Email 16 - "The Members Here Are Super Awesome!" And Zone Conference: "It was AMAZING"

 

"Zone Conference :) With Hna Fuller"

 

 

"My sweet trainer :)"

"Our new rule for the companionship"

 

 

"The sign that I am SO tempted to wear when we contact."

(editor's note:  I think the English translation is: "We are not: Jehovah's Witnesses, or Evangelicals, or nuns.  Please:  Read the nametag!")

 

 

"Accidently matching (a lot more weird looks that day...not gonna do that again, haha)."

 

 

 



"hot chocolate after a hard day"

 

 

 

 "...and the delicious pastry place again. I have to take you all there!"

 

 

 



Hey family!

 

Sounds like it was a fun week for everybody! Love all the pictures! :D

 

Wow, I can´t believe it´s only been a week since zone conference this past Tuesday. It was AMAZING. I learned so, so much. The Assistants talked a lot about exact obedience. That´s something I´ve had pounded into me from so many sources, that excact obedience is vital to success as a missionary, and Hna Diezi and I have been doing everything we can to put that into practice. It´s interesting, though, how the adversary can make things seem okay, even when they´re clearly against mission rules. For example, during the conference, one Elder pointed out how he doesn´t feel that he´s fulfilling his purpose as a missionary when he´s so caught up in getting home on time, he misses a teaching opportunity. Another, more experienced Elder, piped up and reminded us of the first two, great commandments : 1. Love God, 2. Love others. He said that when we do anything against the rules on our missions (or against the standards/ commandments in pre/post mission life), even if it´s to help someone else, we´re mixing up the order of those commandments. By trusting in the rules and standards that we have as missionaries/ members of the church, we´re showing God that He comes first.

 

Hearing that made so many things click for me! Hna Diezi and I have always wondered how “exact” is “exact obedience.” Ha, turns out it´s pretty darn exact. Go figure, huh? I learned this week that we don´t need to question the “whys” or the “what´s going to come out of its” of the rules. We need to just be obedient.

 

Of course this doesn´t just apply to missionaries. It´s something we see in the scriptures a lot. If you think of Abraham, and his reaction to the command to sacrifice his son, we clearly see that he wasn´t caught up in the “why” of what God was asking him to do. Also, by Abinadi simply obeying God´s command to return again and continue to preach, Alma was converted (something Abinadi didn´t know was going to happen), and from his lineage came all the rest of the prophets that we have in the Book of Mormon. Crazy!

 

Just being with the President, Sister Jackson, and the other missionaries in the zone was awesome. Hna Diezi/ Fuller, Elder Foster (Zone Leader)/ Elder Alhovouri and I sang a 4-part “Brightly Beams” in the conference. It actually sounded pretty cool! I felt super pumped. And one thing that Hermana Hunt, a senior-couple missionary said in her testimony during the conference, really hit me. I´ve had in mind this image of the missionary I want to be ever since I decided I wanted to go on a mission, when I was 11, haha. I´ve grown up watching the missionaries closely because I´ve always known I wanted to be one of them! However, the adversary has a way of getting in our heads and making us feel like we can´t live up to that potential, but after listening to the talks about exact obedience, I was feeling like I really can do this, and do it how I´ve always wanted to. And then Hermana Hunt got up and said, “How hard I worked on my mission set the speed for the rest of my life.”

 

I´m not sure why that hit me so hard, but it gave me a new “bring it on” kinda attitude towards this work! …And then the next day “brought it on,” haha.

 

That was Wednesday, and it was rough. It was super cold that day, and we started the morning booked up to our eyeballs with appointments, which we were super grateful for! But I´ll admit we were a little relieved when a member canceld a Family Home Evening with us, haha. Aaand then all of our plans fell through. We were walking outside in the cold for three hours, we called absolutely every investigator/ future investigator/ member/ inactive we could think of, we tried knocking doors and just nothing was working. It was crazy! It was so hard resisting the temptation to take a couple minutes to go into a café, grab some hot chocolate and churros, and take a break. Even after all the talks about obedience the day before! We stuck to it, though, and I´ve never been so relieved for the time to finally come to go home, haha.

 

It was a tough day, but we felt super blessed for sticking to our guns and doing what we were supposed to. Heavenly Father pointed out His hand to us when we got home by having Hno Carmelo randomly call and say he was praying for us, and as we remembered the hot chocolate mixes that Mom sent a little while ago J

 

Wow, my typing skills are really being put to the test, haha. I have so much to say this week!

 

We still have not been able to find F**** or M***. We´re pretty nervous about that, but we´re going to go looking for them again today. But A****** is progressing super well!! Last night, we met with him and put a baptismal date for December 7th, and I´m super stoked. He´s reading, and thank goodness, understanding the Book of Mormon. We tried last night to get his wife on board, but she said she doesn´t have time to make changes in her life right now. I think with him as an example, she´ll come around. J

 

We got another member reference this week of a Cuban lady and her 16-yr-old daughter, both named I*****. We had asked her friend, that works in a store nearby, where her building was, and her friend went off about how the last think I***** needed at the moment was religion. “She just needs to dance, and sing, and forget all the things in her head. The things of God will just make things harder. That´s not what she needs right now.” Hahaha. Actually, the “things of God” are what she needs, and we found out that it´s what she wants right now, too! She and her daughter both agreed to be baptized when they have a testimony.

 

Have I told you about E**** yet? –I don´t think so. He´s the boyfriend of a really sweet 18-yr-old member here, and he´s AWESOME. In our first lesson, I handed him a Book of Mormon and he was like “Woah. I´ve held a lot of books before, but this one has a weight to it. I can feel power in this book,” and then in his prayer at the end, he said, “Please help me to know if this church is true- well, I already belive it is.” :D He recognizes the spirit and already has a testimony. We´re hoping to set a date for baptism with him in our lesson tonight!

 

The members here are super awesome. They´ve suddenly sprung to life in these last couple of weeks, and we´ve gotten so many references! I´m never going to underestimate the power of member-missionary work ever again. They´ve been so helpful with N****, as her husband L*** passed away (We sang a 4-part “God Be With You Til We Meet Again” at the funeral this week), and we´re going to try to put what Elder Ballard mentioned in Conference about every member having an investigator by Christmas into play. The other Hermanas have been working on a game plan for that J

 

Oh, and Mom, how did you know to send that talk from President Eyring to me? That was PERFECT. I love that talk. I remember having a lesson on it in Miamaids once, actually. Anyway, Hna Diezi and I both haven´t been keeping up with our journals. But because we´re so easily motivated by chocolate, haha, the new rule is that we can´t eat chocolate if we didn´t write the night before. ´Guess who´s keeping up with their journals now? J And I love what President Eyring said about President Faust, how “I always felt that when I grew up, I wanted to be like President Faust. There may still be time.”

 

Thanks to the Atonement, there´s always time to become what we´ve always wanted to be! This week I´ve really felt like I can be the missionary I want to be, and I know it´s possible for us to reach the potentials Heavenly Father has in mind for us. We can´t ever forget that!

 

Wow, I´m running out of time. I hope that all made sense!

 

I love and miss you guys so, so much. Keep sending me pictures, those are the best! :) :)

 

Love you tons!!

 

Hna Grover

 

PS -Mom, I thought that picture of the Sacred Grove was super funny. Do you remember how old I was when I drew that?