Heat and Cockroaches

Hello Utah family!

From all the emails sounds like everyone is having fun and enjoying summer. I'm enjoying my summer too,but It's really HOT here and humid. I love the humidity, but were starting to get up in the high 90's and the humidity is gettting higher too. I love it when we show up to investigators houses and they tell us how horrible we look. Ha That only happened once and she was talking to me... my face was really sweaty and red. 

This past week has been up and down and up and down. After Pday last Tuesday Hermana Wilzbach and I were pumped to go out and do the work, because we had lots of lessons planned for that night, and they all fell through. Just like they did all day Wednesday and Thursday. They were the slowest days of my life, and really sad, espcially because a lot of the lessons were with investigators that are solid. Wednesday night was really cool though. We have dinner at Hermana Margy Sproules house every Wednesday night and she invited to of her daughters friends and mom to come to dinner so we could share a message with them. Hermana Sproules lives just a couple doors down from us. We love her! She's the Relief Society President in our ward. She's from Honduras and cooks really yummy food, but Hondurian food isn't spicy. The two investigator girls are 15 and 12. Their mom is a member but is inactive. We taught about the Restoration and it was in English so I taught most of the lesson and shared a couple experiences with them and then asked them if they would prepare to be baptized in a month, and guess what.... they said YES!!! How cool is that :) And they came to church yesterday and their mom loved Relief Society and forgot how strong the spirit was at church. I've really come to realize how important members are in missionary work. A lot of our references come from members and they help to fellowship them in the ward to. So help the missionaries as much as possible in Vernal, I'm positive they need it.

Thursday is our planning day so we were inside till 3 doing studies and planning and once we went out we mainly just tracked the whole time and asked for references, because all of our appointments fell through, but it was good exercise. Oh and we were ride home and it was getting darker and this lady was outside walking her dog, and it was on a leesh and everything, but it started to run after my companion, and the owner started yelling at it and pulled it back to her. Once I went by it ran in front of me and I ran into it..... the lady was then swearing and freaking out at her dog, luckily not me, but once we got back to the apartment we looked at my tire and there was dog hair... haha whoops.

Friday was probably one of the scariest days of my life... Just kidding.  We had Zone Meeting from 10-2 and it's in ALL Spanish... ahhh I was really scared, and I think the Zone Leader Elder Watts noticed, because he made me get up and share my testimony with everyone and then teach a little demostration ALL in spanish. I was a nervous wreck, but I gained so much confidence because of it. I guess I spoke perfect Spanish and everyone said they felt the spirit so strong. I was told by my teachers in the MTC that my simple testimony in Spanish is really powerful and ALWAYS brought the spirit in. So I gained a huge confidence boost and after Zone Meeting we went out and I talked to everyone in Spanish, and guess what we were blessed because of that. 

From Wednesday to Sunday we taught 14 lessons!!  So many blessings come everday in my mission. One of my favorite things is seeing the little Hispanic kids. I don't know what it is but little kids love me. LOVE! Everywhere I go they just surround me. We taught to different Normas this week and both of them have little kids. The first one has a little boy and girl around ages 2 and 4. The little boy sat behind me on the couch and played with my hair the whole time while the little girl was playing with her dolls right next to me. At the other Norma's apartment she has a boy thats 6 a 4 year old girl and a 2 year old boy. The two oldest sat next to me and started digging through my purse for paper and pen and then both started drawing me a picture while the ladies two dogs were licking every inch of my body.... gross! The 6 year old kept trying to speak to me in Spanish but I had NO idea what he was saying and he looks and me and in English said, "you don't know Spanish do you"? Hahah Smart little boy. The little girl started to play with my hair and and was hanging bracelets from my ears.  Cockroaches! we're starting to get them in our apartment now. We kill probably 4 a day. EWWW! I guess summer is when they start to come out.

I'm running out of time so I will give a brief little paragraph about everything else I want to talk about. I have hives all over my hands and arms. We think that's what it is so the nurse had me go buy allergy medicine. It's probably from all the cats...  I can ride my bike with no hands. We have 7 baptismal dates, but one of the families that has four baptisms we found out that they're not married.... :( and the dad doesn't want to get married. So hopefully we can figure things out. We kind of felt it coming though, becuase the spirit told us to talk about the Law of Chastity and if they were living the law. Hopefully, we can change the dads mind. They are my favorite family. They have family in Honduras that is moving up this summer and they want to be taught by us. They already met the missionaries and want to be baptized.

 Yesterday we had a ward activity at the church and we role played what FHE is like and how to invite an investigator family over for FHE. It was all in Spanish so they had me role play as a grandma, and I looked good. Hopefully I can send you pictures. The ward said I was their favorite part of the whole thing. :)

Emily as a grandma during role play

 Oh and yesterday we had a couple baptisms for our zone and your supposed to have investigadors there to watch, but no one came so we decided to go into one of the rooms at the church and plan, but I needed to go to the bathroom and when I was done I was walking outside the bathroom slowly trying to close the door quietly because the baptisms were right there, and I was waving at everyone one and then while I walking back to our room I realized that half of my skirt was tucked into my garments........ hahahhaha so half the ward saw
my bum...... ha. I was in tears crying because it was so funny. Whoops!

 Last thing, across the street from my apartment is the white building with a blue gate and it's all chinese people and they all drive white cars, and only wear white, blue or tan. It's the weirdest thing I have ever seen!!!!! I took a picture and I will send it to you pronto. Love you tons. The Lords work is the best work! Have a great week.

Love,

Hermana Watkins