October 6, 2014 Letter

HELLLOOO FROM MADRID I did get to listen to conference in English, which was a tender mercy because I got a little bit sick the night before (just a cold, no big deal), but I was soo tired and when we were watching the women´s session (which they didn´t have in English, just Spanish), I basically slept through the whole thing. Embarrasing. But true. Then an Elder in my district saved my life and gave me Dayquil and I was wide awake for the rest of the sessions, and I understood every word (GO INGLES). But how cool was it that they had speakers in different languages! The Spanish talk was so beautiful. We listented to that one in Spanish and everyone was so excited about it. He did a beautiful job and even though his accent was  a little weird, we all loved it a whole lot. I understood most of it. Quick story about that, though. So at BYU I had this thought that Conference should be spoken in the native languages of the speakers, since the Church isn´t an American Church, it´s the Lord´s Church. I thought about it A LOT and talked to a few people about it. One was this lady on Trax who actually, as I found out through our conversation, translates conference every year into Romanian. She said it would never happen. But then I talked to my English Professor about it, and she LOVED the idea. She thought it was so cool. She told me on the last day of class that she had thought about my idea a lot and she actually ended up writing  a letter to the First Presidency about it. That was the last I heard about it until an Elder in my District told me about how they had announced that there would be speakers in speaking in their native language. I was SO excited!! I have no idea if my idea had anything to do with the change, but it was cool to think that it may have. 

Ok so the week was FANTASTIC. Such a super great week. I think it had a lot to do with Conferencia General that occured over the weekend. We had 4 investigators in total come, and they all loved it SO much! Quick update about all of them- V. is doing so great! He is now a permanent resident at the aforementioned lady´s house that we had a lesson with last week. She loves him like a son, she told us this week. It´s been so good for him! He´s working on getting his paperwork sorted out and finding a job. Because he is progressing so much, we felt like it was time to move forward with a baptismal date! October 18th right now. Hopefully everything keeps going smoothly and progressing with that. He is so happy and so excited to get baptized, and we can´t wait, either! We met a crazy guy named H. and he´s great. Conference was BEAUTFUL. I loved it sooo much. We felt the Spirit super strong and I got anwers to a lot of my questions regarding missionary work and everything. We didn´t get to have a lot of lessons this week because it was so crazy preparing for conference, but I did do a lot more contacting and it was really good. Getting way better at that. It doesn´t really scare me anymore, but I´m still not great at it so there´s a lot of room for improvement there. I went on intercambios again with Hermana Hadley (again). We´ve become really good friends and she always teaches me a lot. She only had good things to say about me and it made me feel really good. Sometimes it´´s hard to see your own progress as a missionary, but when somebody that isn´t around you all the time tells you that you´re doing well, it feels really good. We also had interviews with the President and that went super well! He´s doing great and I think all is well. Spanish is coming along slowly but surely! I actually found myself having a lot more conversations with people this week, which was really unexpected and cool. I just loved this week a whole lot. Hearing the living Prophet and his apostles speak was the highlight, for sure. Gave me so much animo to just go out and work so hard and change my little part of the Lord´s vineyard! I love it so much and I´m so happy to be a part of this work. I learn more everyday and I´m really working on strengthening my testimony, along with the testimony of my investigators. It´s hard going but super amazing.