The Best 18 Months!!: Going into week 4.....

Hola mi familia!!!

I hope you are all doing well! I love and miss you all and pray for you all the time!
So first Mom, I can't send a box of stuff home. For some reason we can receive packages but we can't send them. Also thanks for sharing your journal entry with me! That was so beautiful! I would be so lucky to have a dream like that!
Also THANK YOU so much for the package! I loved it and so did my companion! :)
Goodness, I can't believe I'm at the halfway mark of my stay here!!! My companion and I were talking about how the days are so long but then at the end of the day we're like "Where did the time go???"
We also figured out that for the most part we get 7 hours of sleep and have 17 hour days. On a good day we get 8 hours of sleep and have 16 hour days. There is totally no way I would be able to do this with out the help of Heavenly Father! I thank Him each and every day for the help He gives me.
So let me just tell you a little bit about this week. So one of our Elders, Elder Johansen, came up with this insane scenario and asked everyone in our district about it. Okay, so his scenario is that the CCM is being attacked by zombies\robots...Haha! How he came up with that I have no idea. His question for us was that if we only had enough weapons for ourselves and one other person who in the district would we pick to help us defeat the zombies\robots. Now we were told to pick someone that we trusted to have our backs so we could make it out alive. Well Elder Johansen ended up picking me! It came down to Elder Wasden and me and he ended up choosing me! Haha! He told Hermana Bown she probably wouldn't even be able to hold the weapon. LOL! I was flattered that he trusted me and chose me over all of the Elders.
Okay, another surprise that happened this week was that I saw Kathleen Billings, from up at school here! I had thought she wasn't going to get here until my last two weeks but then I was at breakfast and I saw her! It was so great to see a familiar face ! She saw me from across the comedor and yelled out loud "Tara!" Haha! So now several Elders and Hermanas know my first name but oh well! I don't ever really see her because we don't have the same schedule but hopefully I'll be able to get a picture with her before I leave.
One of the districts in our Zone that we always played volleyball with left this week so that was sad but we'll be getting a new group of missionaries this Wednesday. Speaking of volleyball...we were playing with the new district the other day and my team was losing. Now Hermana Bown and I aren't the best players but we do pretty well sometimes and I'm good at serving. Anyways, one Elder on the other team said, "Just send the ball to the Hermanas," basically implying that we suck. Lol. Well right as he said that the ball came my way and I hit the ball and scored a point! Haha! You should have seen their faces. It was awesome. My team gave me hi-fives and all the elders were telling the other team that it wasn't cool to call out the hermanas like that. They were pretty much being big brothers.
One of the talks we watched this past week was Elder Bednar's talk called Becoming a Preach my Gospel Missionary (I also read this one at home). I absolutely loved it! A lot of things he said really touched me and one of them was when he said, "You can do this." He then bore his testimony that he knew that all of us are capable of fulfilling and completing our missions. Sometimes I get the feeling that I am never going to learn this language because it is so difficult for me and that I am inadequate. However, when I heard Elder Bednar say that, right at that moment I pictured myself in white. Missionaries are always told to picture their investigators in white but at that moment I pictured myself in the temple dressed in white. I took it as a sign of faith and hope that I can do this! It also reminded me of a beautiful quote by Gordon B. Hinckley's wife. I don't remember it word for word but the main point of the quote was about how she wanted to arrive at the gates of Heaven. She said she didn't want to show up in a brand new car; she wanted to show up in an old Volkswagen; she didn't want to show up with manicured nails; she wanted to show up with dirt under her nails from helping someone plant a garden, and so on. She wanted Heavenly Father to know that she really worked on earth and that she really lived. Well, I want Heavenly Father to know that I am really giving this my all. That I am putting my whole heart into this. I want Him to know that I am going to do my best to study and prepare for my investigators. I want Him to know that I am dong my best to live as a disciple of Christ and be an example to others.
Gosh, I am just so happy to be here and I feel honored that I get to have this experience!
I still have a long way to go though on learning Spanish. Seriously, it's so confusing for me. Why are there so many verb conjugations?? Haha!!
I love you all and remember to pray ALL the time! Also when you can pray on your knees.

Till next time!

Love,

Hermana Soliz