Helados de Cerveza

Ok funny story, we were buying icecream from a sweet cholita in the street, and I saw a green flavor in her box. Green being my favorite color, and thinking it was lime or something, I was about to buy it. Luckily, the vendor was going through telling us all the flavors... turns out it was beer flavor!

This week was crazy! I arrived in Cochabamba and it is HOT! I got to my area and it is FLAT! But we are in a valley with mountains surrounding us like at home, but on all sides! My companion, Hermana Pastillo, is AMAZING. We get along super well, and she told me a lot of things about her life that have made her an incredibly strong person. I have a ton of respect for her, AND she treats me completely like an equal. When we started working, I decided that I was going to be better here in Cocha than I was in Sucre. I love talking to everyone I can and getting to know the members and investigators.

Something I continue to see everyday is that God answers EVERY PRAYER. I was studying in Matthew this week and it says the apostles, when called upon by Christ, dropped everything INSTANTLY and followed Him. I really wanted to be able to put this into practice. Our opportunity came when we were helping prepare lunch at a member's house, and right when it was going to be ready we got a phone call from an inactive sister who was crying super hard, and just said, "Hermanas, where are you? I need you to come right now. You are my only family here, and I need help." So we went almost literally running, leaving behind lunch to go help her. When we got there, we spent a long time with her because she was going through a really hard time with her partner and his family. Everyone was screaming and fighting and there was no respect, no spirit in their home. At the end, her mom came from a few cities over to sort everything out. 

It is a delicate situation and made me so so grateful for my wonderful family, my calm life, my parents who have raised me in the gospel with morals of patience and true love for others.  I am really grateful that we were there for her when nobody else was. I know God needed us in that moment in the life of that sister. I am satisfied with the chance we had to drop everything and follow the will of the Lord.

I know I am going to see miracles in this area, I know this is where I am supposed to be. And I know the adversary never leaves us alone as missionaries, nor as members of the church, so we just need to make sure we are always inviting God into our lives through every little thing we do.

If we are with the Lord, we will never fail.

Fun Facts:

-This week we had the law of chastity lesson with the young women in our ward, and they are A LOT more direct about everything in Spanish.

-To take out the garbage you just listen for the bell, horn, or song of the garbage truck and you have to go running with your trash to catch it. 

{Ok, it looks like this is the cultural celebration she talked about before, where the missionaries were allowed to attend because they had investigators going; and it looks like they set up a table at the entrance and handed out information about the church beforehand.  I'm going to put all these celebration pictures here.}

-- Don't count the days, make the days count!

~Hermana Madsen