From Tampa With Love: The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up!

Dear Family and Friends,

The song, "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock" has taken on a whole new meaning to me this past week, haha!

For starters, our apartment flooded. There is water all over, in the closets, in the kitchen, in the living room, pretty much everywhere. The maintenence crew has done all they can to figure out where it was coming from and they think they've figured it out but they are still not 100% sure. They weren't able to work on it over the weekend, so their solution: put in a fan to dry up the water. The first day it was ok, but the fan actually lets off a great deal of heat so when we got home Saturday night our apartment was well about 80 degrees and the floor was still soaking! SO we spent the weekend with the Seminole sisters at their place.

Ah! Our apartment flooded!!! We put down four layers of towels
(basically all we had) and they were wet within seconds!

On to better, brighter news. We met a couple new people this week who we have started to teach including Elouisa and Juan's neighbor Darwin. Elouisa and the kids came to church on Sunday (Juan had to work) and so did Ray. Ray is still progressing really quickly towards baptism, huzzah! We taught him the Plan of Salvation this last week and he came to our Book of Mormon study group.

Darwin and Elsa, his mom

We taught Elouisa and Juan the first lesson with Darwin and the whole time they were supporting everything we said, it was awesome! I also cut Elouisa's hair for her which was really fun. They are the cutest little family I just can't get enough of them.

I cut off about 9 inches of Elouisa's hair. Needless to say, I conquered her split ends!

We talked with Cindy this week. Everything is pretty much the same for the most part, she's still a buzz trying to get ready for the wedding. We taught her about baptism, it was a really good lesson.

I tried to make some bean dip but the can of beans exploded while I was opening it.
Ha ha, good thing Sister Holloway can cook.

We had the most amazing zone conference on Tuesday! Elder Clarke of the seventy came and we talked about pretty much everything having to do with missionary work. He is a very inspired man and had a lot of good insight for us. I love his motto: "Patience, but hurry."

One thing I really like that he told us was that if we would just quietly transition from each of our Sunday meetings it would change our whole church experience and we would be able to feel the spirit more abundantly at church. We also talked about planning really effectively and about how to teach new converts. They brought in one of the AP's recent converts and we were able to ask him questions; it was really cool!

I loved the conference because even though it was all intended for missionary life, he also taught us how it would apply after our missions. We were also surprised when he told us that the way they choose where missionaries will go is not necesarilly dependant on the country or state but rather that they are chosen to serve where they are because of their mission President and his wife. Now looking at my mission I can definetely see how having President and Sister Cusick here to guide me has shaped me into a better person. They are both inspiring and just amazing. Haha, at the conference they were compared to justice and mercy. President is the justice and Sister Cusick is the mercy! President Cusick talked about developing our faith and Sister Cusick talked about prayer. Overall the conference was one of my favorites so far. Haha, we even sang Head Shoulders Knees and Toes in Spanish!

Once upon a time we decided to walk to all our part-member families houses.
Despite all the sunscreen we put on, we still got sun burned.

I also learned a lot about how the gospel of Jesus Christ blesses families this past week. We spent a bit of Father's day with our wonderful bishop, Bishop Patrick and his family and the spirit there was phenonimal. All of the missionaries in our ward were there (there are 8 of us, crazy right?! But then again there are almost 900 members in our ward) and we all sang "Love is Spoken Here" for them and we gave Bishop a tie and Sister Patrick some flowers. We plan on doing something similar for our Spanish Branch president tonight. We really do appreciate all the work that ward leaders put in to help missionary work!

Well that's my week. Make this coming week a good one! Also Happy Father's Day to the best father ever!

Con Amor de un fin de semana en Seminole,

Hermana Mathis

Welcome to Candy Kitchen, where we didn't even buy any candy, ha ha!
The walls all have old candy wrappers on them and people's signatures
in all different colors. We just ended up getting ice cream.