March 28, 2016

We had another pretty interesting week here in Ixtapaluca. It was Semana Santa and the Catholics do a bunch of crazy things during the week. On Friday we were not allowed to leave the house after the food. We were allowed to work in the morning until 2:00. We saw a huge group of people standing outside one of the catholic churches and they had a bunch of straw shavings in the road and a bunch of palm leaves and we walked past and one of the people standing by asked us what we did during the week to celebrate the death of Jesus. We just explained how we don't focus on his death but more of the resurrection. We then returned to the house after the food and watched some church movies and ordered pizza... it never showed up though so we ended up having to make some soup.
On Wednesday we did divisions with the zone leaders. I stayed in our area and my companion went to the area of the zone leaders. It was a pretty neat experience. We found a guy in my area that speaks English and he wanted us to talk to teach him in English but it is almost impossible for us to teach gospel topics in English. I tried saying a pray in English a couple months ago and it was soooo hard! I will probably be saying prayers in Spanish the rest of my life hahah! We were able to encounter two new investigators that day.
On Saturday we thought it would be a pretty hard day to find people to teach but we were surprised how much success we actually had. It was the first time ever in my mission that our plans before the food all worked out. Usually somebody isn't home or something like that but we were able to teach everyone we had plans for. We also had 9 lessons throughout the day. We usually get like 3 or 4 per day.
Sunday we were able to get 3 of our investigators and 7 inactive members to come. It was another amazing week to see all the hard work pay off. Hope everyone had a great week!
Love Elder Ivie