"You can be skinny tomorrow, there's always tomorrow"

Hello hello!

¿Cómo estamos? :) I'm not gonna lie, this was a really rough week. I knew weeks like this would come but I still don't think I was quite prepared for them. It wasn't a bad week, there was lots and lots of good, but there was also lots and lots of frustration. I've decided I'm gonna start and end with the good though!

We've got quite a few highlights for you cause overall this was a good week! First, last Wednesday we had trainer-trainee meeting. You know what that means, we got to see everyone else! Yay! This was super fun and we got some pictures for you as well :) we learned a lot and I could feel the Spirit really strongly the whole time. I got called on three times though. Three. Times. Don't they know I didn't like speaking in front of large groups of people?! 😜 it was a super good meeting though. Now the story of getting there...that was a fun one! If you'd like to pull up a map of the MTA train system you can see what I'm explaining for yourself. We took the 5 train to Lexington Ave/59th to transfer to the R to go to the Woodhaven stop in Rego. Well, we get to the R and there's a bunch of people all waiting for the same train. The intercom turns on: "ladies and gentleman, due to a stolen train car, no N, Q, or R trains Queens bound will be running from this station..." Then they continued to give alternate route options. We didn't have time for this. We were going to be early; now we were pushing making it on time. We called our zone leaders and they said for us to just walk to the next station rather than wait for a train. So, three weeks or so into the mission and I've already taken my trainee walking through Manhattan.  She was having just a little bit of fun. We booked it to the other station at 53rd and caught an M train that got us to the meeting five minutes til. It was an adventure for sure (our elders had worse luck, they were a few minutes late). (And we didn't take any pictures in Manhattan, sorry! Not our purpose)

After the meeting we had a dinner appointment we rushed back to. We met at the church where the hermana had pupusas for us! She told us she had the little plates so that we could be "nice and skinny so that you can get married after the mission" haha! We were okay with that until we began to eat. We'd eaten two already and she looks at me, "Hermanita, quieres más?" I said no I was good, but she jumps up to get me more. As a last resort I said, "but I need to be skinny!" (Alluding to her comment from earlier, not any food problems here I promise!! 😜😆) She looks at me and goes, "oh honey, you can be skinny tomorrow, there's always tomorrow." Needless to say, we ate more pupusas...and also did more running haha. Moral of the story: Pupusas and skinniness are required to get married...but you can get skinny tomorrow :)

Another little tidbit, Friday we took the B9 (old faithful as Elder Broadhead deemed it) to a lookup. Then we took it back. Then we waited for it again four hours later to get home. All three times we saw this guy, the same guy at the last bus stop looked at us and goes, "are you followin me?" I said, "are you following us?" And we just laughed. Probably coulda shared a message with him. Darn. But that's okay, next time :)

Right before we saw our little bus friend for the third time we saw this little family walking up the dark sidewalk. One of the little girls came running up towards us and I knew I knew her. I asked her
name and I immediately remembered them. We had found her and her mom a few days before knocking. Now they were here again with the mom's sister and daughter. Turns out they're interested in learning English and want us to come by their house Saturday to teach them English (...and the gospel!! 😄) Hopefully we can see something happen with them, cause the odds of running into the same people a few days later in a different area and different time in this city are almost nonexistent. "Coincidence? I think not!" :)

Last Friday we also went to Chipotle for dinner cause a member gave us these gift card things for free food (yes!). It was good, but didn't help with the being skinny thing our members seem to be concerned with haha! (We had another dinner appointment Thursday where that hermana told us she was giving us water not soda to help us be skinny #arewegettinggordita?) We taught English class Friday as well. There was a part of the lesson on slang...#nohablamosslang
#whereiseldercreagerwhenyouneedhim?

...not really sure what happened Saturday, but Sunday we had a dinner appointment and FHE with the Luna family. When I say family, I mean clan. We had literally half the ward there 😂 it was super fun & all ended well. We sang Hazme Con Migo and let everyone switch off who was the leader, the adults even had a lot of fun with that one! On the way to the FHE we met this super cool lady on the bus and she's here by herself. We were talking with her and I gave her a card after telling her we teach people about Christ and help them increase their faith in him. She perked up a lot when I said that and said as we helped her off the bus that she'd see us Sunday at church...? She also gave us her number. It was crazy. I really really hope we can see her again. That would be awesome.

So we had a few little tender mercies this week that really made it great. It just serves as another testament to me that your situations are what you view them as. This week could be summed up as:
#frustrationsgalore #patienceisavirtue #...thatidonthave or it could be #notexactlywhatweexpected #tendermercies #learningpatience #alwaysgrowing #nogrowthinthecomfortzone. I'll go with the latter. :)

Entonces, this week I will be striving to be more patient --and probably for a long time after that as well :) so I would invite you to look at yourselves and ask, what lack I yet? Then ask God. And when
He tells you, strive to improve upon that thing, that weakness. When we humbly submit to Him and allow Him to show us our weaknesses and areas of improvement, then can He make us strong through Him (2 Corn. 12; Ether 12). I hope you have a great week!!

Muchísimo amor,
Hermana Karra Gourley

Ps. I'm happy right now --happier than I think I've ever been-- but there were some intense moments for me of frustration I didn't think I would ever have. We added it all up last night. Over our four weeks here (we're starting our fifth week today, crazy!!) we have planted 619 seeds. And we have two investigators and two more hopefuls for maybe this week out of all those seeds. That, was frustrating to me. We taught eleven lessons two weeks ago, last week we taught three. That was frustrating to me. We have been doing everything we could possibly do to find people to teach and we have hardly seen anything come of our efforts. "No effort is wasted" says preach my gospel. We believe that, but when you think you've got a plan and you do your best to follow it and the Spirit, then still nothing comes, you think "we should've done something else" or "we wasted that time" or "we could've done this or that and found people who are actually ready", that can be frustrating. If you let it be. We got a nice little lesson in patience this week. I had a really rough time Thursday night in particular and Friday morning God blessed us with another little tender mercy --as He always does-- and we learned we are working to develop some patience and trust here during this time. Some trust in God and His timing, some faith that it will come in His timing, and some patience to be able to wait for that time. I love in PMG where it says, "when you are patient, you hold up under pressure and are able to face adversity calmly and hopefully." So that's the key here for me. The hope part. I didn't get discouraged, but I did get frustrated and I have to not let myself get to that place and remain hopeful. It's hard. No one says missionary work is easy. It's stressful and intense, but it's the best thing.

Pps. We have this thing called "one driver" for our use of Facebook. So we really don't use Facebook, we mostly just use messenger and Facebook is just to find the people. Therefore, when we use Facebook only one companion has it open and the other companion uses it --so we never open up our own Facebook app and use it. (I would use Sister Voss' and she'd use mine). Therefore, you can just add whatever you want to my Facebook thing cause I won't be doing it :)