Happy Preparation Day!

hello everybody. feliz dia de preparacion.

this week has been good. we got a new sister in the apartment.. straight out of puerto rico and learning english. its nice to practice spanish a little more. hermana feito is her name.

sonia and jose dropped us. sadly. they got into some anti-mormon literature and after some trying to battle it out with the spirit, jose said, "i will NEVER believe this." its sad that someone can feel the spirit so strongly and then through doubt or fear or lies completely deny it and be seem so miserable. the spirit in their home and eyes had changed very dramatically within a two day period. sad. BUT. we did find amazing people this week. when one door closes another opens. (anyone get that horrible pop song stuck in their heads? "i hope you daaaaaance.") yes i still battle with getting songs of the world out of my head.

anyway, we found la familia torres. sister busath and i do service every week at the church employment office. luis torres came in looking for a job. he had been to our church in corpus years ago with the missionaries and liked it, so he knew we had an employment office and searched us out here in mcallen. we set up an appointment to visit him and his family on saturday. long story short: they are so amazing. it's him, his wife, his wife's father, and they have four children under the age of 5. we went over on sunday morning to help them get ready but they were all ready already, including the wife's father, who has no legs. they were cut off in a work accident almost a year ago and he is in a wheelchair now. the seven of them came to church and loved it and are planning to get baptized, although they are still being scared about accepting a date to prepare for.

we also met a woman named diane. she had an aviary with about 200 birds as of yesterday. she sold them all to the botanical gardens in corpus. we helped her rake all of the bird poop and seeds. at first she was very cold to us and didn't want us to even talk to her. then as we continued to talk we found out she had an aviary and asked her if we could help her clean it and after some time she finally caved and let us come back the next day. when we came back and got to know her we found out that the aviary was really her husbands and that he left her, took all the money, left her with all the birds, and hasn't talked to her since. she said that she has been really trying to work on her relationship with god lately and that the other day when we came over, her initial reaction was to shoo us a way, but that she felt like god had "slapped her on the back of the head
" and said, "LISTEN!" so she let us come back. after sharing a message with her she asked us if she could read the book of mormon and told us that she knows god sent us to her. she is a great lady. she cried and expressed her gratitude for us coming over to help. and she gave us chocolate chip cookies. i love being a missionary so much. i love seeing that god really does love his children and reaches out to them always.. we just have to let him in. and listen to him.

hope everybody is doing well. until next week.
britt