Monday, December 14, 2015

Guyyysss I dont want to write... 


uuuummmmmmmm okay sooo Karla is super stoked for her baptism WOOT WOOT! Shes making super cute invitations and everything and wants to invite the whole world and its so awesome to see her so happy! She is golden. I know the Lord has people prepared here to accept the gospel because Karla is one of these people. 

This week we also started teaching these two guys named Ramses (#nachoooo #ramsesnumber1) and Jose Antonio. So the story with them is that for weeks they've been bothering us in the streets and yelling out EHHH GUERA and one day we were like ¨hey why not contact them?¨ so yeah, they accepted fechas so yay more people to teach!
Oh also this week we went to poza rica for the cena de navidad. SUELO SUELO SUELO yeah it was a party. We sang lots of Christmas songs. Hermana Blackham and I took turns butchering them on the piano. That was fun. No, she was good it was mainly me butchering the songs. And we got to listen to President and Hermana Greer, the best people ever! We also had piƱatas and everything! 

But best part of the week was yesterday at the dedication of the Tijuana temple WOOT WOOT. It was so awesome to be a part of that! it truly did feel like I was in the temple and it was amazing to be there with Valente and his family.

AH I'm out of time. I'll send pictures next week. 
LOVE YOU ALL!

Hermana DeGraw

Monday, December 7, 2015

                                           

Heyo!

uuuummmmmmm..... what to write.... 
okay so yeah this week was good. Kind of frustrating because NO ONE was in their homes this week for some reason so we didn't have a whole ton of lessons. haha but okay one day we taught this little old man named Bartolo. He made it very clear to us that he is catholic and showed us all his altars and images in his house. But we taught him a lesson and invited him to be baptized but he denied because he didn't understand what was wrong with his first baptism. But anyway, we invited him to pray at the end of the lesson and afterwards he says ¨wow... que bonito se siente.... que diferente!¨ and hna martinez and i think... could this be? a miracle? he's gonna change his mind and accept a baptismal date? and then he looks at us with a smile and says ¨que bonito ser catolico¨ *cara de pichon* Bueno, adios bartolo. que tenga buen dia.

BUT a miracle did happen this week. maybe not with Bartolo but with Valentes baptism!
okay so Saturday was the day for Valentes baptism. We went to the church early to get everything ready but for some reason we didnt have the key to open the church gate (triste elderes took them from us) so we had to wait like a half hour for someone to come open the gate. then we couldn't figure out how to work the fount. when it finally started to fill up, it barely had any water and then it stopped filling. there was no more water. the church never has water. by then it was like 3:30 and his baptism was supposed to be at 4 and it takes about 2 hours to fill the fount and yeah... we were kind of freaking out because they couldn't do the baptism any other day. So i prayed for a miracle because i didn't know what else to do. Hna Martinez called our district leader one last time and he told us to go upstairs into some closet where the rotoplas (water tank) was and hit it. just hit it. so she did... and all of the sudden water came! ... what? i don't know how it worked but yeah! she just hit the rotoplas and boom. water. MIRACLE. Also the fount filled in much less than 2 hours. another miracle. Heavenly Father answers our prayers!

 so... yeah! Valente was baptized!! His wife, hna Delfina was bawling all that day. so sweet to see their whole family together in the church and soon theyll be able to be sealed together as an eternal family!!!!!!

Yesterday was fast Sunday and their whole family got up to bear their testimonies, including Valente! 

So.. yeah! things are great here in Papantla. just chillin eating tortillas every second of my life. seriously though, I've heard multiple moms tell their children you need to eat more tortillas, you only had two! that's not enough, you cant leave the table until you eat more tortillas¨ tortillas are basically vegetables. they're also utensils. sometimes, I'm given mole without utensils to eat it with.. so i have to use tortillas instead and it takes like 20 tortillas to finish one bowl of mole. plus homemade tortillas are just sooo good.

Okay so last night, we got to watch the first presidencys Christmas devotional and something i liked was from elder Bednars talk. He talked about Samuel the Lamanite's prophecies of Christ birth and how there was going to be a day, a night, and a day without darkness. when the sun set, it was as light as if it were noon

Christ is the LIGHT of the world. 
Every good thing comes from Him. Because of Him we can have faith, hope, joy, confidence, salvation, eternal life. 

Share His light with others during this Christmas season. 

Love you all! 
-Hna DeGraw


Tortias give her strength.


Valentes baptism


Hna Martinez and Hna DeGraw love the tacos!


She named her succulent Frida.