EAT ALL YOUR DINNER

Everything is great here for me! I hope that you are having fun on your cruise and you are enjoying everything! I am loving everything out here and training! My spanish is doing great and I basically understand everything now and can say anything! I am loving the people
here so much though! They are all so kind and they are so loving! 

Something that was funny this week was that one of our less actives was giving us food and my companion still isn't used to eating a ton of food and she offered him soup which he didn't like so he left about half of it and then said he was sick! I was laughing but she got
pretty offended that he didn't eat it and was like oh you didn't like it and everything! It was funny but we now ave to be really careful that she will even let us in! Basically everything is going great! I will send you more next week! Love you all

EASTER

This week has been great but it has been pretty stressful! I have been working so hard that every night I get back home and I am just exhausted! We have to study so much now with training and the language and everything that I just get so tired! I am really working hard to help my companion and everything so that he can start teaching and speaking more! I love it though because now I don't have enough energy to think about myself! It truly is about other people now!

Our investigators are doing great, Ventura came to church again and she is fulfilling her commitments so we are just trying to get her on a date! She even called one of the members yesterday and had him come over to her house because she made him and his wife tamales! She is doing great we are just working on her finding her own way to church now! She loves the gospel though there are just some minor things! Our area is really progressing though now! When I first got into the area we taught one lesson a week and one less active lesson too. Last week we had 6 lessons and this week we had 4! We are truly being blessed here for our efforts! I love this new ward though! After only being here for a transfer I already feel like it is home! I miss the old area though too because today on our way here to the Logan Square church we rode a road that we would always go on and it just brought back so many amazing memories though!

  

My spanish is doing great though! I can understand basically everything now! I am shocked at how well I understand! Of course there are still some things at time I don't understand but I am doing so much better! I have so much confidence in my spanish and everything right now! And I am getting great at cooking too! I am now husband material! JK I am still a baby! Everyone talks about marriage and I just am laughing at the squirrels and stuff

For Easter yesterday, we just did normal missionary work. We didn’t do anything really special. It just felt like a normal day. Thank you for the package and everything by the way! But we have this less active family who we are working with and last week we started talking to the mom because we were just mainly working with the grandma and the grandkids but we finally got in contact with the mom and we are working so hard with her right now! She has so much confidence in us and she wants to come back to church she just doesn't know how! I love their family so much and they are my goal for this area! That is the thing I want so badly is for them to come to church! I love their family so much! I am so tired but I love it here! I hope you have a great day and good luck in China!

 Elder Martinez and I with Hno Crespo, he is so funny and he is the assistant ward mission leader.

Elder Martinez and I with the Bishop's family.

Elder Martinez and I with the Liconas family

Chicfila

Transfers with my new companion

NEW COMPANION

Sounds like you all had a great week! You are lucky that you got to go to the cubs field and everything!  But I hadn’t heard about Daniel!  That is so crazy!

But Elder Martinez and I aren't staying together. He is going down south to be in the YSA ward there and I am now going to be training! I am way nervous but I am so excited! I am sad to be leaving Elder Martinez though because we were such great friends! This transfer was amazing and we had so much fun, we have become so close that I don't want him to leave! I love this area though so much and it is crazy, I am training the only Spanish speaking missionary that is coming in this transfer.  I don’t know about my new companion, all I know is that he is a new missionary.   I thought for sure we wouldn't get split up though this week because we are working so well and so hard together and we are finding some great investigators! We did tons of service this week so that was great too!

This week’s message is a little short because I haven't felt great the last few days.  It’s from food I ate on Saturday!  But I am really loving being a missionary! I love you and have a great day!

This is what came out of one of our vents here. Soo gross but now it is all good :)

CHICAGO DOG!

Everything here is going great! We found a golden investigator this week! Last week when we were contacting we talked to this lady and it was pretty late at night but anyways we taught her this week  We brought her to a ward activity on Friday that is called Noche de Hermanamiento so basically just a family home evening one day a month and we can bring people to it and she had the best time there. All of the members were so great to her and they were all bringing her around and just making her feel right at home. Then on Sunday she came to all day of conference and so she was there at the church for 6 hours and then right after she wanted us to come over tomorrow (so today)! She is amazing that she was still interested after being there for so long and she said next week she is going to bring more people from her family!!!

But for conference we all just go to the church for all of the sessions and the members go there too.  During the breaks we just went out to eat but on Sunday the members all brought food for everyone! It was great and I watched the whole thing in Spanish! But Jesus never got baptized they are still working with him, it is a crazy situation kind of right now but they are working towards everything! I love everything here so much and thank you for sending me the package by the way! I love it here though and I hope you have a great week!

Tell Annie I can load her message so I will try to respond if I can get it to work but tell her that I love her too! But one other thing, Josh's friend and a bunch of other kids have their baseball gloves out here so can you send me mine?? I love you so much!

But I took a pic with the hat the other day though...  [I think I crocheted Garrett’s hat a bit small - heehee]

THE BIKES ARE BACK

Yeah everything is great here! Today it is in the 60s and yesterday high 50s! It came out of nowhere and it is absolutely amazing! There are no flowers here still though or blossoms or anything. But about all of the places that you gave me to take pictures, I can for sure get the picture with the Chicago sign because I have seen it tons of times but Wrigley Field may be hard because it is really far north in Chicago so it’s pretty far out of the way. And the bean I  can get if we go there one day so I will try!

Everything is going great here though!  The last few days have been really tiring because we were challenged to read the Book of Mormon by General Conference and I am doing it all in Spanish so it has taken me a while so the last few days I have been reading so much of it!  We have started to find some legitinvestigators this week too! The whole time I have been in this area we have been doing so much finding but now we are actually starting to teach more! The thing that is hard about this area is that it takes us 30 plus minutes to bike to church each way. It is so tiring and then on Tuesday I was on exchanges and that is in a big area and we rode 30 miles that day and it was freezing and I had no gloves.  But now that I am getting back into the groove of biking I love it again.  But yesterday I already got my first flat tire of the year...  

Something funny that happened was on Sunday, normally we get a ride with one of the member families in our area to church and so in the morning it was getting kind of late so we called them and something happened so they couldn't make it anymore so we are like Oh crap.. Then we texted the bus and it wasn't coming for a long time so we just got the bikes out and left. When we were walking out the door, Elder Martinez put the helmet on backwards and was like I hate helmets.... I just started laughing because he didn't realize it was the wrong way.. But everything is going great here.  I love it here so much! I hope you have a great day!