Email 43 - "Some big, important part of me just got recharged!"

 

Hello again!!

First off, yes, I did get Dad´s voice message on our phone yesterday. We´d left the internet place after calling you guys and went straight down into the subway, so I didn´t have signal. When we got out, my comp started listening to the message, and quick pushed the phone on my ear because it was in English. It was a little bizarre hearing Dad´s voice coming out of our phone! And I guess my reaction really scared Hna P, because she told me later she thought someone´d died or something, hahaha. (I guess when I´m really happy that´s the impression she gets from my expressions?) I'm stoked to hear that Alicia and Mike will be down in the 321 for my homecoming, that´s a very generous sacrifice. :) 

Thanks for letting me know about it right away! (And yeah, I was wondering about how you had our number, haha) 

It was so, so great seeing all of you yesterday, too! I don´t know why, but having big connecting moments like that with you guys doesn´t make me sad or trunky at all, I just feel like some big, important part of me just got recharged. :) Perfect preparation for the arrival of my trainee tomorrow!!

Hna P and I continue to scramble in the moments we´re in our piso to get ourselves organized enough to have two more people join us. It´s really strange setting up all on my study stuff in a separate room! I´m so grateful, though, that my sweet comp and I will still be living together as we both train, I know it´ll help a lot. Mike´s advice is going to be a huge help as well.

And I found out last night that I´ve been released from my assignment as Sister Training Leader so I can focus more on my new companion and not be worried about exchanges, which is a bummer and a huge relief at the same time!

I had my last exchange this week with another Hermana Palomino (no, not related. This one´s from New York and one of her parents is from Ecuador). All of our investigators got a kick out of that. It was fun getting to be with another missionary who has much more experience than I do!

This week we haven´t been able to see as many people as we´d like to, but A----o´s starting to progress again, F------o´s still meeting with that pastor and not with us, R-----d´s caught in a really rough situation with his wife and he´s been needing some serious introspective spiritual reflection, S----o´s been finding himself surrounded by testimonies of the truthfulness of the One True Gospel in every baptismal service and Sunday meeting he´s attended (yay!), and M-------o still loves to talk just as much as ever and interrupt us with really long random comments during our lessons, hahaha. It´s going to be SUPER weird splitting up our investigators between the new companionships that´ll be formed this week. It hasn´t been a very fun process... but we´ll still get to see them in the chapel! :)

And, because this is a work of miracles, this week was as full of tender mercies as every other :) Here are a few:

-We stopped to pick up flowers at a flower stand for a sweet, helpful member´s birthday, and the lady gave us a HUGE bunch for free, explaining how she´s a member from another ward, and she´s here in the area to help out with the Mothers´Day craziness. Now we´ve got flowers in our piso!

-After a long visit from two old, raspy-voiced plumbers, our bathroom doesn´t leak water into the apartment downstairs anymore!

-As I told you on Skype, I got to see my mission prep teacher, Brother Farnsworth! 

To make a long story maybe a little shorter, when the missionary age requirement was lowered, I had a few things made very clear to me, one of them being that I needed to serve a mission asap. One of the things not made so clear, however, was how the heck I was going to begin preparing. After first miraculously making it into a mission preparation class, I started getting on track with the help of my wonderful professor. Then, as he does with all preparing pre-missionaries, the adversary began to hit me HARD, and I started getting really confused and frustrated by the feelings of doubt and unworthiness that came. I had nothing keeping me from being worthy, so I just tried ignoring the feelings. After a long time of pushing it off to the side, I finally had to talk to someone about it- and I had the strong impression to talk to Brother Farnsworth after class one day. I´ll never forget his patience and assurance as we talked, and his advice to talk to my bishop out there at BYU. I remember walking on air on the way home from talking with Brother Eastly- having been declared worthy by a judge in Israel (something that probably wouldn´t have happened without the nudge from Brother Farnsworth). Satan was then powerless to make me feel unworthy, and I was able to continue preparing with a little more inner peace :)

Seeing Brother Farnsworth brought all of that rushing back to mind, and I´m so grateful for the reminder :) The thirty-second encounter he had with a past student he probably doesn´t remember probably meant nothing to him, but it meant a lot to me!!!

-A----o had another one of his crazy dreams, but this time, it was about trying not to be distracted by groups of people competing for his attention as he made his way, past guards, up to a huge, beautiful mountain! (temple!!!) So cool.

-We had an awesome right-place-right-time moment as we stopped by R-----a´s and were able to help her inactive sister rekindle her testimony a little.

Haha, I love getting to remember all of this stuff every Monday :)

And of course, there was the awesome meeting with Elder Snow and Brother Neilson, who talked to us a lot both about our history as missionaries of the Last Dispensation, and about the futures we need to be planning on having. I accidently left my notes at home, but I´ll write more about that next week :)

Also, we spent this morning at the Zoo! Haha, yes, the Brevard Zoo a block away from our home in Florida is definitely better, but it was fun spending time with Ana (adorable YSA who´s decided she´ll be our personal tour guide any Pday we want to go anywhere. awesome!!!) and my comp.

After hearing "¡Hermana! ¡Sáqueme una foto aquí!" all day, I think I understand how Dad feels on our vacations a little better, hahaha. Needless to say, I have LOTS of photos of barely visible animals on my camera now, hahaha. Whatever. We had a blast :D

And I think that´s about all I´ve got for this week! Once again, I LOVED getting to see all of you yesterday. That was by far the highlight. Thanks for being so dang wonderful :) 

Have a stupendous week!

Love you!!!

-HCL :)