"Super soaked! It rained all day the other day. No worries. We sang "There is Sunshine in My Soul Today" all day because there was no one in the streets!"
"This kid, Elder Poulson, was in my ward at BYU and now he´s in my zone!"
"That was the view from our window one morning :)"
"Andrea´s bunny, "Pacho" :) He doesn´t tolerate Hna Palomino. I think it´s because she´s always joking about eating him, haha."
"We found this book in the MTC president´s house (we had a district meeting there. His wife, Sister Sullivan, makes us American cookies sometimes)."
"FHE last night at S----a´s house. That´s Elder Helske, Elder Malan, me, S----a, Hna Palomino, and N----n (S----a´s dad), and that´s the bishop there on the end. He´s such a huge help! :)"
Dear family,
So much to write this week! And I was skimming through your emails and dying to read them more in depth! It sounds like you all have some really awesome things going on right now. Keep it up and keep me posted! I love you guys way the heck more than I can tell you. Thank you for the gorgeous photos and the recording!!
Thanks Mom and the Brodrick gang for the fabulous letters! I had to share some of the adorable things Noah and Ellie are saying with the other American Hnas in the piso, and they all loved it. And if I remember correctly, Noah had whispered to Ness´s belly before Anderson was born something along the lines of this being the best family ever. Yep. Basically. :)
Oh, and Mom, we have a can opener in this piso :) It´s weird, but Hna Palomino knows how to use it, so no worries!
Ok, so Hermana Palomino and I had such a great week. I mean, we´re talking more-miracles-than-I-even-have-time-to-write-in-my-journal kind of week. We definitely can´t take credit for any of it, because it´s all been Heavenly Father putting super prepared people right in our paths. As an overview, we got 50 people´s numbers on the streets and 9 new investigators. We also had three different occaisions where someone approached us in the street, genuinely wanting to learn about the Gospel!
We´ve definitely been working harder. Hermana Palomino and I LOVE working together and it´s been super awesome/hilarious teaching her hymns in English this week :) Because of some rough patches with her trainer, she didn´t seem to care much at all about learning English at the beginning of the transfer, but now she can´t get enough of it! She loves learning funny phrases to make the other missionaries laugh.
I really feel like my Spanish is progressing super quickly, too. And Hermana Palomino pointed out that when we´re just talking, she can tell that I have to think a little about how I´m going to say things, but she told me that, as she´s watched me teach, that just goes away during lessons. She says that the Spirit´s really been working miracles with my ability to teach in this language! :)
I love this about her. She always tells me things like that to help me keep going.
Another thing she told me after a lesson was how she noticed that I was starting out explaining things using "creemos" (we believe), but after explaining about Joseph Smith and testifying of the first vision, I switched to using "se" (I know). I definitely didn´t notice that I´d been doing that! But the Spirit was definitely giving me more confidence as it testified that what I was explaining was truth. So cool.
Oh, and she told me that one of her past companions had asked her teacher in the MTC why she couldn´t just teach in her native language. She was a good teacher, why not be able to teach well right from the start? There are plenty of people out there that already speak Spanish!
The MTC teacher reminded her that she´d been called by a prophet, and that the Lord knows that her testimony, given in a foreign language that she doesn´t know very well, will do much more for many more people than any testimony she could give as a missionary in English.
Yep, not going to wonder about that anymore!
Anyway, here are some of the other miraculous things that happened this week:
1. Remember S----a? She´s doing AWESOME. She loves hearing conversion stories and reading about examples of answered prayers in the scriptures (I think Ether 2 helped a lot- when the Brother of Jared has the three big problems with the ships and the Lord sends him instructions in three different ways: 1. Don´t worry about it. I´ve gotcha. 2. Here´s exactly what you need to do to fix it. 3. What do you think the solution is?) We had a Noche de Hogar with her and her dad last night (first time her dad´s sat in for almost an entire lesson!) and we brought the Elders and the Bishop. We´re trying to start including Priesthood holders early so that it isn´t awkward when they have to choose someone to baptize them and they don´t know anyone, haha. Anyway, it was such a sweet, powerful lesson. S----a always talks about how much she loves and respects the leaders of her church, so it was SO awesome to have the help of the bishop!! Also, he connected really great with her dad. It was a miracle that he had time to help us! And Selena says that she "almost has her answer!"
2. F------o still isn´t totally free of his addictions, but everytime we´ve met with him, we see something else change. For example, he used to always say "I have to drink. I don´t have a choice," and then it changed to, "it´s just hard. I´m trying, but it´s hard," to, "my friends invited me, and I went, but I just didn´t want to." Those are miraculous changes, even if he still refuses to be positive and notice them! There´s definitely a lot of hope in him, though!
3. Alright, here´s my favorite one of this week. We were out contacting, and decided to stop by to see A----a, J---e´s daughter, and we talked with her about Heavenly Father and His love. At the end of the lesson, she started crying. She told us that she really feels like Heavenly Father has been trying to tell her something all week, like she´s kept running into Him. She told us that she was scared to come back to church, so we promised her that we´d pick her up and take her with us.
Ok, then a couple of nights later, we had a Noche de Hogar planned with her family, but we showed up and she wasn´t there. Their DVD player was broken so we also couldn´t watch the video we wanted to show them. I was a little bummed, but little by little, we saw how Heavenly Father had planned it all out perfectly. J---e stayed in the room for the whole lesson. He participated and asked questions. As his wife got up to go to the kitchen, she flashed us a huge smile and a big thumbs-up (she comes to the chapel occaisionally and reeeally wants her husband to be baptized).
At the end of the lesson, we explained to them how their daughter was scared to go to the chapel, but that she was going to come. Both of them got so excited! They both said that it was an answer to prayers, that Heavenly Father had heard them (J---e prayed?!?!?!) We told them, pretty directly, that as her parents, they were the ones that needed to accompany her and help her out, and we reminded J---e of what he´d told us before about doing anything to help her. They were both not promising anything.
We asked A-a (the Mom) to say the closing prayer, and in her prayer, she said , "Senor, me voy a la iglesia mañana. Te prometo que me voy. Gracias por escucharme. Me voy mañana." (Lord, I´m going to church tomorrow. I promise you that I will. Thank you for hearing me. I´ll go tomorrow.)
Sure enough, we showed up to pick them up, and they were all three ready to go!!! They were all SO HAPPY at the chapel. And all the members greeted them and helped them feel comfortable.
Love it.
Sorry that was a little obnoxiuosly detailed, but Heavenly Father was in every little detail, and it was a huge miracle for this family!
4. We had a first lesson with (a lot of people, but also with) J--n G-----l, and as he sat there telling us how he believes that God exists but thinks he´s just missing something; like there´s peace and answers out there somewhere, I couldn´t help but feel like I was holding a huge plate of delicious food, and someone was approaching me saying, "I´m hungry." Haha.
Anyway, that´s really just a tiny portion of everything awesome and miraculous we saw this week. Like I said, we´ve been working harder than ever, but something I was studying was what really changed things for me this week. Mom and Zac both sent me talks from Elder Holland: "The Inconvenient Messiah," and "The Hands of the Fathers." Thank you both for being so inspired!!
My favorite parts of the first talk were these two quotes: "If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived." And, "All but a prophetic few must go about God´s work in very quiet, very unspectacular ways. And as you labor to know Him, and to know that He knows you; as you invest your time - and your convenience - in quiet, unassuming service... ´He shall give His angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up´(Matt 4:6)"
Life wasn´t convenient for the Savior, and missionary service isn´t supposed to be convenient for me. Forget yourself. Serve others. Get off the bench and talk to that guy. Fold your companion´s laundry. The Inconvenient Messiah :)
And an Elder in Zone Training this week said that when the alarm goes off or when it´s raining and you want to go home before 9:30, you just have to ask yourself, "How much do I love the Lord?"
The examples of perfect, parental love in the talk the Brodricks sent me solidified that idea in my mind. The Lord loves me perfectly, and would do anything, and did do everything, for me. So how much do I love Him back?
As I kept those two phrases in mind, "The Inconvenient Messiah", and "How much do I love the Lord?" I was able to do a lot of things this week that I don´t think I could´ve before.
And it was far from a perfect week. Perfect weeks don´t exist, haha. We had hard lessons. We had hard moments. We´re helping a lot of people, and Satan´s not terribly pleased with our efforts, haha. He´s been working hard, too. ´Hasn´t stopped us yet!
Anyway, thank you for your prayers, love, support, letters, and for just being so crazy awesome. We´re being really blessed over here in Madrid!
I love you all so, so much!!
Have a stupendous week!
Love,
Hna Grover
P.S. Dad, the missionary training idea sounds awesome! I´ll have to think about advice for that- but know that we live by Preach My Gospel, so knowing that book and experiencing missionary work for yourself is the best preparation there is!
Man, I can´t wait to visit the new temple down there! I can´t wait to visit the Madrid temple, too. We don´t have a temple day this transfer, but I know that if I´m still hear next transfer, I´ll be able to go! Everytime we walk past that sacred building there´s a "heavenly homesickness" as I´ve heard someone describe it, that always makes me look at the angel Moroni up top for a few seconds :)
Thanks for everything you´re doing back home, and a huge, eternal thank you for helping me prepare to be here and for establishing the wonderful family/ home that I can´t wait to see again someday!
I love you!
-Chrissy
P.P.S. Also, before I get off, Hna Zitting told me that Frank and Elvyn received the priesthood yesterday!!!! So much happiness!
Love you! Byeee! :)
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