Tamale and Tamale and Tamale...(apologies to Shakespeare!)

November 12, 2013

Surprise! My mission president told us that we could email on Tuesday instead of Monday due to the fact that yesterday was a holiday. whoop.

speeeeeeeeeaking of yesterday, I have two tidbits of Hermana life. 

tidbit number one is a story. buckle up.

So: yesterday I was suuuuuper hungry so I basically ate my weight in food for both lunch and dinner. (To spare myself the embarrassment of showing you how NOT exaggerative that is, I will refrain from telling you ALL I consumed. let it simply hitherto be known that it was mucho) -anyway- so we went to this party (see second tidbit of my blog) and they served tamales, beans and rice. I was already STUFFED, but they had bought over 60 tamales, and the party was in large part planned to help missionary work along, so..... I squeezed in one tamale, beans, and rice.

Flash forward a whole ten minutes later when we drove to -----DINNER------ where the kind person serving us had spent ALL DAY cooking us......tamales.

Brief interruption: there were two tables at our generous dinner appointment because, including the 8 missionaries and the family serving us, we needed 10 seats. The family and 4 missionaries were at one table and the four remaining missionaries sat at the other. I was at the table without any members of the family. End of interruption.

So we each get served 4 tamales (and not any of those wimpy limp-y tamales either. we're talking big, hunkin', probably 600-calorie-each tamales), rice, and two different kinds of pasta salad. The Elders sitting next to me had apparently eaten as much as I had that day, and were reallllly struggling to finish their food. What ended up happening? I had to help the elders finish their tamales and ate SEVEN -not including the one at the prior party. plus rice. plus the elder's rice. plus ice cream. oh yes. I definitely got heart burn last night and could barely even move let alone sleep.

tidbit numero dos (2):

Here is an EXCELLENT example of sharing what you know with everyone around you: So there is this young woman in our ward named Julie. super awesome. She has shared the gospel with many of her friends in the past and basically has the most radiant light around her. So she --all by herself--- organized a party with all of her friends so that she could invite the missionaries and introduce them to us.

She bought food (see tidbit (party) one), planned activities, opened her home to everyone, and basically invited her whole school. It was amazing. We came, we ate, we played, we talked, we got to know each other, we had an incredible experience. And all because this one young woman was willing to go out of her way to share something that she knew to be so important and precious.

Think about it. Why would a 16-year-old girl go to all that work and risk her reputation to tell her friends about a religion? Because it's true! And when you know it and when you feel it, nothing else matters. You simply want others to taste the indescribably joy of it. You realize that there is a bigger picture and that what others think of you, or worldly success, isn't nearly as important as sharing the plan God has for us with our spiritual brothers and sisters:  We ARE LOVED with a perfect love, we were sent here to be happy and successful. And this church, set up by Jesus Christ and restored through Joseph Smith, teaches us how…along with a ton of other saving truths!

love love love and intense feelings of extreme gratitude for readers,

Hermana Thomas