It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Así es la vida.  Well famfam, I had a shocking realization of the life I now live.  I have sunk deep into the life of a missionary. One of the elders in my zone quoted the District Movies... I could not help but be overcome with a deep sense of sadness (Christopher and Carson will understand). Ah!  The life of a missionary is a beautiful but strange thing.  I feel that this week I have had a few of those moments where I thought, "yep, this is one of those moments that will turn into a story."  

I had my first meal where I was dry heaving the whole time.  I am really not sure what it was.  It was like mushed up lumps of corn (moldy corn) that was deep fried.  It was super mushy and everything kind of had a flavor of black licorice.  Yep.  Nasty. One of the elders was having a seriously difficult time eating it and everyone was finished but him and when the Hermana had her back turned he wrapped his last lump of corn in a napkin and stored it away in his pocket!  Clever fella.  I hope I never have to eat that again. Yuck.  

So with the upcoming transfer they have been making a lot of changes.  There are now 2 zones here in Martinez and they have finally sent two more Hermanas to us!!! Yay! We finally have friends out here among all the elders!!  One of them is even a gringa straight from the MTC!!  I was so freaking pumped when I found out there was another American girl I went over and gave her a big hug!! She is wonderful!  So the new focus out here is numbers, numbers, numbers. When we come home at night and we don't have very good numbers I feel like Buddy from Elf.  I am a cotton headed ninny muggins!! Oh well, I am scared that I can't keep up with all these numbers! Agh!! Oh well!  

Okay, time for another story. We were going around to visit our investigators and we took one of the young women in the ward with us. One thing you need to know about Mexicans is that they are very very loving.  They always greet and farewell with a kiss on the cheek. As a missionary this presents a problem because the men do this as well! Before I knew what was happening our investigator gave me a kiss on the cheek! Ah! No touchy!  I had no idea what to do.  And then I got reprimanded by the YW from my ward.  Oh man.  Needless to say the next time I saw him I gave him only a nice firm handshake. 

It has been great though, yesterday we got 5 of our investigators to come to church!  The tender mercies of the Lord are amazing, because last week we didn't have any! Also one amazing tactic to missionary work is taking your investigators to a baptism.  It really gets them excited and it puts them at ease when they see how it is done!  We are going to be baptizing this next week!  (keep your fingers crossed)  I will let you know how it goes. The church is true! Preach it!

Love,

Hermana Chandler