Temple Bound

Hola mi familia y mis amigos, 

Happy almost 5 months to me! the time is flying... I have a little over a year left.   Does anyone else think that's crazy?   It has been a truly wonderful week. Parra is the greatest place on this earth!   Every time we leave Parra for the day we talk about how much we love it up there.   It takes a long time to walk there and back, about an hour each way.  But it gives us time to talk about our areas and and our menos activos.  I truly believe we have received a lot of revelation for our areas during this time.  There are a lot of menos activos up there but there are also some really solid members who really take care of us.  They are even teaching us to make Dominican food and juice.  This week I had Dominican spaghetti which is a million times better than american spaghetti. Soo good!  

We are really seeing a change in some of our menos activos.  They have a desire to read and pray and come to church and they love when we come and visit. We are working a lot with the mujeres jovenes (Young Women) and the women and we have seen the light come back into their eyes.  A lot of them came to church on Sunday without us passing by their houses, which is a big deal. And they sang and actually looked like they wanted to be there.  One kid we are working with gave a great talk, proud missionary moment.  We are truly seeing a change in these people and it makes me so happy.  I am continually amazed at this work.  If we give everything we have, God will help us be better missionaries than we could ever be on our own.  He softens their hearts and he gives us his Spirit.  

Work in Las Flores is also going great. We had six of our menos activo priesthood members show up to church this week.  One of them is really old and has some kind of sickness.  Last week when he came to church he had to go to the medico after, which made us pretty worried.  But he showed up again this week.  He has so much faith and wants to do what is right.  We just hope he doesn't die.  One problem we have with these menos activos is a lot of them don't know how to read.  How sad is that?  When they were taking the lessons the missionaries were helping them to feel the spirit all the time.  But now,  they have a hard time being spiritually fed because they can't read the scriptures and they feel uncomfortable in church because they can't sing the hymns. It's super sad and we are trying to help them because they really do have strong testimonies.  

So this week is going to be a really different week. Tomorrow we are going to Bani and sleeping over there because Wednesday we have to leave at like 4 am for THE TEMPLE!!!!  I am super, super excited.   After the temple we are going to a house in the capital to spend the night because Thursday we are having an hermanas conference.   Nobody actually knows what that means because this is the first one ever.  We are all pretty scared, but I am sure it will be great.   Thursday we will get home really late and then the next week is week 6 and that Sunday is transfer day.   This transfer is going soo fast I can't believe it.  I hope you all have a great week. Thanks for all the letters and the love. Love you!  Hermana Rush