Oops

So one of the downers of not speaking very much Spanish is that I never know what's going on. I thought we were leaving to go to the grocery store but then we ended up coming to use the internet so I don't have my camera to send you all pictures. Sorry, next week for sure!

Today has been good. Last Pday was crazy because we just rode on buses all day to meet up with our zone/district so we didn't get much time for anything else but today we got to clean our house really well and study longer, etc. It was more relaxing and one room at a time I'm slowly tackling the bugs and dust and ickies of the house. Elders used to live here up until 4 transfers ago and they didn't do a very good job of taking care of it and the sisters before us didn't try too hard to repair any of the damage so it's slowly coming together. Last week I cleaned out the whole fridge and almost all the cupboards and found lots of spiders, bug nests and cockroaches-eek. Mom remember when we helped you clean everything in the mission apartment when you moved in? It's like that but ten times worse. But it's getting better and I'm getting used to living with bugs :)

Mission life is an adjustment. (I'm not sure if I spelled that right. It's funny how my Spanish isn't really getting any better but my English is slowly getting worse...haha) So much can happen in one week that I don't even know where to start. Thank you for your support and prayers. I've definitely felt them this week as I've been trying to get used to this lifestyle, stop thinking about home/myself, learn Spanish and become a missionary. Sometimes when I've felt blobby and Debbie-Downer I've said a prayer and then we teach a really spiritual lesson and I catch a glimpse of how lucky I am to be here. It's a roller coaster but a blessing.

This month we're studying faith as a mission and I've been trying to better understand the relationship between us having faith that with the Lord's help we can find and baptize people and the personal agency of those individual people. We can have tons of faith but faith doesn't override a person's agency, so how does our faith that we can make a difference in this work create baptisms? I don't know if that made sense, I hope it did. If you all have any insight I would appreciate it.

We have a baptism on Saturday for Candida, a 16 year old girl from a humble indigenous family. She's very quiet but she's starting to open up to us and we can see that she's growing. Her parents can't get baptized because her dad has two senoras and they all live together in the same house. He would have to boot out half of his family if they were to get baptized. But I think her younger siblings will get baptized and we're working hard to get them involved and help them become truly converted.

The people here are really friendly and it's easy to contact people and get into houses but it's hard to get people to act by coming to church, reading the Book of Mormon, etc. We have a lot of work to do!

Oh, before I forget. I guess the postal service or the government or some sort of Big Brother figure doesn't allow any food to be shipped into the country. If anyone sends it, they take all the edible stuffs out of your package and leave a little note saying it's been removed. So if you were thinking about sending candy or any kind of food, please don't waste your money. I guess I won't be eating much American candy for a while... But it's ok because I've already gotten attached to these bland yet strangely addicting fried banana chip things. And they're only $.30, wahoo!
Welp, I'm out of time but I love you guys and I know this church is true! I'm praying for you all :)

Love,

Hermana Dance

Hebrews 11-the first 2 or 3 where it talks about faithfully running the race which is set before you and about how in the moment we don't take joy in our afflictions but later we're grateful for them. Sorry, I don't have my scriptures. Love you!