I'm in Tennessee!! yea. 7/8

Hello everyone!

  Thank you so much for the letters that you sent me this last week. I loved all the messages nand the updates. I will try to answer all of your questions as best as I can. Let me just start of by saying good job on the Missionary work. I am just starting to gain a strong testimony on the power of membership in missionary work. they are so important.

  So I am in the Madison zone in the White House ward. It is so crazy to me because our area spans over 45 minutes each way. there is just not many wards or people for the wards here. We are trying though. We are trying to get a ward set up in Springfield which reminds me of downtown Turlock a bit. Its sketchy but there are so many people here ready to hear the gospel. I am actually in a trio. I know right!?! My trainer is Hermana Hendrickson who has been out for 7 months now and the other is Hermana Reed who has been out for 6 weeks. They are both amazing and I absolutely love being in a trio. For one thing we can go places and talk to people we normally can't. Plus its nice when I am not exactly sure what I am doing. Its a little hard though because I replaced a Sister so everyone always tells me how much they miss her.  This first week has been kind of hard with investigators, got my first door slamed in my face yesterday, but its a learning proccess. We have a baptism on Friday for a crazy old man named Donald and we are all really excited about that! I can't take credit for it though, they committed him before I came. But you can just see the changes that the gospel has been making in his life. His relationship with his wife is shaky because they dont believe in devorce, but they have just so much kinder to each other. It is so great to see the changes in people's lifes.  

  Tennessee is absolutely beautiful! So green expecially in my area. Yes it has been raining pretty hard. The bugs are crazy as well. 10 bites so far and counting! The very first full day in the field the took me to a festival. Apperantely our zone are one of the pilot zones for these festivals where we set up a both and raffel of a picture of Jesus. Thats how we get referals. It was so crazy. I really had to jump in full fledged. I was so nervous! It was really fun though and we have been getting a lot of success. I even had my first real hispanic meal on Saturday (I swear I almost died!!!) they serve up so much and we have to eat it all. It was weird because it was at the senior missionary couples home and 3 sets of elders and we were all there. the elders kept silently cheering me on. It was so good but so terrible at the same time.

  So the fourth of July, I am so excited to hear what you all did. That is so much fun. it was raining really hard here and we had to be in at 7. So we studied until 12, and then we went out to try and contact referrals, but nobody was home. We all got so wet. Then we came home and ate dinner at home because our appointment fell through. It was a nice evening though because we caught FIREFLIES!! Like real ones! And then we got to watch 17 mirecules. It ended up being really fun.

  Last of all my first day of church was great. I guess I never told you guys, but I am a missionary for the english ward and a spanish branch. Its a little difficult when I teach because We switch off from english and spanish and I havn't learn asmuch of the language, but the ward is so great. That also means we are at church for 6 hours each day, and then we have devotionals for an hour each sunday as well. It is so great. This last sunday we had 83 people at our devotional and 20 of them were investigators!! Cool right? Biggest in the whole mission! also on the way home one of our favorite ward members, Brother Kinney, or as we call him Captin Kinney, drove us home. He is like a grandpa to us all. he drove us home in his convertabl: we blasted christian music and we tossed Book of Mormons into people's cars. yep, the life of a Tennessee missionary. Nobody thinks twice about it. Its such a culture shock. I didnt say this before but at the SCHOOL festival we went to, there were at least 20 booths just from diffrent churches. Crazy!!

   I am loving it a lot here. It is trying my faith a lot, everyone believes in Jesus Christ and everyone thinks their church is the true church, but I know that the Lord is with me. That as long as we do all that we can, "he wont let us fail".  I have to hold on to that. It is so great. I love you all so much. good luck with everything going on at home! Im glad Bee's birthday party went well. I was thinking about her so much yesterday and telling everyone that it was her birthday. I love you all!! Have a great week and I will talk to you all next week!

 

Hermana Cruz