What is the meaning of Life?

The long-awaited email - I don't have the ganas to write a nice put together email hahaha so I'll do that next week. U can send this to the grandma's if u so desire. August, I am still in San Carlos. But I'm glad I'm still here. This ward is sooooo awesome. So awesome. I love them all.

(this is part of the family we baptized in May after a youth activity)

Here are some cool people I've met

1. José Machado
This man right here is so special. His name is Hermano Machado, from Chile. He's very old. He´s 91. Not even joking. He is VERY healthy, probably healthiest than any other Hermano in our barrio. He walks 5 kilómetros a day. He's also a patriarch.

We have a man in our ward who was bishop about 6 years ago, then he was excommunicated. Everyone loves gossiping about him, because well there's a lot of drama surrounding him. Well, after who knows how long (6ish years I'm guessing) this brother came back to church for the first time a few weeks ago and has been coming ever since. It was shocking to everyone haha.

Every Sunday we wait at the bottom of the stairs to greet the members before church, usually Jose Machado stands with us. This Sunday ya know we're greeting people, and we see this brother (the one that was excommunicated) in the far-off distance walking to church with his wife. Well at the time I didn't recognize him because he was like really far away. But Jose Machado recognized him. Oh boy he recognized him. And that man ran. You've never seen a 91-year-old run so fast. Or run at all probably. I was like "what on earth is this man doing."

He ran to this brother, gave him the biggest hug. Then they walked back to us and entered the church. And Jose Machado was crying.

It was a really moving experience. Such a simple act, but so powerful. How often do we judge people for this or that or this thing or whatever. Instead of just hugging them and crying tears of joy. I think that's what I imagine Jesus does when someone returns. It doesn't matter how long it's been. 50 years 60 or more. All that's important is that we return.

(Hermano Machado is on the left, on the right is Carlos Rodriguez who was baptized when he was 14 but went inactive and they lost his records and now we´ve been teaching him and he's going to get rebaptized Sept 24th.

2. Leo
This is Leo, he's been a member since he was 17. He has a chronic illness I'm honestly not sure what it is, but he's severely handicapped and permanently in a wheelchair. He can't walk and really can't do anything. He lives about 20 min walk from the church and he wheels himself to church every. Single. Sunday. He has not missed a single Sunday since I've been here.

He made us lunch a few times this month and it was very humbling. Every time an inactive person gives an excuse for not coming to church, I just laugh inside because it pales in comparison to what this man is going through, yet he still comes every Sunday. No excuses haha.

Right when I first got here, maybe the 1st or 2nd week, it was a Sunday, and we were looking for a member's apartment who was going to give us lunch. It was a pretty big complex area, and I was bored of looking for the number haha so I saw a door that was open, and I popped my head in and was like "hi do u know where this number of apartment is?"

Then I hear the husband go, "hey it's the hermanas". Then they're like, "oh you're looking for the Cotto's? And I was like ya!" Then I put it together, they said Hermanas' and they knew the member family were looking for. So I was like "yall members?" and the husband goes "ya ya but were inactive" and I go "oh well can we visit you sometime next week?" And he goes " uhhhh...no no it's ok" he wouldn't even give us his number hahah.
So that was that, we went on our way and thought we were never going to see them again.

We talked to that family that we had lunch with and they told us they had been trying to work with them for years. They were a whole family who just slowly stopped coming and no one really knew why.

Maybe like 3 weeks later from this incident, they came to church which was awesome! And they've been steadily coming since May. I honestly never knew why. But they ended up getting callings and everything. This week the Hermana gave the relief society lesson about "love share invite" and she started telling her story about why their family decided to come back to church. And it went like this "we were sitting in the house one Sunday afternoon and the Hermanas' stopped at our house. They didn't know who we were, they were looking for someone else, but in that moment, I knew it was the Lord's hand in my life, telling me to come back to church. Then about a day later a different Hermana from the church sent her the link to General conference" and that's why this whole family came back!! Haha kinda wild, but it taught me to never underestimate the Lord. He puts us in the places that we need to be.

This week we did a white board activity where we wrote "what is the purpose of life?" and people wrote their answers. We found 12 people to teach so that was awesome. and we only did it for like 1 and a half hours.

We also found a new family to teach this week! and they came to church which was so awesome. We were worried the talks weren't going to be good hhaha because even though I love this ward we definitely have some characters.  The last Sunday someone gave a talk about how we shouldn´t pray about certain things haha it was strange. But we got lucky, and they had the 91-year-old talk and a return missionary, so it was good. and plus, after church lots of people talked to them, it was like a mob.  

 I'm good!! my comp  is really fun we are really good friends. The only bad thing right now is that our new mission president made a rule that we can only have one zone p-day every transfer and we are not allowed to have any district  p-days or p-days with any other groups of people. So pretty much we can see other missionaries other than our companion once every 6 weeks.   He has some reasons for this, which I get. BUT I don't think the solution was to immediately cancel p-day lol. In standards it literally says that on p-day you should "enjoy time with other missionaries and engage in physical activities like sports." it says that word for word. News flash, you can't play sports with 2 people and we´re not allowed to have p-day with members either, so I just think the rule was a little short sided. There are so many benefits to having a pday with other missionaries such as helping people's mental health. II actually think that is one of the biggest reasons, plus it's so fun to just play soccer and get some physical activity in. Anyway, we talked to the zone leaders and we wrote a letter to the President, not asking for the rule to be lifted necessarily, but just so that maybe instead of 1 we could at least have 3 zone p-days every transfer, or 2 zone p-days and 1 district p-day. He never responded haha. but oh well at least we tried. Hopefully if enough people say something he will change it. 

I know it's not a big thing but it kind of is. we should be able to enjoy p-day I think. 

anyways that's all for now.