Hermana Sandra Grindstaff, August 24 2009

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> Hola familia,
> Thank you so much for the uplifting letters from your time at youth conference. I enjoy reading about the things you`ve been learning. It is so uplifting. It`s also nice to know how my siblings are doing. (congrats Aaron for being section leader. That`s awesome... and Anita, acting like a manicane in a store window souns exciting.:)
> So today my e-mail is being written a little later because we had a special zone activity and meeting that took up just about the whole day. We were supposed to be going to a beach by a river somewhere in the forest here in Uruguay, but it turned out to be just one long hike to nowhere. :) We started out alright making our way through (or fighting our way through would be more accurate) the thick trees and walked for over and hour. It was really muddy and the trees were really thick (kind of like hiking through the swamps of Louisiana I imagine). After realizing we were all lost and weren`t going to find a place to have a meeting, we decided to head back. We were so incredibly lost. We sang a song and said a prayer after we`d been wondering for a while and then the elders had a brilliant idea to let "the hermanas" lead the way. So there I was, one of the four hermanas, leading the group of lost missionaries through the mud and the trees with absolutely no idea where to go. I was hilarious because in my lost state I hear the elders behind me saying "follow the hermana`s, They`ll get us out of here. :) We eventually did make our way out okay, hence the reason your getting this e-mail. If we were still lost it would be difficult to write to you.
> This week was really great. I love my companion a lot and I`m learning so much from her. We had a pretty funny experience (we have experiences from time to time that just make us giggle)... and this experience had to do with food. We were in the home of an old lady that we had found last week and had just finished the second lesson, when she asked us if we wanted a treat. She had no idea that we had already baked ourselves a feast in the microwave earlier that day (because this was last p-day) and were stuffed full. We told her no, but then she told us that she had bought this cake because she knew we`d be coming. ugh, so we had to give in. She cut huge pieces of this cake for us and we stared at them in agony and began to eat them. (she also poured us both large glasses full of coke, which is also something very special here. You all know that I don`t like soda, so you can imagine that this was difficult for me to see). When she left the room my companion did me a favour and poured the coke back into the container for me and hid part of her cake in her back pack. When the nice old woman came back she poured me more coke and gave us both another large piece of cake. I could have cried, but instead I giggled with my companion about the awful circumstance we were in. We felt pretty sick after this because even though I tried to hide my cake in my book bag, I was not completely successful.
> Okay, so I`ve spent most of this time writing about not very uplifting things that have happened this week, but I want you all to know that I know this gospel is true and that this is the Lord`s work. I love you all so much and hope to share some more uplifting experiences with you in my letter home.
> Love you all!
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> hna. Grindstaff
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> p.s. Mom and dad, If you feel like it`s time to move then I look forward to coming home to a new home. I will be praying for dad to find a job and that all will work out according to the Lord`s will.
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