Email 58 - My Favorite Lessons Ever!

 Hiya family! What's good??

Thanks for all your emails, I LOVED reading them. Unfortunately, I don't have time to respond to all of them individually because we're at the Larsens' today and I've got a bunch of Elders waiting to get on the computer....

Updates!

C-------n almost believes in God now. The lessons we have with him are probably my favorite ever. We've been answering questions like crazy and using a lot of logic in our lessons about who God and the devil are, and teaching the Plan of Salvation. He just gets it. I feel a lot of Heavenly Father's love for that kid during our visits, too. Before the mission, I feel like I had a lot of opportunities to help people that don't believe in God understand more about His existence, but I think I did it all wrong, haha. I feel very blessed by the chance to try it again. The Atonement's a great thing :)

S----a's progressing! There's still no way for her to come to church, but we finally had a lesson with both her and her mom, and found out that her mom feels like all of her biggest doubts about religion were answered by the Joseph Smith movie. Pretty awesome.

We're having some problems getting in touch with Y-----a, though. She hasn't been coming to church, and things keep coming up when we show up to her house. We're not losing faith, though! I'm confident she'll get baptized soon. She knows it's all true :)

Oh, and F--n, our world-traveling buddy, definitely had the Spirit touch his heart, and it really surprised him. He knows that if what we're teaching is true, he's got a lot to change. I can tell he's taking a little step back. He started listening to us out of curiosity, and I don't think he ever thought it could all be true.

...I'm currently hearing a lot of very animated commentary from the Elders playing Jenga on the other side of the room ("Bold move by Elder Hansen! BOLD!" "That'll come up in companionship inventory tonight...")

Anyway, our lessons (and pretty much everything in general) have been improving quite a bit lately as we've gotten back into the habit of doing comp inventories every night like our zone leaders had asked us all to do. We look at each lesson we had and try to target specific things to study together the next day. It feels good, because we're actually getting things done and not ending up with the same weekly goals every time, haha.

In other news, we had a lesson this week with members of another prominent religion, and I was really really surprised to find that their belief in their interpretation of the Bible was all founded on historical evidence. After talking for a while, it became clear that that's their only claim to truth. Honestly, it was kind of shocking... especially because of what I had just read that morning in my personal study, in 1 Nephi 10:17-19:

17 And it came to pass after I, Nephi, having heard all the words of my father, concerning the things which he saw in a vision, and also the things which he spake by the power of the Holy Ghost, which power he received by faith on the Son of God—and the Son of God was the Messiah who should come—I, Nephi, was desirous also that I might see, and hear, and know of these things, by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek him, as well in times of old as in the time that he should manifest himself unto the children of men.

 18 For he is the same yesterday, today, and forever; and the way is prepared for all men from the foundation of the world, if it so be that they repent and come unto him.

 19 For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round.

We're teaching a lot of people right now who have grown up in religious families but tell us right up front that they understand nothing about our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ. And it was really overwhelming at first, trying to figure out how in the world to start explaining something so huge and sacred and infinitely important and something that's become such a prominent part of who I am as the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But that pattern in 1 Nephi 10 works here, too!

The mysteries of God are learned by the Holy Ghost, and I'll never ever get tired of seeing its influence in people when they're touched by it during a lesson.

Other than that, it's the same old same old! (meaning, every single day is entirely different and I'm learning a ton. We've started a dessert-war with the Elders that's only lost by failing to bake at least once a week, and I've made oatmeal crispies, lemon bars and Reeses cookies. We saw a guy kneel in the street and worship Elder Bybee. We made another homeless friend, P--e, who always crosses the street over to us when he sees us, and salutes and stands at attention until we pass. And we tried a new Chinese restaurant and scored big time with some delicious shrimp pasta. Good week.)

I love you all so so much! I think of you all the time. Thanks for the emails again. Thanks for being awesome. Keep it up :)

'Til next week!

-Hna Grover

Email 57 - A Couple of Big Miracles

Chrissy and her companion reunite with an investigator they haven't seen in a while.

"Skype zone meeting (this is actually only half of my zone. I´m not sure why they zone leaders do it twice and we don´t just get everyone on skype, but whatever! I only see my whole zone here every 3 months. Hna P AND Hna Adair are technically in my zone, and I´ll finally see them in September! Woohoo!)"

"Big ole mama statue we found today, and the beach!"

 "The Elders trying to get our borrowed frisbee out of a tree, haha."

Wazz good family??

Thank you for the emails and the photos!!! I hope Milo works out for Mike and Alicia, that´s a perfectly cute name for a little lost cat. I´m glad to hear that the first days of seminary and babysitting have been going well, and I´m also pleased to hear that Megan didn´t need a root canal, haha. Hermana Jackson was telling me about how Megan´s birthday was coming up, I´m glad you were able to make it a good one for her :)

Oh! And I finally got the package Mom sent to Madrid in May!! I have AMERICAN BROWN SUGAR now! Mmmm. And I had just been craving pretzels this week- that was some major inspiration when you put those in the box back in April, haha. I also got a bunch of letters that were sent to Madrid a million years ago, so I had fun hearing from Jonathan and Aida and Mads and a couple of times from Mom. Thanks for the love!

Ready for a big miracle? ...How ´bout a couple of them? :)

We saw F----o!!!!! He finally answered his phone, and met up with us in a park after almost 2 months without contact. It was stupendous (although I could´ve gone without the comments about how much chubbier I´d gotten, hahaha. It´s like what Mike said about Thailand- those kinds of comments are harmless here. Now, if you ask about their AGE you´re really setting up to get a smack in the face, haha)

Anyway, that was pretty great. He said he´d just needed time to clear his head and set some priorities straight- I´ve actually seen a lot of that during the mission. People start progressing beautifully and then drop off the face of the earth for a little while as they take in the fact that what we´re teaching is true and make the decision to either follow with it or back off. When that happens, all we can really do is try our hardest to stay in touch and pray they´ll make the right choice. F----o says that he´s going to pray some more about what we´re teaching this week, and says he intends to be baptized at the end of the month. We´ll see!

S----a continues progressing, although now it´s official that she won´t be able to attend church on Sundays until next year when she´s no longer a minor, so we had to cancel her baptism. She´s doing great, though. She can´t even bring her Book of Mormon into the center where she´s staying, so she goes to the dance academy of the Roka family to read there.

Brother and Sister Roka are going to meet with N-----a´s mom today to talk to her about N-----a being baptized. We haven´t had a lesson with her in about 2 weeks, but we´re hoping all´s well. She did come to church yesterday, though :)

Anyway, we´re starting to see some of the fruits of all of the hard work from these last couple of transfers. We were very blessed this week with new people to teach.

There´s a lot of variety, too. One new investigator is C------n, 17-yr-old athiest, another one´s R----o, a classy, wealthy, older guy who´s been the president of the association of all things private boats on the island for the last 5 years, and then, among others, there´s F--n, the 24-yr-old world traveling student and R-----o, the Catholic jeweler and his very skeptical friend, A-------o. Fun stuff.

It was actually really really awesome, teaching so many people with such incredibly different needs and interests all within the same week. I couldn´t tell you exactly what each one of them got out of our lessons, but I can tell you what I did! I just found that my trust in the doctrine we´re out here teaching is stronger than ever. Even when a couple of proselyters (sp?) from another faith grilled us on the street the other day, I was completely calm, because even though I don´t always know how to explain things, there´s simply no doubt in any part of my being that what I´m teaching is pure truth.

Jesus Christ´s original church is restored to the earth, along with His pure teachings and the authority to go about God´s work in His name. The heavens are not closed, revelation has not ended, and God is a constant, perfect being with perfect love. And I know it because I have a personal relationship with Him and He´s told me I´m where I should be. Anyone in the world can ask Him if what the Mormon missionaries teach is true and they can have the same testimony as the one I´ve been sharing all week long. 

As we´ve been teaching all of these new people, Hermana Irigoyen and I have been really working on improving our lessons. We´ve hit a bizzare little funk lately, where we´ll both feel like we´re being led by the Spirit, and yet we´re taking things in completely different directions.

(A few weeks ago, I did an example in our district meeting where I had two of the Elders teaching the other Elders, and they had to follow the "promptings" -aka sticky notes- that I was handing them from behind. Each companion was receiving promptings that told them to teach completely different subjects, and the lesson fell apart. We laughed about it, and agreed that, if we´re truly in-tune with the Spirit, that will never happen! ...I never thought it´d be something we´d struggle with! haha)

So that´s been a major focus. We´re also working on trying to really be the representatives of the Savior that we claim to be. Frequently throughout my mission, especially during particularly difficult or frustrating lessons, I try to have the image in my mind of the Savior sitting in my place and being the one giving the lesson. That helps SO much. It gives me more patience, more love, and more sensitivity to the Spirit and to the investigator.  So that´s been fun.

Among the other fun things, I´ve also realized that my Argentinian comp´s addiction to dulce de leche is rubbing off on me, I found some sweet sunglasses for Pdays for 1 euro this morning, and I started the Book of Mormon over! President Jackson´s asked us all to read it cover-to-cover by December 23rd (not that it´s on my mind or anything, but that will be my last week in the field. Pretty convenient timing, huh?), and I´ve been focusing on the "turning-points" in the conversions of each of Lehi´s family members. I was especially impressed by the big one I saw in Nephi. It´s like a "we´re in this together" moment with him and his father :)

Here´s what it looked like to me:

Lehi and his family head out into the wilderness. Nephi loves the Lord and he trusts his dad, but he knows he needs a change of heart to be able to endure the trials he´ll face (1 Nephi 2:16), so he goes off alone and has a powerful spiritual experience.

Meanwhile, Lehi´s telling his other sons that they need to backtrack their 3-day journey and return to Jerusalem. They´re rebellious and start complaining.

Nephi, having just received a personal testimony of the reality of the inspiration of his father, and probably pretty pumped about continuing on to the promised land, returns to Lehi´s tent and receives the new assignment that I´m sure he wasn´t aware of, yet was totally prepared for. 

Lehi explains that, even though his brothers were rebelling, Nephi must be obedient because this commandment was coming from the Lord. Still unaware of the experience his son has just had, it is no surprise that the famous response of Nephi in 1 Nephi 3:7 made Lehi "exceedingly glad." Nephi made the right choice and was able to solidify another portion of his conversion to Christ.

Those daily decisions of how we react to our circumstances have the same kinds of consequences- we can pray for help and spiritual confirmations, and then we need to always be prepared to face our new challenges with new courage and new faith- that´s how our conversion becomes a part of who we are.

One decision at a time, folks!

I think that´s all I´ve got for this week. I hope you have a great one :)

Love you all tonnnsss!!!

-Hna Grover

Email 56 - "The Foundation of My Testimony"

"I´m sorry. I really slacked off on photos this week... But here´s some of our most recent lesson with Danna, we made little Standards of Liberty for how to be united as families. Danna´s is so cute. At the bottom of hers, she wrote, 'To get to the sun' (celestial kingdom)."

Hey... the fam! (Elder Wiltbank and I discovered this week that we could both easily quote entire scenes from obscure 90´s movies like "What About Bob," and "Groundhog Day." Very refreshing, haha.  Editor:  Bill Murray calls Richard Dreyfuss' family the fam in "What About Bob.")

How´s it goin´? I was reading all of your emails about the awesome things you´re all doing and almost forgot again that I needed to write. Thank you so much for keeping me updated!!  Oh, and I got Aida´s letter this week, next time you see her, tell her I´m STOKED to hear that she´s heading on her mission- and I´m going to miss her! I´ll send her a letter as soon as I can :)

Soooo, unfortunately, there´s really not a whole lot to tell this week, haha. We´re basically in the same sitch as last week, on-and-off seeing our amazing investigators.. and then going 2 or 3 weeks without having a lesson with them again! Ah! We did finally see S----a again! She lives with her three younger siblings in a center for kids and teenagers that have been taken away from their parents, but her mom (L--i) is in the process of regaining the rights to have them at home again (yay!). Anyway, it´s a religious center, and they told her that she couldn´t bring the Book of Mormon inside. So now she reads when she goes to Willy Roka´s dance academy! 

She told us that she´s been feeling the Spirit as she reads, and she and her mom "just know" that the church is true. She said her mom already has the Restoration pamphlet almost memorized... haha. Please pray that we´ll be able to finally teach her!

Other than that, we´ve been working a lot with the records from past missionaries, trying to find people who have regained interest, and doing lots more contacting (I actually remember you telling me that contacting tactic, Dad, before I left on the mission. That´s actually something I´ve used quite a bit! It works beautifully here, because when you actually do need directions, people will put their arm around you and even walk you to where you need to go. They know they need to take care of their tourists so they´ll come back, haha ;).

Oh, and we got to see President and Sister Jackson!!! We got to be with them for about a half hour as they stopped by all of the islands to do missionary interviews. Our mission president really really reeally loves his missionaries!! We´ll get to see them again in a few weeks for zone conference!

And our new district has gotten along stupendously right off the bat. The other companionship here in Las Palmas is awesome, too. We´re going to the chapel in a few minutes to play some ping pong :)

Our first district meeting together was great. We talked about the what/ how/ why of our missionary objective, emphasizing that we´re doing everything we´re doing because of love. I was impressed by how quickly the Spirit filled the room as Elder Dyer asked us each to share an experience when we´d felt Heavenly Father´s love for us or for another person.

I talked about the foundation of my testimony. I don´t remember how old I was, but I remember coming home from a particularly powerful fast and testimony meeting, and saying a prayer that night. As I prayed, I just asked if God was really there. I´ll never forget what I felt! I remember just being completely filled up by a perfect love I´d never felt before. It was the most powerful spiritual experience I´ve ever had. There was absolutely no way I could have denied in that moment that God exists and loves me as His daughter. I´ve never felt the Spirit again as strongly as I did that night, but sometimes I´ll get a little glimpse of it, something reminding me that, "you´ve felt this. Don´t forget that I´m here." :)

(though my situation isn´t exactly comparable to his, the new mormon message that came out reminded me of that experience: http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=3701964025001 ) 

Anyway, we talked about how this perfect love Heavenly Father has for us is the most desirable thing we can posses (1 Nephi 11:22-23)... but if people have never felt it, they won´t know how desirable it is. We decided to focus more on that, on the "why" of our missionary objective, during street contacting. People may not respond as well to the "what," (Hi, we´re full-time missionaries inviting people to Jesus), or the "how," (Hey, can we come by to teach you a message about God?), but they might just respond to the "why," (We´re here because God loves us and He loves you).

Aside from that, I was looking a lot at the talk, "Your Four Minutes," by Bishop Gary E. Stevenson.  He said: 

"Dear friends, you are in the midst of an exhilarating journey. In some ways, you are racing down the half-pipe or sled track, and it can be challenging to perform each element or navigate each turn along the way. But remember, you’ve prepared for this for millennia. This is your moment to perform. This is your four minutes! The time is now!"

It´s cool to think that Heavenly Father loves us and values us so much that He didn´t just send us down here to see how we´d do, but He prepared us for "millennia" beforehand. We didn´t just have the Council in Heaven, shrug our shoulders and decide to "go for it," and then come down here. Heavenly Father loves us too much for it to have gone like that :)

I love youuuuu! Have a great week!

Love,

Hna Grover

Email 55 - The Spectacular Hike to Roque Nublo

"My area, Las Palmas :)"

"The international dinner (complete with some typical Latin American dancers! ...nonmembers. Hence the arm around me in the photo, haha)" 

"The hike to Roque Nublo. Complete with a double-district selfie, haha."

"Double District Selfie"

Elder and Sister Larsen 

"The best missionary couple ever, folks!"

    

Our district goodbyes- Elder Shumway´s heading home, Elder Thunnel´s headed to the other side of the island (same district, different area), and Elder McWhorter´s headed to Madrid after spending a year away from the temple! If you look at my shots from the flight over to Spain, Elder McWhorter´s the Elder asleep on my right, hahaha. 

"Feeling the love from home! :)"

Hey, folks!

We got transfer calls on Saturday, and Hna Irigoyen and I are stickin´ around for another transfer in Las Palmas! Woohoo!

We´re actually losing quite a few missionaries this transfer (a big group just finished their missions), so some of the districts are shrinking down. Our district now has two companionships fewer, and now, instead of just being Las Palmas, our district includes the whole island (that means an hour commute to each district meeting!). Lots of changes.

We´ve got a LOT we still need to do here, so I´m glad we´re getting the chance to do it! I still feel like we´re almost to the point of seeing a lot of major miracles in our area, but for now, we´re still fighting to see progression in our current investigators and keeping up the search for newbies. 

Thanks a ton, Mom for the talks you sent and the little package! Those M&Ms are just about gone already, haha. Perfect timing, as always. :) We´ve been listening to that disc everyday, I´m a big fan of the new EFY music.

So this biggest issue this week was canceled appointments. It´s becoming the "norm" to go 2 weeks inbetween visits with most of our investigators. It´s really frustrating because they´re so so close to progressing, but it´s obviously tough to progress in the Gospel if you keep leaving on vacation and getting sick and having all kinds of other legitimate excuses that keep us from meeting, haha.

We have been able to see Y-----a quite a bit, though, and she accepted a baptismal date!!! There had been a lot of issues keeping her from accepting one before, so it´s been kind of a touchy subject that we´ve been careful with. And then, when it came up in the last visit, my companion just said, "Soooo... why are you waiting?" and she, surprisingly, said, "Y´know, I don´t know. I feel ready now."

Her date´s set for the end of this month, but I think we´ll end up bumping it forward :)

Other than that, there´s really not much to tell this week. I wish I had more updates- but we haven´t been able to see people so I´m wondering how they´re doing myself! Haha.

But the activity we had on Friday, the International Dinner, went really well. We had a LOT of people show up, and all of the members were wonderful and brought their typical foods and we all had fun. In every area I´ve been in, the members have complained about not having enough activities, so it´s been a goal for me to have a ward activity every transfer. Any ideas for this transfer? :)

And I´ve been reading the talks Mom sent, and I especially loved one titled, "Healing = Courage + Action + Grace" by Jonathan G. Sandberg. It was cool seeing how applicable his counsel is for everything from healing from an abusive past to taking the next step wherever you are in the conversion process. This was one of my favorite parts:

"If Satan can convince us that our fear is too great to be able to act or that to act is a great idea but we should do it later, he can prevent us from opening the door to grace."

And the perfection, or "healing" process is, like what Tad R. Callister said, really just about aquiring spiritual gifts. But without that grace that Satan tries to prevent us from receiving, we can run ourselves ragged (sheer grit, remember?) trying to develop gifts of knowledge or discernment or street-contacting without ever becoming "partakers of the divine nature" simply because we alone don´t have the capacity to do so. Here´s part of what Elder Callister said:

"Our embrace of the Atonement opens up a new cache of spiritual powers that "add upon" and endow man with godly traits that he cannot generate from internal sources alone."

Basically, we really depend much more on God than I ever really realized! We´re not asked to do this on our own, because we don´t even have the capacity to do so!

I´ll be keeping that in mind as we keep doing what we can to get this area reaching the potential it´s got!

I sure love you guys!!! Have another great week. And tell me all about it :)

Love,

Hna Grover