Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Email - March 31

    This week has been kind of crazy and one of the most uplifting weeks of my mission! Holy Moly! So on Tuesday we had Zone Conference, it was our zone, the Gilbert Zone, and the Chandler Zone. Us, as Spanish missionaries cover both zones in our large area. At zone conference we talked a lot about conversion, consecration, and the doctrine of Christ. Our assistants and the Mission President taught us, it was way awesome!! Luckily, we sister training leaders and zone leaders didn't have to train. It scares the daylights out of me haha, but I learn a lot as well from being able to study and train other missionaries! We watched the video about John Tanner, I love this video! We talked about how consecrated he was to the Lord. Very uplifting! We then had district meeting Wednesday. Then on Thursday we had Missionary Leadership Council. It was good, we talked about diligence, how to plan more effectively, and how to use Facebook and online proselyting better. President Toone promised us that if we, as a mission, are diligent in all we do, especially planning, then we can double our baptisms per month by the time of the dead heat of the summer. That is a pretty giant promise!! But we will be diligent!
   On Friday, we had a regular planning meeting and on Saturday, you know, THE GENERAL WOMEN'S CONFERENCE!!! Holy Cow! (Santa baca!) I loved it! The spirit was so so strong! I was tearing up in just the first song! Oh man, it was amazing! When all the children sang "Teach Me to Walk in the Light", that was so sweet and I kept imagining Bloom being able to attend this conference in just a year or two! I asked this 8 year old how she enjoyed it after and she just shook her hand like 'mmm so-so" haha. I loved how they talked about judging others is not Christ-like or finding differences in each other. I liked how Sister Burton talked about perfection because that is something I definitely struggle with and I know so do a lot of woman. P.S. Bonnie L. Oscarson is one of my first Zone Leader's and now an assistant's, aunt. So that is cool. The talk from President Eyring was very powerful! I think a lot about before we came down to earth. I think about having to prepare and leave my Father's arms with hope and with faith, that all would be well in this life. I think about what I knew before I came to earth and the fear I may have had that I might not make the right choices on earth to return to live with Heavenly Father. I think of the empathy I had before this life for those people that knew they would not be sent to a home that had the gospel already planted in it, or that came here knowing of the abuse or disasters they would be in. Everything that President Eyring said and explained have been the exact thoughts of my mind. We are not taught about this too often. It is thoughts that I had in my mind that the Holy Ghost gave to me and President Eyring testified of these truths of my thoughts. At the end of his talk he said, "the Holy Ghost testifies of truth, and we all felt it here tonight" this was simple, but so true. I knew just like I did before that I was prepared from a young age to serve a mission at this time. The Lord protected me and prepared me to be here now, and I love it!
   You should read the talk Good, Better, Best. This month we are studying about diligence, and this is a great talk for anyone in any calling to read, even a parent!
   So on Monday night, we taught a man named Armando and his wife, who is a member, Nancy. It was our first lesson with them and so we just did an introduction lesson of what we teach and who we are and set expectations. My Spanish is still not perfect but I do know how to testify and I can't remember exactly what I was talking about at this moment in the lesson but I think I was testifying of how much the gospel will bless their lives. The spirit was so strong, usually the spirit is around us so I feel like we are more immune to the spirit, but at this time the spirit was so strong everyone in the room could feel it. Armando grabbed his wife's hand and laid back on the couch. It was really neat to see how much my ability to speak another language can affect someone's life. I love being able to speak Spanish. It truly is a blessing to learn it! Especially with the Lord helping me so much!
   Everyone tells us how animated we are, and not just boring and strict. We have a lot of fun and we show the members that we love missionary work! I am even learning how to crack some jokes in Spanish :)













2 Nephi 5:27 And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness.

Email - March 24

   So this week has kind of been a blur. It has been a hard week, not in the normal things that usually make it hard but motivation wise! My companion and I go home the same time, so we are both pretty old missionaries and we can see how our motivation is weakening. The whole week we just felt like we were dragging ourselves. We started trying new things. We biked two days, it was really fun! But also in Spanish work, it is really hard because the people are super nice, too nice to say they are not interested. And too nice where they say they will go to church, but they never show up. Most everyone lets us in their house, but they have no desire to learn or anything. So it makes the work super disappointing when they don't keep their commitments. This week it just seemed everything was falling through but we just kept pushing on and decided to write down the little miracles we have each day to have more umph and excitement in the work. Something we noticed is that we have been starting to think more about home because it really is shocking we only have 6 months left, time flies by!!  And this has made it harder for us to focus on our purpose as missionaries. We are going to improve that this week and stop thinking of home, or where we will be in 6 months and stuff like that. LIVE IN THE PRESENT! Because I don't want to ever go home knowing that I could of done more on my mission, that I could of worked harder or talked to more people, or changed more lives. I want to leave with feeling that I accomplished the will that the Lord had for me at the time I served.
   My companion and I laugh a lot, a little too much! Sometimes we have a really hard time praying because funny things happen too much! We are like best friends, and I love her to death! The other day I noticed that I have not thought not even one bad thought about her. Pretty amazing right!
   I will tell you one of the miracles that happened really quickly. So one day we were super tired and drained and were so done with the day. We didn't know any one to visit and we lost all hope. We were about to turn home, even though we had probably about an hour more to work. We decided to visit one of our investigators that isn't progressing very much because we didn't know who else to visit. We parked across from his house and a car pulls out of the driveway of the house we were parked by. They drive up to our window and it ended up it was a person that has definite potential to be baptized, but we lost their contact information! We didn't know where they lived or their phone, so there would have been no way to find them. They told us that they will be at church on Sunday and we can come by on Monday night. It was such a miracle. God knows what He is doing!

   And we put someone on date this week for baptism on April 12th. Her name is Estrella which means star and she is 10. She is adorable!