Edinburg week 4

Things just keep getting better and pressure is compounding as I am figuring out more about the area and our people, the need to converse smoothly in Spanish is probably the biggest struggle yet somehow through the language barrier I really love some of these people and I think they love me too! They laugh a lot but there are some bonds being formed, they love trying to teach us knew words in Spanish so that's been helpful too! This week has been crazy weather again, and along with flash flood thunder storms comes BUGS, we drenched ourselves in bug spray yesterday and I even killed one that was on me as I was putting on the spray but I still came home with at least another 7 bites (not casual). The thunder storms are so much fun here, although they create a few problems for us. For example this Thursday we were both wearing white shirts - lesson learned, always have an extra set of clothes in the car. Side effect for the car - it now wreaks of mildew, hopefully that goes away soon. The biggest problem with the rain has been lessons, because seriously who wants to let two drowned rats into their home to teach about a church they've never heard about...very few. We schedule a lot of appointments though because people feel bad for us so that's nice though! Our new focus is less actives and members down here, we are trying to schedule half of our time re-activating people that are on the records without ever being seen. I love it cause the people know so much about the gospel already and we just get to motivate them and play with their kids and show them that people care - wonderful. We are currently working wth one part-member family who is less active and they are the sweetest people ever. Fernando, the dad, doesn't speak a lick of English but his wife can translate for us pretty good when we struggle. Anyway they came to our mexico independence party with the Spanish ward and they were so cute, their little boy Fernando jr. is my favorite person and he calls us his sisters - experiences like seeing them there make me SO HAPPY! As missionaries we are only expected to invite, and then people can use their agency to make good decisions - those decisions are what make us happy. Agency. I have been thinking a lot about our gift of agency and I think that agency holds the key to everything in the gospel. We get to decide everything, about everything, for ourselves. Doing good wouldn't benefit us at all if we weren't allowed to make the decision to do so. Heavenly Father has set up this earth so that there are inevitable good consequences when we make good decisions and the same for bad. When we follow the guidelines he has set - he will bless us with more than just the inevitable but there has to be a decision - the more conscious the decision the better. ONe of our investigators, Gonzalo has made decisions these last few weeks to quit smoking and drinking and I can see the blessings inside him but inevitable and the ones given to him by Heavenly Father! Its pretty cool. Life is about being happy and we can only be happy when we choose to do so, and our choices should lead us to make decisions (exercise our agency). Time to go once again, but I love and am grateful for all of you! Have a swag week! H Boo Crawford