Abuleita de Batman

This week was a real good one, duh. It was a little longer than what it's been in the past, I don't know whether I should be grateful or sad, haha.

 

So for the past 6 weeks or so we have been doing service at Salvation Army once a week for about 2 hours. It has always been really fun service, I love it a lot. The lady who is in charge, Cenia, ablsolutly loves us. At the end of every service she gives us a lot of food to tie us over for the week. We try to tell her that we cant take it and she just says "oh shush!  If my baby was out doing work like y'all I would want someone to take care of her too! So I'm just watchin out for y'all." She is awesome. This week we brought the other companionship in the city with us and we threw bread into a van and then unloaded it at the warehouse. Then Cenia asked us if there is any chance we could help later on in the day form 1 to 4 because she the other volunteers wouldn't be able to come, of course we said yes! So we went back and took carts of food to old people's cars to help out. We had a lot of down time so we were able to talk to Cenia a lot about the Church. She is pretty interested in it! I think it is so cool to see how many little ways you can spread the Gospel. Things like service make ALL the difference and really big impacts! I really love doing the service, too!

 

Mexicans are like my favorite people ever. I think I explained it before, but they just have a party for every thing possible. They just love to party. And there is no such thing as a small party.  This week alone we went to 3 parties in the branch to eat and had BBQ at like 2 other parties from just random people. I love it!  The Ormsby family's little son just turned one...so what did they do? They cooked 30 lbs of carne asada and 100 hamburgers and hot dogs. We ate like champs and then they gave us some to take home:)  Then The Morales family's little son Levi just turned 4, so we went to the church for his piñata and ate Nachos and hotdogs there. They gave us cake to take home. THEN the branch had a mother's day activity at the church so we ate REALLY good there and they gave us more to take home. There is this one song that they sing for every festivity called Mananitas. I  don't know why, but it is so awesome. At the mother's day thing they had all the men, us included, go up and sing this song to all the moms. It was SO funny. I was laughing for days. I cant wait to learn the words and sing it at every birthday party from now on. In short, this week was a party and I probably gained weight. #yay!

 

We had a Zone Conference this week, it was my very last one. It was so good. I just love the way that President Heap teaches. He has made a real good impact on my life. Right before the conference he pulled me into his office and we just chatted for a little bit about what I can do to help out Elder Farley and to still be going 100% in my other missionary duties. I was really appreciative of it.  Anyway, at the conference we learned more about planning and goal setting. It was cool because that stuff will still apply to me even when I am home, so I paid real good attention. The spirit taught me some stuff I can do.   For lunch we ate some real good BBQ...surprise, haha. But then after lunch came the real surprise... Sometimes in our mission we do this thing called "departing testimonies" that's where the missionaries who are about to go home give their testimony for the zone. It's pretty hit or miss on weather or not the zone conference will have it. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Well this one they sure did and me and 5 other missionaries had to give our departing testimonies. It was so nuts. I never thought I would be there. I cant believe how time flew. Gah. Anyway, it was really good and there were some powerful testimonies born.

 

I only have 3 more weeks. Holy crap.  I'm gonna keeping working really hard and hopefully I'll be able to help change a few more lives before I'm done! I love y'all so much! Have a good week and be happy and work hard!!

Love,

Elder Porter