Aug. 29- Week of AWESOME!

My Dear Family,

It was a week of AWESOME! We literally traveled by bus every single day of the week due to the many capacitaciones and divisiones and reuniones, but it was great:) I learned so much and am so grateful:)

To start off, I took this pic of a bunch of free fruit some awesome members gave us:) There are mangos, and tunas, and this long green fruit that I don't know what its name is. Mangos are delicious, tunas are awesome- they are cactus fruit. I know, did you even know that cactus had fruit? they are full of these big seeds, but are sweet and refreshing. You just swallow the seeds.. and the big long fruit is weird. Its small white fruit inside is like velvety and individually sliced when you open the fruit. All of these things I will miss when I come home.

This is a dangerous picture I took of me and my companion while we forced our way onto a ruta (bus) that was already way too full because we were running late to a capacitation:) Sometimes I do things that I never thought I would do a year ago, haha. 

This is a beautiful arcoiris (rainbow) that we saw this week, I haven't seen a rainbow in a long time. If you've never checked out the scripture of how we got the rainbow, I suggest you do it because it is one of my FAVORITES:) (Gen. 9:13–17). JST, Gen. 9:21–25

We had to go to Iguala to do some divisiones with some sisters there and it was awesome going back to one of the cities I served in for so long:) We werent in my old area, but we passed by familiar spots I loved:) 

This is us with sister Payhua and her trainee Sister Gomez, they are awesome sisters. We laughed together, we cried together, it was awesome. 

We had a meeting this week where we discovered that the final 4 of the original 6 american sisters who came together here to Mexico were all together again! We haven't been all together in more than a year when we were in our training! They are all super amazing sisters that I love a lot, I have attached the first picture we all 6 took together and this latest picture of the 4 of us here now:) 

THEN we got home after traveling all week and had the MOST awesome branch mission activity ever! We called it the 'Safari Fair' and we had cute face paintings and games and balloon decorations and it was just great. We had many investigators show up:):) The members even walked in the street inviting people to come in! 

This is one of the most amazing families I have had the privilege to teach while here on my mission- la Familia Hernandez. We found them while contacting people on the street and they turned out to be a super chosen family. Eduardo- the man in front and Guadalupe- the one with the grey hair are the ones most close to baptism on the 24th of September:) They both act with so much faith and have received witness that the book of mormon is the word of God. Guadalupe actually was so awesome this week because she told us that her Mom (who is really old and has a tumor in her intestine) called Guadalupe saturday night to tell her that she needed to go to the hospital the next day because she was in pain but Guadalupe told her she couldn't take her because she had to go to CHURCH! She told her Mom that God would provide and that she'd take her to the hospital on Tuesday!! WOW, RIGHT!:) 

My companion made me this cute face painting and I love her:)

Also... Hermana LAURA REES is now here with me serving in the Mexico, Cuernavaca Mission!! I love her so much!! She is friend from way back when we were in Bear River High School together:) We played the flute together in the band, we jumped hurtles together in track, and now we will be preaching the gospel together in Mexico:) It was so good to see her, I felt like my worlds were colliding a little, haha.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! Good luck to everyone starting school and everything! I love you all and I hope that you can see the amazing blessings you have and see how Awesome God truly is:) Love you!

Hermana Swallow