Live the gospel and eat lots of pizza

Friends and family,

Today Is my 10 month mark exactly. 10 months serving as a missionary! It's starting to hit me that I only get 8 more months, then I have to go back to being a normal person, and I don't really know how I feel about that. But, I'll live it while I can!

What a week it's been! I don't have many pictures to show for it though. Here are some highlights:
Our branch leadership got completely changed: our branch president is now presidente Ruge, with Hmno Avila as his first councilor and Hmno Motta as his second councilor. So as of now we don't have a branch mission leader, at least for the week. We made some no-bake cookies to encourage people to come to branch council. It would have worked, but
we ended up not having branch council. Next week it will work! :)

We were able to meet with 5 less active members and all of the lessons went really well! Our branch is picking up speed really quickly and doing very well. We had more members at church this week than I've ever seen! The Frias family, Clarita (investigator) and Omar (less active), the Camaro family, Ruby, and Carlos. The biggest miracle was probably Carlos- this was my first time teaching him and I've been serving here for over 3 months! When we knocked on his door, his sister-in-law told us the usual; he's at work. But before she could close the door on us we saw him come running from the back room saying " I'm here, come on in!" We then had an awesome lesson where the spirit was super strong and he opened up to us, explaining why he hasn't been coming to church and his desire to change. It was awesome. We live for moments like this! 

The lesson with Clarita and Omar also went really well, Omar's sister Hmna Montesinos was there and bore her testimony, then Omar ran to the back room and came back, holding a painting I had been admiring a few weeks earlier. He then gave it to me, saying it was from Clarita- I almost cried. We also had a relief society activity, and we were in charge of spiritual bingo, it was awesome. :) then Hmna Frias taught us how to make lasagna, Mexican style. It was amazingly yummy.

We taught a few investigator lessons as well. Edgar, where we read from the Book of Mormon and helped him understand the importance of prophets. Ción and the girls and Ivan, where we taught the 10 commandments. And the coolest part was that Ción's WIFE came to the lesson!! Her name is Monica, and she is very nice, but in the whole
history of teaching this family we have never had the opportunity to teach her. It was a huge miracle!

All in all, it's been a great week. Super busy and crazy and completely worth it. I love being here, I love how obedient and hard working and consecrated these missionaries are. I love how fun and talented these members are. I love seeing the light grow in people's eyes as they read the Book of Mormon for the first time and realize how beautiful and valuable it is. I love seeing people return to church and take the sacrament for the first time in months or even years. It's worth it to be a missionary. I highly suggest it. :)

Love you all,
Hermana Hokanson

Our car got attacked by an army of birds, so we got a really nice car
wash because we couldn't scrub it all off...