Oracion! (Prayer) It's TRUE!

So if you can't tell this is going to be a little more spiritually based. Here are a few pictures of us at church our first sunday! the first is by the sign out on the street and the other is in front of the building it is different than any other church building I have seen. It is two stories and only the second story has air conditioning so sacrament and sunday school are up there. Then the men kick the women out so they can have priesthood there and the women have relief society down stairs, It is SOOOOO ridiculously hot it is hard to focus, we just sit and glisten profusely together! HAhah. The ward we attend is very small and so cute, I think we, 34 americans, we almost out number the mexican members. They are so nice and friendly especially the youth who invite us to things and a few even came to our FHE with our byu group. It is very fun to be in a different country again and recognize that the church is TRUE wherever you go! sidenote: I brought my heels thinking that others would do the same, nope i was close to the only person wearing heels at church! Oh well I like them. I probably wont wear them that often because we do walk quite a bit on Sundays. We also had the Aa-mazing opportunity to go to a session at the Merida temple last thursday! It was SOooo wonderful! I just LOVE the temple and it was fun for me because eventhoughI have done a few spanish sessions in Provo (and that one with mom and david in the San diego temple, hahaha dave i hope you remember it! I thought of you when they called the couple up! :) The temple is small and gorgeous inside. there are only 30 chairs in the endowment rooms, so only about 32 people could do a session at a time. The rooms were hand painted with nature scenes, it was beautiful. I just sat and stared while we waited for the session to start. It was fun, we went with the ward, ruthann(my roomate) and I are the only endowed girls but about 6 of the guys from the group came with us. There were quite a few mexican women and a few men from the ward there with us too. It felt so nice to sit in the celestial room. I am always amazed by the peace that resides there!!! We went and got icecream after and there was a soccer game on, I snagged a picture of the guys in their white shirts and ties cuz i thought it was so funny! I'm sure we looked completely out of place!!














NOW for the real story and reason I decided to write this post!! TODAY the coolest thing happened!!! Background info:For some reason BYU has a strict no proselyting policy for their study abroad students. We are not even allowed to go out with the missionaries to their appointments. We are allowed to answer simple questions that people might have, but then refer them to the missionaries. THIS really bummed me out! Ever since i stepped off the plane I have been having these flashback moments of my mission and i just want to walk up to people and tell them about the church. Everytime we get on the bus, i have this moment where i look for who i should sit by to talk to on the bus to share the gospel with and then i realize i can't proselyte even if i wanted to :( (however, i have started random conversations with a few mexicans on the bus, but since i can't pull the "i'm a representative of Jesus Christ" card i think they just think that i am some crazy gringo! don't worry i don't break the rules or bring up the church i just try to talk to them about their lives and often they jsut look at me like i am crazy! I met this cool girl named kenya-she goes by "kenny" she is originally from cuba, we talked about adjusting to mexico and the modismos or the difference in slang from cuba/chile to mexico. It was fun to chat, She was really nice! Ok back to the story! Well, the lady we live with is catholic, she doesnt attend church that much but does go every once in a while. Well, the first day when we sat down to eat she just started eating so we looked at each other and prayed in our heads. We asked out prof. his opinion and some other kids in the group said that they prayed over their food with the people they live with. SO we told her that we like to pray before meals and asked if it would be ok with her if we prayed before we ate. She said yes and that catholics do that too! SO we pray before every meal. The first couple of times we just said the prayers then one day she said "yo lo hago"(i will do it) and she recited the "padre nuestro"( don't know the name in english, the lord's prayer maybe??) adressing the father but doesnt end i nthe name of jesus christ like we do and it is all memorized words. After that we started taking turns rotating around the table at meal times. One day she says "girls i have a good one today" and she pulled out a book and read this REALLY long prayer typed front and back! Well we have been here about 3 weeks and for the last little while she hasn't prayed, one day when i was at the beach and ruthann ate with her, she told ruthann she liked when we pray because she liked to listen to the way we pray! Well TODAY, i went down to eat lunch and she said she would say it. And then she said the cutest little prayer from her heart! Just like we pray! She thanked him for the food and she prayed for me! and closed in the name of Jesus Christ amen! I about jumped out of my seat for joy! It was so cute!! I know we can't proselyte or talk to her about the church but at least we are leaving a good example It made me SO happy!! :) here is a pic of her and us, it is the only one we have so far of all of us, I wanted to post it so you could see how cute she is, Just don't mind how weird my neck looks from the weird angle or my grossness after waking up early to finish packing and flying all day! hahaha (p.s. dont take this the wrong way but ruthann thinks that when addy smiles she reminds her of izma from "emperor's new groove" the way her skin pulls back! you might not be able to see it in the picture but it is kinda crazy/creepy! haha)