First Baptism!

Hola mi familia!

This was kind of an eventful week! We had my first baptism! Woohoo! It was such a tender moment in my mission.  I honestly wish I could do justice to the feelings that I felt and the things that I saw.  There was a powerful Spirit at the baptism.   Luis was so ready to be baptized, that nothing could have stopped him.  He showed up for his baptism so early, and was already grinning from ear to ear!  In total, we had 4 people who were baptized: Yahaira, Luis, Modesto, and Themis (an 8 year old little girl). While everyone was changing, I had the chance to spend some time with Yahaira's kids! She has 4 daughters and a couple sons, and the oldest is 9. Annie and Ashley are the two oldest, and they will be getting baptized next month once Ashley turns 8! They are seriously the most adorable little family.  The little girls just remind me of home.  They just love to tackle and play and love on you.  Every time they see me, they just all run up and give me super tight hugs.  They always make me feel so special and loved.  It was such a blessing to see this cute little family so excited for their mom to be baptized.  Their dad was inactive, and now their whole family dynamic has changed.  I have seen joy come into their lives as they have accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ!  The program was so beautiful.  Themis was the first to be baptized, and her little brother was the most adorable thing I have ever seen.  He is probably about 5 years old, and just hilarious.  When it was announced that Themis was going to be baptized first, he started cheering! "Yeah! That's my sister! Yeah Themis!" It was so cute, I almost died.  After she was baptized by Elder Stephens, he just goes, "WOW! That was so cool!!"  He was just precious.  It makes me rejoice when little kids are excited about baptism.  Even they can understand the significance of such an event.  

Luis's baptism!

Next was Yahaira, and there was just such a sweet spirit as Elder Wilkins baptized her.  Her girls were so entranced by it, and you could tell that they felt the Spirit. And then the big moment (for me) came as Luis was baptized.  At this point, I could not even wipe the smile off my face.  The Spirit is so tender at baptisms, and this one was so special.  Elder Gamble baptized him, and you could tell it was perfect moment!   Modesto was also baptized, which was an amazing moment for Elders Hurtado and Wilkins, I am sure. Modesto has been more active than a lot of our active members for over a year.  He just never got baptized. After the ordinances, we then watched the Restoration video while they changed.  The Spirit just stayed, and testified again to us how important it is to know for a surety that this Church is the true church on the earth.   Juan Carlos, the former-less-active husband of Yahaira was asked to the give the closing prayer.  Before he prayed though, he decided to bear his testimony.  It was such a sweet and simple testimony.  He bore testimony to his wife that this ordinance was going to change their lives.  He spoke about how they were going to sealed in the temple in a year, and how they were going to have a forever family.  All of a sudden tears were just flooding out of my eyes.  It was such a sentimental moment.  I felt the Spirit testifying to me of how special this family is.  I also felt the Spirit testifying of the power that comes from a family that is sealed together for time and all eternity in the temple.  I am so grateful for my parents, and that I have those blessings of the covenant.  I truly felt love for this family as they will have the same blessings. They have had opportunities to change so much and be blessed, and they have taken every single one of them.  I am so excited for the time when their children follow to be baptized, and are then sealed.   Luis was just glowing after the baptism.  He was seriously just glowing.  It was such an amazing vision.  I cannot wait for his future.  He said that all he wants to do is give back to God.  He wants to do maintenance for the church or algo mas (anything else) because he just feels so grateful.  He said that he is just rethinking so many things about work and life.  It is beautiful how just a simple ordinance brings so much power and influence.

All the sisters in our zone! I love them all.

LOOK AT THIS PUPPY WE SAW ON A PORCH!

On the more typical awkward- Sadie side of things, I went on a split with Sister Cole on Saturday, and we could not find a bathroom for the life of me!! I had to go to the bathroom so bad I couldn't even walk standing up straight.  We were down in Elder Gamble's area, so I only knew where a few members lived, and they weren't home.  We walked around, into a super market, looked into restaurants, even a movie theater, and found NOTHING.  After 45 minutes we finally found a Burger King! I ran in there only to discover that you had to buy something first in order for them to open the bathroom door for you to use.  I ran up the counter and told the girl working I wanted a cinnamon roll (it was the first thing in sight, literally right next to the cash register.  At this point, I really didn't care.)  She just spoke so slowly- relaxed and casual, which was definitely a stark contrast next to my impatient-I-am-going-to-wet-myself-right-here-voice.  "Okay, that's all you want?" "Yeah.  And the bathroom." "Okay.  Do you want it heated?" "Sure.  Just let me use the bathroom."  "Okay, let me get this for you."  I seriously was dying watching her take precise slow moves to grab the cinnamon role, put it in a box, then walk back and put it in the microwave.  Sister Cole was probably just laughing so hard.  The Burger King lady was moving slower that an old grandma, and I seriously thought that my bladder was going to explode at any moment.  Finally after a few agonizing minutes she came from around the counter and opened the bathroom door.  YAY!  I survived! Mostly I was just so scared that since it was so cold outside that if anything happened, it would just freeze to my leg.... haha.  Oh man.

Elders are so awkwarddddd. 

Another exciting thing from Sunday, Sister Richardson and I got to teach Primary!  We have been waiting to hand out the CTR rings prepared by the Northfield 14th Ward Activity Days girls, and teaching Primary seemed like the perfect opportunity to share them!  We taught about following the Savior and leaving everything behind that would prevent us from to choosing the right.  My heart was so close to bursting teaching these kids.  They all have so much love for Jesus Christ, and such a grand understanding of who He is.  Every question we asked about Him, at least 5 little hands shot up, ready to give us answers. I felt the Spirit testify to me of how special little children are in the eyes of God.  At one point we asked them to give us examples of things we can do to follow Christ's example.  Themis, who was getting baptized later that day, was about to jump out of her seat.  I swear her hand was up so high that had she jumped out of her seat, she would have touched the ceiling.  We called on her, and she says, "I'm getting baptized today!!!!"  It was so enlightening to see everybody so excited about following our Savior's example!  After our lesson, we taught them about choosing the right and handed out the children's green CTR rings, each with a little note from one of the activity day girls from my home ward.  They LOVED them.  Every single little Primary kid swore to wear the ring every day!  I have been in this ward for long enough now that most of the kids know my name, and so for the kids who received notes from Emmy, it was really special.  Emmy is an example to me.  She knows the truth, and wasn't scared to share her experiences and her testimony of choosing the right!  So thank you NF 14th Activity Day girls for helping my kids here in NYC!  The testimony of a child is precious and pure, and when shared, it is impossible to not feel the Spirit.  

Sooo much snow! This is from last Tuesday when the policed lined off

our street.  

I hope everyone had as good of a week as I did!

Love you guys TONS,

Sister Dodson

THANKS

Hola mi familia!

This week was not nearly as eventful, but still awesome, nevertheless. My favorite missionary in Indiana, Sarah, sent me a talk by Elder Ballard about how to have success, and I have seen that the doctrines taught in that talk are so true.  He talks about how success and happiness in missionary work all depends on Attitude.  Essentially, if you can see it, you can achieve it.  As we have worked hard, visioned success, and MADE our situations happy, we have had awesome weeks.  I know that as we do everything in our power to look at things the way we want them to be, they will end up that way!  I have really been focusing on staying positive- on trying to make myself happy, and trying to make others happy.  I have seen my relationships grow with others, with missionaries, with members, with investigators. Definitely attitude is key to everything!

This week we reached the Standard of Excellence!  This standard is the ideal goal for the mission.  So it encompasses a goal for number of lessons, new investigators, baptisms, lessons with member presents, etc. that everybody in the mission should be striving for.  They are definitely difficult to achieve, but possible!  We worked SOO hard this past week, and reached 21 lessons, the standard for total number of lessons! I saw miracles continue to happen, as we found people on the street who we could teach, less actives who ended up being home so we could teach, etc.  When you set a goal with faith and you work hard, The Lord is going to provide for you.  I have seen that time and time again my whole mission!

Something I learned this week was the importance of Preach My Gospel! With the ipad, we have access to every single conference talk, teaching resource, and video available on the Gospel Library app.  It has been super easy to get sucked into the other things and forget about Preach My Gospel!  I was reminded on Monday that we have been called as Preach My Gospel missionaries.  The book wasn't written just for us to look at occasionally and then throw to the side as we study other things, essentially it has everything in it necessary to be the most successful missionaries possible.  I have been focusing on studying it more, and am seeing it help my focus as a missionary.

Yesterday we got hit by another snow storm!! I can't complain though, after reading emails and letters from Sarah in Indy, and Ryan in Ohio, I am so grateful to be in The City!  While others have been grounded, we can still work!  Yesterday it snowed for 14 hours straight, and we received about 2 feet of snow.  Let's be honest, it made me want to go skiing pretty bad…. Haha.  We live on a pretty steep hill, and while we were doing language study, we heard SO MANY cars struggle to get up the hill.  So at 10:30-ish we headed outside to go shovel our steps and help cars up the street.  At this point it had been snowing for about an hour.  We shoveled our steps, a little bit of the sidewalk, and dusted off some cars parked on the side.  We then saw this van struggling to get to the top of the hill.  So the two of us, Sister Richardson and I, went down and started to push him up the hill! Basically we felt like pioneers pushing giant handcarts in the snow. We were just praying for the help of angels.  We pushed it about a block--minus the last 15 feet.  We were SO close to the top of the hill when two men showed up out of nowhere.  Instead of coming to help us with the last haul, they went up the driver, told him he wasn't going to make it, and that he should back all the way back down the hill and go some other route.  And so what did the driver do??! HE BACKED UP ALL THE WAY DOWN THE HILL.  Even with the missionaries, representatives of Jesus Christ there at his side, when tempted to take the easy way by the whisperings of man, the driver followed man.  He totally could have made it to the top.  Boo.  Hahaha.  NEVER GIVE UP.  It's just ridiculous!! Hahahaha.

Love you all, stay warm! Thanks to my new boots, I am staying nice and dry and warm! ;) So THANK YOU!

LOVE YOU!

Hermana Dodson

Some pictures from last week's P-Day bowling activity:

Hermana Dodson's Top 10!

Hola mi familia!!

I wish I could once again explain how amazing this week was!  The Lord is continuing to bless us!! It has been amazing!!! Here is my Top 10 for the week:

10.  Today we went bowling with our zone!!! It was so much fun.  I love that we can all get together and just have good fun.  There are 5 sets of sisters and lots of elders.  We are lucky to be in the city so we get to be together to work and play a lot.  We are spoiled.

9. We have 3 new investigators!  LS, JB, and Amparo.  All 3 of them are AWESOME.  They will be mentioned later on.

Mundongo Soup from her birthday

8. The other night we were riding the bus to go visit some members in our ward.  We were sitting across from a young mother, her friend, and her 4-year-old son.  Sister Richardson sees the 4-year-old pointing at me and then whispering to his mom.  The mom giggles a little bit.  She looks up and catches glances with Sister Richardson.  She then says, "He thinks that she (pointing to me) is pretty, but is scared to tell her!"  I almost died!  It was the most adorable little thing!! We then talked to him and he told me I was pretty, and then we gave him a picture book (a Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet).  Don't worry, all the 4 year-old-boys are in love with me.  Haha.

7.  Another bus experience!  The other day we were on the bus and I was standing next to this 35-ish guy sitting down.  He looks at me, and then sassily says, "Are you looking for something?"  I told him no, I was just looking out the window.  He then says, "Are you one of those Jesus people?"  I told him yes, then told him I was a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I then asked him if he believed in Jesus Christ.  He turned his head and got this really sassy look on his face.  He didn't say anything for about a minute.  I thought he had heard me say the name Jesus and decided to reject the message.  But after a while he turned back at me and replied, "I kind of have my own doctrine."  I then ask him what it was--what was he preaching.  He replied with some comment that really didn't make sense.  I asked him, "How is that working out for you?"  He told me it was okay, he guessed.  I then testified that the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ betters the quality of people's lives.  He looked at me and sternly said, "My stop is next.  Do you have a card?"  I gladly handed him a card.  I told him my name and how to contact me.  He then told me his name was Jamal.  He said that he would call me after Sunday.  (This was Friday.)  He then left, and later so did we.  About two hours later we get a phone call from a random number.  It was Jamal!!  He told me that literally that morning he had bought his first ever copy of the Bible!! What are the chances of that?!  He then asked me who the picture was on the front of the card I gave him.  I told him it was Jesus Christ.  He said thank you, told us he would call again after Sunday, and hung up.  So far no word from him, but I have hope!!

Random Christmas pics

6. Last week we went to a recent convert's house who is inactive. Her and her 15-year-old son were baptized in April, and neither has come to church in months.  Unfortunately, missionaries haven't visited them either for months.  We stopped by and introduced ourselves, then had a quick lesson with them.  Ronald, the son, is such a sweet spirit.  He has such an inward desire to get to know the Savior.  It is really beautiful.  We asked him to say the closing prayer, and it was one of the sweetest prayers I have ever heard.  He thanked God for sending the missionaries to him again and for letting them know that they were not just part of his imagination, and for letting him know that we really hadn't forgotten about him.  It is moments like those that make me so happy to be a missionary.  We really have the opportunity to share a piece of God's love to people.

5.  We are silk worms for lunch on Monday!! We had a competition in the zone to see which district could hand out the most Book of Mormons.  My district creamed everybody.  When the zone leaders gave us our treat, they handed over frozen cooked silk worms!!! It was SOOO NASTY.  Clearly we had to eat them.  We popped them like pills, because after disecting one with a pen we discovered it was basically like a Gusher... And we were not going to let bug juice explode in our mouths.... Anyways, they tasted like potatoes... Haha.

6.  We went to the Statue of Liberty last week!  One of the Elders we went with, Elder Gonzales, was hangry (Dodson speak for hungry to the point of being angry) and cold.  He grabbed a hot dog on the Ferry before getting off the boat.  After eating about half of it, he declared that it was the best hot dog he had ever eaten.  As we are walking along, all of the sudden this seagull floats in from the right side about 1 foot from my face.  It then, with perfect tact, manages to steal just the hotdog out of the bun in Elder G's hand!! I almost wet myself laughing.

5.  Lesson with Amparo: We had one lesson with Amparo right before Christmas.  We haven't been able to meet with her since then.  Her daughter is a convert, but inactive and lives in Dallas.  She knows like everything about the church already.  Last time, we invited Amparo to read about Joseph Smith and then pray to know if the Church is true.  In our lesson this week, she told us she was confused because she had a dream after praying.  In her dream she saw three beings:  Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost (but he looked a little different.).  She was confused because Joseph Smith only saw TWO beings.  We then were able to testify to her about the nature of the Godhead: Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have bodies of flesh and bones, and the Holy Ghost is a spirit.  We also then testified that Joseph Smith physically SAW two beings, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, but then FELT the Holy Ghost testifying that in reality They were there.  She then told us she understood and wants to continue learning with us.  She wasn't sure why, but she said she felt something.  She totally knows it's true!! I am so excited to teach her.  She is a sweetheart.

4.  We always have AMAZING lessons with Dori.  I LOVE TEACHING HER!

3.  This week it hit me so hard: I LOVE MY AREA.  I have really come to love the people, the weirdness, and the work.  The Bronx is so amazing.  It is such a good feeling when you realize that you just want the best for this area because you just LOVE it.

At White Castle and thinking of her daddy :)

2. MY PANTS ARE SO LOOSE!!!! Gym is paying off!!

1.  THIS IS THE BEST STORY EVER.  GET READY.  About 12 days ago, we did Former Investigator lookups.  We go knock on the door of a former investigator, LS, who was golden back in September.  He had a baptismal date and everything.  He even media referred HIMSELF to the missionaries (Mormon.org/missionaries), so he was GOLDEN.  At his baptismal interview, he said he wasn't ready to get baptized, because he was still having a hard time quitting alcohol.  I think this crushed his spirit.  After that, he wouldn't answer calls from members or missionaries, and wouldn't answer the door either. Sister Lancaster was devastated, since she had found and taught him, and he had just dropped off the face of the earth.  So 12 days ago, we knock on his door.  He opens, and says, "Oh, I wasn't expecting you. You can't come right now, I am drinking.  But you can come Friday." We were slightly devastated to see he still hadn't given up alcohol, but also extremely excited since we had a return appointment!!  So last Friday we went to go see him.  He told us that us knocking on his door was a sign from God that he should go back to church.  He said he wanted to go back slowly, but he was ready.  On Sunday, he came to church.  And not only that, he made half the comments in the meetings!! He was more involved in the lessons than our active members!!  On Monday, we received a call from him.  We were kind of freaking out.  This either meant that he wanted to be baptized, or was done forever with the missionaries.  To our surprise, and excitement, LS says, "Hola Hermanas, yo quiero bautizarme!!" WHAT??  THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN.  PEOPLE JUST DON'T CALL TO SAY THEY WANT TO BE BAPTIZED. We were dying.  I was doing a happy dance right in the middle of the sidewalk in the Bronx.  It is so exciting.  We met with him yesterday, and his smile was so huge.  He is so dedicated.  He said he is so done with alcohol, so ready for this new life.  He just knows it's right.  He has a baptism date for the 26th!!!!!

What's even more amazing about this story is the fact that at the beginning of the cycle we had a goal for each companionship in the district to have one baptism.  At that point, we had NO ONE.  Our ward has been a little dry on baptisms since September…..We had, maybe a few prospects, but meeting someone and getting them ready for baptism in 6 weeks is a scary feat.  Sadly, no one was progressing to be able to meet this goal.  I had fasted and prayed, and we were working hard, but no baptism prospects.  And then Heavenly Father just threw LS into our hands.  MIRACLES HAPPEN.

She takes so many selfies!!

I feel so blessed! Thank you for your love and your prayers!!

Love you ALL!!

Sister Dodson

Week of Miracles!!

Hola mi familia!

This week has literally been a week of miracles. I don't understand what we have been doing to deserve it, but whatever it is we will keep it up! The Lord is amazing and He is blessing us so much! I can't deny His existence at all!

Miracle 1:

Last Thursday we met with a less active referral from the elders. Her name is Dori. She is AMAZING!  She was baptized when she was eight, then went inactive at age 17.  She is now about 38.  In 2004, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It left and came back six times, and in the process she had a double mastectomy.  She was then cancer free for 5 years.  It now has come back as stage four terminal cancer.  Last year she was given three weeks to live!  In this past year her cancer has spread all down to her abdomen, and the tumors have developed a disease of some kind that makes them produce water.  Because of this, your system becomes flushed with water- your body swells and eventually your organs basically drown and you die.  She looked like she was about 9 months pregnant.  And then her miracle happened.  Her mom is incredible and EXTREMELY active in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  She is awesome and taught her kids in the Gospel and especially at this time has been pushing her daughter to pray and find The Lord again.  As the cancer became worse, Dori started to turn towards God a little bit.  She started to remember The Lord.  Her mom and her began praying intensely.  She said they would pray for hours just pleading. Two Sundays ago she came to church for the first time in 23 years!  The Tuesday after, she received a miracle.  She woke up with a six pack! Essentially ALL the water had left her body.  She went to the doctor that day and they just hugged her and rejoiced.  This has NEVER happened before!! (At least this doctor had never seen or heard of it happening).  It truly was a God given miracle.  She has completely devoted her life to serving Him.  I wish I could properly explain the light that was in her eyes.  it was beautiful.  She told us repeatedly that she never will leave this church again.  She knows the way, and she just wants to share her story with everyone.  She wants to go to the temple now to receive her endowment, and we are going to teach her to get her there.  She is a God send.  She knows who she is and Whose she is.  She used to be a model, and in connection with that, she has been working on an inspirational TV show about how she has dealt with cancer.  She told us that the costume people had outfits picked out for her, but that she is going to have to talk to them because of the turn-around in her values. She is an advocate for modesty now! I was amazed.  I cannot wait for her to go to the temple.  She is such an amazing example to me of dignity, divine worth, and growth, knowledge, goals, and especially faith.  She is going to be an AMAZING OUTSTANDING example for YW everywhere.  She is giving up the modeling life for God…..the world for God.  She has modeled for Michael Kors, and other amazing artists, has her own makeup lines, has modeled at fashion week, done the whole red carpet scenes, has her own spread and video in cover girl, etc.  BUT she left it. This is the most amazing thing about her: she told us that all she wants is for people to know and understand that "THE WAY OF THE WORLD OFFERS US NOTHING. IT IS EMPTY."  Imagine the example she will be! The light she will share! YW everywhere can see how amazing it is to give up everything the world has to offer, and follow Christ! They could understand from an amazing woman how to be modest and how to respect yourself!  I LOVE IT.  I LOVE HER.  I feel so blessed that Heavenly Father is allowing me to be part of her life at this time.

Miracle 2: This last week we have found 7 new investigators.  SEVEN!

Miracle 3: The most lessons I have taught in one week was 10. We have had between 1-7 lessons per week for over a month now. This week we had 14! On Monday we set a goal of getting 2 other lessons taught (lessons to investigators). At 8 at night, we had time to basically knock one more door.  We went to an address of a former investigator…knocked...and the door swung open. We taught one more lesson to this former investigator who told us all she wants to do is get baptized. WHAT?!?

Miracle 4: After doing Tours of the chapel yesterday, my iPad went missing.  Legit missing!  We were all convinced it was stolen!  Later that night, during our lesson, we get a call from some elders in our zone. THEY FOUND MY IPAD IN THEIR BACKPACK. I don't even think they were at the church yesterday!!!

We have had millions of other tiny miracles too! God loves us, you guys.  When we follow His instructions and are obedient, miracles happen.  He is our Father after all, and all He wants is our happiness.  I know He lives, and I love Him.  I know I am doing His work here on the earth, and I love it. He truly cares for His children, and I pray that as we feel His love and see His love in our lives, that we will SHARE it!

I would love to hear about the miracles you have seen in your life!  You can email them to me, put them on my Facebook, or comment here on the blog! Tell me how you have felt God's love and how you have gained a testimony that He is your Father!

LOVE YOU ALL!

Hermana Dodson

Birthday + Christmas + everything else

Hola mi familia!

This past week was so AWESOME! It was definitely an eventful one though.  I will describe what happened chronologically:

Wednesday, Dec. 25

CHRISTMAS!  Christmas truly was fantastic.  It was completely different than any other Christmas I have ever had, that is true.  But I loved it.  The best part was getting to talk to my family over Skype! I thought an hour would have been just the right amount of time, but woah.  It went by waaayyy too fast.  I needed like at least 12 hours to really say everything.  It's a good thing we have an eternity.  I am sorry you will probably have to hear me talk about stuff for that whole eternity though...

Saturday, Dec. 28

Today was the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium.  Rutgers and Notre Dame were playing.  We had been planning a Finding activity there for at least 2 months now, and we definitely were anxious to go to this game.  We gathered our whole zone and brought TONS of posters with phrases like "Looking to KICK your addiction?" "Come meet the Mormons!" "Wanting to Strengthen your team?" and "He is the captain of our team- come check out his playbook!" (We spent 7 hours on these posters on Friday... I almost died.)  The idea was to just hand out pamphlets and cards and talk to people!  Little did we realize that Notre Dame, the biggest Catholic school in the nation, would be playing!  I will be honest, we were heckled like none other!  Some of the things we heard were pretty funny, but the majority of them were so terrible! I had a huge smile plastered on my face for the first hour and a half, but it turned more to a fake-smile-grimace by the end. The good news is that we were just able to laugh about all of this and have fun.  And we did find a few gems! And we did plant a TON of missionary seeds! Here are some funny phrases that I heard people say:

"Mormons?! Hey this guys is Mormon! (pointing to friend)" "No, you idiot, I'm Muslim."

"Kick my addiction?  Why would I want to kick it!  I want to make it stronger!" (Pretty sure this guy was super drunk...)

"Oh yeah, I'll be Mormon! That means I can have multiple wives, right?"

"Oh, Mormons! BYU got crushed yesterday!!"

Overall, people were not very open.  But there were a few gems amongst the rough, and I just had to focus on them.  For example, I talked to a guy who spoke Spanish who really wanted pamphlets for both him and his girlfriend.  I pray that they read them and are calling some missionaries right now!  There was also an old man who came and asked if I would take his picture with his son.  I said of course, and as he was leading me to the picture spot, he said, "I decided to get you to take our picture, because I know Mormons are very nice about helping out."  I then explained to them that we love to follow the example of our Savior and serve.  We had another man stop by, tell us he wasn't interested, but say thank you for all the work we did down in Far Rockaway last year.  I am so grateful that I can remember those good experiences that came from it.

I am 99% sure The Lord held back my tongue this day... Hahahaha.  Let's be honest, I am a little bit sassy ;) But when people yelled crazy stuff at us, I replied politely and nicely, and then like 10 seconds after they left I thought of a sassy phrase I could have said... Haha.

Wrapping presents as a finding activity...from last week.

Monday, Dec. 30

MY BIRTHDAY! It was one of the best birthdays I have ever had.  Definitely different, but I loved it.  There was a different feeling.  Like everything seemed just a little bit brighter.  It was basically a normal day, though.  My awesome companion made me breakfast, we went to district meeting, etc.

Here is a hilarious birthday story:

After zone lunch we went to go visit one of our active members, Carmen.  Carmen is a super awesome lady who struggles with health issues.  But she has such a strong testimony, and does everything she physically can to keep her sacred covenants.  Carmen decided to make us lunch, and after our arrival, she promptly brought out bowls of soup and rice.  When I glanced down at the soup, my stomach just dropped.  I started giggling--the contents of the soup looked just a little too familiar for my taste!  I turned to Carmen and said, "Eso es sopa de mondongo?" She replies back, "Si!" I almost died right then and there--of course, for my birthday lunch, I would be eating a nice giant bowl of Mondongo (cow intestine).  Hahahaha!  Just like at Sara's house, the soup tasted great, but the texture was not so great...Different from Sara's soup, these mondongo pieces were HUGE. They barely fit on my spoon! And somehow they managed to have pieces of bone... I took anatomy, and I don't think there are any bones mingled in with intestine... 

Luckily for me, we held our Zone meeting lunch at my favorite Hamburger place here--Checkers. (It's basically Carl's JR, except better) and my AMAZING district leader, Elder Gamble, had bought me lunch.  I was still pretty full from that, so I couldn't eat a ton of soup.  Carmen sassed me about not finishing my bowl, but after a few times of swallowing the slimy golf ball sized pieces of intestine, I couldn't get any more to stay down...Hahaha.

Mondongo soup!

Also here is a birthday miracle: 

While at Carmen's, a man came around soliciting for a charity organization.  He spoke english, and Carmen spoke spanish, so she called us to the door to figure out what he was talking about.  Upon my arrival at the door, the man looked at my tag-his eyes got huge and he started freaking out. "Missionaries!!?! You guys are missionaries??! I have always wanted to meet missionaries!!!!" I basically had to pick up my jaw off the ground. "My girlfriend told me about missionaries, but I have never seen or met any before! Tell me what you do as missionaries!" I then explained to him our purpose, which is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the Restored Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.  He was so interested.  He then asked us all about the church, where there was a chapel, what we believed, etc.  He told us everybody and their dog asks him if he is Mormon.  That made me laugh pretty hard.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and our number, testified, and invited him to read it and call us.  It truly was a birthday miracle.  Never have I met a nonmember that excited about the Church, missionaries, or the Book of Mormon.  He is from New Jersey, but I pray we get a call from him quick and he can be taught!

Later that night we went to Susy's house where we had a fabulous dinner, tons of laughs, and a really awkward rendition of Happy Birthday sung to me by her husband who then tried to give me hug after finishing (this caused even more laughs).

It has been an amazing week.  I have really seen so many miracles as a servant of The Lord, especially at this time of year.  I know He lives, He loves, and I feel so grateful and excited to serve Him.  I am so excited for the new year!  We are one more year closer to the coming of Jesus Christ.  

Love you all,

Sister Dodson