader called me this morning and we had a good talk with him and found out everything was from miscommunication. What?  Huh?!

Seriously. I have lost so much sleep this week...this has been the hardest week. I guess I will be the “seed-planter” type of missionary. Not much success with teaching and baptizing but hopefully people will remember me and my example and seek Jesus Christ and the Gospel through the example they saw through me. So here's to a New Year. Keep reading the scriptures. I love you!  And I'm going to bed at 10:29 pm tonight, I promise. Bye!

Hermana Annekke Walker!