Why HELLLLLLLO!

Hello Family,

 

How is it going? It sounds like you all had quite a wonderful Easter. We had a good Easter too! We had a beautiful sacrament meeting about the Savior, his atonement and the Resurrection? I can't remember how you spell that word. Sorry. :) We also did visits to a few members in our ward as a ward council. I went with our relief society president and hermana guitierrez with a different hermana in our ward. It was so weird leaving her. It was really fun though to get to be with hermana garcia. She is so special I learned a lot from just talking to her. She is a fantastic woman.

 

This week was good! It went by quick again. Time flies. Alright where to start. Hmmmm

 

Eddie is doing well. He is starting to remember things better. We taught him about tithing this week as well as a few other things but he was able to explain all the principles of tithing when we asked him. He is still reading and praying. He wasn't able to come to church yesterday because he had a family activity but he is doing well. He (without even being taught the word of wisdom) is trying to stop drinking. We talked to him about some of the blessings. Later on in the lesson yeseddie (his daughter) came over and then she is sitting there and randomly says. Daddy, no smoking, no drinking and No bad words or God is going to get mad! hahaha :) Look at her go! :) We just told him, Eddie you have to listen to what she is saying! He was laughing. Yeseddie's mom, Yesenia came to drop her off and we talked to her for a minute. She said she is going to come to church next week. We asked Eddie if he had invited her to come and he was like...nope she invited herself! Maybe this little family can come back together...:)

 

Fun Story. We were at our investigator/less active's house. Julio and Rossy. We were eating dinner and then we were talking about cereal and I told them how I love cereal and how i always liked to eat it at night time. Rossy said well I guess we should just have some right now. After eating our cow tongue tacos (yup-that ain't no lie - quite tasty...tastes like chicken! slimy yet...satisfying! lion king...bahaha) we had a bowl of special K and it hit the spot. I was just smiling that we were eating a bowl of cereal. It made me happy! It was funny but it made my night. Speaking of food. You are never going to believe what i ate last Tuesday. I ate a whole fish. From the fish. Like a dead fish, just cleaned with head, eyeballs and all. All the fish. I thought I was going to die. I was giggling because i was thinking...how am i going to do this? Hermana Gutierrez was saying why did you keep laughing. I think it was like a nervous exertion of energy! :) I told her how i would have NEVER eaten anything like that before.  It was super good though. I also ate shrimp this week. Still not my favorite but I survived. I am becoming less and less picky which is good for me. Crazy though. I am sending pictures of the fish.

 

Lopez - Mormons at the Catholic BBQ peeps. We haven't been able to get in with them for a bit because they were out of town and then not catching them. We ended up stopping by and we had an awesome lesson with them. We read in Alma 32 about experimenting on the word and acting to see if it is true. Good stuff right there. We asked Hno Lopez what the passage was saying. He totally knew. He just starts going on and on and he got it right but then he said but i am catholic and i told my mom ya'll are visiting me but that i am catholic and just learning more about God. Hermana Gutierrez was able to bear a strong testimony about how she left what she knew to be true and is the only member and told a bit of how her family is being blessed for her decision. It was really neat that she can tell him that. She said it isn't about doing what your family did or what your culture is or anything. It is about doing gods will and doing it his way. It was powerful. He and Josephina (who is so sweet and humble and willing to learn) committed to reading the book of mormon and praying every night as a couple. I was able to testify of how dad you always said if people, married couples specifically, would do those little things it would change their marriages around. It is true though because when we have the spirit we don't have a desire to do evil. We want to be more Christlike and everything gets better. We have an appointment on wednesday with them.

 

We put on an activity for the youth this last friday. It was really fun. We had them do scripture jeopardy  scripture mastery relay races and a balloon pop with the balloons tied to feet and then you have to pop them. I think it went very well. I had fun. We had hotdogs and a guest speaker too from another ward. I felt it was very successful. It was a bit crazy putting it all together but it worked well. I think it helped strengthen the testimonies of some of the members of the ward who didn't trust us as much because they heard our testimonies and hopefully felt our intentions. I feel like we are gaining a lot of trust from them. Some of the people who didn't talk to us as much are coming up to us and inviting us to eat or just asking us more about the work which is awesome!

 

Saturday we went to Magnolia which is in our area. We were trying to contact some less actives up there. We thought on was in our area but it was the elders, they told us we could just contact them since we were there. It was like 8:30 at night on a super dark road. We can't see anything. We were sacred. As we are walking up we see this huge dog...up to my hip huge. It had a rope and it was broke and it starts running at us full charge. We are screaming...and then He jumps on top of us and and I fell over and he bit my arm. It didn't break skin but I was like ahhhhhh he wouldn't get off and it was just so crazy. Hermana Guiterrez just was like oh my goodness what do i do and it is definitely April fools. so ha ha got you. :) Back to the story. He starts running towards us and we are like yah he isn't chained and it was quite scary but he was nice. We hurried and knocked on the door and she let us in. She, Hermana Martinez, is soo nice and has a strong testimony but kind of just stop coming to church because sometimes her husband works and she hasn't come back but she said she wants to start coming again. We had a great lesson with her and hopefully the elders can continue to help her come back.

 

Okay well I think i this is it. This is the end. Thank you so much for the birthday wishes. I got my cards today. Thank you for all the birthday wishes. I still haven't heard anything from Kendra...hoping to get that letter soon! Well Have a beautiful week and enjoy your time off and conference! I love you all a lot and keep reading daily!

 

Remember who you are and to whom you belong! Off finding tens of thousands!

Hermana Rife!

At the Youth Activity with Bella, Yeseddie and Angel's daughter

Two cute sister missionaries

& 

The "Balloon Pop" 

Yummy Fish Kynsie got to eat!  :)

 "I ate a whole fish. From the fish. Like a dead fish, just cleaned with head, eyeballs and all. All the fish. I thought I was going to die. I was giggling because i was thinking...how am i going to do this? Hermana Gutierrez was saying why did you keep laughing. I think it was like a nervous exertion of energy! :) I told her how i would have NEVER eaten anything like that before."

Yup...Kynsie managed to eat the WHOLE thing!!! 

Another little creepy creature from Texas!

Kynsie is having quite the adventure and learning to enjoy all kinds of FUN  things!