Email 27 - "More often than not, just stick to the basics! :)"

Here´s a photo from the locotorio (computer/ public telephone place. I don´t know what that´s called in English) we went to last week. Look for a sign of missionaries in the picture :)

Our district´s Elders in a really cool member´s house (most hipster place I´ve ever seen.)

Hermana Gaona´s last day in Spain!

Hello my American family! :)

Wow, you´re the best member-family ever! Haha. Giving the Sisters hot chocolate and then driving them (and their bikes) home. Love it.

The new Sisters there sound really neat. It´s fun getting to work with people from different countries. In our district we´ve got another Elder from Finland, a Sister from England, my companion from Ecuador, and then the rest are Americans :) 

And I´m not sick anymore! I was able to go out and work everyday this week and I´m think I´m totally better now :) Finally!!!

And I realized that I made it seem really vague and mysterious what I was learning by being sick, haha, but what happened was Heavenly Father put me in a really humble situation and kept me there until I started paying attention to what I could learn from those around me- something I hadn´t been paying as much attention to before. I learned so much!!

I had intercambios (exchanges) twice this week, and I went to another district for both of them, so I´m still not getting to know our investigators as well as I´d like to! Haha, but I learned a ton as I worked in the 6th ward´s area.

The first time, I was with Hermana Phillips, our Zone Sister Training Leader, who finishes her mission this transfer. She has a really amazing conversion story, beginning with her living with her grandfather for a couple months and being baptized when she was 9, but not remembering anything about it. When she showed up at the doorstep of the house where she was renting a room during her first year of college, an LDS family opened up and invited her to an activity at the chapel. She said she felt an amazing, super familiar feeling ("I don´t know what this is, but Inever want it to go away!"), which the missionaries tried to convince her was from the premortal existence, but she was pretty sure it was something else.  She had them check to see if she was baptized, and sure enough, she was already a member!  3 or 4 years passed, and here she is on the mission :) I learned a lot from her as we spent all day running from lesson to lesson.

The second intercambio was with her companion, Hermana Cabrera, a greenie from Ecuador who also doesn´t speak English. She´s a convert of a few years, was raised by her older sister (who she calls "Mom" and everything), and is the sweetest thing ever. I think it boosted her confidence a lot to see that she could work well without her trainer.

We had a pretty intense first lesson with a member reference, though. I mean, good gracious. You can keep saying that you respect other religions, but that doesn´t mean you do! Next time I have a lesson like that, I´m making sure that our purpose as missionaries is understood- that it´s not to convince them that their religion is wrong, nor that our religion is right. We´re here to share what we believe and love, and give others the chance to try it out and ask God if it´s true. We respect other religions and ask that others respect ours and don´t waste their breath attacking what´s precious to us!

Next time a lesson starts out with articles about the origin of Halloween and how we don´t live what we say we believe because of how a goofy holiday we celebrate started, we´re taking a time-out and making sure we all understand why we´re here, haha. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I´m learning a lot from the people I´m working with here. If for nothing else, I needed to serve a mission just to have my eyes opened to the people around me!!

And I´ve been studying a lot of different things this week, and one thing I discovered was that I should really stop trying to complicate doctrine, haha. Remember how I was studying how blessings could be the natural consequences of specific laws? I was looking at that more (with the talk Mom sent- I was on an intercambio in that other piso when your letter arrived- perfect!), and was wracking my brain for deep spiritual connections when I felt a little something telling me to chill out and stop complicating things.  Blessings are blessings and we receive more of them for being obedient. Nothin´ more to it than that, haha.

As my Book of Mormon professor would say, it´s cool making deep doctrinal connections and it´s important to understand and apply the principles of the Gospel, but some of it just isn´t as important as we try to make it. Sometimes, before explaining some neat little thing in the scriptures, he would first say, "Now, this won´t getcha into Heaven, but here´s something cool.."

More often than not, just stick to the basics! :)

Anyhoo, I have finally gotten to know some of our investigators! Here are the ones we´re focusing on:

F------o is in his 20´s, and he´s kind of got a similar situation to F---- in that he has trouble with some of the commandments but desperately wants a change. He came to church for the first time yesterday, and told us that he felt amazing and didn´t want those feelings to leave. He´s really scared of slipping up again. We´re going to see him as often as possible and try to keep him positive and focused!

S----a is a seventeen-yr-old Evangelist who´s gotta be the most sweet, innocent girl I´ve ever met. In complete contrast to the lesson I had with Hermana Cabrera, when S----a asks "hard" questions about parts of the Bible, it´s because she genuinely wants to know what we think the answer could be. She´s really searching for truth, and I know if she keeps looking with faith, Heavenly Father will let her know that this is what she´s been searhcing for!

And I haven´t really pieced together exactly why yet, but a lot of parents here (especially fathers), feel that they can´t/ don´t have an obligation to govern their kids. It´s really interesting, and it´s the case with J---e, and investigator who lives with his inactive wife and 21-yr-old daughter, A----a. He doesn´t have a whole lot of interest in what we have to say, but he really wants us to reactivate his daughter, and he told us that if he has to come to church to get her to come, he´ll do it. We´re going to try to help him understand that his progression in the Gospel, as the head of the household, is what´s going to help her and his whole family.

Oh, and I got to help with English classes this week! There were like, 15 people there! :D I´m surprised by how many people speak English here in Madrid. I mean, it´s not a ton, but our ward mission leader and a handful of members speak perfect English, and we contacted a guy in the street the other day who could only speak English. We´re also teaching two Muslim guys from Iran Spanish, which has been pretty hilarious because the only way we can communicate is with the tiny bit of Spanish they know, and the little bit of English that only one of them knows. It´s great. :)

And that´s all I´ve got for this week! I love you all sooooo much!

Have a great week!!

Love,

Hna Grover