Texas Te Amo

Hello my dear friends,  A few stories:    1. Tuesday night, 1:15 a.m. hermana Casper and I sleeping soundly, and suddenly our phone rang. I do super annoying things in my sleep sometimes, and naturally I, 3/4 of the way asleep, grabbed the phone, didn't look at who was calling, answered it, and did nothing else. By this point, hermana Casper was awake and cognitively  functional enough to look at the name that was calling and start talking. It was our old friend Salvador, who loves us and the church at ton, but mostly because he likes saying 10+ minute long very excessive and eloquent prayers to us over the phone. He was calling us and just goes "hola hermanas puedo decir una oracion, muy rapio..." and hna. Casper was like SALVADOR NO WE WERE ASLEEP IM SORRY THIS IS NOT A GOOD TIME yes ok fine call us later it is 1 am ok bye Salvador.  It was so funny because I'm pretty sure I just grabbed the phone, answered it, and went back to sleep. 2. We had din...

Buenos dias!!!!! Very nice weather over here in Garland. The last few days have been like 70 and sunny and prime bike weather.  THINGS PEOPLE SAID  - "que Hermosa, la juventud..." ("how beautiful, youth...")(our favorite abuelita from El Salvador when we handed her a kind of ghetto photo of ourselves we printed off)  -"ANDALE, PUES" SO many people here say this but we haven't really noticed until this week. It's super funny because I have always thought that "andale" just means "get going" but apparently it also means like "goodbye/take care" I am pretty sure? But it was very funny because it was always older Mexican dudes that would always say it as we were hanging up and so to me I kept thinking they were saying "go away" but in a super friendly tone of voice. So now we always say on the it was when we hang up the phone with anyone - ok there is a very sweet solita abuelita we have been ...

we got a text from someone the other day that simply said  hola tiene feibo fei bo fayboo facebook   o it was so funny we laughed for several minutes TRANSFERS hey~great~ news!!!  me n casper are chillin here in garland for another 6 weeks wachouttttt  Neither of us are getting  transferred I'm so happy I think she is secretly sad to be stuck with me also she has been in Garland since may but I am very happy because we are tight, plus, this area is so sweet  FOOD - we ate with this way funny family named the ascencio's this week. basically, this is what happened: I ate an entire serrano pepper, their abuelita repeatedly ran into the kitchen to show me a variety of different tortilleras, and hna casper was repeatedly ROASTED by the entire fam the whole time. it was super chill, except for the fact that i was slightly sweating the entire time, because i ate a whole serrano pepper!!!  but hey that spice tolerance ...

Groovy Artsy Really yummy Central and South American food Love  Also lots of chihuahuas and pitbulls No soy mentirosa De nada poetry loving Garland. It's so so trippy that my first transfer is almost over!! Been a resident of Texas for more than a month ?!?! if you are a human/ are interesting in making your life better please check out the recordings and/or transcripts of the recent General Conference from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!! It instilled in me a large dose of: perspective, hype, desire to improve, clarity, and answers. Here are my favorite talks, if you want to check out some particularly stellar speeches:  Saturday morning- Ronald A. Rasband, David A. Bednar.  Saturday Afternoon- D. Todd Christoffersen, Gerrit W. Gong (wow, this one was really special) Women's Session- President Russell M. Nelson Sunday Morning- Jeffrey R. Holland Sunday Afternoon- basically every single talk was influential to me. Robert...

I am currently writing from the bus! Buses are my second favorite mode of transit so this is fun for me. We are headed to Dallas to go ice skating with our sister training leaders  ‍ context for my subject line: we snagged a dinner with the elders up in Wylie 2 days ago with a cool older couple! We were waiting for the food to finish cooking so we asked the sister if we could see her garden. It was sweet!!! A fig tree, a huge patch of sweet potatoes, watermelon, and loads of peppers. She loaded us up with armfuls of peppers (mm SCORE) and we headed inside. As we were heading to go sit down she just casually mentioned: "oh, and you will probably have chiggers" I just smiled politely and laughed slightly because I had no idea what that meant. I looked at my companion with a slightly scared look on my face and she just calmly said "chiggers are tiny microscopic bugs that hide in tall grass and burrow into your legs, suck your blood, and lay eggs under your skin...

hola mis amigos!! chugging  along nicely! I like it here. It has been suuuper killer weather lately. cloudy, sometimes rainy, but super fresca and breezy.  Over half way done with my first transfer, but please don't bring it up, it makes me sad inside bc it feels like I got here yesterday? and it means running the risk that mi mejor companera may leave me in 2 weeks?  FUNNY THINGS PEOPLE SAY okay Hispanics have really funny things they do while texting. Here are some "O" (instead of "oh", for some reason this kills me every time) - write in all caps in every text message - use periods between words instead of spaces - "jijijijiji" "jejejejejeje" "jajajajajaja"  - G.A.D. ("gracias a dios") and additional funny things that have been said this week: - a group of like 3 Mexican 30+ y/o guys came up to us while we were studying at the Mexican market. They were being obviously kinda fake intere...