Hermana McKay Hadley: "Locked Out & Ready to Run"

I literally don't know where to start. This week has been a crazy one filled with a ton of adventures! Let me just start with telling you all that I hope you had an wonderful Easter! I loved having such a great day to celebrate the Resurrection and Life of our Savior. One thing that was shared in church yesterday was that the reason why our religion doesn't have the cross displayed everywhere is because we KNOW that our Savior lives. We recognize his death but glorify in his Resurrection!

Last Monday our Zone got together at Buffalo Wild Wings to watch some of the Elders do the "Blazin Hot Challenge". The Elders had to eat 10 really hot wings in 6 minutes. It was an adventure and they must sign a waiver and everything. I signed as a witness for one of the Elders. It was so funny to watch and most of them finished then ran to the bathroom crying...... don't worry I got pictures.

So, our next big adventure happened Thursday morning. To preface this story, I need to tell you that Wednesday morning Hermana Nelson and I thought it would be a good idea to do this really hard work out that an Elder gave us. Well we did it and when we woke up on Thursday morning I was not able to move. So, we decided to just go on a little 10-minute run to loosen up so we weren't so sore.

We left the house and right when we closed the door we looked at each other and paused. We realized that we had just locked our keys and phone in our apartment. We quickly ran to a member’s house who lived close to us and knocked on her door. She answered and we were soooo thankful she was awake. We used her phone to call the Elders in our ward.... and they didn't answer.

We tried calling a few times and we got no answer so the best thing to do was to then run to their apartment… 4 MILES later! We got to their apartment and felt like dying. The Elder’s thankfully were home and got in their car to go break into our house. Because mission rules are that we all can’t ride in the same car (double date with Elder’s) we used their bikes and then biked the 4 MILES back to our apartment to find them chilling in our apartment eating breakfast (our food) and listening to music. We ran and biked 8 miles total for the day, so much for a light work out to loosen muscles. Lesson learned we will NEVER forget our keys and our phone again. And we have now learned how to card a door. My body had a hard time moving for a few days.

Some more highlights of our week, on Friday we went to go help out Hermana Serrano, the Primary President, with a Book of Mormon Read-A-Thon that she was organizing for the kids during Spring Break! It was great and our 10-year-old investigator Rafael finished the Book of Mormon!!! How cool is that?! We are so excited that Rafael has chosen to be baptized this Saturday so please keep him in your prayers.

We walked into the church for the Read-A-Thon and a ton of kids where eating food and listening to the Book of Mormon. It was a party and they had forts and everything! We helped Hermana Serrano then she gave us SOOO much food to take home... like 40 sandwiches! What are we going to do with 40 sandwiches? It was so awesome though to see all these young kids reading and finishing the Book of Mormon!

My last experience that I will share from this week was on Saturday! We were able to take an awesome trip to the LA Temple! It was wonderful to take Rafael and his Mom to the LA Visitor Center! Hermana Serrano took us up in her Jeep where we crammed 2 of her kids in the back-cargo area, then us, Rafael, and his mom in the seats. It was a crazy experience with 7 people with 5 seatbelts. We got there and had such an awesome time!

The missionaries at the Temple were great at helping Rafael and his mom realize the importance of progressing together as a family! After the tour, we were walking around the Temple and Rafael was telling us how different it felt every time he took a step closer to the Temple! It was incredible and I loved having that experience with him!

Many things happened this week but that was some of the big awesome moments that we had! I am so grateful for this time I have to be a missionary and servant of my Heavenly Father!!! Love you all!

-Hermana Hadley