Email 14 - "A Super Awesome Week!"

 

Oviedo's Mount Naranco on Preparation Day 

 

 

Editor:  Notice the rainbow on the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiya, family!

 

This was actually a super awesome week! I can´t believe it´s P-day again already!

 

What´s everyone´s Halloween plans? I got a little update on that from Kate- I want pictures of your cat costume and eye makeup! You´re welcome to check out that makeup kit I´ve got at home somewhere from my class. You should be able to find some fun stuff in there :) -just make sure to clean the brushes with baby soap after your done so they don´t get nasty, haha ;) And it sounds like Brad´s killin´it with tennis! Keep that up, little bro. And I want pics of that too ;)

 

Dad, that´s an awesome idea about getting the ward to read Preach My Gospel. Holy cow. If all of our 15 million members would read that book, the church would double in membership in no time!! And Mom, I love how perceptive you are with your Miamaids. I know they´ll love ya in no time if they don`t already! Hna Diezi always says I have the cutest, most friendly-looking parents she´s ever seen, haha. Everyone says I have a really cool family from what they can tell in the pictures I´ve got. :) :)

 

We are finally enjoying a little bit of the fruits of last transfer´s constant finding efforts! We got 6 new investigators this week!!

First off, there´s F*****a. Her first lesson was probably the most powerful, spiritually directed lesson we´ve ever had. She is SO prepared, just eating everything up. She has two little kids that keep asking her which one their church is, and they always ask her questions about what they´re learning in their Catholic school. They´re only 5 and 2 years old!! She told us that her 5-year-old won´t eat apples anymore after what he learned in school about Adam and Eve, hahaha. I can´t wait to keep teaching her. She introduced us to her kids as "friends of Jesus" and we´re working on teaching them "I Am a Child of God."

 

Remember how I told you what Sister Wixom told us in the MTC about loving the kids we teach for her? Definitely hasn´t taken any effort! They´re so innocent and full of faith, there´s no way not to love them. We´ve been off-and-on teaching a woman named M*****a, and her kids have an amazing amount of faith. The first time we visited, her 8-yr-old nephew sat and listened for a bit, and then ran out of the room, found a Bible, and came back all excited to show us that he has a Bible, haha. The next time we visited, her 5-yr-old turned to his 2-yr-old cousin and said, "Do you know them? They´re people from Jesus." :D

 

Anyway, we also had a first lesson with a 24-yr-old girl named P***a, who says she mostly believes in the Buddhist religion. But holy cow, she was super open during the lesson. As we were ending, she told us that, looking back, when we contacted her in the street, she couldn´t believe she stopped and listened to us. She said she never would have normally talked to anyone that asked her if she believed in God. She also said that when she answered her phone and said she´d meet with us, she kept asking herself, "what am I doing?" She told us that now she knows why she felt that she needed to do those things, and she´s excited to learn more :)

 

We also noticed a big change in F**** this last time that we taught him. The first time, he interrupted a lot and kept asking questions and touching us on the shoulder as he talked. This time, he was quiet for almost the entire lesson, and he just sat there and listened. He was really taking everything we said very seriously. We had a Noche de Hogar (FHE) the other night at President Florin´s house and brought him to watch the Prophet of the Restoration video. So awesome :D Afterwards, he told us that he needs time to meditate a bit. I know that he knows it´s true, and he knows how much of a change he needs to make in his life. He needs prayers for sure!

 

Of course we´re still working on finding, though our efforts often seem to be in vain. The other day, we tackled a fifteen story building, knocked all 60 doors, and didn´t find a single interested person! But we´re feeling very blessed. As this new transfer is starting, Hna Diezi and I are feeling a renewed focus. Plus, we´re beginning to understand each other with our personality/ culture differences a bit better, haha. :) It´s been neat to see how, in our last few lessons, we´ve each said exactly what was on the mind of the other person. Now we´ve just got to work on ALWAYS being that in sync!

 

We´re still learning a TON, too. This week, I got really deep into the scriptures, and found a lot of answers to a lot of questions. I really feel like there´s no room for doubt as a missionary, because the Lord needs us to testify and promise blessings with power. With that in mind, I´ve studied with the expectation of receiving answers, and, without fail, I´ve gotten them!

 

For example, I was thinking about how exactly it works with investigators that repent and then are baptized. I didn´t really understand it. We tell investigators that they´re cleansed from sins when they´re baptized, but they have to repent and everything first. (Ok, probably everyone else understands this already, but I didn´t! Haha) I realized that investigators can´t fully take advantage of the Atonement without the ordinance of baptism. Sin is like a jacket, and unbuttoning the jacket is like repentence. Taking the jacket off is baptism. If you just repent, and aren´t baptized, the Lord can´t pardon your sins. It´s like unbuttoning the jacket, and not taking it off. If you´re just baptized without repenting, it´s like trying to take off the jacket without first unbuttoning the buttons! But by helping investigators repent first, they "unbutton their jackets," and then, at baptism, the "jacket is taken off" and the Lord accepts their repentance. That´s why people feel a weight lifted when they are baptized, and that´s why it´s so important!

 

I also thought a lot this week about progression and how that all works. Before coming on my mission, I understood that I´d have to work to become a missionary, but I still had the perception that I´d put on my chappa (nametag) and BAM, be a missionary-minded missionary. Ha, nope. I was still me. I still am me! But I´m in the process of becoming the missionary the Lord wants/ knows I can become. 

 

I´ve also had that same misperception about the process of becoming like God one day. Like becoming like God will be a sudden gift, y´know? Like, hey, good job with mortality, here´s Godhood! But in reality, becoming like God will be a process. I won´t be more like God right after I die than I was right beforehand (other than the fact that I´ll have a remembrance of the premortal existence and all that good stuff). I need to try to be as much like Him in this life as I can. It´s why it says in D&C 130:19 that if we learn more in this life, we´ll have an advantage in the next. The perfect knowledge, love, understanding, etc of Heavenly Father will come through progression, continuing after this life! Mortality is just the first test to see if we´ll be worthy to enter the Celestial Kingdom to continue to progress to Godhood. Anything and everything God does/ puts us through is to help us along in this process. His work and glory really is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

 

...I hope that made sense. It was kinda one of those "aha moments" for me this week :)

 

And today, we had an activity with a bunch of other missionaries in the zone in Oviedo. We went on a surprisingly difficult hike up a huge mountain up to a big ole statue of Jesus Christ! It was so cool! Remember how the Orlando Bloom character saw a statue like that in the movie Elizabethtown during his roadtrip? Haha, that´s what it felt like to me :)  It was fun just goofing off a little bit and enjoying the incredible scenary. We just got back from that, so I didn´t have time to crop photos. You´re welcome to touch them up if you´d like!

 

The new missionaries in our district are super awesome. We´ve got Elder Alhovouri and Hermana Cancado, and Elder A is from Finland, and was in the MTC with Jace! Hna C is from Washington state with parents from Brazil. We´ve had a lot of fun with them already, and they´re really hard workers.

 

The Hermanas sang in sacrament yesterday, the Spanish version of "If You Could Hie to Kolob," which they don´t have in their hymnbooks here, so the members liked that a lot. We did a 3-part harmony :) Oh, and since Hna King´s gone, I had to play the piano in sacrament meeting! Aah! Hna Diezi and I both know a couple of hymns, so we switched off, but we´re going to have to learn some more asap, haha.

 

Wow, time went fast, I gotta get to sending some pics.

 

I love you all so, so much! I hope you have a great week!! I have more to tell you all, but P-day time´s almost up, so I´ll try to send some letters next week.

 

Love you, love you, love you!

 

-Hermana Grover

 

Woohoo! Still a couple of minutes left :D

 

So, we taught a lot of Restoration lessons this week with our new investigators. The adversary has a lot of fun getting creative on how to interrupt whenever we start talking about the first vision, haha. Want to hear a few? It ALWAYS happens right as we say "And in Joseph Smith´s own words..."

 

-M*****a´s niece ran over and asked to have her help her take her jacket off

-F**** straight up stood up and left to get a cigarette, haha

-We were teaching another young girl and a super obnoxious lawn-mower started up

-Teaching this same girl, trying again, and she said, "Are you two hungry? I´m hungry. I´ll go make some food." And she went into the kitchen.

 

It´s ridiculous! Haha. But it just adds to my testimony that it really is the truth. There wouldn´t be so much opposition if it wasn´t!

 

Last thing- I´ve still been studying about the nature of the Godhead, and one thing I realized is that it totally makes sense to think that God is a spirit if you think that Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and God are all the same being. When you read the Old Testament, it talks about Jehovah, the God of Israel, whom we know is Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, Christ hadn´t yet been born and received a body, so He was only a spirit. So then, when people who believe that Jehovah is this trinity, Godhead being, He´s described as a spirit, it makes sense to them. Crazy, huh?

 

Ok, now time´s up. But I love you tons!

 

Thanks for the letters and the love :) I got those papers with Brad and Kate´s random drawings the other day, haha, loved those. And the talk and recipes from Mom. Those letters mean a lot!! Keep doing cool stuff and telling me about it! :D

 

Hna Grover