Email 17 - "Heed the Words of Christ"

 

The bus ride home from Leon.

"That drive is absolutely gorgeous. :)

(I really can´t do this scenary justice.)"

 

 

 

"After the zone meeting this week in Leon."

 

 

 

 

 "Just one of our laundry, haha :)"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"A fun store that had Katie written all over it ;)"

 

 

"A truck that I just had to grab a photo with, haha."

 

 

 

 

 

"Enjoying the parks around here this morning :)"

 

 

 

Hey family!

 

How´s everyone doing?? I hope you all enjoyed your week. Mom, thanks a ton for the object lessons you sent! Those are great. We´re going to use the one with the cups about the Apostasy hopefully tonight. :)

 

Thank you for letting me know about Nate. I was actually really worried. A member came up to me at church and, out of the blue, started telling me about how there´d been a huge storm in the Philippines and 5 or so Americans died. AH! Anyway, I´m glad to hear he´s doing okay!

 

THANK YOU FOR THE PRAYERS FOR F****! We found him!!! Finally, on Saturday, after a baptism of the other Hermanas, he answered our calls and we met up with him in the capilla (chapel). We had set up several appointments this week, and he kept not showing up. He was telling us on the phone that he was in the midst of a battle for his soul, and honestly, we were able to see it happening. Because of his potential as a strong leader in the church, it´s clear that Satan does not want the combination of him with the priesthood. So what did we do? We got him a priesthood blessing :)

 

Hermano Carmelo and the Elders gave one of the most powerful blessings I´ve ever heard, blessing him with health and protection from evil spirits. Directly after the blessing, we saw a very apparent change in his countenance, and he couldn´t stop saying how peaceful he felt. We taught him then and there about the Word of Wisdom, and challenged him to stop smoking and drinking coffee from that moment on. He agreed.

 

He came to church yesterday, too, and all of the members loved him right away (like I said before, he´s totally like Sirius Black from Harry Potter. What´s not to love? Haha). After church, Hna Diezi acted on a prompting and basically forced him to go home with the President and his family for lunch. When we called their house two hours later, he was still there playing card games with the family! We stopped by, had a lesson, and then asked what he was doing next. When he said nothing, we brought him along with us to a Noche de Hogar (FHE) with the ward mission leader! He was with members ALL day, and had 0 time alone to even be tempted to break the Word of Wisdom.  He wants to get baptized asap, so he´s got a date set for November 23rd!! I´m so, so excited for him.

 

Last night, Hna Diezi and I remembered that, last transfer, on a particularly difficult night, we´d decided that we needed to do everything we could to have Heavenly Father lead us to a strong potential priesthood holder to help this tiny branch here in Gijón. ´Looks like we´ve found him!

 

We still have not been able to find M**u, though, and F**** said he hasn´t seen her either, but he´s going to help us look.

 

This week, we weren´t able to meet with A*****o because of his work schedule, but everytime we call, he answers and tells us that he´s still reading and loving the Book of Mormon :) And it´s the same story right now with E***n, but we have an appointment to see him again tonight. We´re a little nervous about helping him seperate what he´s learning about the church with his girlfriend, but we´re going to explain to him how important that is tonight.

 

The two I****s are doing well, also. They both have no hope in their lives right now, but the AWESOME member we´re working with has made it very clear to them that "hey, you have a problem. These two girls with me have the answer. You keep listening to them." Love it!

 

And we found a family this week!!!! It´s a family of five, and we taught all of them (except for their 18-yr-old son who hid in his room...) earlier this week. The spirit was so, so strong, and I just kept thinking during the lesson, as we involved their 8-yr-old daughter, 14-yr-old son and both parents, this is how it should always be. We´re going to stop by tonight and use that object lesson I mentioned.

 

I´m glad to hear you were able to indulge in some of those stupendous chocolate croissants over at EPCOT! Those are such a weakness for me here, haha. But I´ll tell you right now, octopus is not a weakness. The first few times I ate it here, it was okay, because my system hadn´t quite decided what to think yet. Mmmm, yeah, not a fan, haha. But one of the many blessings I´ve seen as a missionary is being able to eat whatever we´re given! Including the beans and octopus stew and the African food made with fermented oil that we were fed this week by members. ¡Viva la vida misional! ;) But tonight, we´re going to an old Spaniard member´s house and she´s going to teach us how to cook paella!!

 

Anyhoo, things are going well for us here. Exact obedience is tough, but oh-so-worth-it. We have a higher law to live as missionaries, but the more obedient I am, the more I get out of my studies and the more spiritually in tune I am. It´s like the metaphor with the Liahona has become more literal for me. But that´s how it should always be, you know? In Alma 37:44, he mentions how it´s really just as easy for us to heed the words of Christ as it was for Lehi and his family to heed a compass with directions literally spelled out for them. The more obedient we are, the clearer the way. :)

 

I´ve been studying the nature of the adversary a lot this week, too. With everything going on with Frank right now, and the fact that I´m in the war chapters of the Book of Mormon right now have made that an important topic. It´s so important to understand how Satan works and what exactly he´s trying to do. But the cool thing is, while I´m studying this, I already know he´s going to end up losing this battle. We really already know which team is going to win, but I heard once that it just depends on what jersey we choose to wear.

 

Well, that´s all I´ve got for this week! Stay wonderful, folks, and keep me updated! I love you and think about you more than you can possibly know :)

 

Love,

Hna Grover

 

P.S.

 

Forgot to tell you about one other investigator we had this week, L***a. She´s been off and on investigating for a few years, and has told us she wants to be baptized now- but she clearly doesn´t understand yet why it´s important to be baptized in this church- so we´ll work on that. We had a funny moment in a lesson with her this week. She had a friend there, so we taught them both, and L***a kept trying to interrupt us to explain what she thought was our doctrine, but she kept saying things we don´t believe. Her friend would then confront us and go off on how crazy that belief is while we were trying to talk over L***a to explain that we don´t actually believe that, hahaha. It was hilarious.

 

And then I ended up using the example Mike gave about how the Godhead is like a basketball team with one name and purpose, but different people and positions. L***a´s friend had been describing the Godhead as an egg, with three distinct parts, but all in one egg. We were kind of agreeing with her, until she then reasoned that when Jesus Christ was on the earth, that meant that God was on the earth and there wasn´t a God in Heaven at that time. Ha, nope. The basketball team idea seemed to clear that up for her.

 

That´s it for this week! I love you all tons and tons and I hope things are going great. Thank you for the prayers and everything and I´ll look forward to getting that recording device soon!

 

Hna Grover