Email 50 - "I Love This Ward!"

 

 

Hey family!! 

First off, happy birthday to B-radster and Nana! I hope it was stupendous. It sure sounds like it was :) 

It sounds like things are going swimmingly out there in Utah, which makes me happy :) Keep sending me updates! I love hearing all of the details :) 

We´ve had another busy week over here in Las Palmas! D---a´s baptism was moved up for the 13th of July, F----o has been getting more and more into the story of Lehi and whips out notes everytime he animatedly (did I make that word up? we use the word "ánimo" a lot here, and I can´t think of an exact translation...) tells us about what he read. And I´m loving the older couple we visit, L--a and R-----o, more than ever. I don´t know if I´ve told you about them, but they can´t come to the chapel for health reasons, so we stop by every now and then to chat and see how they´re doing. They´re HILARIOUS. We finally introduced them to the Elders the other day to share the love, and now they´re the district favorite :) They´re just a very humble, sarcastic, loving, intelligent couple that I can´t get enough of. 

And this week we´ve basically gone back to being in the Young Women program, haha. We are ALWAYS with the Young Women. And I can´t even tell you how awesome it is to be teaching 4 investigators  within that program in an area where the YW are so strong. It´s the best. 

We´ve been spending tons of time with them this week, and we were with them almost all day on Saturday after receiving special permission to accompany our investigators to an activity up on a mountain. Aaaand we´re going to teach them how to make American brownies on Friday :) 

We´re seeing major blessings from spending all of this time with the girls. Not only have Hna Irigoyen and I been gaining some major cool-points with the youth, but now they all want to go with us to our appointments, our investigators are bonding beautifully, and they´re all taking the need to share the Gospel more seriously. 

N-----a´s fast progress can definitely be attributed to the Roka family and the YW program. She´s still not set on a date, but she LOVES being with us and has made a lot of friends at church. I´ve even been teaching her how to follow the music in the hymnbooks and find the pitches to sing so she feels more comfortable when we all sing together. ...And now she never wants to meet anywhere where there isn´t a piano available to practice, haha. 

K------e and P---a are doing awesome, too. They´d been falling through on us for a couple of weeks, but this week they invited us over 4 times, and they´d read from the Book of Mormon together between each visit! We have a goal with them to read everyday for 21 consecutive days :) 

A--a is the 15-yr-old sister of our cute convert, A----a. She recently told Willy Roka that, having seen the baptism of her sister, she thinks she´s going to be baptized after the EFY she´s going to in a few weeks. We were finally able to start teaching her, and I´m excited about the progress we´re seeing already.  Pretty neat, huh? And we can´t even take credit for ANY of it!!! I love this ward! This is how it should be! 

Anyway, I´ve been a lot more pensive as we´ve spent time with all of these teenagers because it makes me think a lot about how my testimony was founded during my time in YW. I got the new Ensign that Mom sent (thank you!!!) and I LOVE the talk, "Becoming Perfect in Christ." 

As I´ve been thinking about all of the things I should have done better as a teenager, I was being pretty hard on myself, but I´ve learned a lot from Elder Gong´s quote in this talk: 

"Fully accepting our Savior´s Atonement can increase our faith and give us courage to let go of constraining expectations that we are somehow required to be or make things perfect. Black-and-white thinking says everything is either perfect or hopelessly flawed. But we can gratefully accept, as God´s sons and daughters, that we are His greatest handiwork, even though we are still a work in progress." 

Things can get crazy and we can mix priorities and we can get confused about what doing our best really means- but if we take a break and give Heavenly Father a chance to teach us, He´ll show us what He expects of us, and give us the means we need to improve and feel the perfect love He has for us. 

I love you all!! We´re all not perfect, but I know Heavenly Father´s pleased with our efforts! 

I miss you tons. Hearing details about everything going on over there has been awesome- keep it up please!! ´Looking forward to seeing photos of my best buddy´s WEDDING tomorrow!!! 

Have a blast! 

Love, 

Hna Grover 

Photos: Hna Irigoyen deciding that PB isn´t all it´s cracked up to be, and the YW activity!