We had lunch with a member on Tuesday because she wasn't available for dinner. One part of the meal was pesto sauce, put on top of chicken and stuff. Apparently pesto includes cashews. My companion is allergic to those. So we were sitting there, eating our food and the member kept talking and talking and talking. I noticed Hna Hartley clearing her throat a lot and chugging water and fidgeting in her chair, so I knew that something was up. Hna Hartley finally interrupted with, "Well thank oyu so much for the food! Sorry to leave so soon, but we have a lesson to go to." We didn't even share a spiritual thought or anything. Then we drove home and then to the market in search of Benadryl to make her throat stop closing. Then we rested at home for about an hour while both of us learned how to breathe properly again. We called in to explain what happened and request and EpiPen to be sent sometime (because some people don't know what is good for them and don't have one). And then we ate ice cream and went back to being missionaries.
Side note: on Monday, we received an email from the mission president's wife mentioning that apartment inspections are coming up, so we should prepare for those by having district cleaning parties (yay). So we had a fun day of going to three different elder's apartments and helping them clean. The first one was awkward because for some reason we have had a strained relationship with the Elders. It might be because we are young adults who have many restrictions placed on them, banning practically all touch, being alone together, and anything that might resemble flirting. And some people are just awkward.
So anyway, by the time we got to the second apartment, we finally somehow broke the ice with them and we all might be kind of friends now. So that was good. We refused to let them come clean our apartment, because we still didn't want them to come in. They were mostly just curious to see what it looked like inside (about the same as theirs, but cleaner). It was definitely an adventure-filled day.
The only particularly interesting part about Thursday was that we went to Walgreens and picked up an EpiPen.Then I had to spend a while convincing my companion that it was probably a good idea to keep one in her bag. That was a lot harder than it should have been.
Although we didn't allow the elders to come help us clean, they were nice enough to buy us a bug bomb. You get rid of opened food and cover your dishes with towels, then you open the canister and smoke comes out, so you lock the doors and leave for the day. You air out your house when you get home at night. A few days later, you find dead cockroaches everywhere. That was our Friday activity.
We have had so many blessings and miracles this week, we can't even believe it. We keep getting texts or calls with people wanting us to go teach their friends. We spent Saturday putting hearts on people's doors, but then all our lessons canceled for the night, so we had no idea what to do. We finally decided to just go knock, even though we were afraid of interrupting romantic evenings for Valentine's day. We had a goal of inviting 10 people to church, then giving up and going to get ice cream. We ended up with a great lesson, 10 invitations to church, and discovering a less active member from Sudan. So we went to Sonic for ice cream. We sat outside and met another less active member who had recently moved into the area. And we were amazed.
Sitting in church on Sunday, we were a bit disappointed because none of the people we usually teach had made it to church. After sacrament meeting, we found out that someone had just moved into the ward, and had brought her boyfriend to check it out for the first time. So we had someone to teach! Milagros! And later we had a lesson with someone who opened the door as we had almost walked out of earshot, but she told us to come in. And there is definitely a lot of potential there. For the past few days, we have just been asking ourselves what we started doing right to deserve this amount of sudden success.
The thing about success is that it requires a lot of responsibility. I feel like my prayers have become more sincere because these miracles are obviously not my own doing. On our own, we can't teach with much power or find people who are prepared to listen or know the right way to respond in difficult situations. The word "grace" means divine help, an enabling power. That is what this work is all about. We do more and become more than we ever could on our own. And sometimes you just sit in your car for a second and say "I have no idea what just happened in there. Dios nos ama. God loves us."
Have a great week!
Hermana Pace