Wherein Sadie Realizes It's a Blessing to Be a Missionary!

                                                                                                January 30, 2023

Hey yall! 

This week was good and went by pretty quickly. Here's some things that happened.

I left the house like 3 times without my tag this week. Oops.

Our area consists of pan de azucar, la capuera, and a little town called kilometro 110. Tuesday I got to plan our day and decided we should go out to km 110 since we had not been out there yet. It's a 2-3 mile walk to get out there on just a long country road with nothing. So no shade. We got there knocked on a few doors, nobody answered, and then we walked another few miles to lunch and then a lot after lunch going to lessons and contacting people. We normally walk a lot but this day was different because there was zero shade and we didn't stop at all to talk to people on the way cuz it was just a straight field. It was also a little disappointing because nobody even answered so we didn't talk to anyone. Bad planning oops. I haven't been in charge of planning since then haha. Anyways, I got fried that day. So bad. It turned into a big blister so that was exciting. But the rest of the week was super chill and relaxed and we didn't walk very much. 

One day our bus broke down on the way back from La Capuera. We were sitting there on the side of the ruta for like 10 minutes when I was like I should just start talking about the gospel and start handing out pamphlets. But it took me like 5 minutes to build up the courage and then right as i was getting the pamphlets from my comp to start doing it, a new bus showed up for us and everyone left. Bummer. Next time I will act faster. 

So the first day we showed up here, there was this stuff in the corner of the room and some more in the corner of the doorway of our bedroom. I wasn't sure what it was and thought maybe it was like some type of poison or something that keeps bugs out. It just looked like a bunch of little pebbles or something. However, day after day I watched and this week I finally realized it's not a good thing. It was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So finally we sent a picture to a senior couple here and they said it was an ant hill! EWWWWW!! it had gotten so big. So we went to the store and got a poison and instructions on what to do. I swept up and removed the ant hill! Ugh. And then put the poison down. However, the next day, it was back! These ants literally work so fast it blows my mind. We will leave in the morning and come back a few hours later and it's big again. It is kinda impressive but also absolutely disgusting. Also i really did use up the bottle of raid so that's unfortunate. And there's a spider in the window that i haven't killed yet but i watch it every day and make sure it hasn't come inside yet. My goal is to kill it this week. Oh the things I'm learning that I never expected.

We have had some good visits with our friend Maria whose husband passed away. Also another one of our friends from the hospital passed away. I've learned the word fallecio real fast. Also the more we visit the hospital here to teach our friend, the harder I pray nothing happens to me. A little sketch haha. 

We lost our friend Maria inez. She was progressing so well and we had just set a date for her baptism and now we haven't seen her since. Tough.

Our friend Franco has been making friends in the branch and came to church again and is hopefully going to be baptized next sunday!! Pray for Franco please! 

Our little friend lucmila is the cutest ever and in her desire to be baptised, she is reactivating her mom. She sends us pictures and voice messages that brighten my day! 

We had a branch activity on Saturday and got to stay out late! And we ate hot dogs. Some branch members that have some beef with each other kinda got in a little fight and that was super awkward but other than the activity was great! I'm still trying to understand the mate thing. Like the branch sits down together and starts passing around mate, drinking out of the same straw! Ew. Germs. And it's like so much caffeine and they drink it late at night i have no clue how they sleep! Maybe one day I'll try it but for now i'll sit and enjoy the idea of the relaxed atmosphere of sittin and sippin 'mate together without actually doing it.

Something people told me when I was preparing to come to Uruguay was to bring seasoning because the food is bland. I didn't understand at first because I thought the food was pretty good. And it is, but I realized this week that I flavor my food with mayo now. So ya the food is bland but atleast it's not like gross. It just needs more flavor and the most flavor you can get here is mayo apparently haha. 

We also had a multizone conference on thursday so that was good to see people and be with other missionaries! We talked a lot about working with members so that's what we are trying to do now! Though we don't have many active, we are trying. Yall should work with the missionaries in your area!

Something fun that I came across in my studies this week is a talk from my grandpa Groberg in a general conference. Every morning I have been trying to write down a few goals I have for the day. Usually simple things like drink 3 bottles of water or compliment my companion once, or do a full hour of language study (yet to accomplish this),etc. And every day I have been writing "patient and kind" as a goal. Then the other day I read a talk from my grandpa and one of the things he said in his talk was about being patient and kind. That was just a fun connection to me. Like my mama says, "it's more important to be kind than to be right". And for me that takes a lot of patience right now.

Living with a person you barely know, in a place where people only speak a different language than you, across the world from your family, with lots of bugs and crap and walking down streets getting fried and constantly sweating is not easy and not really fun, but this week I have been able to shift my perspective easier and have found joy in the work. Sometimes it is actually fun. An adventure at least. 

When I focus on others, whether it be the people I am serving or my companion's needs instead of mine, or my family that will receive blessings from my service, it is a lot more doable and a lot more enjoyable. There were some days this week that I just thought wow how cool is it that I can be here doing this right now. This is awesome! Those are good moments. And sometimes that thought is forced. Kind of a fake it till you make it kinda thing, but it works anyways because I've had a lot more enjoyable happy moments than I was having before. I decided to stop waiting to have a better situation to have a better attitude and decided to be the positive that i wanted to have around me. A mission is really a rollercoaster. But we don't have to wait to get to the top to start screaming lol. That was a bad analogy but anywaysss

We honestly didn't work much this week. Every day was kinda slow but I am stoked to work hard this next week. I am trying harder to work on my Spanish and to really focus on the people. People always ask if i am going to learn spanish or uruguayo lol. The castellano accent makes it a little different.

I also love learning from other missionaries in our zone. I'm always hyped and motivated after meetings with them. 

This week we get to go to Montevideo and have another training meeting so I am excited for that!

January was one of the strangest months of my life. I feel like a different person in a weird way. Like i've just been through and experienced things that i haven't before and when i look back on me even in the ccm a few weeks ago i just think awww how happy and clueless lol. But I have learned and grown so much in a good way and am looking forward to February and the good things and the learning moments that will come with it.

Oh also there have been some wildfires in the "mountains" in piriapolis and surrounding areas so everybody has been praying for rain. Hopefully this week we can get some!! We got a few drops this morning finally. I think the fires have been put out for the most part but we still need rain also i am praying for yall freezing in idaho and utah!!

What a blessing it is to be a missionary.

Vamo Arriba! 

Love yall a lot and praying for you!! Remember God is mindful of you.

Hermana Bailey

Also im going to stop apologizing for these being long and random lol its my english rant that i get to do once a week

Spider count: no idea like 6 maybe but really the fat one in the window i need to kill

Pictures: comp, branch activity, hot dog, sunsets(Ok i love the sky so beautiful sunsets or cool clouds make me so happy. Little blessings from God), broken down bus, something of charles darwin out in the middle of nowhere, and the ant hill just a little while after cleaning it up.