The Life of Treasure and Pumpkin 7/22/13

( Sorry for the odd formatting of this post, can't seem to find the problem) Hola familia!!  I am doing great this week. This letter is titled " The Life of Treasure and Pumpkin" because those are our new  nicknames. A really cute girl in the Spanish Group named Eleni gave us those names, haha her nickname is Beauty! Some amazing news, ADAM IS GETTING BAPTIZED!  We are sooooooo excited for him! Adam is Mckayla's step dad and he is amazing. We knew that he was going to be baptized, it was just a matter of when! We have been praying for him and his family like crazy. Anyways, so we are just so excited for them and can't wait for his baptism. This week I also got to go to Bowling Green Kentucky on exchanges with Sister Tauoa. Bowling Green is a really cute town full of very nice people. I learned a lot from Sister T, she is very outgoing and nice to everyone she meets. She is the type of missionary who really does talk to everybody. We were driving through the poor side of town and 3 black guys come up to our car and I get a little nervous because I didn't know what they were doing. Then Sis T rolls down her window and starts chatting with them and she had taught them all before and she was good friends with them, haha. She is friends with all the people in the "Hood." She has all their numbers and they told her to call them if anyone slams a door in her face! Our Spanish work is going really well in Lebanon and we are seeing good progression! Maria and her son came to church this Sunday and she seemed to really like it! Maria takes everything we say very seriously and is someone that is true to her word. So if she says she is going to read or pray about something, she does it! Although, getting her to church this week was no easy task... When we finished our lesson with her on Saturday night we asked her if she would come to church. She said that she has to ask her husband for his permission and then she said that she would call us later to tell us what he said. Well, when we left we knew that it wasn't going to be enough because she has told us that before. Hna. K and I decided that were going to search for her husband ( a little back story, Maria's husband is known as the local drunk, and he does not care to have God in his life when we have talked with him, we also think that he might be a little abusive with Maria)  We know that Maria is a little afraid of her husband so we knew that she would not ask. So we go searching, we pass by a house that we sometimes see him drinking at, and he was not there, but some other guys were outside drinking on the front porch so we drive on to search trailers that he could be at. We can"t find him at this point, but I have the strongest impression that we need to go back to that first house we drove by, so we pull the car over and pray that we can find her husband so we can ask if Maria is allowed to attend church. We then switched places for some reason that I can't remember, so now I am driving and Hna K is in the passenger seat. I pull back to the house with the men drinking outside and ask them if Armando, Maria's husband, is there. One of them walks inside and then comes back out a minute later. He says that Armando is not there. We don't believe the guy so we ask him if he could tell Armando that we want Maria to go to church with us. We talk with the men a little longer and they are persistent that Armando is not there. Then Armando comes strolling out of the house totally high.  Hermana Knecht gets out of the car and asks him if Maria could come to church, she also invited him as well. Armando said that he would not come, but that Maria has permission to go to Church. We ran back to Maria's trailer and told her that her husband said she could come to church. She was shocked but very happy! She did show up to church the next morning. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary and I love being in the service of my God. I have learned so much about myself these last few months and I have learned new limits I can push myself to that I never thought I could do! God really does love us all and know us individually!  Have a great week family! OH and HAPPY HAPPY Birthday to my AMAZING little Bro Alex! He is an amazing guy and has so much love for the people around him, I know that he is going to be an amazing missionary in 3 years and do great things with his life. I wish I could be in Argentina to tell him Happy Birthday in Person! Love  Hermana Ayre