July 29, 2013

oh hello family!

thank you for the letters and such. i love being loved, so thank you for allowing me to feel loved. i can still hear milo and logan's voices in my head. i wonder how different they sound now. they sure seem cute in the letters and in my head :) i hope they dont forget me!

yes i can buy mexican food, there is just not as many options, which i am ok with anyway. i dont cook a whole lot. i just do simple fast meals. oh. speaking of such things. i told my mission president about you, bob. he asked me to ask you if there was any way you could help out with easy recipes for missionaries. i was in a missionary leadership meeting the other day and the elders voiced that they have a really hard time knowing what to buy and how to cook and all that stuff. they just need simple quick stuff. if there is any way you can help out, i am positive they would appreciate it.

 
bum, i thought about you all week. i am so sad for you. it just sounds so scary and owie. how can you lay down and heal when you are hurting on more than one side?? but i am glad you are doing better.

oh yeah! transfer calls- didnt get one. we are all 3 staying for another transfer! well at least for now. i dont know when s herrick gets her visa, but i hope it comes soon. i worry about her. i dont know how much longer she can keep up this whole patiently waiting thing. but she sure is a wonderful contribution to the companionship. i love her. s mayle is... possibly happy about the news of no news. she didnt really let us know if she was relieved or disappointed. but. we are happy :) she is coming out of her shell a little now; she is silly and fun and even giggly at times! it is great! thank you for the prayers. i know they reached us. things are going a lot better for us and we have a lot more unity. we still need to work on it, but there has been a lot of improvement.

are you ready to hear about our wicked sweet week?? it sure was a good one! we got to do some service on a small farm this week. this sweet brazilian family allows us to come over and help and take home milk and eggs and stuff :) this week when we got there, they told us the wonderful news that their can had just given birth an hour earlier!! oh it was cute. we got to go see the little calf and the mom. the calf was still a little wet, and sooo cute!! we were able to see the calf stand up and try to play a little, nurse and cuddle. oh it was such a joyous time. you would have loved it, bob. the mom is great. i guess she has investigated before and she almost got baptized, but i think she is not wanting to give up coffee.. so she was pretty hesitant of us at first (4 or 5 weeks ago) but now she is so happy to see us! when we went over this last week, she wanted to sit down right away and talk about what she read in the book of mormon! she has been sharing what she reads with her family and she told us that she wants them to start sitting in on the lessons! wowie!!!!! she keeps telling us that she is not giong to join and all that, but my goodness! her heart is changing already! she is coming up with her own ideas for commitments. she is just a joy.

ron is doing well. we had another lesson with him this week. i have missed him a couple times due to exchanges and what not, so this was the first time i was able to talk to him in person while he was sober. wow! the light in his eyes was amazing. there was also a lot of sadness in his eyes, but now there is also hope. he used to be so hopeless, it was heart breaking. at the end of the lesson, i shared 3 nephi 9:14 with him. with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face he said "thats beautiful. that makes me feel so happy!" then s herrick and i invited him to be baptized, to which he happily said yes :) we are planning for october 12 :) we went away from the lesson practically off the ground! we were all just so happy :) later this week, we had a lesson with a man named anthony. he was pretty happy to see us and was all excited about mormon.org and the book of mormon. he is also planning on being baptized on october 12 :)

after we talked with anthony, we were walking to our car when we saw a woman standing outside her car. we waved and said hi, and she was just so... perplexed by us. she kept asking us "where did you just come from?... you are so cute! where were you?" hahaha it was so funny. it seemed like she just wanted so badly to talk to us, but had nothing to say, so she just kept asking the same questions. it was great! but we did talk to her, all 4 of us were laughing and just having so much fun. she gave us her number and we gave her ours. we are so excited to see her again! i hope i didnt make her sound crazy. she actually seems totally sane- she was just hilarious!

then, 15 minutes later, we were walking down the road when a man waved us down and ran across the street to say hi to us. he told us that he used to be a member and that he wants to come back! hahaha wow! how often does that happen? so good. he had some mental disabilities, so i dont know if he really is a member or anything like that, but hey, who knows what will happen next!

on saturday, we got to help out with a... WEDDING!! a member of our ward along with a recent convert of the ward got married :) they asked us to help out with stuff. bob, i got to help cater the wedding! just like you!! it wasnt anything fancy; they had us make over 200 tuna and egg salad sandwiches and we helped decorate the cultural hall and that sort of stuff. it was great though. that couple is amazing. they pretty much did all of it! they got all the decorations ready to go, she had her friend do her hair, she was in the kitchen with us getting food and all that ready to go, they had 3 cameras they assigned to me, an elder and someone else to take pictures the whole time. it was amazing! and so cute!

i know my emails are very jumbled and all that. i hope you can still understand them. and i know i make plenty of spelling errors and all that, i just dont have time to fix them or anything.

but as you can see, this week has been wonderful. and next year, i will tell you the rest of my mission, because there is just not enough time on a pday or emotion in a keyboard for me to tell you how much i am being blessed, the miracles i am seeing, the love i have for my mission, the desire i have for these people, the happiness the gospel brings to me and the reality of heavenly father and jesus christ. i love all of it so much! even the trials! i know they are difficult, but this is what i chose. every time something challenging comes up i just tell myself- this is what i chose. i chose to serve a mission. i chose everything that comes with it. as i think about that and as i study the plan of salvation, i realize that i will be able to tell myself the same thing for the rest of my life, because i used to live with god! i knew about his plan and i knew that earth life was going to be challenging and i knew i was going to have to walk by faith. i chose to follow christ and i chose to go with the lord's plan. i chose earth life. all that it brings, i chose it.

well to finish off this email, you can see that i have been having a great time and that i love you all very much! keep being a wonderful family! i love you all lots and lots!! i am excited to get that box in the mail! thank you so much!!! i love you!

love, sister wanay buxton :)