Green Things Grow

Hey Y'all!

A "super" friend of mine used to always tell me "Green things grow" and what do you know, he was for sure right!!! I have been doing a lot of growing this past week!! I don't even know where to start with everything. First I will start off with our numbers from this week- I won't give you the actual numbers, most of you prolly won't even know what they mean. lol But I will tell you that they were LOW, really low, lots of zeros and stuff. So basically that means we haven;t baptized anyone or even got baptismal dates or actually investigators for that matter. Our missionary "work" is a slow go right now. We actually got a little lecture from our district leader who got chewed out from our zone leader about the numbers. Our whole district had bad numbers. The fact of the matter is, we are working HARD, but people just don't want to listen. That's ok though because we will just have to work harder and then we will really get San Marcos booming!!

Throughout this really rough week I have grown a lot! The Lord has taken this opportunity to teach me so much and to really rely on him. We currently have 0 investigators. We had Minerva, but she just wasn't progressing and wouldn't commit to a baptismal date, so she is dropped. We do have a guy named Brian who ordered a bible from one of the church's commercials and he is going through a lot of tough stuff in his life right now and he is really looking for answers. We went over and taught him last night, we brought a member couple with us- the Whitesides, they are AWESOME!!!! They help us out so much, feeding us, giving us ride, coming to teaching appointments and many more things. So anyway the four of us went over and taught Brian yesterday and it went really well. We are teaching him tomorrow and he tells us he is really looking forward to church on Sunday, he is going to sit with the Whitesides, he likes Brother Whitesides because they both have their birthdays on Halloween. Ha ha ya but anyway Brian is our one glimmer of hope right now. We have a few more potentials, but no one golden. I am not worried though, we will just have to dig in and push harder. I am getting my comp going for sure, ha ha all of my greenie spirit doesn't let us sit in one place for too long- I like to get out there and work!!!

So the ward here in San Marcos is pretty much awesome! We have a wide variety of people that is for sure!! I already have a few "favorites" I guess you could say. People that I go to when we need something, there are several members who are really there for us missionaries, which is awesome!! So yesterday in our ward council meeting (missionaries sit in on all of those ward welfare and PEC and the like every Sunday before church) the YW President said that their YW were going to start up a basketball team for the stake YW B-Ball tournament in February. They want to start practicing right away, but they need a coach. Right away I was like...light bulb... I could be their coach. So I suggested it and they thought that was a great idea. We got the idea approved through the zone leaders and everything. So now for a half hour every Wednesday night my comp and I are going to go down to the church and coach the YW. I am so excited!! It is a great way for us to do service. We are always looking for service opportunities but no one ever has anything for us to do- they always ask the Elders instead. SO anyway this can be a service project for us and also a great way for us to develop relationships with the young women and build relationships of trust with the ward. Also we will encourage the girls to bring non-member friends and hopefully that can lead somewhere. So ya that is the fun and exciting things happening in the San Marcos ward. Oh and also Bishop had some fun with me on Sunday. Let me explain. Our ward has English and Spanish, but mostly English, so they have someone translate during sacrament meeting and the Spanish speakers wear the headphones and listen. Well every 2nd and 4th Sunday they have a seperate Spanish Sacrament meeting. They hold it at the same time as the English one, it's in the relief society room and there are usual about 20 people who attend. So yesterday was a Spanish Sacrament meeting and my comp and I went to it and the Elders went to the English one. They never come to the Spanish one- I guess cause mostly only are half of the ward are the Spanish speakers. SO anyway after the two speakers spoke the Bishop got up (he speaks Spanish but he is a total Gringo) and he said (in Spanish) "We have a new sister missionary in the ward and I would like to have her come up and bear her testimony to you and tell you some of her thoughts and feelings on Missionary Work." Luckily I understood him- that would have been really embarrassing if I had just sat there staring of into space. Ya so I walked up there and bore my testimony and talked a little about missionary work- all in Spanish and then sat down. Ha ha well I guess I have been broken into the ward now. lol

SO who wants to hear about the funny things that have happened this week? I am sure y'all do!! Ha ha ok so here is my very first big "Greenie Mistake"- Thursday night I was tired and we were getting ready for bed. Sister Moran was in the shower and I was in charge of taking District Call (the DL calls every night to see how our day went, see if we are ok and all that jazz) well we have been switching off taking DL call every night and I was used to it, but since we had just seen the Elders not even two hours before bed I was not surprised when Elder Squire did not call. I figured it was no big deal and I went ahead and turned off the cell phone, put it on the charger and went to bed. Well in the middle of the night sister Moran and I were jerked awake by the sound of pounding on our apartment door. We woke up and sister Moran said "I am going to answer it" I said "are you crazy?!?" we had no clue how late it was, we were in a deep sleep before we were rudely awakened and both thought it was like 3am. Well we sat there on our beds, not knowing what to do, and then heard pounding on our window! We were both a little freaked out. Then I heard the Elders voices, so I went and opened the door and there stood the Elders and Brother and Sister Whitesides. My comp and I grumpily looked at them and were like "what the heck do you want? We were SLEEPING!!!" Then Elder Squire says he got so worried when he tried to call us for District Call and it went to voice mail. They tried calling several times, then they called the Zone Leaders and then they called the Assistants to the President. The ap's told the Elders to find a member to give them a ride and come check on us, make sure we were home and safe. So at 11:30 at night the Whitesides went and picked up the Elders and came to check on us. Ya my bad- lol. So the next day was zone conference. We drove up to Austin and met with all the other missionaries in the Austin area (about 60 of us in total) and with President Cutler, his wife and the AP's. As the meeting started President got up to the pulpit and was giving announcments and then randomly out of nowhere stared straight at me and with a big smile on his face said and we all nkow that we never turn off our cell phones right? I smiled and sheepishly said "Yes President". I learned my lesson for sure- ha ha and Sister Moran says that she tole me that we never turn our phones off, but I honestly don't remember hearing that! lol maybe it was my selective hearing kicking in. Ha ha

Well I will leave you with one of the cool things I have learned as a greenie. We had a tough week, a really tough one and as I was thinking about it I was able to not get discouraged and know that the Lord would help me (the old Kristi would not have been able to do that- I would have broken down on the third day out here prolly) I am constantly amazed at how strong the Lord has helped me to be and how positive I can be- I know that I am only doing so well because the Lord is right there by my side. So this week as we were striking out constantly the Lord found little ways to throw me a bone and give me the little boost I needed. One of those ways was y'all's mail- that helped me so much!!! Thanks to Jennie, Max, Allison, Lindsey Frost, KT, Uncle Jeff and Cristina for your mail!!!!!!! I loved it so much!! Another bone that was thrown to me came while we were having dinner with a member family. We were teaching them about the Book of Mormon and I was bearing my testimony of it, and the neatest thing happened to me, I can't really even put it into words, but as I was teaching and bearing my testimony I had this overwhelmingly powerful feeling that made me almost want to cry. I was testify of these things and the spirit was so strongly reassuring me that they were true. I was blown away by the amazing feeling that I felt that I really do know these things to be true. Like I said, it's hard to explain, but it was so totally the Lord reaching out to me saying I love ya kid, keep working hard, you know what you stand for and you know why you are here.

Well I truly have learned so much this week and I am so grateful for the amazing opportunity to be a missionary. I also am grateful for the fact that my very first week was so hard. Now when I have success and things go really well I won't take it for granted and I will know that it came from God.

I love y'all so much and am truly grateful for your support!!!

SMILING ALL THE WHILE-
Hermana Kleisler