On Monday, I ate the biggest meal of my life. A salad large enough for three people and then a huge plate of vegetables, tilapia [fish] and camaron [shrimp]. I wasn't sure I could eat the camaron because it hadn't been de-shelled so you had to peel it out yourself AND I knew that I didn't like it. All of the legs were still attached so when you peeled it... eeehhhh. I wasn't sure I could handle it. I ate those about as fast as I could. Hermana Cantarero, our host, saw that I was done really fast and asked if I wanted some more. Nope, I'm good, but thank you. And I guess I actually do like camarones... Maybe it's because I've eaten grosser things, like chicken hearts and cow tongue. Camarones are normal.
On Tuesday, we had mission conference with Elder Carlson. It was pretty cool. We learned a whole lot about the Plan of Salvation, exact obedience, and consecrating yourself to the Lord. There is a little difference in opinion about how to consecrate yourself between me and what seems like everybody else. Everybody else seems to think that it involves giving something up. So we had a bunch of missionary sisters tell about how they gave up writing to their elder boyfriends while they were on their missions. Maybe I just can't relate to this seeing as I have never had a boyfriend or even been on a date.
I think "giving something up" has a bad connotation; it doesn't sound very nice. But I think consecration is more about focusing on what you need to do. So you give focus to some things, like reading the scriptures or praying and you take focus away from other things. All this reminded me of a commercial that plays in the Real Deal movie theatre while you are waiting for the movie to start. It's for safety and speed limit stuff on Main Street in Los Alamos. To sum it all up: If you are going super fast, your vision (or your focus) narrows. So you can't see the pedestrian that wants to cross the street or whatever. But when you slow down, your vision circle (your focus) widens and you can see a whole lot more of what is around you. At the same time, you don't want to be driving soooo slow that it takes you half an hour to drive down Main Street. First of all, that would take waay toO long and isn't very efficient. And second of all, everybody behind you would be ticked at how slow you were going.
And so, I guess the moral of the story is, don't go sooo slow that you never get around to serving the Lord, but don't go so fast that you miss a whole bunch of other important things. Some things, like how fluffy the dog was that you just passed and how cool that girl's shirt was, don't need any of your focus. Neither the dog nor the girl with the cool shirt are going to run out in front of you now that you've passed them and so continuing to pay attention to them is just dumb. There are a whole bunch of other things that are far more important.
And that is why I don't think that consecrating yourself to the Lord is about giving stuff up but rather it is focusing on what is really important, as in how you can best serve Him.
On Saturday, I finally got to meet the Brazilian lady in our branch. And then we had this really awesome activity with about a quarter of our branch and a bunch of our investigators. It was our branch mission leader's idea. We had several of the families in the branch invite a less-active family or an investigator over to their house for dinner and then we all met at the chapel afterwards to watch a movie and have un postre [a dessert]. Super awesome! Now the members are stoked about missionary work because they got to help and it wasn't even hard. And the investigators know some of the members in the branch.
One of our investigators is ready for baptism. Unfortunately, her sister isn't quite there yet but we figured we would just give them separate dates. We don't think they would want to get baptized on the same day anyway.
For my pictures this week, I found a psychic reader's place and I just HAD to take a picture:
We got a little distracted in language study... Hermana Newman has a way better sense of balance than I do. Her stack was rock solid on her head but mine was wobbling from side to side.
Hermana Newman and I decided to randomly take a picture in the freeeezing weather outside. It actually wasn't that cold. It was just really humid. So we were still freezing.
Our ward mission leader gave us some bags from Guatemala. They're pretty sweet. Just saying.
And now that I have written an essay of a letter, I bid you all farewell till the next week. :)
Hermana Crotzer
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