adventures with aubrey: vamos a la playa

Que pasa? Hope that everyone had a great week and had lots of fun enjoying the summer heat that has taken over everywhere, because we sure did! This week was filled with some interesting experiences and a lot of laughs and good memories to say the least. Also, I hit my 5 month mark yesterday so what?!

First off, it's really stinking hot. Sister Neeley had a dream the other night, she said she dreamed that it was cold enough to use her cardigan outside of the church building and she woke up super happy. This, my friends, is what we call a #FloridaMissionaryProb. We dream about it being cold, it's kinda sad, but the heat means that more people are inside their homes so let's look at the positive side of things, right?! (it's still too hot). Pretty sure its the humidity that kills, because then it feels 15 degrees hotter!

Last p-day we went to the beach... well we went to the pier since we aren't allowed on the actual beach in this mission. But we got to see the beach and it was beautiful. We left sad that we couldn't go into the water because it looked amazing and it was hot (shocking I know). I will attach some pictures but they don't do it justice.

One more interesting thing that happened was yesterday. We were knocking and we got a call from the other Sisters we live with who said that our ceiling was leaking? So we ran home and there was literally yellow "water" falling from our ceiling into our closet. IT WASN'T WATER. Our room now smells awful but thank goodness they fixed the upstairs apartment and there is no longer nasty stuff falling into our room. RIP to my suitcase though... hopefully I cleaned it well enough. There will be some pictures of that too #sorryaboutit.

Finally, an update on Byron. He is still awesome and still progressing and will be baptized this Saturday! Whoop whoop, he is so awesome. We had a great Family Home Evening with the Bishop & his wife on Monday with Byron & his wife and we talked about families being eternal and the temples, and it was so spiritually uplifting. We shared testimonies about how we have been blessed by the temples in our own lives and Byron's wife, who is already a member, was just so thrilled and happy that in one year they will be going to the temple to be sealed as an eternal family to their new baby, it was perfect. We left there on cloud 9, but also racing home because it was almost 9:30 ...oops. On Friday, we had another awesome lesson about the commandments and he came to Church yesterday and we have one more lesson today and then his interview on Wednesday, but yay! It has been really hard this transfer, with all the doctors appointments and having to stay in with Sister Neeley's stomach but we are going to be able to see the fruits of our labors this Saturday!

This week I was reading in Preach My Gospel about hope, which is so important. We can't have anything really if we don't have hope. Faith starts with hope, everything starts with hope. Preach My Gospel says that hope is "patient perseverance," yeah it is. It really stood out to me and something that I definitely needed to hear and learn about this week. This whole week I have been focusing on a different Christ like attribute everyday but really hope was the one that stood out to me the most. Without it we have nothing, but with it we can have everything.

One thing that I seem to write over and over again in my journal is: "I am so happy all the time." I don't know how because its exhausting work, but just being able to be here, right now and serving the Lord. Especially this last week, when at first our success wasn't as high, but then yesterday it was just miracle after miracle after miracle. It's such a blessing! Its way more fun to be happy doing missionary work than it is to be sad!

#1: this is our closet disaster feat. Sister Rianda