Email 70 - "Feathers you use to write on white walls."

"Snapped that sucker on the car ride back from a member´s house. Crazy, huh?"

 "Eating at the Vera family´s"

 "...followed by a jam session with Elder Cahoon on the guitar and all of us harmonizing hymns. Good stuff :) (poor Elder C´s companion was having knee surgery... good thing he´s in the Office and doesn´t have to be walking around...)"

 "Birthday cupcakes for Hna H! 20 years old..."

"And then that was another bday party at Eusebio´s (the sweet guy in the Residency). We forgot to buy candles..."

"An attempted photobomb almost got myself an elbow in the face when my comp changed positions, haha."

 "Taking advantage of some pretty lighting yesterday" 

(Editor:  That's my girl. :)

Hi family!!

Thank you for the emails!! I loved all of the photos of the weekend out in Utah, and it sounds like Cheesecake Factory made it a good weekend for the ladies back home, too :) Good stuff all around.

So we had a pretty good week over here in Alcobendas. Hna H and I have been trying to pay more attention to little details- things we can do to find more investigators and grow closer to the members. We´ve been blessed!

We found a few new people to teach, and we´re praying to finally find some people who can prepare themselves for baptism right away, and that aren´t caught up in living with boyfriends (who either don´t have their papers here in Spain or aren´t divorced to their last wife so they can´t just get married and the situation is heckadays complicated) or addictions. I would frankly LOVE to find someone like that right now, haha. Like, that´d be stupendous. 

Working on it!

Wanna hear something funny?  I feel like I can pretty much speak Spanish now, right? I´m totally comfortable in lessons and everything. But that´s when we´re talking about the Gospel, haha.

Earlier this week, while in a pharmacy, I asked for "those little belts you use to keep the fabric from clothes on your skin over a wound."

Later, that same day, I asked a lady in an office supplies store if she had any "feathers you use to write on white walls." In both incidents, I realized my mistake as soon as the words left my mouth (Brian Reagan flashed through my mind, saying "WORDS ARE COMIN´ OUT!"), but couldn´t really do much about it. How the pharmacist and the poor craft store lady figured out I needed medical tape and whiteboard markers is beyond me...

We saw a few cute little miracles this week. V------a, that lady I mentioned last week, has never been able to understand much of what she reads in the Book of Mormon. But her 11-yr-old daughter, S-----y, soaks in everything she can about the Gospel and is a pro at understanding scriptures- especially for a primary kid. V------a has never been willing to read with her.

I called her the other day to confirm our appt, and I asked how she was. "Here," she said, "reading the Book of Mormon with S-----y."  Sure enough, by the time we got there, they´d spent the whole afternoon reading the scriptures. S-----y wouldn´t let her mom go on until she´d understood the verse they read. I´m so proud of that kid. They both eagerly accepted new reading assignments :)

We´re also still working with T-----a and P------a. P------a can only meet once a week, so there´s not much news there. In fact, most of the people we´re teaching can only meet once a week... at the same times as everyone else, haha. Yeah that´s kinda hard.

Anyhoo, T-----a´s been doing really well. She has hard questions. But good ones. We finally ended up giving her a study journal and telling her that these were the kinds of questions she needs to write down and look for on her own- the kinds of things she´ll only really learn through the Spirit, not through a couple of missionaries. 

In fact, Hna H and I were practicing teaching her during a comp study, and we would ask "why" after EVERYTHING (which is pretty much how our lessons go, haha), and we were trying to explain everything, until we finally got stuck on one question: why couldn´t Heavenly Father just give us all of the blessings He has? Why can we only progress this way?

After praying, looking for scriptures, and throwing ideas around, we both just recognized that the Spirit was telling us,"You just can´t become like Him all at once. Divine attributes have to be acquired."  Basically, it was a "this is just how it is" kind of answer. We realized that those kinds of things are answers T-----a´s going to need to get on her own, so we straight up told her we weren´t going to answer her questions. She took it well :)

Still thinking about her questions, though, I read over Elder Christofferson´s talk, "Free Forever, to Act for Themselves," from the Conference edition I got in the mail from Mom (Thank youuu!! ´Pretty sure I´m the first person in Spain to have that). He says, "So God does not save us “just as we are [or just hand us blessings],” first, because “just as we are” we are unclean, and “no unclean thing can dwell … in his presence; for, in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man [of Holiness].”4 And second, God will not act to make us something we do not choose by our actions to become. Truly He loves us, and because He loves us, He neither compels nor abandons us. Rather He helps and guides us. Indeed, the real manifestation of God’s love is His commandments.´´

Following His commandments is the only way to become like Him. He´ll give us answers and help along the way. Just obey and trust!!

In other news, Hna Hillman´s birthday was this week! That was fun. I also got a lot of photos this week, so I´ll get on sending those...

Love you guys!!

Have a good one!

-Hna Gro