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