Tender Mercies

Krista with her district 
at the Houston temple.

The whole zone at the Houston temple.

Beautiful flowers from Julie Holman!
Sooooo sweet!!

Bikes loaded!  Sister power!

Hitting the pavement.

Bike up and down stairs - no problem!

Laundry + ice cream = p-day!

Hi Mom,                                                            May 6, 2013

Did you know that when it gets humid, lots of mosquitos come out? I counted 16 bites from one day :) Also my arm swelled up super huge! Haha but luckily it's not summer yet! So my companion that is training me refers to me as "The Bold One." Hahaha did you ever think I would be referred to as that? I have been blessed to have turned my shy-ness into ... well boldness I guess. Lots of people are rude and love to argue with you, but the ones that only speak Spanish are "soy Catholica" and they don't argue... well most of them. Some people are nice to talk to. Also, did you know that when someone has a baptism date, Satan works SUPER hard on them! Also, inviting people to be baptized on the first lesson, helps you weed out the people who aren't ready- which are the ones we are really looking for. We have had a lot of great lessons, but a lot of people we have had to drop. We teach lesson 1s (the restoration) 50 times a day, and are extremely lucky to get to lesson 2. Carlos Quintanilla has a baptism date for this Saturday!!! May 11th! I am so excited out of my mind!!! His story was a miracle. He was already found when I got here. Hermana Flores and Hermana Arcila were trying to visit a former investigator in the trailer park and Carlos walked past them and said "Hey! When are you gonna teach me!?"  They got creeped out because they had been hit on earlier, and it was dark, and in a trailer park... so they kinda shrugged it off but then he said "your church is the one that believes in apostles and prophets right?" So they went over to talk to him! Apparently he had been meeting with the missionaries when he was living in El Salvador a long long time ago. So they began teaching him! He was on lesson 3 when I got here, and so I got to teach him all the commandments and the Doctrine of Christ. So cool. I LOVE teaching him because he accepts everything we say- and always says yeah that is not a problem for me. Anyways I could go on and on but its so fun to teach him. We had him all prepared for baptism for the 4th but the ward had an activity planned on that day and so we had to push it to the 11th. So we have been visiting him and asking him if he has any questions in the reading. We are making sure to visit him as much as possible, like every other day, to make sure nothing happens. Hermana Flores is the coordinating sister training leader or whatever its called so she goes on 7 exchanges or more a month... I have already been on 2 and have another one today haha so on Friday we had an exchange with another trio so this time we had 2 companionships for our area, it was like a quatro-panionship. It was weird.  Anyways, we  planned to teach Carlos about the law of chastity that day but he was concerned about getting baptized!!! NOOOO but we talked him through it and he is getting baptized on Saturday .. I HOPE. I have faith. He is pretty solid. On Sunday he was asking about the Isaiah chapters in 2nd Nephi and I was soooo confused because it was Spanish and I don't even understand those in English!! . As missionaries we always try to have a member present at the lessons... so we did this Sunday and they kinda explained it to him, but it was mostly Carlos explaining it to us!! Haha,  he is great.  I'm giving him the triple in Spanish that Dad gave me! He wants a D&C really badly but they don't give them to us, so I'm giving him mine, since I have a really nice one they gave us at the MTC.  We are also buying him a tie and a white shirt today. I'm super excited. Guess what!  I'm also singing at his baptism.. hahaha me.... singing... hahaha its ok though because Mexicans don't really sing very well so they will be used to it :) 

This past Sunday was just filled with miracles. We had another investigator come to church! His name is Pedro and he can't read! At all!!! He doesn't even know the alphabet. He is kinda oldish. we teach him every Saturday night. His wife works on Sundays so she can't ever come to church and that is always his excuse why he doesn't come- It was a miracle that he came this Sunday  He has been taught 5 times and we are barely on lesson 2. He learns extremely slow. But I love it. I think its great because he is amazed at how well I read in Spanish and how much i can say, and so he can relate to me because he can't  read Spanish, so its pretty cool. So he sat behind me and Carlos with a family that came with us to teach him. Hermano Jaime explained about Fast Sunday to him and invited him to Carlos' baptism this Saturday! (Which was what I was going to do after sacrament meeting)  and he is coming with his wife! boom! He said he is so glad he came to church and wished his wife could come to "feel" how beautiful it was there. AH MIRACLE! Ask me why! Because. Our ward is SUPER disfunctional- there are hardly any people in it. Last Sunday they prayed for the pope in the opening prayer. and in one of the talks, a guy said "repent or you're going to hell!"  Its also super loud with screaming kids and stuff. so I am SO SO thankful that he felt the Spirit. I was dreading that people were going to get up to bear their testimony about crazy things haha but it was good. ALSO we got 2 inactives to church that day!!!. We are bomb and the lord is great!!!  

Also I made it a goal to smile more because when I am sad or upset, I am bad at hiding my emotions and that day that I made that goal, we were knocking and a white lady answered the door and said, "you should leave, I'm a retired minister," and so we kept talking to her and she was so sweet and told us about how she helped her Mormon friend get ready for her wedding a long time ago and how she thought it was beautiful that we believed in families forever- and she said she could tell what kind of people we were through our smiles. Tender mercy- that that was my goal that day! haha anyways, i love it. This is great and there are so many miracles every day. Oh we also found a family that is inactive, we have met every family member of this family that could never be found- and so we are going to bring them all back to church! I'd say more than half of our ward is inactive.  Sadness.  Sorry there are so many typos, but I'm typing as fast as I can. 

Yes I got your packages! Thank you SO much!!!! I also got flowers from Julie!!! Please tell her I said thank you thank you thank you and so do my companions haha. She is so sweet!! We have new missionary training on Wednesday and I'm excited to see all of my MTC friends and see how they're doing! Anways. I have to email President Crawford now. I love you so much and I'll talk to you at 3 your time on Sunday!! 

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY! I love you!

love

krista

ps. I'm going to mail you my pictures on a jump drive- it doesn't let me email videos because the file is too big. everything is bigger in Texas...