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!