September 16, 2013 Hello hello hello! How is everyone this week?! That´s probably good Mikey´s wedding got pushed back EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that NOW that will interfere with mom and dad coming to Spain to pick me up! (money situations) Alright mom and dad...who´s your favorite?! ;) I loved the pictures from mom at Grammy´s with everyone! Good to know Aaron and Mary haven´t forgotten they´re favorite niece :) Sounds like things are going really good at home though :) Well, after a bum week last week, I´m sure you´re all dying to know how this week was right? Alright, I´ll not keep you waiting any longer... It was WAY better! Holy cow! Contacting here in Sevilla is a lot harder than it was in Murcia. People here are way Catholic so in the street they´ll be straight up with you, which is fine I suppose. It´s just makes the discouragement of not talking to someone come a lot quicker rather than waiting till you try calling them thousands of times and they keep flaking. So, since contacting is harder, we´ve been hitting it really hard with members. We had 9 member lessons this week and we share a message from General Conference from Elder Anderson that talks about when people pray the Lord promises that the names and faces of people will come to their mind. So I´ve almost perfected giving that message now after giving it several times this week. And during most lessons...we got references! So we call these people the next day and we have an appointment with them! So that has been really cool! We were visiting with a member this past week and we invited her to pray to know someone to share the gospel with, (wow, the Spanish is coming out...in Spanish you can´t end a sentence with ¨with¨ so it felt really weird saying that...) But yes, we invited the member to think of someone, and she told us that she´s handed out several Book of Mormon’s in the past and has zero fear of sharing the gospel, except she was just a little bummed cause no one has ever accepted it. I got an impression, one of those vague ones that I´m not sure was from me or from the Spirit, but what the heck? A righteous hunch is a good hunch, so I followed it. I gave her a Book of Mormon, a Restoration folleto and a pass-along card, and I told her that if she prayed and asked the Lord for help, that the person that she chose to give the Book of Mormon to would be ready to accept the gospel. For me...that was a pretty steep promised blessing. We called yesterday but she still hadn´t given it away, so I´m still hoping and praying for her! Another cool experience we had this week was with Familia Gil. They´re all Spanish and very active and strong in the gospel. We went over last Sunday and got to know them. We shared the Neil L. Anderson thought with them and they had the same story. ¨We´ve tried sharing the gospel, but no one is open.¨ So when we finished our lesson, I asked the father if we could kneel, I asked him to specifically pray for an experience that they can share the gospel. When he said the prayer, the Spirit was SO STRONG. I was like, ¨OH YEAH! They´re going to have a reference!¨ Nothing. So we went back a few days later as a follow up to see and the mom was like, ¨no we still haven´t had anyone come to our mind. All of our friends know we´re LDS and they respect us, but they´re not interested.¨ So I asked her that out of ALL these people who had talked to the missionaries before? She gave us a few and the one person that stuck out to me was a neighbor. So I asked about their neighbor. The mother said that she was an older woman who´s husband had just passed away and was having a really hard time with it. So, I was like, ¨perfect! We´ll pass by her hoüse!¨ We went by her piso a day or so later. We knocked and on the other side of the door the old woman was like, ¨sorry, I can´t open the door.¨ and she sounded really sassy and old! So I left a Plan of Salvation folleto on her door and left. Yesterday at church, the mom of Familia Gil came up to me and told me that their neighbor came to talk to their family about why we had gone by, and that she really appreciated it and wanted us to come back! The old woman said that she was busy this week but next week she´ll have time to talk to us, we just need to get in contact with the Familia Gil first so they can tell her! HOLY BLESSINGS!!!!! Other two sweet success stories we´ve had was we were walking through a park and a woman that was like 75 years old stopped us. She had received the missionaries before and had a baptismal date several times in the past. She has a Book of Mormon in several languages and knows the church is true. What´s keeping her from baptism? She´s scared. Of what? I still haven´t figured it out. We had a church tour lesson with her on Saturday and I asked her why she was afraid and she said something a long the lines of it´s the compromisos, or the commitments that scare her. So she doesn´t really understand the Atonement. So hopefully we can resolve her fear and she will want to be baptized. Another cool one was last Monday we were eating dinner with a family, and the son who served a mission in Ogden Utah about 4 years ago, was like, ¨Hermanas, I want you to visit my aunt!¨ so we took down her info and she lives in fetching outer darkness Sevilla, but we went to visit her. It was an AWESOME lesson! She´s had the lessons before but is very Catholic and has lots of questions that root back to authority. She asked questions about the pope and the Saints that everyone here worships. Did you know there´s a Saint for every day of the year? Yeah...there is. But when we left, she said, ¨Hermana, ¿que Dios quiere que de me?¨ What does God want of me? I was like, ¨haha! Well here! Let me tell ya!¨ Along with reading the INtro to the BoM before our next visit I left her with 2 Nephi 31 which is the doctrine of Christ. and I thought for a second and another chapter in PMG ch 5 came into my mind, 2 Nephi 5 or 9. I don´t remember now...but there´s a list of questions that people have that the Book of Mormon can answer and so I gave her that too, and she was like, ¨perfect! I´ll read it all tonight!¨ So I guess this week with all these experiences, writing them out and thinking about the situation again, my testimony has been strengthened SO much in following promptings. Heavenly Father knows what His children need. I don´t. There´s no way I could. But by following those ¨righteous hunches¨ as Elder Bednar calls them...we are truly magnifying our Father´s will and magnifying HIS work. This is the work of the Lord, I´m merely a pencil that He has to keep sharpening so I can do what He wants. My Spanish, I feel, is getting a lot better! I got busted several times this week for my gringo accent, but I guess it´ll go away with time. Last night Hermana Guerrero and I were laying in bed just talking and like I said last week, we speak in Spanish 100% of the time unless there´s something I just have no idea how to say in Spanish. But she told me the other night I woke her up sleep talking in Spanish! My prayers are mostly in Spanglish. I normally say my prayers in English cause it´s an opportunity for me to speak English without feeling guilty, but sometimes the Spanish words just come out easier than they do in English, so my prayers end up in Spanglish. I also had several strange dreams this week. One of them being I was at Mikey and Francine´s wedding and I got to meet Francine for the first time, and in my dream I loved her! I woke up thinking I already knew her and I loved her! haha so feel free to tell her that I love her already. :) Anyway, I´m excited to see what Heavenly Father has in store for us this week. Even though our days are completely different, like one day is really successful, and the next zero success, I know if I do my part, I´m plantando las semillas, (planting the seeds) like Mallory talked about in her email. I feel like that´s all I did in Murcia was plant seeds! haha but Heavenly Father is in charge. I´m very hopeful for our area this transfer and I know there are people here that are prepared to make those sacred covenants with Heavenly Father. I love my mission with all of my heart. I have grown in SO many ways, I can´t even imagine not being on a mission. My mission and my experiences are helping shape my life into the person Heavenly Father wants, but more importantly it´s helping shape the life of others. The mission is the best thing anyone could do with their life. I´m sorry, I can´t send pictures cause these computers are REALLY slow. So you´ll just be all sorts of surprised when I send an SD card home. It´s not anywhere near full yet. So yóu´ll be waiting a little. Anyways, I love you all very dearly. I hope you all have fantastic weeks! xoxo Hermana Muse
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:00:08 +0000
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