Buenas tardes

Hello family!! I am feeling really grateful for your emails today and for the love I can feel from you even though we are literally on other sides of the world. Thank you for the words of encouragement and the "I love you´s." Sometimes after a week of walking around and speaking Spanish I forget how much I love to sit here and read about what kind of fun things you´re doing, and receive such kind little messages. Thank you, it means more to me than you know!

So I just wanted to start out this email with a little funny moment. First of all, I STAYED IN CIENEGUILLA! I told you all about my hard emergency transfer thing, but in the end, they kept me here so I didn´t have to move again. It still wasn´t easy to know that I wouldn´t be able to say goodbye, but that literally is just what we do here in the mission. ANYWAY, funny moment. So my companion is Hermana Mack, and she is white like me, from Arizona. We get along really well and have a lot of fun. The other night, we were running late, and it was really dark, and we just happened to be in the darkest part of our area. So, naturally, we decided to run. Not like some frantic super scared run, just a "I´m a little bit spooked, we´re late, and I´d rather run" kind of run. So we were running down the street, singing Taylor Swift, and we saw this guy walking. Obviously, seeing a couple of white girls running in the dark singing in English isn´t a normal thing, so we were just going to pass him and just avoid the weirdness. But at the same time, we looked at each other, stopped running, and turned back to go contact this guy. Hahaha, his face was so funny. I think he was really confused. But we talked to him for like 5 minutes, invited him to church and did that whole missionary thing, then took off running and singing again. It was honestly really weird and we just cracked up, still running. Mormons are weird, but missionaries are definitely weirder.

So this week. I don´t really know where to begin. It was just really filled with a lot of unexpected things. First of all, my new area, Cieneguilla, is HUGE. Seriously. It´s unbelievable. We take a bus because we don´t even live in our area. I literally don´t even know how to explain how huge it is...if you were to go from one end to the other it would take AT LEAST 45 minutes. It´s big. And the thing is, the Hermanas that were here before had quite a few obstacles that prevented them from working so there is so much space that is just completely untouched, and for that reason they also didn´t have very many investigators. So this first week, we went to all the parts, and went searching for people. Just talking to people in the streets,knocking on wrong doors, or asking for help when we got lost. It was honestly super fun. We talked to a ton of people, found a ton of people to teach, and met some really amazing people. This part of my mission is unlike anything I´ve experienced until now...it´s just one huge (I´ll say it again because it´s literally HUGE) project that was just kind of plopped in my lap. I don´t know how or why God thinks I was the right one for this job, but thank goodness I have Hermana Mack because she loves to work. I just have such a huge amount of hope and I am super excited for the time that I will get to spend here in Cieneguilla.

I wanted to share a little experience really fast. The most interesting part of our area is the very farthest part. You take a bus, and it´s literally the very last stop, so it´s like the end of this little world or something. It´s called Rio Seco, which means DRY RIVER. That sounds pretty appealing, right? It´s exactly that - dry. 100% rocks and dirt, and it´s just one giant hill. You get off the bus, and just start climbing this mountain. It´s just this little pueblo...some people that live in the bottom of the hill live in normal-ish houses, but the higher you get, the poorer it gets. They live in little wooden shacks with sheets of metal for roofs. Most don´t have electricity, and I´m still confused about how they have water...maybe there´s some water lines, but I don´t really know. Anyway, it´s totally different from the other parts of the mission I´ve been in. All of Cieneguilla is hills and dirt, but this part especially. Anyway, so one day we went to Rio Seco looking for this less active lady that hasn´t gone to church in 10 ish years. Her name is Isabel Marquez. It took us forever to find her house, because even though they have addresses, they don´t have like fancy little plaques with the number on it. So we asked a million and a half people where this hermana lives (made a lot of contacts though ;) ) and finally found her house after looking for a while. We knock on the door, and of course she´s not there. So we get all sad, and turn to leave. We´re walking down the hill, just kind of thinking about what we were gonna do next, just focused in our own thoughts. We passed two women and just said "Buenas tardes," and kept walking. But my companion and I looked at each other and just kind of the same time turned around to go contact them and invite them to church. We started talking and invited them, and we asked them their names. One said Rufina, and the other said ISABEL MARQUEZ. We just looked at each other and silently freaked out. We told her we had been looking for her and she just got sooo happy and invited us to her house. We had this super sweet,simple lesson with her and her friend, and talked about Jesus Christ like missionaries do, but the Spirit there was so strong. She just soaked it all up and was so excited to have us come back. As we left her house, she just stood there and waved, watched us around the corner, and my companion and I were SO HAPPY.

It was just something really simple. But in that moment, I just felt so strongly in my heart that I really am meant to be here. More than that, that God is preparing these people. It´s so funny how little we actually do out here. But I am just so blessed and happy to be here! I know I will have lots more miracles to share eventually.

I love you all so much! Know that I miss you and still pray for you every day. Have a great week, I will talk to you soon!

I LOVE YOU!!!

Hermana Scott