Email 21 - "The reality of the Savior has become a big source of strength to Hna Zitting and me."

 

 "The random Christmas festival we stumbled upon today. Good stuff :)"

 

 

 

 

"Homemade chocolate con churros (kinda) :)"

 

 

 

 

  "Liz, the cute member with her drawing of us."

Hey family!

Good to hear from you all as always :) The photos are awesome! Dad- I had the same idea about recordings. I´m totally up for trying to put them on my device here. We played one of yours for Frank and Malu on Friday in English class, and they were super excited anytime you said "what is..." when you were playing trivia because they knew those words, haha. If you guys want to record talking in simple English, I´m sure they´d love to hear that and try to understand :)

Mom- thanks for the recipe! I´ll try those out. I haven´t seen chocolate chips around here, but I´ll keep my eye out. Empanadas are super delicious. Not usually spicy. Send me the recipe that you end up using! I loved your idea of a cracked vessel letting in light, too. Thanks, by the way, for finding that chapter that talked about forgiving yourself. It´s really interesting, thinking about how the only being with true power to forgive is God, and it only works if we give our wrongs to Christ.

This week was a little tougher than normal- but Hna Zitting and I are doing great as always! We agreed that she´s basically just an older version of myself, haha. So I went from learning a lot because my companion and I were polar opposites, to learning a lot from someone who´s exactly like me. Good stuff. She even read that personality test result thing that I´ve got and decided that it was definitely her as well.

E---- is getting baptized in two weeks! And he is doing amazingly well. The JAS have taken him in and, within the last two weeks, he has seen 6 people baptized all over the area because the JAS keep bringing him. He spent this entire weekend at a conference of JAS, and Carmelo told us how he bore his testimony there of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. He´s such a stud.

And as Mike pointed out in his email last week, missions really help you chill out a bit and just learn to take what comes. We´re working really hard, but sometimes "things just tank," and we keep working hard and moving forward anyway!

-----, however, really needs prayers. He was supposed to receive the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday, but he wasn´t at church, and we got a really bizarre phone call from him after the meetings. As I´ve said about him before, Satan does not want this man to have the priesthood.

Anyway,after searching Gijón for him last night, feeling more spiritually empowered, guided and protected than I think I´ve ever been before, we pulled him out of a bar and tried to figure out what the heck was going on. We´re giving him a day to sober up and we´re meeting with him and Carmelo tonight.

It was nothing less than devastating to see the state he was in last night, but I know he can pull through and get back on his feet. 

The adversary is very well present and accounted for here in Gijón- and I won´t lie- it´s occasionally very discouraging because it sometimes feels like we´re just standing in its big ol´ massive wake, trying to pick up and fix whatever we can, and then it just comes back around behind us and messes things up again. We´ve been dropped this week by just about every single investigator! 

But, Elder Boyd K Packer said in his talk this past conference that these kinds of things are exactly what we can expect of our day. And then he said that as he looks at these times and the future, he is "overwhelmed with feelings of positive optimism." And while "overwhelmed" with happiness might not be the way I´d describe how I feel about a lot of the things happening, I´m still full of an optimism and motivation that definitely couldn´t be coming from anywhere but a loving Heavenly Father who´s interested and invested in the well-being of His true church and the missionaries He´s sent to take care of it.

As I´ve been reading Talmage´s "Jesus the Christ," the reality of the Savior has become a big source of strength to me and Hna Zitting. And as we´ve been confronting a lot of darkness, I´ve been thinking about what Zac always told our seminary class, "where light is, darkness cannot be." (Thanks, FUZ, for the awesome letter, by the way!!) I´m just grateful for the light that we have, and for knowing that as long as we cultivate it, the darkness that´s everywhere in the world doesn´t even have a chance to enter into us, and with the help of Jesus Christ, any darkness that we´ve allowed in can be cast out forever.

It´s just another testament of how true this Gospel is. There´s no way there´d be this much opposition if it wasn´t the truth!

Sorry this is kinda a shorter one, I´m sure we´ll have a more eventful week to write about next week! :)

I love you all tons!! Thanks again for the photos :D

Have a great week!

-Hna Grover

Just one recording again this week, I promise I´ll get better at recording more interesting, informative things, haha.

I love you tons!!! Can´t wait to skype ya in a couple of weeks :D