This has been the fastest week of my life. It's also been an awfully slow week as we only had one lesson with an investigator, and three walk in lessons. It's been difficult, but I've seen a lot of miracles as well.
At one point, I want to say Wednesday or Thursday night, we were knocking doors and it was my turn to lead the introductions and such. The door opened and we could see that there was a kind of birthday party going on, and immideatly I felt uncomfortable with everyone staring at me. The girl who answered yelled "mom it's for you!" passing off the annoying visiters to someone else,and walked away leaving us standing there. The mom came over and the words "hi, we're missionaries" were barely out of my mouth before she started laughing at us and shuting the door. "Don't want any of that here!" she said as the door closed sharply in my face. First time I've really felt like crying since coming out to Texas. Sister Wright touched my arm and said kindly, "Christ had people spit in his face too." It was then that I realized, and if I was to represent who Christ was and is, I was going to have to take some of brunt of peoples words and actions. He was mocked and tortured, Spit upon, and scorged, and He was the kindest person to ever live. If I am to represent Him, I have to represent Him at all time and not just when it's easy.
We've started to get a little Spanish tutoring for a few minutes after church on Sundays from some of the native Spanish speakers,since we aren't using our Spanish a lot. We've been practicing and preparing all week to teach them just one principle from Preach My Gospel, and I was nervous. I worked on memorizing the first vision in Spanish, and so far it's been kicking my trash. While practicing Sunday morning with Sister Wright, she told me to simplify it. To use the words that I did know, and to not make it harder for myself by using descriptve or laungage I didn't know. She told me I could do that bare minimum of what I did know, and work up from there. And so I did. Mike, a member in my ward was helping me, and he's been speaking English since 1st grade. He told me that he still has trouble reading English sometimes and sometimes doesn't understand words in english. It gave me hope, since he's been learning English for over 10 years know and still struggles sometimes. It will come. I can at least use past tense forms of words now, so that's a plus.
Transfers are coming up fast already and my trio has decided that we need to start praying to stay together. We just have too much fun and work well together to be split. The laughs keep us going in the day as we knock on many empty apartment doors. The weather has been pretty up and down this week, one day we'll be sweating buckets, and the next we'll be putting on coats and tights. One day, I said "as long as I can wear carves and scardigons I'll be okay." That mishap of words is still going strong in our jokes.
I'm working hard to learn all that I can. I want to be prepared. We were told that we could be training the new wave of sisters as soon as we're done with our own training. I've already had nightmares about training. Sister Wright thinks sister Miller and I are all cute being so worried about training in eight weeks. She said she'd even recomend us for training once we were done. She got a good laugh out of our tarified faces. I hope she was joking.
Well. The work moves forward.
With mucho love,
Hermana Montgomery
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