Sick in Aurora

Email #4

Yes, finally an email from me! Last Monday, Sister Hoynacki and I couldn't email because our car had some weird problem where I'd buckle my seatbelt and the seatbelt indicator would still beep beep beep beep...it was very annoying but it took 4 hours to fix and basically cut into our email time. And, guess what? The seatbelt's STILL not fixed. Oh well. Now we try to sing songs to the beat of the seatbelt indicator. It's kinda sad.

The weather here for the past 2 weeks has been crazy! The first two days were about -15 degrees F but the next day was 50 degrees F. It's true what they say: if you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes! But then that backfires because if the weather's nice and you wait 10 minutes, then you're outta luck.

But there's so much that happened in these past two weeks! Sister H and I started with absolutely NO investigators. Because our ward boundaries are VERY small, the elders that were already in this ward had only 2 investigators. But at the end of 2 weeks, we officially have 6 investigators! From 0 to 6! The Lord really has guided us directly to them! It's amazing!

Oh, but this past week was pretty physically demanding on me because...yes, I got the flu:

Monday - my wisdom tooth swelled up during a lesson with a less active member. That was embarrassing. I was teaching with a lisp and a lopsided face. But (GROSSNESS ALERT), during the lesson, pus flowed out of it and the swelling immediately went down. Fortunately, there's a dentist in the ward that we had dinner with on Tuesday and he gave me a syringe to clear out the gunk.
Tuesday - woke up with a sore throat.
Wednesday - began coughing
Thursday - got a fever of 101.2 while I was at zone conference from 8AM to 4PM. And my body was all achy. Oof.
Friday - fever be gone! But I continued coughing with a horrible sore throat.
Saturday - woke up congested and weak all around. I ended up staying in all day until 4PM to rest up. I felt so bad for Sister H, though. She had to be inside with me the entire time!

But now I feel infinitely better. It was cray.

The ward here is amazing, though. Saturday, I received a Priesthood blessing from such kind members of our ward, one of them being the member who owns the house we currently live in! The ward boundaries are super small only because there's already a large community of Latter-day Saints here! Most people who are not LDS here often times personally know a Mormon from school or in their family. And the high school is right across our church building and we're taking advantage of that fact by holding church tours every week! (Pretty good finding idea, eh, father?)

But back to the work. The first family we found are from Panama. I'll call them A and J, mother and daughter. They already pray every morning and night together with J's husband / A's father and they already have a love for God. We're just here to help them develop an EVEN stronger relationship with God.

Second family is a family from India. They already have a Christian belief in God. They have two little children and they want to instill Christ-like beliefs in them. So we taught their 7-year old how to pray and they were very grateful. They fed us cool Indian snacks that were dericious.

Third family is a brother and sister, both of whom are in high school. We found them on our way to a dinner appointment. They were outside their house smoking cigarettes. It just goes to show you never know who is yearning for God's help!