Well, I am definitely in the best area in the mission! Its beautiful, going anywhere is an adventure, the members are amazing and my companion is awesome! Best friends for life! Watson and Sherlock!
I can only keep talking about how much I love the members here, and how fun it is to live in the building where everybody is a member. There are nights when the bishop will call us through the window to come eat hot dogs, or somebody will knock on our door with treats. We had ward counsel on the terrace roof of our apartment building yesterday. They split the ward two months ago to help us prepare to send in our papers to be a stake this month(woooo!!!) so while we are looking for land to build a chapel, we are meeting in a high school. But we, as a district of branches are so close to being a stake, and its a real priviledge to get to be a stake maker missionary! (President only puts the best of the best in the districts, clearly :)-look how awesome we are!)
Our best experiences have been with investigators have been on the spot, unplanned opportunities, people responding to church invitations, people asking us what church we are from and listening to our message of who we are, its been great. We had 7 investigators at church yesterday which was absolutely awesome, and out of those we knew only half! Getting to church on Sunday, usually tired and sweaty from walking all over the city trying to pick up investigators and most of them telling you they just want to sleep, but arriving in sacrament meeting to the great surprise of investigators? Well, its the best!
Because we teach so many different people every day, some who come and go, I will probably just tell you about the people I meet as we baptize them, its literally impossible to keep track of everybody. But just know that we are meeting some amazing people and having neat experiences!
This last saturday we decided to go to a neighborhood that was further than the one we live in, about an hour walk from where we live, to visit a less active and her references. I attached a picture of her street. Yes, that is a street, if that tells you much about some of the streets we walk. There are normal, paved, painted streets, but becos are the dirt roads that people have walked and created to build houses. Adventure time! There are so many moments I just stop and say look! Do you realize where we are? (my companion being american and just as amazed as I) which I feel like is something important to do in normal life. Just take a moment and really enjoy where you are, because you are never going to be at this point in your life again. I can only testify with all my heart of the power of goals, and always being in a mindset to accomplish and not to pass by life.
The roads here might be different, but we are all walking the same path of life, and we know which one is the straight and narrow and which has the steps that will lead us back to our God.
Sister Holmes