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