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