Cheers to the New Year with Punche!

Burbank and N Hollywood Valley

Hermana Day and Hermana Glauser

Feliz Ano Nuevo! ​

2 de Enero (January) was my 100th Day on a mission! Pretty sweet! :D

Time to explain my subject line/title. This week on New Years Day, we went and visited Marie and she welcomed us in and gave us dinner, along with dinner she gave us this thing called "punche" (accent on the e, pronounced, "punch- ay") and it was just a bunch of fruit (guava, pear, apple, pineapple, peach) with cinnamon and hot water. Bleck.  Oh, also there was a LOT of cana (tilde over the n, so "kahn-nya"), which translates to..wait for it..."reed." So we were eating and chewing on a plant reed sooked in hot water. Anyway,we celebrated the new year with punche, very fun! :) I recommend trying it just say you did!  

Oh yeah, and last Monday we went on a little hike up a hill (to California it's a mountain) where we got to overlook Burbank and North Hollywood Valley for sunset, it was so beautiful (I may have teared up, as always) and I got lots of fun pictures!

After a hard day of hardly any contacts and dinner with the punche (fruit with reed and hot water) we returned to our casa for a short dinner break, as we got out of the car one of our neighbors (Manuel) was there. We got to talking, about who we are as missionaries, why we're always changing, why we are the ones paying to be here and aren't being paid, what we do, etc. We gave him a restoration folleto and then invited him to church and...HE SAID YES!? He knows English and Spanish and is a retired doctor, he has a very cool corvette car and he likes to joke around. He's been catholic his whole life and has NEVER gone to another church before, but he said for some reason he felt interested and why not learn more? We said we'd meet him outside at 10:30 sunday and he could follow us to church. We walked out yesterday at 10:32 and he was sitting in his car,  wearing a SUIT!, waiting for us! WHAT!?! The spirit was very strong and it was quite the crazy, random but cool experience! After sacrament meeting, he asked for "one of those books everyone had been talking about today"--a Book of Mormon! We set up a time to revisit him this week, we are very excited about our awesome random investigator! The Lord really does put people into our path! It's pretty cool :)

Speaking of paths, last week we helped a woman (Rosario) move her plants from a car to her apartment. We had a return cita with her this past week and we taught an amazing lesson! We were in such crazy awesome unity and she was very prepared! She accepted the doctrine very well and the spirit was very strong during the Joseph Smith Experience! She wants to come to church but she works on Sundays, so she said a kneeling prayer asking for the help and is in our prayers also! We are very excited to see her again this week and hopefully see some progress! :)

Anyway, it has been quite the milagro week! :) Very many experiences have touched my heart and I love the members and people and area here SO MUCH! :) I didn't even think it was possible to love "random" people this much (and so soon), but it is! ♥

This week I finished reading through the Book of Mormon, I wrote my testimony and I wanted to share it with you all, however I left it at my casa, so next week I will be sure to send it to you all and add some more awesome words! This means I'm giving you all time to prepare too, read your Book of Mormon every day this week and then send me a sentence or two (or more if you wish) about what you learned or what you liked or your testimony of it :) It will be cool to hear :) (Plus, as a missionary, I get to invite people to do things muahaha)

 Everyone hear is scared of the tap water ('cause most of them are from mexico, where it's not safe), so they're always giving us water bottles hahaha :) (at least, I hope that's why...)

There's an opossum that lives right next to our window and door, it's funny. I need name suggestions! is it true that they hang upside down by their tails? (or did Magic School bus lie to me?)

The Spanish Culture here loves bubbly, carbonated drinks, so sometimes that's all we have to drink for dinner....it's funny to have spicy food and then a bubbly drink to try to save me hahaha :) but their fruit juice is very yummy most of the time! p.s. one of them had boxes and boxes and boxes of TANG! It was delicious

Okay, I gotta get going! Love you all lots and lots, thanks for being so amazing! Being a missionary is very fun and I can't wait to email next week and tell you all about the many more Milagros! :) :) :)

Lots of love,

Hermana Day :)