I learned that I'm going to become more photogenic this transfer. My new companion, Hermana Coronado, likes taking pictures and looks good in them (she's quite a fashionable person). What I love about pictures is remembering upon looking at them the story of what was going on, and where we were, and everything else that went into getting us to that precise moment for someone to click a button and capture a small snapshot of our personal history.
What we see in the people around us are also snapshots. Our daily interactions with people are so brief in comparison with the time our spirits have existed and developed and learned. I love our area book (where we keep track of people's contact information and what we've taught them) as a missionary because it provides a tiny glimpse of what some of these people have experienced with the Gospel. We don't know what people have experienced or what they are experiencing (those things don't show up in photos) but one thing I do is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is what we all need.
Pictures are static. The pictures I have when I had braces and too-short bangs that I cut myself in middle school don't accuratly represent who I am now. Give people the chance to move beyond the snapshot you have of them.
There's my two cents. This week we discovered a set of cliffs because the plants that had been hiding them had been cleared out. We also spent Saturday in Plaza Crystal (a mall) inviting everybody to watch Él es la Dádiva. If you haven't seen it, go to christmas.mormon.org right now! Almost all of the missionaries in the city were there, and a choir from all three stakes was there as well. It was really fun.
Have lovely week!
Hermana Juliana