Hermana Garner - Now a Texan!: 5-23-16

hello everyone!!!

transfers are this week and I am training! kind of. I am called a "follow-up trainer"! My new companion has been in the mission for 6 weeks, so she still has 6 more weeks of training to do with me. im so excited and I already love her! I will meet her on Wednesday, so pictures to come!

this week has been NUTS. we moved to a new apartment, Hermana Reeder is getting ready to leave and saying her goodbyes, transfers, crazy stuff. actually, I had the worst day of my mission this week. it was super hard and sad. more details on that later! lets get to the good stuff!

So we have visited Leopoldo a lot this week because he isn't working so we have a lot of time in the morning to visit him! But we aren't teaching him, he is definitely teaching us. He has seriously taught me so many things this week! On Monday we were talking about how he doesn't have a ride anywhere because he sold his car so he doesn't know how to get to church. We told him that Oscar offered to take him but he felt bad. He told us that he would walk all the way to church. We were like "No!! It is so far! We will find you a ride!!" and he said "Hermanas, Jesus Christ walked more than 30 miles to be baptized, I can walk to church" holy moly. he is incredible. on the same day, we were talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, etc) and he made this analogy for us. He said that the gospel is like this. We learn to walk when we are really little and when our mom lets us go to walk to our dad, our focus is so centered on getting to him. We walk straight to him and sometimes we fall! but that is okay! we are all learning, but our focus should always be centered on returning back to the presence of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ again. future bishop--I am telling you! Sad news is that he is going to Mexico for a month. He is spontaneous, it kills me sometimes! haha. he called to cancel an appointment because he was in Houston about to go to Mexico to see his family. he explained that while he has this time off work, he might as well go visit his parents that he hasn't seen in over 2 years. we definitely supported him in that! hopefully he comes back before I leave (whenever that is)! we miss him already!

WE MOVED! no more cockroaches, no more flooding, no more mysterious smells, NADA ASI. we are sooo thankful. we are also so close to all of the people we visit so it has saved us miles on our car and it is more convenient. we had fun putting it together this week! pictures to come next week!

so............Thursday. hardest day of the mission so far. this is the day Hermana Reeder has her departing temple trip. so on Wednesday night we come into the apartment complex (we moved that day) to park and finish the day. our apartment lady told us that we have to park outside of the gate (guest parking) because we didn't have an assigned parking spot yet. so we are looking for a guest parking spot and they are all taken so we just pick a random reserved parking spot and park there. Thursday morning at 5am we come outside to leave and our car isn't there. no where in the parking lot. we are freaking out. we start calling everyone and long story short, people had to come pick us up to get her to the temple on time. our car got towed!!!!!! we were supposed to go on exchanges that day but we ended up switching the whole schedule around so we could go places with other hermanas because they had the car. going back and forth to Sunnyside, Houston (40 minutes away) about 4 times that day wasn't the best. the worst part was while all of this was happening I had the worst cold, it was storming all day long and there was a potential tornado. A lot of hard little things added up to a day that was sooooooo stressful and hard. Finally getting the car back after the towing lady complained to me about my license being from Missouri and having your district leader call you and tell you there was a tornado at home so we couldn't even go back home once we had the car. lets just say I said a suuuuuuper long prayer that night and slept like a rock.

my favorite family that moved to Austin, la familia Garcia, surprised me yesterday and came to our congregation for church! I was sitting on the stand after I finished playing the piano and they walk in and my jaw just dropped and they were all smiling huge. it was the best feeling ever. they will be here until the end of June! YAY! complicated things happened with their move so they are here for a bit. I couldn't be happier!

the story that hit me the most this week happened on Saturday night. we went to a choir concert of one of the youth in the branch. she has a very interesting family, part-members/less-actives/non-members so we thought it would be a really good opportunity for us. So we went early to save seats with Hermana Garcia and her mom (my abuelita (cute little grandma)). We were sitting there while people were coming in and all of a sudden this couple comes and sits down in the seats we were saving. The couple at the end told them they were saved but apparently they didn't care. They sat down and Hermana Reeder said very nicely "Hi maam, we are saving these seats, sorry!" and she said "I really don't care! We are sitting here!" sooooo rude. we told Hermana Garcia and she got up (using her best English) and told her to get up because we got here early to save the seats and how she isn't being very mature about it. She still followed with "I don't care what you think blah blah blah"! so everyone sat down and it was about to start. the lady stood up, went over to Hermana Garcia and said "I am so sorry. My daughter committed suicide last week. I am still dealing with it and it has been really hard for me" and they hugged and cried with each other for about 3 minutes straight. after we all sat down, we all felt super bad for judging her and her rudeness. we all felt sooo guilty. there weren't really any words. Hermana Reeder and I then had the opportunity to sit with her for the concert and teach her a little bit about the plan of Salvation. There were some songs that she just cried and cried and held our hand. I learned a powerful lesson that day. don't judge people you don't know. we have NO idea what they are going through and what their circumstances are. we have to strive to love everyone because we are all sons and daughters of the same God. We are all brothers and sisters and a family loves each other!

I have learned a lot of things this week and I am excited for this new transfer, a new chapter. I love change, especially in the mission. Wish my new trainee and I good luck this week! prayers would be helpful as well :) im a little nervous. LOVE YOU ALL!

Hermana Garner