Sister Anna Meredith: Cinco de Mayo!

Cinco de Mayo Fiesta! 🎉

Feliz cinco de mayo! You probably thought that wouldn't be that big of a deal for missionaries, but it was a huge blessing this week. Even though it isn't actually Mexican Indendence Day, it is a real holiday that lots of people have lots of really big parties for. On Saturday there was a huge Cinco de mayo festival just a couple blocks down from our house, so we were able to spend most of the day contacting there and talking to all the hispanic people we could find. That was my first time officially contacting on my mission, but it went surprisingly well, and by the end of the day I was pretty comfortable approaching people and talking to them in Spanish. I've found that when they see you're trying so hard to speak Spanish and understand them, people have a lot of patience with us. We've been trying to find new creative ways to find new people to teach, and this helped us find a lot families and people we're really excited about getting to go visit this week.

Transfers were this past week and Hermana Hughes got moved to Rochester, so my new companion is Hermana Shepherd. She's from Colorado, and this is her fourth transfer in the field, which means she has only been out of training for one transfer herself. Neither of us know exactly what we're doing, but we're slowly improving every day. Leading out an area halfway through training, speaking a foreign language is kind of stressful, and I was really overwhelmed and freaking out for the first few days, and I'm still freaking out just a little bit, but this is really helping me learn to rely on the Lord, because there is absolutely no way I can do it by myself even if I wanted to. We have already seen a lot of miracles, and have a lot of new investigators. And sometimes an ice cream break can solve a world of problems.

The big breakthrough this week is I finally can talk to people on the phone in spanish. Fun fact, talking on the phone, to anyone besides family and close friends, is one of my least favorite tasks in the whole world. Last transfer I managed to always get out of it, but now since I'm the one who knows people in this area, I have no more excuses. I don't always understand everything, but I get the general message of what they're saying and they get the general message of what I'm saying, and the gift of tongues is real.

We got a lot of new investigators this week, but didn't see a lot of progress in any others areas. We're getting the 611 potential investigators in our area book a little bit better organized and we've got lots of doors we're excited to go knock this week. It's amazing how quickly you get over the embarassment and awkwardness of knocking on a strangers door and trying to talk to them about religion when it's basically all you do most of the time.

I hope you all know how much God loves you. It's a lot, I promise, more than we can imagine and I know he feels that love for each of his children. Thank you for all the love and support! Have a great week!