Email 32 - "The Gospel is Beautiful"

"...a super precious 6-yr-old in a part-member family we´re working with. She´s soooo cute, and she adores all of the Hermanas :) That was at a Valentine´s Day dinner that we had in the chapel on Saturday night. And Fernando came!"

"Two of the new Elders in our district! This picture doesn´t even do their hilarious height difference justice..."

Another lunch in Burger King

Mi querida familia,


Love seeing pictures as always! Pretty eventful week for everybody, huh? I´m glad to see that Brad can still survive off of pizza even in the wilderness, hahah. Also, lil bro, you definitely owe me emails!


This was an interesting week, with a little bit of everything. We continue helping J------n, the 15-yr-old in our building, with her homework, and she came to the chapel for English class the other night (the other missionaries don´t like teaching the English classes, so we finally decided that I´ll just teach every week. WOOHOO!  Love it so much.). Anyway, she was super nervous about an Algebra test that she was about to have (I hear ya, sister), so we taught her about how much prayer helps. The next time we saw her, she said that she was fine right before the test, but her friend was freaking out. She told her, "A lo mejor, tal vez puedes hacer una oracion. Dos chicas que he conocido me dijeron que ayudaría." (Hey, maybe you can say a prayer. Two girls that I´ve met told me it´d help). She said that her friend tried it and calmed down right away, and was able to take her test just fine. 

Such pure faith!!

Hermana Palomino continues to progress amazingly well with her English. She´s trying to only speak English in the streets (working on that), and she´s learning "A Child´s Prayer," and cries almost every time we sing it, haha. I love her. Also, her friend sent her an exercise video for us in the mail. Ready for this? It´s called "Billy Blank´s Boot Camp," and it´s a MASSIVE black man doing aerobics. Exercising in the mornings has gotten a million times more exciting, haha.

Speaking of massive black men... hahaha, one of the new Elders in our district is from the Dominican Republic, and he´s ENORMOUS. His hand swallows mine when we shake hands. The best part is that his companion is a tiny guy from Mexico that comes up to about my chin.

Oh! And I made pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and the four of us Hnas ate all three loaves the same day. Same story with some iced brownies. Lots of praises sent your way, Mom, from the Hermanas for your recipes. :) (Thank goodness for Billy Blanks!)

Also, we had our first dinner appointment since I left Gijón! The drive from the chapel to Rivas, where the family lives (about 45 minutes) could have easily been the drive from SLC to Provo (just with fewer temples/ chapels and much more grafitti, haha). Lots of memories!

Plus, I saw my first neighborhood with houses since seeing the mission home when I first entered the field. So fun! The family we ate with is a very classic, talkative, strongly-opinionated Spanish family. Loved it.

Alrighty, now for the good stuff.

F------o has a baptismal date!!! Finally! He´s basically our only investigator right now, so we´re stoked to see that he´s progressing. He´s set with March 8th as his goal. It was a really neat visit, when he committed to the date. We shared Mosiah 18:8-11, where it talks about the baptismal covenant. What seemed to finally hit home to him was what we´ve been trying to teach him all along- you don´t have to be perfect to be baptized!

These people in this chapter had a desire for all these things (being in the fold of God, serving others, being an unwavering witness of God, being worthy of Eternal Life, etc), they weren´t already doing these things. BUT, they had the desire, and it always starts there!

We continue studying the Book of Mormon with A----a, and I love it more each time we go. We´re all well familiarized with Lehi´s family (having read about them each of the hundred times we´ve decided to start over reading the Book of Mormon, haha), but, surprise! You can still learn new things from the stories you´ve heard since sunbeams. Good stuff.

For example, I love how when a commandment of the Lord is revealed to Lehi or Nephi, the next morning they get right up and do what is asked of them. Like when the Lord prompts Lehi to take his growing family even further into the wilderness (without any further instruction or promises), and as he gets up to leave, boom, he trips over the Liahona that will serve as his guide through the journey.

I´m sure it would have been a whole lot easier for him to roll out of bed that morning and leave his tent if he´d known that the Liahona was out there waiting for him. But hey, at this point, I think we all know that that´s not how the Lord works.

Then, after Lehi slips up and complains, humbles himself, and asks God for direction, the Lord simply points his attention back to the guide he´s had all along.

"Look upon the ball, and behold the things that are written."

Or, maybe more applicable for us, "Take a break. Sit down. Open your scriptures and behold the things that are written."

E-----o has still been struggling a lot with his doubts, and at the beginning of this week, he told us that he was going to just live his life. He wasn´t going to come to church, read the scriptures, or pray, and he wanted to see what would happen.

Needless to say, he´s had a very confusing week, haha.  A couple of days ago, he said he just didn´t understand why he wasn´t being guided, why, suddenly, nothing was making sense.  "Sit down. Take a break. Open the scriptures and behold the things that are written."

Little by little, I think he´s going to come back to fully accepting the Gospel. He´s very attracted to the things of the world, but just like how Laman and Lemuel didn´t approve of the ship Nephi was building (not work[ing] the timbers after the manner which was learned by man) until after it was finished and they saw how beautiful it was, I have a feeling that E-----o just needs to hang in there and keep the faith until the blessings come and he can remember again what a beautiful thing living in accordance with the Gospel is.

And just as it´s helping E-----o, I think the counsel the Lord gives Joshua in Joshua 1:5-9 is a good reminder to all of us :)

We´ve heard a lot more this week from the churches here that attack our beliefs, and F------o even has a couple of coworkers that are trying to "save him" from becoming a Mormon.  I´ll just always be grateful for the clarity we receive from the Book of Mormon and the witness I receive, everyday, that what I´m teaching is true.

Despite the contradicting doctrines we´ve been hearing this week (and since I came here to Madrid), I know that Heavenly Father loves every one of us unconditionally. He can´t tolerate sin and He´s sad when we make wrong choices, but that´s only BECAUSE of His perfect love for us- because sin keeps us from being able to return to Him. I know that we ALL have the potential to be able to return to Him- that´s an option that´s open for everyone. Not a single person comes into the world without it. 

I know that we, as imperfect mortals, have neither the power nor the right to condemn anyone of our brothers and sisters, and that we will one day be judged by the only perfect judge - God - and He will take into account how we have judged our fellow beings in this life. 

I don´t need to see the brass plates or find the name of a Book of Mormon prophet in the Bible to know that the Book of Mormon is true. And even if I didn´t have the ancient tablets/ records that "prove" the origin of the Bible, guess what? I would still know that it´s the word of God!

The guides are there. The Gospel is beautiful. The Church is true.

And I love you guys so much! I think about ya and pray for you all the time.

Love,

Hermana Grover

PS- Can I just say I love you guys again? I really do. It isn´t easy being so far away from you all! Love you love you love you!