Email 9 - "By Far the Hardest Thing I've Ever Done"

Hiya, family!!

Thanks for all the emails! It was fun to hear from everyone :D And holy cow, you´re going to see Imagine Dragons! Just keep buying their music and supporting them so they´ll still be around when I get home ;)
 

I´ll look forward to getting your letters this week. I also sent some home last Monday, so when you get them, I´ll probably be getting yours that same day. Make sure you always send them to my address in Gijón, because it´ll take about 2 months to get to me if you send it to the mission home. And I´ll probably be in this area for up to 6 months, so no worries about transfers!
 

This week has been pretty intense. I´ve heard people say that a mission is like a refiner´s fire, and ain´t that the truth, haha. This is by far the hardest thing I´ve ever done. It´s easy to look at missions from the outside and say, "huh, yeah I bet that´s pretty tough." But when you get here, you realize how much the Lord expects of you, because He tests every one of your weaknesses until you become the best you can be. We can´t comprehend our potential as He does, and even though this experience is super hard, I´ve been blessed to have moments where I can step back and see how much better it´s making me. 
 

We don´t have a whole lot of investigators (and by technical terms, we don´t have any progressing investigators), but here are some really neat ones:

 

-T***´s a guy from the Domincan Republic in his twenties. He started being taught with Hna Diezi & King, and he has SO MANY QUESTIONS! Like in our last lesson, he wanted to know why we needed to have the 10 commandments if we have the two commandments to love the Lord and love each other- which cover all of the other commandments. Also, when we taught the Plan of Salvation, he said he read and understood the entire pamphlet that we gave him (he´s the smartest person we´ve taught, haha, it´s so awesome), but he didn´t understand the purpose of the whole picture, like why it was all important. It was so awesome getting to really dig in the scriptures with him to show him how to find answers, and he´s really starting to grow in his faith. He just needs to start recognizing the answers he´s getting, act on them, and start coming to church! But he wants this so bad, and I´m super excited because we´re going to set another baptism date with him in our next lesson (he couldn´t keep the other one for this weekend because he isn´t coming to church).
 

- E******** is a twenty-one year old who has a lot of changes to make, but is starting to develop the faith to make them. The Spirit was crazy strong in our last lesson, and she started crying as we taught and felt prompted to just really focus on the Savior and faith in Him. I think she´s starting to feel like she can do what she needs to (like leaving her less-than-supportive 46-year-old boyfriend who´s been keeping her from progressing). We´ve just really got to pray that she´ll get the strength to take some big steps.
 

-M****´s a twenty-year-old from Africa, and it´s kind of a fun story with how we found her. We walked by some pisos, and felt prompted to go into one of the buildings to knock some doors (which you usually can´t do because the doors are locked, but this one was open!) and we found this guy, C********, who seemed SO prepared that we basically gave the first lesson on his doorstep. Because we were so excited with our success from that lesson, we decided to try the next building, and that one was open too! We felt that we should knock on one door in particular, and found M****, who agreed to let us come back in a few days to teach her. We didn´t feel like she´d really progress, but as we stopped by C*******´s the next day, we realized that he just isn´t quite prepared for our message yet, and seemed pretty disinterested. Disheartened, we walked away, and I didn´t want to try to teach M****. We stood by her building deciding what to do, and at that moment, she walked out to take out her trash! That was a pretty clear sign that we needed to talk to her, haha. Anyway, we sat down to teach the Plan of Salvation, but as we started with the 3 questions of the soul about our existence (why am I here/ where did I come from / where am I going), we simultaneously felt prompted to teach the Restoration. She´s either way prepared (pretty sure that´s it, haha) or she thinks we´re nuts, because she just listened quietly and didn´t talk much as we gave the whole first lesson. The Spirit was strong though, and I think that the only reason we found C******* was so we´d find M**** :)
 

We´ve got some really neat new members here that we´re working with, too. Katy (kah-tee) is an Ecuadorian my age I believe, and she´s SUPER helpful and does a lot with us. We never go a whole day without seeing Katy. She was baptized a few months ago, and wants to serve a mission, so I showed her President Rasband´s talk to give her a very thinly-veiled nudge in that direction, haha. 
 

We´re also getting fed a lot by a Latino couple (shoot, I think they´re from Colombia, but I´m not positive), Carmelo and Vicki. They give us SO MUCH FOOD. It´s super delicious. It´s tough though, because with the culture here, they give A TON of food and you just absolutely have to do everything you can to finish it, haha. But with prayer, everything is possible ;) I don´t know where we would be without Carmelo. He basically does EVERYTHING for the rama and for the missionaries here in Gijón. He´s the best.
 

But we have had some way tough days this week. There have been two days this week where we weren´t able to teach a single lesson. Yesterday, for example, we had plans, backup plans, and then more backup plans, and they all fell through. We sat on a bench and called every phone number we had- investigators, potential investigators, members, less-actives, and references, and NO ONE could have a lesson! We knocked a few doors and didn´t get anywhere, and the streets (for the first time that I´ve ever seen) were completely empty of people to contact. And we had three whole hours left in the day! The Lord was definitely humbling us as we tried to find something to do to use our time, and tried to find someone to have a lesson with. It ended up being kinda neat because we literally had to talk to absolutely anyone that walked by- including the kinds of people we definitely wouldn´t normally contact. In most cases, we were just reminded of why we don´t contact those kinds of people, haha, but then we also learned a lot about different kinds of people, and now we´re more open minded as to who we´ll approach. 
 

This area is supposedly the toughest in the mission. We´re far from the mission president and most people here just stick with the culture here of smoking, drinking, and not believing in God. We actually, unfortunately, have an Elder from our district going home this week because it´s so tough here. It´s a shame, because he´s a great teacher, but we´re hoping to hit the ground running with exact obedience as a district as we´ll probably get another greenie to take his place. 
 

Being a missionary is crazy, haha. But I love it. This is testing every part of me, so I´m SO grateful that I´ve been so prepared for this throughout my whole life, and the strength from home is priceless!

 

I love you all so much, and I´ll send more letters home later today :)

 

Love,

 

Hermana Grover
 

PS- The Spaniards here are actually a lot easier for me to understand than other Spanish-speakers, because they speak a lot slower. However, it´s easier to talk to Latinos (even though they speak unbelievably fast) because they´re, well, usually a lot nicer, haha, and they want to help me understand. :)

 

PPS - Holy moly the ward´s splitting?? That´s awesome! And crazy! Best of luck with everything, I´m excited to hear how it goes.

 

PPPS - Mike, your stories cracked me and the other Hnas up. Love it. Love you :) I´ll send you a letter today!

 

"Some of the JAS (YSA) after watching the CES fireside from Elder Bednar. It was lucky that he gave a talk that he´s given before, because I remembered it and was able to understand what was being said in the translation, haha (it was the one about having faith "not to be healed")."

 

 

 

 

 "Eating with Carmelo and Vicki :)"

 

 

 

 

"Another one from Carmelo and Vicki´s"

 

 

 

"A fun reminder of home"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Super good ice cream"

 

 

 

 "The first time in my life that I´ve played soccer! We had an Italian, a Colombian, and Venezuelan, and American, and a Swiss playing soccer together- and an Ecuadorian taking the photo, haha."

 

 

 

 

 

"This was earlier today at a Turkish food place. Mexican food for America is Turkish food for Spain. They have these yummy wraps there that are pretty cheap and delish :)

 

That´s actually all I´ve got for photos this time, but we should be able to go to the coast finally nect week, so I´ll get more photo opportunities there. Dad, you´ll love shooting here, it´s so gorgeous! And it´s comforting knowing that you´ll come here and shoot someday, because if I didn´t want to avoid looking like a tourist, I´d have my camera out 24/7, haha.

Also, thanks for letting me know about the memory card. Thankfully, I´d sent you all the photos I´d wanted to from that card before it freaked out, so no worries. I´ll still try to send it home sometime soon :)
 

Love you all! Hope you have a stupendous week!"