#M.A.Y 26 Mayo 2015

Alrighty, so this last week we were fed by Hna Chavez, Hna Yolanda Ortiz, Hna Maldonado, Hna Franchi and Hna Trini Arce. Food <3 I love these amazing women, too. Now for the rest of the less-important stuff~

  President Richardson (MAN he is just so awesome!) is having us focus more deeply on the Standard Works during our Personal Study time. And Personal Study is just so great. The revelation flows like CRAZY and I'm getting more out of the scriptures than I ever have before in my life! We always start off with a half hour in the Book of Mormon and then we move on to Preach My Gospel, Conference talks, etc. I tend to focus on Doctrine & Covenants and the New Testament. A do some dipping into the Old Testament occasionally. I've been searching more carefully for evidences in the Bible about "Divine Potential of humans" and that humans have been able to see the face of God. Tons of people down here don't believe those things, but they believe every literal word in the Bible, oddly enough. It's seriously written all over the place.

   I've been working with maps a TON more lately. We've made a map of all of the less-active members that we've never met, so we can LA search and find simultaneously! I've also printed out Google Earth maps and started marking the roads that we've knocked. It makes things easier.

   We got our miles cut about two weeks ago. Something tells me we'll be using our bikes a lot more! :)

    So we haven't been getting a ton of mail lately. But last week a magazine for Babies R Us or something showed up in our mailbox. What are the odds? A magazine FULL of babies shows up at a house of sister missionaries! Is the world TRYING to make us trunky?? Haha

   I looked it up on a GPS. I'm 2,700 miles from home. I'll start using that in my finding, saying "I came 2,700 miles to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with you." 

   So we went to Publix last week (I love that store! It is like the Florida version of Safeway) to buy cookie dough to make cookies for our amazing RS President that does everything. And Sister Bradley grabbed a DEADLY flavor of ice cream. She says that it is an FFLM tradition to try Publix's "Chocolate Trinity" ice cream at least once. It was heaven. And we can never buy it again after looking at the nutrition info LOL.

   We had ZONE CONFERENCE! I LOVE those so much!!! <3 Afterwards we had "Hurricane Preparedness Training" by Elder/Doctor C.P. Bean. He is a medical advisor for 9 missions in the Southeast of the U.S., a convert, ex-military, an orthopedic surgeon and he is HILARIOUS! Funniest natural disaster training ever! Plus his voice sounds just a little bit like the pig from Toy Story, so it was all the more better!

    He told us about what we need to know/do/ everything. Mom, Dad, I can't call you if there is a hurricane. Sorry. He told us that there is a high chance of a hurricane this year, but we're going to pray that that training was wasted time. He told us that the floods brought in by hurricanes tend to bring water 17 feet above sea level. He called out "How many of you Elders are in the keys?" They raised their hands and he just chuckled and said "You guys are so dead!" (The Keys are 2 feet above sea level LOL). Then I went over to Miami Beach with Sister Furner for a full-day exchange! It was great and we got to teach Brittany and re-teach Kenneth! :)

    Running out of time, I'll try to be quick!

   We got Harold, Palm Springs North's RC. He came to Spanish ward because he is bilingual but his fiancee doesn't know English. I love them both so much and I'm SO excited to teach them!!

   We met a guy that begs on Red Road. He came up to us while we were on bikes and we had a nice chat.

    We biked half the day yesterday and it was 91 degrees. I got burnt, but it was the best! And we found a new investigator! :) We also met a SUPER Patriotic Cuban lady! Like we're talking 'Murica bumper stickers all over her car and inside her house!

    And we also learned that Red Road and 57th is super dangerous when the traffic lights are out. Yay lol :)

       Anyways, I love you all! Have an amazing week!

~Hermana Curnow

    #M.A.Y (Miracles Are Your's)

17 Mayo 2015

These blog post titles are incredibly dull, I apologize.

  So a couple of fun things happened this week.

We had to drop a seemingly elect investigator. We'll call him "Jamie". We found Jamie while out knocking doors while he was riding by on his bike. Hna Elizabeth Calvo (coolest RM ever! And she's Cuban!) helped us out and he got really excited about coming to church and getting baptized. And later on, we found out that he was a little... attached. He didn't really want anything to do with church, he just was obsessed with a "muchacha". Namely, one of us. It got really creepy and awkward really fast. We passed him to the YSA elders but he just became a headache for them and didn't want to do anything with them. We're done with him.

   We've had to stop teaching another investigator (so now we are down to zero in our teaching pool). But her last lesson was HILARIOUS! So we had a Member Present Lesson with her once before with Yolanda. And this investigator has three rabbits that just roam around. And during our lesson, one rabbit kept trying to chew up Yolanda's shoes and my bag. So this last Friday we brought Yolanda's husband, Isaac, to teach with us. We had to show him were to park, but we left our car a little further off (due to our shortage of miles) and we couldn't ride in the car, so we walked ahead of him for 2 blocks to show him where to park. Isaac is driving really slowly behind us, and we're in a less-safe area. So this black mustang pulls up next to us and the guy rolls down the window and says to us, "Hey! Do you know that guy behind you?" We assured him that we did and he drove away. Then we just BUSTED up laughing because we realized just how funny/awkward/sketchy the whole situation looked! Our poor member!

    So we parked, said a prayer, and walked up to our investigator's door. I warned Isaac about the bunnies. But then the door opens, and there are TINY Styrofoam balls EVERYWHERE on the floor! And the investigator's half-naked, 2-year-old granddaughter comes running out excitedly! She was trying to entertain her. So this whole lesson, the baby is running around and sweeping, throwing and blowing bits of Styrofoam EVERYWHERE! SO FUNNY! We left and I had to dump the little balls out of my Book of Mormon and sweep them off my skirt! It occurred to me later that I hadn't even bothered to warn Isaac about the granddaughter LOL!

   But yeah. That was it for this week! And also always remember this: The love is more important than the KIs. Love y'all! Talk to you next week!

11 Mayo 2015

This will be one of those blog posts in which I basically just list things that happened.

We had a fire exchange on Tuesday! Sister Furner and Sister Mahterian are such bosses! :)

This week Gladis, Jenny and Criseth fed us!

There was an awesome Dia de las Madres spa activity put on by the Relief Society on Saturday! Really great turn-out, and people brought their friends! :)

Marisol, Hector and Hector's friend ALL came to church yesterday!! MIRACLE!! They're all way interested and are looking towards baptism! Honestly, as a missionary, the best way to see miracles is to work as hard as you can and then leave the rest to the Lord. Then, boom! Your faith is rewarded and MILAGROS!

And we got to Skype home! <3 That was way fun! I almost forgot what Gran's British accent sounded like. Oh, and yesterday, the nest of duck eggs by our house hatched! There are now a bazillion "patitos" in our neighborhood! :)

  We've been knocking doors all week, and I love it! This is seriously the best work ever! To anybody that is worthy and eligible to serve a mission: DO IT!! You won't regret it! :)

     I love you all!

  ~Hermana Curnow

P.S. I've realized that our Ward Mission Leader and his wife are the cutest little people ever! The remind me of the grandparents in the Land Before Time :)

   Quotes:

    "These are Mormons! They are good people, Christopher!" -Evelyn, a sweet little Haitian lady that we met

    "Hey, look! Two snowbunnies!" -From an experience that Hermana Bradley had in her last area

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May the Fourth Be With You! (Long post!)

I'm SUPER sorry that I ran out of time to blog last week! :(

I have a little leftover time right now, so I'm going to do my best to fit in all of the details!

   So we've been having some CRAZY storms lately! Lighting and thunder get really close, the streets fill up with water fast and it sometimes gets too dangerous to drive (water and lack of visibility). One storm in particular caused us to have to "rain check" (get it?) our trip to the gator farm yet again!

  I also got a flan de queso recipe from Hermana Alcazar (a missionary from Tijuana. Side note: Hno Barrett my MTC teacher served his mission there!) gave me her flan de queso recipe. It is AMAZING!! Super easy and super yummy!

   I had a nasty head cold from Thursday to Sunday of last week, and it was really bad on the last Friday of April, so I had to stay home and rest. IT WAS THE WORST. I slept all day and I've never felt so unproductive and useless in my life! Hermana Lightheart stayed home with me for the first part of the day but then the Palm Springs North sisters were on an exchange. Sister McAfee was here with Sister Heacock, so they did splits and Sister McAfee stayed home and guarded my unconscious, ill body. 

    Hermano Cabellero was baptized by the elders! He was basically already a member, the whole ward knew him and called him Hno Cabellero! Jajaja!

   We had been in a giant game of tag with Elder Ortiz and Elder Coburn, and we are often sent by members to drop off food at the elders' apartment. And Elder Ortiz had given us the commitment to be more "creative" with our tags (as opposed to leaving sticky notes that said "tag" on their bikes). So we dropped off some groceries at their apartment and gift-wrapped their apartment door! We used wrapping paper, balloons, a bow, the whole bit! We also filled the balloons with confetti pieces that said "tag". They admitted defeat after we did that! ;)

    I've been having tons of dreams over these past months. All of them are either about my MTC zone and/or weird proselyting situations.

    And we had a full day of biking the day before transfers! My legs were so dirty by the end of the day, I loved it! And we saw a storm coming in the late afternoon, right after we prayed with an awesome lady named Mirium (she's Cuban, and she already has a great testimony of the Great Apostasy, LOL), so we started biking North. Right into it. The lightning was super close, so we took cover in a Chili's restaurant and ate dinner. It started pouring right when we got inside!

   Sister Lightheart got transferred. So did Elder Scutt, Elder Ortiz and Elder Krikava. The only regret that Sister Lightheart had about transferring is not getting a picture with Jacob (this 4 year old boy in our ward that has the BIGGEST crush on her). And it was basically a companion swap! I got Sister Lakes' old companion, and Sister Lakes got Sister Lightheart! I'm now serving with Hermana Lakes. She is awesome! :) Super chill, and we're learning a ton from each other. Greenie-breaking is going good!

    We've been doing basically nothing but finding all week. At one point this man named Wendell came outside when he saw us from us house and gave us juice boxes! Turns out he is a JW and thought that we were JWs, too! That's why he gave us the juice, lol! XD

   We also found an English speaking member named Nicole. She was feeling homesick, and so we said a prayer with her. We don't think that her records moved from Utah to Florida, so it was a miracle that we just stumbled upon her! She is so sweet! :)

   Betty, a Dominicana investigator got baptized yesterday and will be confirmed this next Sunday!

   And Hna Elizabeth Calvo came out knocking doors with us! She is the BEST!!! She and her family were baptized in Cuba, moved to Spain, then her family moved her to Fort Lauderdale while she stayed in Spain to study medicine. She decided to serve a mission and got to... here! She served where her family was living! :) She decided before coming out to "move" here once her mission was over. She was released last Wednesday night, and now she is in our ward! She is awesome and I love her! :)

      That's all for this week! See yall next week!

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