Email 13 - A Recipe for Miracles

 

Outside the chapel

 

 

 

 

Chinese food! I ate a ton of that sushi, and while eating like, the fifth one, a little tentacle fell out, haha. So I ate a lot of something with tentacles that day. Super tasty :)

 

 

The members are so excited about missionary work, they´ve started wearing chapas that past missionaries have given them during activities in the chapel, haha. (There are only two members in the branch that have served missions, and they´re married to each other! They´re super cool. We feel the most at home in their piso than in any other place here. I´ll get a pic of them soon. Oh! That´s the same couple we stopped by during my first week here, when I felt the spirit all strong and was able to understand Spanish, haha)

That other pic was before a baptism of the Aviles Elders

 

Our eating appointment with paella. There wasn´t a man in the house, so the Elders had to eat like that, haha. BTW- that stuff that looks like beer (I know, sketchy, right?) has absolutely no alchol. It´s like the sparkling cider we have at home. :)

 

A visit to the hospital (We didn´t even plan with all those members to be there at the same time, we all just ended up there after church. How cool is that??)

 

 

 Super delish pastries this morning.

Hey family!

Your emails were so fun today, haha. I was enjoying them and forgot for a second that I need to hurry up and respond :) I love you guys so much.
 

We had some tough days this week, but some really cool things happened too (should I just stop starting every email with that? Hahaha, I think you know by now that this is how every week goes...).
 

For one thing, I discovered that I LOVE teaching Enligsh! (Ok, I would go back and correct that mistake, but that´s just too ironic, haha) Like, I seriously love it a lot. A lot a lot. It´s something I can actually do, and it´s something in which I can really measure my success right then and there, because you can see the person you´re teaching progress in the moment. I love it. Did I say that yet? ;) We helped one of the Elder´s investigators prep for an interview she was going to have in English (turned out she had no idea how to work interviews either, so I tried my best to remember what Dad taught me about that), and we helped the other Hermanas´ new convert, F*****, prep for a test he had this week for the military. The best was helping these two teenage girls with their pronunciation the other night. I´m starting to feel super strongly that I need to study to become a high school teacher. I don´t know if that idea will stick around, but I´m feeling great about it right now. :D
 

Oh, and we had some incredible authentic Spanish food this week. I had my first paella yesterday! SO GOOD. It had shrimp, clams, chicken, another kinda clam, and then, if you looked really closely, baby octopus! Haha. We also had that potato torilla thing again, empeñadas, and orange slices covered in cinammon and sugar (I dare you to try it. It´s stupendous). And it´s Gijón missionary tradition to gourge at a Chinese buffet once every transfer, so of course we had to do that (I got a littly trunky when some Black Keys music started playing at the restaraunt, haha)
 

Hm. Sorry to be writing about kinda boring stuff. But here´s something fun: We´re teaching homeless people! Haha. The Elders in Aviles met and baptized an incredible woman, M***, in three weeks last month, and now she´s here in Gijón looking for a piso. She spends her time marking scriptures and then sharing them with all of her homeless buddies. (she marks scriptures that she has questions about in red, ones she likes in blue, and then ones she feels prompted to share in green) Hermana Diezi and I visited her last week in a big park, and some of her buddies walked by and she told one of them to come listen. His name´s F****, he´s an inactive Evangelist, and he knows a lot about religions, and he´s super cool. Imagine Sirius Black from Harry Potter as a homeless, talkative, wise old Spaniard and you´ve got F****! Hermana Diezi and I have taught him a few times and we don´t know how well he´ll progress, but it´s fascinating teaching him and talking to their buddies.
 

One thing that´s actually really hard about being a missionary is not being able to help the needy people you see on the streets. We aren´t supposed to give them money, but it feels TERRIBLE walking past them without helping, especially with the chapa (name tag). It´s hard trying to contact someone that just saw you walk past a homeless person without helping them. Ugh. I think that´s one of the reasons I feel so awesome and uplifted when I´m teaching M*** and her friends. Love it. (And we´re safe, don´t worry. We´ve prayed to know if it´s okay, and not only are we in a safe area, in a big open park, but we feel the spirit really strongly when we´re with them. Just in case you´re worried, haha)
 

We´re having a tough time with our investigators. We haven´t been able to meet with T*** at all- he´s "always busy," that woman, M*****, has moved to Oviedo, M**** pretended to have moved and then we saw her running away from us in the street the other day, and L**** and her friend texted us yesterday basically saying "thanks, but no thanks." AAH! But we´re working on it. We just made a goal as a district for each companionship to have 3 people found, taught and baptized this transfer. It feels pretty far-fetched, but Hermana Fuller was studying in her scriptures and discovered a "recipe for miracles" that we´re going to work on: desire, prayer, faith, action = miracles. Sounds simple, but we´re really going to try to focus on it, because acheiving this goal would definitely be a miracle!
 

It helps that the members are really starting to get on board with us. I have never heard any of them talk about member missionary work without us bringing it up and pushing them to do it, but yesterday, almost all of the testimonies mentioned their desire to work with us and share the gospel!!! My cheeks hurt from beaming at the members by the end of the meeting, haha. I´m so stoked. 
 

And, holy cow, there´s a thirteen year old kid in the ward that is an awesome example to everyone here. He kept asking us for Book of Mormons, and I asked him if he really was giving them all away. He proudly told me that he´d given away 7 copies in the last 20 days, and their family had given away all five of the pass-along cards we´d given them, and wanted more asap. I´m so proud of that kid!! We´ve decided to try to place more Book of Mormons this transfer to keep up, haha.
 

Oh yeah, and this week is transfer week! This morning we sent off two from our tiny, tight-knit district. Unfortunately for us, Hermana King was sent down to Madrid to white-wash and train! The members were devastated because she´s been here for almost six months- her entire mission so far. We also sent Elder De Avila to another area in our zone to train. I´m stoked for them both, but we miss them! Hermana Fuller´s with us right now, and we´ll pick up her new comp in a couple hours :)
 

Teaching here can be pretty hard. We get hard questions a lot, and even more often, we just get people saying "no, that´s not right. It´s like this." ESPECIALLY about the Godhead. I´ve been studying that a lot. The best answer I´ve found was actually in the Ensign from the April General Conference. I forgot to write down who it was that gave the talk, but it was about the unity of the Father and the Son. He talked about how Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are mentioned so often as being "one" in the scriptures because they are one in power and purpose. He said that they desire for us to be worthy to enjoy that same "oneness" with them. I don´t believe that it´s mentioned in the scriptures so much to confuse people about the nature of the Godhead, but rather to help us see how desireable it is to have our will conform to theirs, and to be one, with them, in power and purpose. Plus, it´s impossible to really understand the Atonement without understanding that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are three distinct beings. And to understand the Plan of Salvation, it´s super important to realize that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have glorified, perfected bodies. It´s really difficult trying to help people understand this truth I´ve always taken for granted, but I know it´ll work if I continue to study it and have the spirit with me!
 

It´s also important to realize that the best way to answer questions can be very different from what you´d expect. For one thing, if you look in the scriptures, any time a missionary (Alma/ Amulek, sons of Mosiah) is asked a question, they bring it down to very basic doctrine first, and then bring it back up. I feel lame for not writing down the references to send to you all, but I promise it´s all there! We need to help people have faith in the basics of God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Atonement before we´re going to get anywhere. And trust me, we´ve tried answering hard questions directly, and it never works! Plus, I had an MTC teacher that pointed out that Heavenly Father has all the answers to any questions we could ever have ever. But he doesn´t just hand them to us, because we need to find answers on our own to learn and grow. We´re trying now to help investigators know how to use the scriptures and the church websites to find answers, because it´s so much more powerful when they discover them for themselves.
 

Anyhoo. I love you guys tons, and I miss ya lots. I´m so, so grateful for the mail that seems to find it´s way here in the moments I need it most!
 

Jay´s baptism sounds like it was a super powerful experience. I´m glad to hear that the ward´s doing well, and I can´t wait to hear about what those 25 people do with their new callings! 
 

Kate- that camp sounds way fun, even if your "grand plans" didn´t work out so great, hahaha. I´m glad you´re enjoying the Percy Jackson book, too! :) And yes please! I´d love a bracelet! I think I may have misplaced my one from Thailand :( so one to take its place would be stupendous!
 

Brad- Haha, yes, I´ve heard of Slenderman. Connor told me about how the guys in his ward would all get together and turn out the lights in their dorm and scare themselves silly. I´ve definitely never been able to handle the scary stuff!
 

And yeah, I often find myself looking at things happening as how I´d tell you all about them, too. Super fun! The key is then remembering them during this short hour and a half... 
 

Thank you for the love and the prayers :D
 

´Til next time!

Love,

Hermana Grover
 

PS- oh my goodness, today Hermana Fuller found a thrift shop. We just spent an hour of P-Day playing around in there and becoming buddies with the shop owner. It was so fun!! I got some fun pics, I´ll send a couple :)