Email 54 - "Truth Is Truth!"

Florida connection to Chrissy and her mission president!

Hiya family!

We don´t have a whole lot of time today, we just got back from Roque Nublo- the mountain in the middle of our little island. We had a fun little hike getting up there, the highest point here in Gran Canaria :) It was a fun way to spend the last Pday of the transfer. I just realized that we left my memory card reader up in the piso, and the cable I just tried gave me the options of either copying all of my photos or deleting them, haha, so if we have time I´ll grab that reader later. I don´t think we´ll get to it though.... I´ll have lots of photos next week!!!

That´s so awesome that you were able to meet Megan!!! (Editor:  See photo, above.  Sister Megan Jackson is Chrissy's friend from BYU who is serving in the Florida Orlando Mission, third from left.  Sister Jackson's dad is Chrissy's mission president in Spain!  Melissa and I received permission from Sister Jackson's mission president to travel over to Kissimmee and take Sister Jackson and her companion Sister Day to lunch...so awesome!) I´m sure she´ll love those CDs, Mom. That was a great idea. We just listened to those two in the car with the Larsens on the way to the hike today, and Sister Larsen was a big fan. She and I talked all about homeschooling (which she did for 16 years). Oh, and she was very, very touched by your thank-you card the other week. She said it was the first letter she´s received on her mission :) ...I guess when you can Face-time your family whenever you want, you don´t really have a need for mail, haha.

This was a much better week than the past few :) We´re still not being able to set up any baptismal dates, but as a district, we´ve been focusing on helping each other remember that our God is a "fourth-watch God," and we´re trying to go by His timetable, and not by how many weeks are left in the transfer ;) (speaking of transfers, I can´t BELIEVE I´m already finishing my second transfer here. I´ll find out on Saturday if I get to stay on the island a little longer!)

We´re all working hard to find new investigators, and we´ve been trying harder than ever to talk with everyone in the streets. We find a lot of pass-along cards left on the sidewalks, haha. We always check the numbers on the back to see which companionship it´s from :)

So A--a LOVED EFY, as we knew she would. We´re going to meet with them on Wednesday to get the full scoop, but Y-----a told us that A--a came back a completely different person, and that she wishes there was an EFY for adults, too. :) And N--i was able to come to church!! She was having a very legitimately hard time being left behind during EFY, but we spent some time with her this week and had fun. :)

One thing we planned with the YW was watching the Joseph Smith movie (the hour long one), and that turned out fantastically. We´d taught S----a (I think I mentioned her before, she´s a 16-yr-old member reference) the 1st lesson a couple of days previous, and she loved the whole movie. Halfway through, her mom (L--i) showed up! She picked a kind of inoportune moment to walk in, because it was right when Joseph Smith silenced the jail guards in the name of the Savior and then it goes into a long sequence on the intense suffering of the early Saints, haha... but she loved it! We gave her a copy, and when she came to church on Sunday, she told me that she´d not only read the pamphlet we gave her several times, but she´d watched the whole movie every day that week!!!

One talk this Sunday was about Joseph Smith, and when he started quoting the First Vision, L--i turned to me and finished his sentance. She grinned and said, "I know that part by heart now!"

We´re going to teach them again tonight. ´Pretty stoked about their progress already.

We also met this week with a guy named E-----e, a doctor whose intention for meeting ended up being teaching us about nutrition. 

He´s a very intelligent guy, and he told us how, the more he learns about science, the more evidence he finds that God exists. 

The fascinating thing about this lesson was his reaction to truths coming from a spiritual source, rather than from his scientific studies. He told us all about his understanding of agency and the need to make correct choices- we resolved a few doubts of his by reading parts of 2 Nephi 2. He talked to us about what he knew about the nature of mankind and how the Gospel simply can´t require that to change- we shared Mosiah 3:19, and felt the Spirit powerfully testify that what we were saying was true. Revelations from God were providing answers to fill in the gaps of his secular understanding.

Like I said, he´s an intelligent guy, and he knew all too well that if what we were teaching was true, it was going to make some big changes in his life. That´s not exaclty a mystery to the majority of the people we teach. Thus, when he felt that Spirit testifying of truth... he hopped up, cut us off, said a hurried goodbye, and straight-up ran back up his stairs into his apartment. Weird, huh?

During that visit, I couldn´t stop thinking about Elder Nelson, who said:  "Truth is truth! It is not divisible, and any part of it cannot be set aside. Whether truth emerges from a scientific laboratory of through revelation, all truth emanates from God."

I LOVE that quote!!! And I love that quiet, peaceful feeling from the Spirit that nudges me along as we teach pure truth. Sometimes I lack the faith to believe that other people can/will let themselves feel it too, but when we see it touch people, it´s beautiful! Seeing people understand and accept truth can be a lot easier when we´re teaching people English or explaining to tourists how to get to where they´re going- but helping them understand and accept divine, doctrinal truths is worth the extra effort and possibly the most satisfying thing anyone could sacrifice for!

I´m as tired as ever and still trekkin´ along with all we´ve got going on, but I´m happy! I´m still learning a lot about the Atonement but basically just doing everything I can to focus on other people and not think so much about my problems or the phone calls/emails I´m getting ALREADY about my flight home. So weird.

Have a good week, folks! I love ya more than I can possibly tell ya!

Love,

Hna Grover

Email 53 - "One Very Smiley Missionary"

That´s the really awesome view from a member´s house where we ate this week. So pretty! 

And there is my favorite older couple ever, good ole Lola and Roberto. I LOVE them. We made them a little nervous by taking photos, they thought we were getting transferred, haha. I don´t know when I´ll have to, but I already know it´ll be crazy hard to say goodbye to them.

That´s their daughter and a 12-yr-old friend of ours (María Jose´s son, Haorán) in the shot, too. 

Hello!

You all sound great! Between those really great emails and the major endorfins I´ve got pumping from playing my first game of ultimate frisbee in a year are making me one very smiley missionary, haha. I discovered this week that one of the members has a frisbee (can´t find them anywhere!), so our district took advantage of that and played 3 on 3 for a couple hours this morning. I haven´t run like that in a long time, haha. Hna Irigoyen picked it up like a champ.

Updates? Yes?

Things are still looking a little gloomy with our buddy F----o. He´s still not answering his phone for us or the member he got really close to, and the last thing we heard was, "you´re good girls. I´ll probably tell you someday what happened." *click*

We were worried something similar was happening with Y-----a´s family when, after 2 weeks of not seeing them, we set an appt to take the hour bus ride to her house, and she canceled on us as we got to her street. BUT then her whole family showed up to church yesterday! WOOHOOOOOOO!!! 

And A--a is in Madrid enjoying (hopefully) her first EFY. :) If it´s anything like the experience it sounds like B-rad just had, I think we can count on her being a little more pumped about baptism when she gets back!

D---a and her family are all doing really great. We started off our most recent lesson with our family photo, and I explained the blessings our family can claim because of the Restored Gospel. It was fun listening to D---a and G------i rattling off all of the blessings they could think of. I think that really caught C-----a´s (their nonmember mom) attention. And we referred back to those blessings throughout the lesson as we talked about dispensations, the Great Apostasy, and the miracle of the Restoration.

N-----a hasn´t been able to come to church lately because her family keeps planning last-minute family outings for Sunday mornings- which is not a good sign on how her mom´s been taking the idea of N--i joining the church. But she seems to be progressing really well aside from that, and when she´s not surrounded by the Young Women, she´s constantly What´sApp-ing them (that´s the text messaging app that, from what I´m hearing, every country aside from the US uses, haha).

We also helped an old investigator named L---a with the craziest move I´ve ever helped with. I kid you not, she had an entire room full of boxes. Not like, twelve boxes scattered on the floor kind of full, either. We´re talking stacks of rows of towers of heckadays lotta boxes, haha, and they each had a dead cow or at least something equally heavy inside of them. We did our best to help with everything else as the poor Elders hauled each of those suckers, a fridge, a washing machine, an oven, cases of water, and 10+ bookcases/dressers up a flight of stairs (thank goodness 3/4ths of them are mountain-western football players, haha). The poor lady´s landlord had told her that morning that she had to have everything out by the end of the day, so she was definitely grateful for the help, and then showed up to Relief Society the next day!

Unfortunately, other than that, there´s not much news. Hna Irigoyen is still learning how to drop her ´t´s and speak in American slang (props to the Elders), and she´s recently picked up saying "geez," my most recent exclamation of choice. She, however, says, "cheese!" and then giggles for a while everytime, haha. The members get a kick out of it, so no worries.  And I´m being told that I´m starting to talk a little in the sing-songy Spanish that Argetinians use....

That all being said, it was still another kind of rough week, and Hna Irigoyen and I are both feeling like there´s a lot we can improve. On Thursday, we had the most optimistic motivational speech/pep talk of a zone training ever from the Muellers´ friend, Elder Laughbaugh, and and Elder who turns out to be a friend of the Webbers, Elder Gentry. They challenged us all to do mini companionship inventories every night to try to improve something everyday, and that´s been surprisingly helpful.

One thing we read in the training was D&C 108:7- "Therefore, strengthen your brethren in all your conversation, in all your prayers, in all your exhortations, and in all your doings."

That´s our new focus for working with members, investigators, fellow missionaries, etc. 

Then, yesterday, a YSA friend of ours, A-i T----s, gave a talk on Christlike communication. She used us missionaries as an example, talking about how friendly and enthusiastically we talk to everyone as missionaries, even if we´re talking to someone we´d rather not be around, haha. I realized that, while that´s true, it´s all really easy to do just because of the nametag I´ve got on. Almost everyone in the world knows how a girl dressed in a long skirt and wearing a nametag with the Savior´s name on it should act.  My hope is that I can remember that, as a member of the church, even after the mission, I´ve still got a label on me as a disciple of Christ, and hopefully it´ll be just as easy to keep this up!

Thanks again for the emails and photos this week :) I love you guys tons!!!!

And I´m sending a request for recordings :) I´d love to hear from you all! I don´t even care what you talk about or anything... maybe B-radster can tell me a little more about his week at EFY or something :)

Love,

Hna Grover

Email 52 - Baptism!

Hiya, folks!

Thank you for the pictures again!!!! That was wonderful. Thanks for the emails, too. I'm glad to hear that Girls Camp went so well (I don't remember who came up with the idea of choosing Spain as the theme for the ward, but give them a big hug for me, haha. Those pictures were adorable), that the Florida reception was a hit, and that B-rad's headed off to EFY. 

I'm not sure what advice I would give about getting the youth out to EFY, I'll have to think about it. For me and the other youth that were with me, everyone was just always super stoked about EFY... The youth here are all losing their minds waiting until EFY starts, haha. They're all excited to see Hna Caballero, who's working as a counselor this year. In fact, we're planning activities with the Young Women who aren't old enough to go because they're all depressed about being left behind, haha.

So still no news on F----o or A----a's family, but K------e and P---a came to church!! Y-----a's decided we're her best friends and D---a was baptized yesterday!!

The baptism went really well, too. We did it right after church so a lot of people came. Our district sang "Love is Spoken Here," from the Children's Songbook and we all actually stayed on-pitch, and D---a was all smiles the whole time :) It was great.

We met with N-----a by herself that evening where we were finally able to talk alone with her about baptism and everything. The update is basically this: she's feeling a little pressure from the leaders she's getting close with in the church, and she's really worried about asking her mom if she can be baptized. She also said that she doesn't think it'd be a good idea for us to meet her. The three of us decided we'd all pray about it and talk about how we're feeling on Wednesday. Prayers, please!

In other news, we're starting to see tourists coming outta the woodwork all over Las Palmas, the World Cup is over (FINALLY!!!!!) and my companion was only a little devastated that her country lost, I had another person in the street think I was from Spain (this time even AFTER I'd opened my mouth, haha), and we're getting to know the island reeeeally well as we search all over creation for the addresses the bishop gave us to verify and as we keep searching for new investigators. I live in a really cool place.

Thanks for the advice about perfectionism. It's still been a bit of a struggle, but I'm reading a lot of really neat talks and I've been having some interesting studies lately. Dealing with my faults/ getting over other people's faults has continued to be a challenge, and I feel like the moderately perfectionist side of me from before the mission has gotten a little inflamed and infected, haha. But things are improving little by little!

I really like Elder Bednar's perspective on the Atonement that I read this week in his talk called, "In the Strength of the Lord," where he says:

"Most of us clearly understand that the Atonement is for sinners. I am not so sure, however, that we know and understand that the Atonement is also for saints- for good men and women who are obedient and worthy and conscientious and who are striving to become better and serve more faithfully. I frankly do not think many of us "get it" concerning this enabling and strengthening aspect of the Atonement, and I wonder if we mistakenly believe we must make the journey from good to better and become a saint all by ourselves through sheer grit, willpower, and discipline, and with our obviously limited capacities."

I'm not sure why that can be so hard to comprehend sometimes. The Savior is not just sitting in the stands, patiently waiting for us to put into practice all that we know about the Gospel, lending a hand whenever we trip up- but he's down on the track for the whole race!

Like I said, I'm honestly not sure why that can be so hard for me to wrap my mind around. It's like I'm down here trying to get to every appointment on time, be exactly obedient, remember to do all of the phone calls, update all of the records, plan perfect lessons, and then I look over and yell to the stands, "I got this! I'm stressed and impatient and definitely messing up a lot and I know there's a lot to improve, but I'm hanging in there! If all goes well, I'll see you there at the finish line!" And then I get an excited little cheer and a thumbs-up from the Savior and I keep going with that sheer grit Elder Bednar talked about.

I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I got this. I won't ask for help because I already know what You'll say and it's too hard. Maybe I can make it all work all on my own.

...Haha, yeah, that definitely doesn't work out very well!

So that's my challenge for this week, and possibly for the rest of my life; following/ depending on/ allowing myself to be strengthened by the Savior. Again, thanks for all of advice!! I know the Restored Gospel is true, that Christ lives, and I'll keep working on letting the Atonement be more than just something that gives me a clean slate every time I partake of the sacrament. :)

Thanks for everything, family!!! I LOVE you!

Love,

Hna Grover

pics: hanging out with Danna and Giovanni as we waited for the Elders to get there to do a baptismal interview :) They got lost... haha. Giovanni is an awesome little magician, he does the coolest little tricks with his deck o' cards there. Super cool.

Email 51 - "Kind of a Rough Week" with some "Great Moments"

Holy moly, those wedding shots are GORGEOUS. I was wondering whether Dad would whip out his camera or not... I´m not sure why I wondered, haha. You got some awesome photos! Thanks for sharing them :) I´d be lying if I said it didn´t make me trunky! ("This is trunking me out of my miiiiind!!" -Best 2 Years!) Haha, but I love seeing them and seeing how happy you all are. Seeing my floating head in a few of them was pretty hilarious too, haha. Nice touch :)

And thanks for writing to me, everybody! I love it when that happens!!! 

Our week was a little less glorious on this side of the pond, haha. It was a long one, so starting off a new week with freshly set goals and a new plan of attack and a Pday to recharge our batteries has been sounding great.

We just had a lot of appointments fall through and not any luck with the lists of less-actives that we were all super pumped about. Plus, we´ve been seeing some weird things going on with our investigators- F----o´s been sounding annoyed on the phone and hasn´t been able to meet or come to church, N-----a bailed on us a couple of times, and we´ve got some other things kind of worrying us about A--a and her family, and K-----e and P---a. 

But, don´t get me wrong, there were definitely some great moments this week, too.  For example:

-We sat down with N-----a to talk about the law of chastity, only to find that she´d already learned all about it in Young Women class that Sunday (not the first time that´s happened!).

-D---a´s super excited for her baptism on Sunday, and her 10-yr-old brother went off about how excited he is to turn twelve and go to the temple for his "dear relatives who have passed away without the opportunity to hear about the Restored Gospel." ...They´re teaching some good stuff over there in primary.

-On the 4th of July, we had another YW activity where we made brownies and watched President Uchtdorf´s talk, "Your Happily Ever After," which I remember watching when I was a Miamaid :) That was super fun, and we got yet another YW investigator out of it! Her name´s S-----h :)

-We all had lunch with the Larsens and their English students on Saturday, and one of their students made a monster of a paella- a dish I haven´t had since my Gijón days :)

-A family from Utah was visiting this week, and they had their 8-yr-old´s baptism here in our chapel. They planned it that way so all of the extended family that lives here in Las Palmas (the dad is Canarian) could be there and have an introduction to the Church. As we helped set up refreshments afterwards, the dad, still a little shaken from the stress of trying to make it all an uplifting experience for his 30+ nonmember relatives, said, "I don´t know if you have any relatives outside of the Church, but I can´t even tell you how much it means to have this chance to share what we believe with all of them at once." That would be so cool!!!

-We stopped by L--a and R-----o´s last night and found our other favorite less-active, M---a J--é, there with them! ´Turns out they´ve been best friends for over 16 years!

-As I was testifying to Y-----a on Tuesday about eternal families, I looked down at my watch and said, "y... en veinte minutos, tendré una nueva miembro de mi familia- toda mi familia está en un templo en Utah ahora mismo, y ¡mi hermano se va a sellar con su novia!" So that was pretty cool :)

Anyway, this week I was studying a devotional given by Elder Holland about the second-shortest verse in the scriptures:

Luke 17:32, "Remember Lot´s wife."

And, he being the good ole Elder Holland we all know and love, he managed to fill 5 pages and 50 minutes worth of devotional based on that tiny verse. I highly recommend this talk!!

Elder Holland discussed everything from Lot´s wife´s doubts in the Lord´s ability to give her something better in her future than what she was leaving behind in her past, to the dangers of holding others accountable for their past sins and mistakes, to keeping our faith turned forever forward.

I´ve also been continuing last week´s studies on the Atonement, and sometimes it just seems like there´s no way I´ll ever really be able to understand it all, haha. There´s just so much to it!!

And, honestly, I´ve still been struggling quite a bit with my weaknesses and those of the people around me, but I know that the promise in Ether 12:27 is as true for me as it is for anyone else! And in a priesthood blessing from one of the Elders this week, I was promised that I´d be able to begin understanding the Atonement more than ever before- ´just gotta keep studying!

Just like anyone else in the world that may need it, I can take comfort in this quote that Mom once shared with me and I reread this week (in another talk by Elder Holland, "The Inconvenient Messiah"- now the district´s favorite!):

"It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume; it is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever."

Don´t worry, I´m not "weeping bitterly," or anything ;) but this has been kind of a rough week, and I´m definitely looking forward to the "return[ing] to greater power than ever" part!

Keep being awesome, family o´ mine! Thanks for the prayers and the love!!

I love and miss you all tons!

Hurrah for Israel!

Love,

Hna Grover