One time in Naples, after a meal appt with one of our Bolivian members, she gave us a home-grown papaya to take home with us. We were on bikes. So I got to look like a fool and bike with a big ol' papaya in my hand the mile ride back to our car. :P Then we took it home, and I remembered vaguely how one member in my first ward made us a papaya milkshake. I decided to do the same, and it tasted pretty good! :)
Also, Sister Evans and I went with Sister Smith and Sister Rianda (the Vanderbilt sisters) to dinner at Chic-Fil-A. <3 We were eating, and a family in the booth behind us were snapchatting. The young mom and one of her kids were taking a pic, and so I ducked my head down just a little lower, made the most ridiculous face that I could muster, and photo-bombed the snapchat. She saw it 2 seconds after she took the picture, stood up, turned around, and started busting up laughing. Both booths were CRACKING UP! :)
Every morning I would make a smoothie with almond milk, mixed berries, spinach, yogurt, ground flax seeds and chia seeds. I got so healthy. :)
Those were some of my favorite memories in Naples from last transfer. Then I transferred.
I was REALLY sad to hear on the transfer call that I was leaving. Granted, I had been there for a LONG time. 4 transfers (about 6 months!!). We had been eating dinner with the family of the previous bishop in the ward, and I told them that we had transfer calls that night. They told me, "Oh, yeah. You've been here for a long time!" I then realized that I was a goner. :P They're such good people, and I'm glad that I got to say good-bye to them. Didn't get to do that for the whole ward, which saddens me. I will be visiting them VERY soon, though.
I was especially sad to be leaving Sister Evans. We've had a really good run together. Miss my hijita. Heck, I miss my whole district, back there! EVERYONE in the Naples Zone was really close. </3 We went and got some shakes at Steak n' Shake (cookie butter, YUM!!) and went tracting after I had finished packing. We knocked in this one apartment complex, and I know that I had knocked our main area at least twice by now, but we ended up on one door on the upper floor in one of these apartment buildings. And I looked around, and realized that I had knocked this exact same door before. One my last day in Naples, I knocked the exact same apartment building that I had knocked on my very first day in Naples with Sister Rammell. Strangely poetic? Idk.
After that, we went and dropped in Adriana and Bardomiano. We had forgotten the phone (oops) and so we just hoped and prayed that they were home so that I could say goodbye to them. We were blessed, and they were there! We shared 1 Nephi 21:15-16 with them and discussed it a little bit. I then told them that I would be leaving, and expressed how sad I was that I would not be able to attend their upcoming wedding and baptism. But I let them know that I would for sure come back to Florida for their sealing in the temple! Adriana told me that they were sad that I would leave, but happy that I would go and find other people to bring the gospel to. "You will be our first missionaries." she told me. It nearly put me to tears when she said those things. She told me that if it wasn't for Sister Evans and I, they wouldn't have found the gospel and be down this path that they are on now. She then bore her testimony of the Book of Mormon to me. Bardomiano said the closing prayer as well, and expressed thanks for having me be here to meet them and asked that I have success wherever I go. It was one of THE most bittersweet moments of my mission; the other two were very similar: saying good-bye to Maida and to Celina.
So then a wonderful member of the Vanderbilt ward came the next morning, loaded up our stuff in our truck and drove us to Plantation (she excitedly pointed out a drug bust to us on Alligator Alley. "They got him! They ripped that car apart, look at all the stuff of the ground!" she exclaimed. SO FUNNY! :) ). We then went to Plantation, loaded up all of our stuff and headed to Boca Raton. Sister Smith and I white-washed into the area, so we basically had NO idea what we were doing. The first few days were extremely confusing and exciting and frustrating. We blew one of our tires on our way to our meal appointment with the bishop (first night in the area, haha). We met with him, knocked into a CRAZY woman, met another CRAZY woman at Firestone while we got our tire changed, met our awesome Ward Mission Leader, found out that our DL is going home at the end of this transfer, and SURPRISE! He's my first district leader, Elder Ortiz! I met a Brazilian lady that I was actually able to communicate with (Portuguese and Spanish speakers can often understand each other really well, they just can't speak one another's language). I've been SUPER tired these past few days, it happens each time that I switch coasts in the mission! We also had a fire exchange (Sister PK is my STL now, WHAT?? :D ), we had a cool Book of Mormon lesson in 3 Nephi 11 with a new investigator, had an AMAZING ward council training yesterday before church by the Stake President. And we got to know the ward members, and today after email time we'll be playing a district soccer game. Good stuff. Love y'all! Talk to you next week! La iglesia es verdadera!!! <3
~Hermana Curnow
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