Mar. 28- And the Awkward Continues

My Family!:) 

Happy Easter! It was a good week:) It was a little more catholic than usual, but things should calm down again and people should start listening to us again;) Ï hope that everyone is getting really excited about General Conference this week! I hope you can really do your part to attend all 4 sessions. It is an enormous blessing to have a living prophet and to get to hear from him and the other apostles, it is another enormous blessing that you have to hear them in their actual voices and not a translator speaking over them. Remember that, be grateful, attend all the session, and receive revelation from the Spirit!:)

Now for the pictures:)  

This is us with Hermana Anna, shes really cool:) She is a recent convert of about a year and she likes to visit investigators with us:) her testimony is pure power and she is getting ready to serve a mission as well!:) But her boyfriend who is a returned missionary is the person helping her fill out her papers.. so we'll see how far she gets, haha. 

These pictures I take in the house are always so ugly, but a member stopped by one night to buy us tacos- they love us and spoil us so much here in our ward!:) I cant even believe it:) One hermana bought us new skirts and shirts this week, too!

This was a cute Senior-pic we took of me in the window of one of the Hermanas houses, I love her house. Its so weird here in Mexico. Some people live in beautifully constructed mansions and others live in single bedrooms with dirt floors. 

This is me with Hermana Naty and Hermano Silvestre, they are really awesome:) But they live in the Elders area so we hardly get to see them outside of church.

This Wednesday I completed a very special day in the mission... HALF WAY!!:) 9 MONTHS!:) It has gone so fast, I love being a missionary:) 

This is me and Mahanna, she is a girl in our ward:) She recently just got selected for some TV show that is like American Idol or something and will be trying out this week! So we took a pic before she gets all famous;) 

This last picture... has a story attached to it. I thought about not sharing it, but in the hopes of making the world a brighter place through laughter I will share one of my new top awkward moments with my loved ones. 
Something really awkward was bound to happen soon, actually, because about a week ago I tempted fate by thinking to myself that I am more mature and was now outgrowing my old 'Awkward Lillie' self. Not so. So, I like to pick flowers, right?:) Yeah, I love it:) I have this special kind of flower that is my favorite, and I am collecting all the colors. Well we were walking along the side of this huge canal in one of our areas one day this week when I saw a tree with my favorite flowers- in white! I still needed a white one:) But the tree only had one branch that had flowers on it and it was a little high- but I needed one. I told myself 'I just want one flower!' so I reached trying to pull the branch down so I could grab a flower when *SNAP* - I BROKE OFF THE ENTIRE BRANCH. #fear I told my companion 'We have to run!' and she said 'Well, then get your flower first!' When I heard the second most terrifying sound of the day- the sound of the door to the house opening. Nooooooo... But, yes. The owner of the tree came out and I was still holding the stupid branch from his beautifully pruned tree. Um... So I immediately apologized and explained that I 'just wanted one flowr' because I like to collect them. I complimented him on his beautiful tree and he was angry. He said 'Well, you already broke it, might as well take this with you and plant it' I tried to say no, but he kept saying 'but you already broke it' GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY. So he eventually just broke off the part with the flowers and took the large part of the branch with him. I thought to myself, 'Maybe this is Gods plan, maybe I need to bring this man the Gospel! Or maybe he shouldn't know I am a missionary or what church I am from so he doesn't hate us..' But I started to contact him anyway while my companion vehemently shook her head no, haha. But, he didn't want to know anything and shut the door on me. I can understand that. As we were walking away the embarrassment and guilt were welling up inside as my companion and I tried to keep cool, haha. When all of a sudden MY NOSE STARTED BLEEDING! What the what?! And not just a few drops of blood, we are talking a river. For some odd reason we had nothing like toilet paper with us so I just leaned over while blood poured out, and I ran to the edge of the canal to let the blood fall in to the river while my companion started running and knocking on the houses near by and yelling at the cars passing, hahahaha. Eventually a nice young man on a motorcycle stopped and gave me a shirt or something. #tendermercy and we decided we should go to the nearest members house to clean me up. Which happened to be the Bishop. And he and his family wanted to know why I was covered in blood... and why I was clutching a branch of a tree.  

Hopefully that was as funny for you as it was embarrassing for me. I have had a few more nose bleeds since then, we're not sure if they are induced by the heat or by stress, haha. But we can relate this story to sin- YOU CANNOT CHOOSE THE CONSEQUENCES of just reaching for 'one flower.'

I love you all, have a great week:) 

Hermana Swallow

More on the awkward side...

More on the awkward story, yesterday we were walking on the other side of the large canal that I spilt blood into and we saw all the blood splatters, hahahaha. If you zoom in you can see it all. Hopefully they don't think someone was killed there or something, haha. Love you all!

Hermana swallow