Email 67 - Let's Be More Like Captain Moroni!

"Surprising our ward mission leader (named Segundo... which means "second" in English) for his birthday."

"Last district meeting"

 

  

 "Look what we found in a second-hand store window!"

 "A VERY typical Spanish meal appetizer is bread with that raw meat ham stuff, tomato, and olive oil with a little salt. It´s actually really delicious (did I think that at the beginning of my mission? NOPE! Haha)"

 "Another typical Spanish dish I hated before but LOVE now. Arroz con leche :) mmmmm"

"And some views from that side of the world..." 

  "Feeling very, very ready for us to get some iPads someday..."

 "Remember that ham stuff? Here´s the member, Juan, slicing it up for us.

I´ve told you about it, right? They basically cut the leg off the pig, stick in a ton of salt and then leave it underground for a few years. and then you EAT IT. Mmmm."

Cute, right? That´s me and Hna F (above) heading to our first area over a year ago, and then in the same place today (below) to take her to our last area! oh, missions....

  "The mission van that we´ve gotten to know pretty well... that´s what we get for being in the Office Elders´ area. Being in the back of a stick-shift van on windy roads isn´t so great, haha."

"This is at a place called Bustarviejo, about a 45-minute drive from where we usually proselyte. Some really strong members live out there and apparently have the missionaries over every transfer."

Hey! We had transfers! I don´t think I told you about that, haha, but we did!

We were NOT expecting this, but Hna Hillman and I are staying together!! We are so stoked. We´re both way pumped to get going on some goals that will get this companion of mine speakin´ some Spanish and get some folks baptized. And guess what? Hermana FULLER is now living across the street. We had a pretty fun reunion today, and I´m so, so excited to be in the same ward as her again. We started our missions together, and now we´ll end them together. Plus, we get Thanksgiving and Christmas together again. 

Haha, I just heard her speaking Spanish for the first time in about a year today... SO weird. ´Sounds like a pro. 

We also got to host some of the Hermanas last night that are headed home this week. I got to catch up with Hermana Cançado, and that was awesome. I also got the scoop from another Hermana on what´s been going on in Gijon. There wasn´t a whole lot of good news, to be honest, but ELVYN AND KATY GOT MARRIED LAST WEEK!!!!

I feel totally responsable for that.  I remember how he was a member reference from a different YSA girl.

Hna Zitting, "hey we should probably teach him with someone else so he doesn´t just connect what he´s learning with Aixa."

Hna Grover, "Agreed. Who do we get?"

Hna Z, "Katy?"

Hna Grover, "Haha, yeah okay, he´ll just fall in love with her, and then we´ll have YSA drama. Watch them get married if he gets baptized."

Yep.

Anyhoo, this was a pretty good week. We still aren´t having a lot of lessons, which is frustrating, but the lessons we have had have been super, well, productive!

P------a, for example, came to the weekly Family Home Evening we do in her member friend´s house, and everyone shared their testimonies of the Gospel. It caught her attention so much, that we were finally able to commit her to coming to church!! We told her that she could gain the same testimony if she would read, pray and attend church. And she´s doing it!! She came to church for the first time yesterday! We´re meeting with her again tonight :)

T-----a´s also been progressing a TON this week. FINALLY!!! We showed her the "Patterns of Light" videos by Elder Bednar, and she received so many answers on how revelation works. Thank goodness. We were honestly feeling a little hopeless... And after that lesson, she showed up to the ward Noche de Hogar, and Elder Franklyn started explaining the very clear prompting he recieved to teach that night about... revelation. He then proceeded to basically recover everything we´d just taught that day. T-----a shot me some suspicious looks, haha, but I think she was really touched to realized how much God wants her to understand that He´s there.

And I don´t think I´ve told you about E-----e, but he´s a 16-yr-old recent convert that we´ve been working with. He was going through a rough-patch right when I got here, and was often pretty absent during the lessons, but as we´ve been prayerfully preparing our lessons for him, we´ve seen a HUGE change. Now we´re just all studying topics on our own and sharing what we learned in the lessons. It´s been awesome. And he finally came back to church yesterday and passed the sacrament :)

So yeah, not many new investigators and definitely not many lessons, but we´re seeing some big steps in the right direction.

I don´t know if I´ve mentioned this before, but it´s been surprising me a lot how strong the temptation is to just kind of glide into life after the mission. I still have a whole transfer and a half left, but the adversary has been making me feel lately like I´m already wrapping up, so I might as well ease on into post-mission life. Just sloooow on down and have a smooth transition.  Ha, no thanks!!

It´s hard, though. I didn´t think it would be...so I´ve been studying a lot about diligence and a lot about Captain Moroni and how that guy just never ever stops! The war chapters have become my favorite parts of the Book of Mormon. I don´t think I´ll ever get sick of reading about Captain Moroni´s crazy stubbornness when it comes to the commandments of God. Let´s be more like that guy :)

We´ve been busy running around getting people to trains and such for transfers, and i just can´t think of what else I needed to tell you all.... it was cool being in the train station this afternoon, I ran into a ton of mission buddies. I even saw Hna Irigoyen! and Elder Wiltbank! that was cool.

Anyhoo, I better get to sending some pics, I did much better with that this week :)

Love you guys sooooo much.

-Hna Grover 

(I told one of the members about how Dad and Mike were always "bro gro" and "yo bro gro" to the McArthurs, and some of them thought that was so funny that now I´m being called "Hermana Gro") 

Email 66 - "We work really hard out here to help people understand what the Savior does for us."

 "These are all (the photos) I´ve got this week... ha, sorry!!

That´s that the yummy beef stew I made."

"A reeeally sweet, less-active guy named E-----o we meet with every week in the Residency where he lives, in the library he´s in charge of."

"That´s what pretty much our whole area looks like. Gotta love it!!"

Hi folks!

Thanks as always for the updates! It´s always awesome to hear that you´re all doing well. :) I´m looking forward to seeing photos of these Halloween costumes and face paint I´m hearing about...

It got really sunny and nice again all of a sudden! Everyone tells me it´s the "mini-verano" and not to get to comfortable because it´s what comes right before the cold gets really bad. Ugh. I´m taking in the sun while I can, though! Last week, we made a plan to make yummy winter foods like beef stew and muffins and stuff to make it through the cold, and then we finally made it all, and it was hot outside, haha. Oh well, it was yummy anyway :)

So this week, there isn´t a whole lot to tell about our investigators. Like I said before, it seems that everyone can only meet in the last hour and a half we have at the end of each day (that´s also when we have english classes twice a week), so scheduling is rough and we usually end up only seeing people once a week. Needless to say, that tends to slow down progression quite a bit. It´s been a little annoying, but Hna H and I are hanging in there :)

We had some cute activities (oh yes, we´ve been keeping up with our "cute missionary" goals, haha), like a Joseph Smith movie night, a couple FHE´s, and a reeeally precious Relief Society night. And I made a bajillion brownies.

Initially the Relief Society night was just going to consist of all of our female investigators/ less-actives watching President Uchtdorf´s "Forget-Me-Not" talk. By the end of church on Sunday, all of us missionaries realized that none of the people we´d invited were going to be able to come, so we invited the newly called Relief Society president and a few other sisters. Everyone cried during the talk, and the Relief Society pres said that she´d been praying for answers in the temple the night before, and felt like she´d received them all through that talk. Yep. That felt great :)

I´ve been thinking a lot about a talk given in Stake Conference last Sunday- the speaker talked about how the Church of Christ has always been driven by the sacrifices of its members. He also explained some things about Adam and Eve that I hadn´t picked up on before...

He said that after partaking of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were afraid to be in the presence of God (Moses 4:16), and he explained that their embarrassment for being naked is symbolic of the guilt, vulnerability, and lack of confidence in God´s presence that comes as a result of our sinful, imperfect state.

He later noted the significance in God making them coats of skins to cover them (Moses 4:27), and take away that guilt/ vulnerability and renew their confidence. "Where would those coats of animal skins have come from," he asked,"were it not from an animal sacrifice?"

His suggestion was that the sacifice of an animal´s life is what provided the coats of skin for Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness- and explained that we, too, are covered in the same way by the Atoning sacrifice of the Savior. ...Maybe all of you have already made that connection before, but I definitely hadn´t! I´ve been thinking about it a lot, though, especially having gone to the temple on Wednesday.

We work really hard out here to help people understand what the Savior does for us. I love drawing out a map to explain the Gospel of Jesus Christ- showing how the two universal problems that keep us from returning to live with God (physical death/ spiritual death) are resolved through what Jesus Christ did/ teaches us to do. I also like setting out all the little pictures to explain the Plan of Salvation, and then take away most of them to show what the Plan would look like without the willing sacrifice of the Savior.

I really liked rereading the Conference talk Mom sent me, too. "Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence." Anyone who hasn´t taken another look at that talk, well, you should! :)

Looking at that talk and as I´ve been studying about how the sons of Mosiah had SO much success on their missions, I think I have a little more of an idea of how to get the work moving again. Thank goodness for the scriptures and modern revelation!!

That about covers it for our week! I hope you all have another great one :)

Love you tonnss!

-Hna Grover

Pics:

These are all I´ve got this week... ha, sorry!!

That´s that yummy beef stew I made, a reeeally sweet old, less-active guy named E-----o we meet with every week in the Residency where he lives, in the library he´s in charge of. And that´s what pretty much our whole area looks like. Gotta love it!!

´Til next time!

Email 65 - "We are so crazy lucky to know what we know!"

La Puerta del Sol

 

District Meeting

 Making apple muffins

"That´s me being a 'cute missionary' hahaha." 

"Apparently another Hermana Grover served here 10 years ago!"

 "Chillin´ out in Sol :)" 

¡Hola!

Thanks for all of your updates!!! It sounds like everybody´s doing awesome. I had a lot of fun looking through Dad´s shots...that are now all over Deseret News...y´know, no big deal.

So Hna H and I spent most of today getting her residency stuff done... woohoooooo, haha. But hey, 4 hours and a few cranky government employees later and everything turned out splendidly and she´s all legal to be here in Spain. Yay! And we had a lovely, thoughtful and wonderful Halloween package to open up during the train ride :) Thanks, Mom!!!

That being said, I don´t have a ton of time today, and I probably won´t get to writing to you all individually. But I´ve got your emails and I´ll read them a little closer later :) 

I also just realized I left my notebook at home...and I wrote a couple things down that I wanted to tell you all, haha, whoops.

How ´bout some updates??

E-----o, Y-----a and A----n aren´t getting baptized this month. We took that pretty hard, too. It was rough seeing how we did absolutely everything  we could to see a miracle, and then they just simply aren´t prepared. They haven´t been reading the Book of Mormon or asking if it´s true, either, which is a little frustrating. We´re slowing things down a bit with them, and I think our lessons are going to be a lot more focused on their needs now that we´ve turned down the turbo engines and aren´t pushing them harder than what they´re ready for. 

Haha, and the second time we saw them this week, it was a cold, rainy night, just a couple of days after they´d rejected the baptismal invitation. We sit down and E-----o calls to Y-----a in the other room, "Sweetheart, do you want to tell them, or should I?" (And I´m like, holy moly they read and got their answer and changed their minds about baptism!!!!) And then he goes, "We made you some coffee to warm you up!!"...Not quite what I was hoping to hear, hahaha.

P------a has been doing pretty awesome. We thought we´d lost touch with her, but then we saw her at a Noche de Hogar in a member´s house this week! ´Turns out the call button for her apartment building isn´t working, and her phone company cut off her ability to recieve calls because she hadn´t paid the bill. She was really happy to see us.

When we first started teaching her, she was pretty skeptical about everything, but she´s been much more open during the lessons. She was smiling and laughing and asking awesome questions all during our last visit. (bringing her brownies may´ve helped a bit, haha)

Oh yeah, that´s been a new thing for Hna H and I these last couple of weeks. We have a goal to be "cute missionaries." ...Not like, appearance-wise. That´s a battle that was lost in the MTC ;) 

We´re just trying to do more "cute stuff." We include it in our weekly planning and everything, haha. So far we´ve brought people flowers, brownies, helped a less-active do her laundry, and we´re going to have a "Forget-Me-Not" night with the women we´re teaching. Cute, right?

Anyway, we´re also seeing some progression with T-----a, although I have to say that I had absolutely no idea how to help her during our last visit. Her last job didn´t pay her for 3 months of work, and it turns out that her new job isn´t paying her, either. She´s broke, and the only things in her piso are from our Relief Society president (newly called, too. She´s the best). Her two-yr-old´s pretty sick, and her apathetic boyfriend won´t let her talk with him about baptism, and they wouldn´t have money to get all the paperwork to get married anyway. It´s rough. She knows God´s there, but she´s been losing quite a bit of faith. Prayers for her would be much appreciated :)

Other than that, it´s pretty much the same old gig over here :) It´s gotten really cold all of a sudden...getting ready for my second wet and windy winter here in Madrid! I should be set on winter clothes, Mom, so no worries :) I just need to pick up some more tights...and they should have some coats in the mission home I can snag so I won´t have to buy a new one. In the craziness in getting to Las Palmas, I left my coat in Vallecas, and I´m sure I won´t be able to track it down by now, haha. And I´ll probably grab some cheap rain boots just to last me through the next couple of months. :) So I´m set!

We´re still cruising on President Jackson´s Book of Mormon challenge, and I swear I just love this book a million times more everytime I read it. Right now I´m in Alma, and Hna H and I were reading Alma 12-13 the same morning. I just couldn´t get over how clear, simple, beautiful, and perfect the Plan of Salvation is. God is merciful and just. He loves us perfectly. I know the Gospel´s true. We taught an agnostic guy this week, and he had just left religion because the people he asked couldn´t give him all the answers- or even any reasonable ones. It was such a powerful spiritual experience being able to respond to his questions and show him that God really is the all-loving, all-powerful being he´d hoped existed.

We are so crazy lucky to know what we know.

Have another awesome week :) I´ll look forward to hearing about it!

´Love you guys way more than you know,

-Hna Grover

Email 64 - Fasting and Praying for Miracles

Hey guys :)

Thanks for the emails! And the pics. It´s all awesome. Brad´s jazz band sounds legit, thanks for the recording!

Did you all just love General Conference? ´Cuz I did! We got to watch the Saturday morning and the Sunday morning sessions live, and I just felt a whopping connection to each of you, knowing that you were all watching the same thing, and we even got to sing together! (kinda) How cool is that??

We also got to watch the Saturday afternoon session on Sunday, but I still haven´t seen the Sunday afternoon session... it was on past our bedtime. BUT the sessions that I did see, I loved, and every single one of the questions/concerns on the list I´d prepared was very specifically addressed by either the speaker or the Spirit they invited. 

I won´t lie, this week, as I got into bed everynight, it hit me just how crazy my life is going to be in January- getting out to school the day after classes start...not having textbooks yet...still not having a major....not knowing my roommates...schlepping around in SNOW, and probably wondering why I´m not still in Spain, haha. So a good chunk of my questions for Conference had to do with relaxing about not knowing what exactly is up next. 

I just got some very, very specific instructions for what to do right when I get out to Provo, and then I just had an overwhelming impression that said, "Do this, and I´ll take care of you."

Sooooo no more worrying! That feels pretty nice :) 

Hermana H and I are doing great. I´m pretty sure we´re both finally over our colds (haha...yeah, it´s just a matter of time when your companion gets sick...), and I´ve been loving this HUGE push we´re seeing from President Jackson and all of our leaders here in the mission for setting goals and reaching them, "si o si." We´ve spent this week praying and fasting for a very specific miracle, and tonight, we´re going to challenge E-----o, Y-----a, and A----n to be baptized at the end of the month. If you´d like to send a prayer up as well, it´d be much appreciated. We really want to see this family baptized. I don´t think I´ve ever wanted anything so badly on the mission, and if they don´t accept, it certainly won´t be because we didn´t do absolutely everything we could.

Anyway, one thing I´ve been seeing a lot of lately, too, both in what happened this week and in Conference, is the power that comes from fulfilling your calling, whatever it is you´ve been called to do. Just do it!! It feels so good when we contact, when we teach, when we make phone calls, and when we just do everything we possibly can because this is my chance to wear this little piece of plastic on my chest and it´s not gonna be there forever!

And life has been treating us well over here. We still have failed appointments, and it seems like everyone´s working the exact same hours...so fitting in appointments with everyone at the same times is tricky. Contacting still isn´t easy. We still have people that know the church is true but hide behind doubts to keep themselves from progressing, and we still have days when I´m just suuuuper grateful that they´re over. But that being said, my desires are in the right place and we´re working hard.

We had an adorable Noche de Hogar with a bunch of young families and their rowdy children, and managed to control the situation and have a freaking cute lesson on the armor of God, complete with cardboard armor and little velcro things that had "bad things" written on them (can stick to you when you don´t have the armor on, but not with it! Pretty good, right?).

We found out we get to go to the temple on the 15th. Heck yessss!

We´re becoming buddies with a bunch of the refugees that live in the center in our area (as you heard in the recording). The two guys that stopped us, Wasim and Besher, are super interested in what I had to tell them about what they need to do to find out if God exists. I´m way stoked to get to talk to them some more.

Oh, and did you all see the trailer for that "Meet the Mormons" movie that they have on lds.org?? That looks super duper legit. Invite your friends!! Heck, invite my friends!!

Hope you all have an awesome week :) Love ya tons.

-Hna Grover

Here are the pics I snapped today...I´ll try to be better next week, haha.

Love youuuu!