Sister Huber Takes Houston: June 17th, 2013

I feel like every week when I email I don't even know what to say cause so much happens in a week!

first off. people here are crazy. like either they are super nice, like super SUPER nice. or absolutely crazy hahaha. there is no in between. hahaha so its actually really fun to go tracting. never thought I would say that. But I love it. cause you never know what is gonna happen. and each time without fail, we meet a crazy person and it is the funniest thing ever. so saturday we were tracting and we were in this neighborhood and a mom and her son were sitting outside so we go up to talk to them and the lady goes "what are you soliciting? there is no soliciting in this neighborhood. I will call the cops." and sister lockhart goes oh we aren't selling anything. we are missionaries from the church of jesus christ of latter day saints. and the lady goes "that's soliciting religion. I will be calling the cops on you" so then we were just like okay have a nice day! and kept walking hahaha. so then we were like 2 houses down, talking to a man on his porch. and a cop car DRIVES BY hahahahaha. luckily we were hidden behind these brick pillar things but he was slowly driving up and down the road hahahaha. and we have these little white card things that we are supposed to carry with us at all times, just saying that we are legit missionaries I guess and we are allowed to do what we are doing. and neither of us had ours so we were freaking out hahaha. anyways it was pretty funny. and the guy that we were talking to actually had like an hour conversation with us and invited us to come back and teach him and his family so that is good news!

we actually had a really successful week. We got like 4 new investigators. which is kinda a touchy subject hahaha only because when we tract, i swear like half the people dont speak english and it gets really frustrating. so their kids will have to come and translate for us. and so 3 of those investigators we have to give to the hermanas cause we cant teach them! but its still exciting because we are all in this work together!! but me and sister lockhart are determined to learn espanol. so when we are in the car going places we take out our spanish pamphlets or spanish articles of faith and are teaching ourselves hahaha. which is kinda entertaining. we are just really jealous that we cant speak spanish :( but I think that its a blessing because I feel like I struggle with my own laguage half the time hahaha. so I think I need to work on correct english first.

we taught --- this week. Who I feel veryyyy strongly about. she has already read the book of mormon and watches videos about the restoration and downloads all of the mormon messages and stuff like that. she loves what we teach her, and says that all of her beliefs line up with ours. So I think that we are really progressing with her!! we have another appointment with her on thursday. we have about 3 really strong progressing investigators that I am excited about!

Elder Golden from the seventy came to our mission this week and talked to all of us missionaries. it was really cool and I think for me it was very much needed to kinda push me to be an even better missionary! I realized all of the things that I want to be better at, and am making goals to hopefully get me to the point where the lord wants me to be! it was good motivation and pushed us all to work even harder than we were before!

We also got three new referrals from the bishop yesterday which we are very excited about! we are making plans to go and see them this week. We also do a lot of work with less actives and getting them back into the church. and we are teaching 2 people who were excommunicated. so we kinda have a little bit of everything around here!

each week we are supposed to have a certain amout of service hours, and we waited til saturday to actually do them. im not sure why. but anyways we helped --- (the guy who got baptized last week) and his wife weed their yard and it was crazy like their ENTIRE yard was weeds. it was also 105 degrees and 95% humidity outside hahaha so it was kinda intense! and we are kinda retarded and wore flip flops over there? we didnt exactly know that we were going to be doing yard work. haha so we just got going and after a few minutes I felt my foot sting way bad so I look down and there are like a million red ants on it. I have no idea where they came from but I guess you never know where the heck the bugs come from here. so it took forever to get them all off and my whole foot was covered in bites and it was like on fire haha. and it made both of my feet and my hands and my face swollen and his wife said that I was having an allergic reaction to them so it was kinda scary but what do ya do!! hahaha i just kept working and whenever i felt a bug on me i just didnt even care hahaha. after being here for a while you just dont even care anymore. so at least Im not afraid of bugs now! but oh my gosh the dogs here hahaha. people LOVE their dogs. like no one just has one dog. they all think that they need 5 dogs each. so every single house we go to, they have a million dogs barking and freaking out and it scares the heck out of me. a tiny little puppy will be running towards us and I freak out haha I dont even know why! a few times we have gone up to houses and they will have a beware of dog sign and I literally freak out. sometimes I just turn around and we dont even go up to the house hahaha. I dont know what has gotten into me.

we are going on exchanges on wednesday, and I am going with a sister who flew out with me so we are both still pretty new! her name is sister king. and I guess her companion hates tracting and refuses to tract. so they have 0 investigators, and she says that she doesnt feel like a real missionary cause she hasnt taught a lesson yet. soooo I told her that we can go tracting all day and hopefully find them some new investigators! haha so I am excited for that. but the problem is neither of us are allowed to drive hahaha. so the guy from the mission office called today and asked if I could go in tomorrow to take the driving test so that I can start driving! sooo we will see how this goes!

so to end this letter I am going to be a little preachy haha. the true missionary in me is coming out! but I cant tell you how important the book of mormon is. I regret not being as good with reading it everyday before I came on my mission. but once I got to the mtc and we got in the routine of studying it for an hour each morning, I really realized the importance of it. it is such a simple thing that we are asked to do and I know it gets hard at times to sit down and read it each day. BUT it is soooo worth it! Some mornings after an hour of study I am sad cause I wish I had more time to read it! it really does make your day a million times better! and it makes such a huge difference in your life and makes you want to be better each day. The Lord realizes the effort you put into it, and he blesses you more than you will ever know! so dont be flakey about it like I was, and read it EVERY SINGLE DAY! no matter how long you do it for. you will notice the change it makes in your life!

i love you all so much!!

sister huber