Email 15 - "Everyone Needs This!!"

 

"Bracelets from Kate :D"

 

 

 

 

"We made some tasty stew the other day :D Look familiar?"

 

 

 

"So, when you go to restaurants here, it´s a bit different. There isn´t a menu, just a couple choices of whatever they´re making that day. So when they offered us spaghetti, this is what we got! Haha. Octopus spaghetti!

 

It was actually delicious, by the way. Just a bit difficult to look at, haha. ¡Viva España!"

 

 

 

 We were at that restuarant for Hna Fuller´s birthday this week :) And that´s a pic from the conference in León that we had yesterday.

Fun stuff!

Sorry I didn´t have a whole lot of pics this week. I should get some good ones today with the zone :)

Love you tons!!!

´til next week!

Hey family!!

Mom, thanks so much for sending me those shirts! It´s super nice getting to change up the uniform a bit, haha. And we´ve been listening to the cd a ton. Thank you!! Haha, glad to hear that Sister Alexander helped me out with that hug. They sent me a really sweet letter a couple weeks ago. I love that family :)

 

And Kate, I love the bracelet you sent. Super fun. Hermana Diezi always accuses me of not having enough color on, so that definitely helps ;) And the earrings are perfect. I sure love ya, m´dear!

 

Brad- so school´s kinda grinding your gears, huh? I´m proud of you for kinda staying above all the nonsense, though. That´s tough to do. It´s especially tough when you don´t have buddies to exchange exasperated looks with in class, haha, I´m with ya on that one. Don´t forget, though, that Heavenly Father´s watching everything that´s happening- I would even sometimes share a laugh with Him in my head during the day. Like, "wow, are you seeing this too?" Haha :) Good luck, bro. Stick to your guns!

 

Dad, I LOVE those pictures. Hahaha. Thanks so much for sending them!! Sounds like things are going well with the ward. Mom mentioned that you were able to help out with some Halloween makeup. I remember being proud during father-daughter activities when you could do hair and makeup and the other dads couldn´t ;) Blessing of being a dentist?

 

I´m emailing kinda early this week because we´re going to spend the day with the whole zone and with President and Sister Jackson today! It´s gonna be fun :) 

 

So this week was definitely not a "normal missionary week." (If those even exist, haha) We had pretty terrible numbers, but it was interesting getting a taste of some of the less-common responsibilities of full-time missionaries. Like, for example:

 

Exhibit A: Comforters

 

S****´s wife, E***a, asked us to attend the funeral of her mom this week in a Catholic cathedral. We were happy to help, but it did feel a bit strange sitting there with our nametags and everything. That´s not something they teach about in the MTC!

 

We´ve been regularly visiting a couple in their 70´s, L**s and N***y. N***y was an inactive member of 2 years, and Hermana King/ Diezi just baptized L**s the week before I got here. L**s has been SUPER sick. His lungs fill with liquid, so they´ve had to go to the hospital frequently to get his lungs drained. He´s been in a lot of pain, and they haven´t been able to come to church because of it. For the last two weeks, they´ve been in the hospital, and L**s passed away yesterday, just two days after receiving the Aaronic Priesthood. C*****o told us that right after the blessing, L**s sat up and said that he wanted to preach the Gospel. Because of what we read in Doctrine and Covenants 138, we know that he´ll still have that opportunity on the other side :) (Maybe along with Grandpa Mason!) N***y told us that he had been praying to just not feel pain as he died. She told us that for the last couple of days, with the help of medication and from heaven, he has had no pain. We´ll have our third funeral in three weeks this week.

 

Exhibit B: Detectives

 

Remember M**u? She´s the recent convert of the Aviles Elders that´s living on the streets here in Gijón. She has a lot of health problems and for the last 2 weeks has had 0 contact with the church! Because we can´t find her and she won´t answer the phone! The Aviles Elders were understandably super worried, so we went looking for her the other morning. Thankfully, we found F**** and he told us that he´d seen her and she´s fine, but we still weren´t able to find her. Prayers please!

 

Exhibit C: Fixer-uppers

 

The branch here has been having some big problems with gossip lately, and it´s the main reason we have a bajillion inactive members here. We visited some members this week that tried to open that can of worms with us and vent about the leaders. It´s been interesting as we´ve worked with them on forgiving the imperfections of those in the church here, and we´ve used President Uchtdorf´s talk a couple of times. I also remember hearing a quote from, I believe, President Eyring, that was something like this:

  The leaders of the church are striving to reach a standard of excellence they did not set, in a calling they did not ask for. 

One of the cool things about the church is member participation and the fact that the church is run by voluntary service. It´s so important for people to remember to be patient and forgiving!!

 

We also kinda felt like propagandists this week, haha. We took a two-hour bus ride to District Conference (stake conference) yesterday with the whole branch, and every single talk was about missionary work. All of the missionaries were pointed out during talks, asked to stand, and when President Jackson spoke, he had us all come up and sing "Called to Serve." Haha, it was a fun day to be a missionary!

 

Oh, and F**** has a testimony of the church! On that day when we were looking for M**u, we were also trying to find F****, because he hadn´t been answering his phone either. We prayed, left the piso, and found him five minutes later! He was really happy to see us, and told us that he´d been in the hospital for a problem with his lungs, but he´s okay now. We taught him the entire Plan of Salvation, and then felt prompted to have him kneel with us right there and ask if the Book of Mormon is true (he´s already in 2nd Nephi!). He knelt, prayed, and then as we sat there quietly, he looked up, and said, "It´s true!" :D Haha, it was intense. 

 

It´s been really tough keeping our investigators progressing because they keep falling through on us! We haven´t been able to teach F*****a at all, nor P***a or anyone else. Kinda crazy. But we´re sticking with it!!

 

We have been teaching a man named A*****o, though. That´s been super awesome. He´s from Bolivia, and is a super friendly, eager-to-please, 30-something yr old guy. He has accepted everything we´ve taught in the past two lessons, and frequently thanks us throughout the lessons. He gave his first prayer out loud with us yesterday :) His schedule is super crazy with work, though, so we can only meet on Sundays. We´re praying that we´ll somehow be able to see him more frequently!

 

Anyway, as you can see, it was an interesting week. And yet we still found ways to always be fulfilling our purpose as missionaries, "Invitar a las personas a venir a Cristo al ayudarles a que reciben el Evangelio Restaurado mediante la fe en Jesucristo y Su Expiación, el arrepentimiento, el bautismo, la recepción del don del espíritu santo, y el perseverar hasta el fin."

 

I´m super grateful to have the foundation in the Gospel that I have. Everyone we come in contact with has a crazy life in some form or another, and it´s just so, so clear how the Gospel can help them out. Everyone needs this!!

 

I hope you all have a great week :) Thanks again for the pics!

Love and miss you tons and tons!

 

Love,

 

Hermana Grover

 

PS- Mom, do you remember that blog post from a Mormon mom about "drops of awesome?" Would you mind sending that to me? I´d like to share it with one of the members here :) And also, if you have a sec and can Google some missionary object lessons, that´d be stupendous. We´re trying to find ways to make our lessons a little more interesting :)

 

PPS- Is it lame of me to say that Brad and Kate look way-the-heck older already?? Holy moly, you two!

 

Love you!!