Kathleen and her companion have been transferred to Guadalajara Spain. There have never been Hermanas there before. Here is her report:
First and foremost: Guadalajara is GREAT! I love it here. Here are the main reasons: 1. The elders here are angels. Normally when you open an area, you don't have a book information from old investigators... Let alone investigators. We got there and the Elders (Nash and Broadbent) found old investigators for us, gave us referrals, invited us to meet members, and are letting us teach the only person they baptized in either of their missions. They are a shining example of what it means to be Christlike. And awesome. 2. The ward is any missionary's dream. The members really like doing missionary work and they particularly like having sisters. Half of the phone calls we made to members this week went like this: "Hi, this is the sister missionaries. Is this Nico--" "AHHHHH!!! It's the sisters! We have sisters now! Oh, Hermanita! I've been praying that we would get sisters for months! When can we have you over? What do you like to eat? What's your name? Can we come on appointments with you? Where are you from?..." 3. Guadalajara is really pretty and we get to walk a lot. I don't have to deal with the metro for at least one transfer. 4. We have some AWESOME investigators already. 5. The bishop is one of the best bishops I have ever worked with. Same thing with the ward mission leader. 6. There are several young women who want to serve missions and have been calling us to ask if they can spend time with us. They go contacting with us sometimes! Now for the stories from the week. Warning, the part following the stars might not be suitable for people with weak stomachs. *** Okay, I wanted to write about this because I officially ate one of the weirdest things in my mission. A rabbit's head... Actually two... This is what happened: We were invited over to an Argentinian family's house, the S's. They are rumored to be the best cooks in the ward, so I was really excited. They had cooked rabbit that day, so I was even more excited. Until they lopped the rabbit's head on my plate. Normally the way rabbits are butchered here is they are skinned and cut in half down the middle. They do not bother to remove the head, and so when you go to the grocery store they have a pile of rabbit corpses all looking straight at you. It's weird. Normally people remove the head and it's not eaten. This family also doesn't like the head and thought they removed it. They did not. I realized I got the head when I realized that the rabbit was looking at me. I could see it's eye and teeth and everything. so I sort of pushed it to the side. Everyone else got normal things like legs. The daughter, who served a mission and understood my misery, saw that I got the head and slyly asked me if I wanted more rabbit (understanding that I probably didn't want the head). She reached in for another piece of meat, and plopped the other side of the head on my plate. She gave me back the plate and suddenly realized my dilemma... The mother was asking me if I didn't like rabbit, and I finally came clean and mentioned that I had gotten the head. They said that was impossible because she had removed it. Only those Spaniards like the head. The family started poking the meat on my plate insisting that it was not the rabbit head. I tried to eat it, but I gave up after it's brain fell out on my plate. They all came to the conclusion that it was weird and decided to make a pizza instead. I don't think I've ever been more grateful! *** Okay, weird story over! You can all read about the rest of my week! It started off a little slow. Since Hermana Clements and I didn't have many leads, we just hit the street and contacted. We had to stop to rest her foot a bit, but we actually got a lot of work done. Guadalajara is a less receptive city compared to Leganés and Barrio 3, so we had to work extra hard. So far we have three investigators, but they are AWESOME. The first is K. He's from Iran, but had to leave many years ago because he was in opposition to the government. Many years ago, he converted to Christianity. We walked into his shop one day to buy a snack and he started up a conversation with us. He wanted to know more about what we believed and so we taught him a little about the Book of Mormon (we actually had one in Farsi that we were going to give Sr back in Leganés, but he never met with us again) and the next day we came back and taught him about the restoration of the church, which appeared to answer a lot of his questions. He's kind of an eccentric guy, and he talks A LOT! I think he really appreciates that we do come and listen to him, though. The second person is Va. She's from Senegal, and we met her on the street one night. We talked a little about the restoration and she asked if she could come to church. She actually seemed really excited to talk to us, and tried to come to General Conference. We also met En, a young man from Equatorial Guinea. He's here studying and is very interested in religion. We met him on Saturday night and he seemed really interested. We invited him to come listen to conference the next day, and (drumroll please)... HE CAME. He also loved it. He was talking about all the apostles and prophets afterwards like he had been a member his whole life. He said he learned a lot and felt like some of them were talking to him. The members were also really friendly to him. We also met with the Elder's recent convert this week. She hadn't had the new member lessons, and they wanted to know if we could be in charge of teaching them to her. Aa is really cool. She had been waiting to get baptized for a year and a half because her mother was very opposed to it and still doesn't know she got baptized a month ago. In the mean time, she graduated from seminary and got her personal progress award. She's a really strong convert. We talked about the Restoration of the church and she really felt the Spirit. We talked about how she will be a good example for her family even though they are resistant right now. I will never forget the first phone conversation we had with her: "Hey, Aa, we're the sisters assigned to your ward, we wanted to get to kn--" "QUE ALEGRIA! We have sisters now!" (She squealed this at the top of her lungs) We love her. I love all of you. Con amor, Hermana Sykes
This is Hermana Clements, and Kathleen.
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