MI QUERIDA FAMILIA Y AMIGOS-
President Thomas S. Monson once said, "You pile up
enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you’ve collected a lot of empty yesterdays.”
This week has been a week of working and working. Our days have been filled to
the brim with lessons and service projects and intercambios (exchanges) and
family home evening and English classes. It's been one of those weeks that I
can look back on and see how hard we worked and how much success we're seeing.
Intercambios this week went great-as usual. I always leave
feeling inspired to better and work harder. On Tuesday, we took the 1 hour bus
ride to Murcia to meet with the sister training leaders there. That night, I
was companions with Hermana Asay (again) and wow she is such a great
missionary. She's dedicated and hardworking and she taught me a lot. We had a
great lesson with a member and encouraged to her to do missionary work. We had
another lesson with a progressing investigator
where we just read the Book of Mormon together and talked
about it. Overall, it was great
spending time with her and learning from her. Wednesday morning, we did a flip
flop and I was assigned to be with Hermana Smalley. She's a brand new sister
training leader and she is AMAZING. We had so much fun together contacting and
teaching and talking about everything under the sun. We had plans that fell
through so we ended up trying to find some futures. We went to visit
a man that they had taught once and hadn't contacted in a while. We rang the
doorbell and a woman answered and said he wasn't home. So we said, "oh
well hey we have a special message that we share about Jesus Christ, do you
have a few minutes?" And she said, "I'm kind of sick but sure come on
in." ((This never happens so we were already getting excited)). We started
talking to her and she was very receptive AND THEN her daughter and mother came in and decided to join us
too. I'm telling you guys, this is the kind of moment that every missionary
hopes for. We taught lesson one, about the restoration of the church and Joseph
and the spirit was so incredibly strong. You couldn't deny it. By the end of
the lesson everyone was crying and you could tell that they were really feeling
it. They were so prepared to hear everything and asked to come back as soon as
possible ((they really said that)) to share more. (!!!!!!!!!) I promise you
guys, Heavenly Father is amazing. It was a testimony builder to me that
everything happens for a reason. We were upset about everything falling
through, but God always comes through with people that are prepared. I love being a missionary.
This week was seriously a ROLLERCOASTER of emotions with
Moises. Can I first just say that I seriously love this guy. He's so great and
so prepared and everyone that talks to him just loves him. So here's the
situation. He's doing great and progressing so well. IN FACT-he told us that he
went from smoking 20 cigarettes in a day to only 5. I don't know about you, but
that's truly a miracle. Anyways, we had a cita planned with him on Tuesday and
he never showed up or answered his phone. We called again Wednesday a few times
and he didn't answer either. We were super worried and we didn't know what was
going on. Finally, on Thursday he called us and explained that the
mother of his daughter found out that he was going to the Mormon church and
said that she didn't want her daughter involved in that. She threatened to take
Paloma((his daughter)) away and he said he's been super worried because he
loves the church and he loves everything about it but he just don't want to
lose his daughter. Understandable. It's hard because he has Paloma on weekends,
meaning that he wouldn't be able to come to church anymore with her. But he told us that he's
been defending all of our beliefs and trying to get his ex wife to listen to
the missionaries to understand our beliefs. We asked if maybe we could meet
with him that night and talk about everything to figure out the situation. So
we met at the church with Paco((our mission leader)) and talked everything out.
Long story short, since they have shared custody she legally can't take Paloma away with the reason
being religious beliefs. Moises was still super worried so Paco offered to give
him a blessing, which he accepted. It was a beautiful blessing and the spirit
was so sweet, confirming to him that this was the right path. I just love the
priesthood. Anyways, Moises is back on track and everything is fine. We need
all the prayers we can get to help him out with the word of wisdom because he's almost there. We had a
family home evening with him in Paco's house and it went great. He showed up at
church on Sunday in his white shirt and smiling face and wow, just love him. A
member in our ward, Cristobal, told us that Moises went up to him and said,
"So are you ready to baptize me the 29th??" Hahahahhaha he didn't
even ask he just assumed it was happening. He's so exciting and always asking
about everything and what it's gonna be like and ahhhh I'm so excited!!!!! It's so fun to watch him
make all these changes and progress and everything :") keep him in your prayers
as he prepares to take these last few steps.
We haven't had a lot of time to contact people but the
members are feeling a new spirit of missionary work and we're working really
with them. They're starting to trust us more and give us the names of their
friends and family that need the gospel. We've been focusing a lot on having
family home evening activities in the houses of members and encouraging them to
bring their friends. Please help us out on ideas for object lessons and activities-anything helps :-)
One last piece of exciting news. Remember how I mentioned that
Anais has been working on a calendar, marking off every day that she read and
prayed, and gave me a copy of it with a little note?? She's become quite the
example around here because the new trend with the young single adults is to
fill out these calendars. It's SO great. Leo just gave Hermana Vigo and I a
copy of his filled out calendar and made himself a new one!!!!!! i love watching these people
progress and develop their faith and find hope. There is so much power in
reading and praying every day, I can promise you that.
Well, that's all the time I have for this week. I love and
miss you all like crazy. Thank you super much for all the prayers and support
and emails. Until next week!!!!
Besitos,
Hermana Spangler
My district- aka all my favorite people
A long hard day of work with my new pal
No comments:
Post a Comment