Totally Worth The Cockroaches

Hello family of mine,

I'M AN AUNT AGAIN!!! Congratulations to Chelsea and Weston. Baby Easton is a precious little gem. Two nephews in one week. Could life be any better? SO happy. So so happy.

Also, I hit 4 months in the mission this week. Weird.

Changes were this week but we didn't get changes so I will be working in Iguala at least for another 6 weeks. I am happy because we have some great investigators...that don't always come to church but we are working on it.

Today for pday we went to the 'mall' here and I felt for a second like I was in America. For real. There was air conditioning and I ate lunch at subway and the lady at subway spoke English. It was weird contacting her in English. It was more like Spanglish. I love Mexico, don't get me wrong...but sometimes I miss my homeland. Especially when you find cockroaches in your house EVERYDAY. I am pretty sure this week we found more than 15...big cockroaches. And two of them were in the door crack of the fridge. I was lucky enough to open the fridge one of the times and I screamed so loud. And couldn't open the fridge for a couple of days after. But life goes on, right?

Cool story.

About two weeks ago, we did splits with the STLs and I was with Hna. Boitel. She is from the DR and super cool. She needed post-its so we went into a papeleria to buy some and contacted the people working there. There is a mom and 2 daughters in their 20s. They told me they met with the missionaries about a year and a half ago but the missionaries got changed and no one came back to visit them. It is always good to find people who accepted the missionaries before. So I made an appointment to teach them another day. We went back 2 or 3 times and each time they weren't there or couldn't meets with us. I still felt like we needed to go back so on Friday we went and taught them the frist lesson (The Restauration - is that who it's spelled in English?) Anyway..at the end, Hna. Hernandez asked them if the last time the missionaries taught them they prayed about the message. All three of them said 'Yes, we prayed before and knew it was true). Come again? Jaw drop. Ok, my jaw didn't actually drop, but it was one of those moments where you are unsure if you should believe them or not. We challenged them to baptism and they accepted! They didn't come to church yesterday, though. I was really sad about that but I am not giving up hope. They are prepared. How exciting!

Our church building that is really close to our area is now being remodeled so we are meeting in a building a lot farther away. This is going to be a challenge for us with our investigators and for the members here. But I have hope that things will get better.

One last thing. There is a family in our ward who got baptized a little over a year ago and went to the temple to be sealed this past weekend. They bore their testimonies in Sacrament meeting and of course I was crying. I love the temple and to see a family really understand what the gospel is all about was just beautiful. I can't wait to find more people like that.

I am grateful to be doing this work. It's totally worth the cockroaches. Yes, I said it.

Really, though. I know this is the only true church on the face of the earth. I know that this gospel changes lives and that through the sacred ordinances of baptism and those in the temple, we cam be cleansed from our sins and truly come to know our Savior.

I love you all. Have a happy week!

Love,

Hermana Durham