January 12, 2015 Letter

This week has been good! We had a ton of lessons on the street, which was a huge blessing. There was one hour where we were trying to walk down Calle Alcalá, the main street in my area, and it took us and HOUR to get from one Metro stop to the next because as we tried to talk to people, they actually stopped and listened. It was a huge blessing and it just shows that when you talk to as many people as you can, the Lord will bless you and them. It´s so cool. Hermana Irigoyen told me something cool a few weeks ago that has really stuck with me- "If you are obedient, you don´t find people, people find YOU." It´s so true. She´s taught me a lot about the beauty of being exactly obedient. I had that goal coming into the mission, but earlier, I saw how easy it was to be lax in the little things. Hermana Irigoyen came in and whipped me into shape with thigns that I didn´t even realize mattered, like how long we spend in lessons, food appointments, starting studies exactly on time and things like that. I love obedience! It´s so hard and sometimes it´s hard to obey with your whole heart, but blessings really do come from it. It´s somethign that I´m going to try my hardest to do until the end. Obedience is not easy, but it´s worth it. We´re still trying to get all of our investigators to progress. I´m starting to see that I truly can understand and communicate  in Spanish.

 I was on intercambios this week with a girl from Sandy Utah that has 3 months in the mission. She actually speaks incredibly well for the amount of time that she has, but she still struggles a little bit (which is 100% normal at 3 months). So we just contacted and taught and did everything normally, except, for the first time in the mission, I was the one with more experience. And I feel like it acutally went really well. God helped me understand people, and I learned AGAIN that intercambios really do bring miracles. It was so good for both of us and we found some really good people. I´m so excited to see what next tranfers bring and to see if I will have the chance to use what I learned to maybe help my companion a little bit too, like I was able to help Hermana Toone. And she helped me SO much. We became really good friends and it was just such a great day. 

 My testimony isn´t perfect, but it´s growing. I have a testimony that God is our Father and He loves us. We can find strength, redemption, and new beginnings through His Son, Jesus Christ. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and I KNOW that God knows what He is doing. Everything is all good. I´m feeling a ton better today, after a lot of prayer and patience. I´m ready for this next week. One of my biggest goals is to forget about myself, forget about my wants and worries and issues and EVERYTHING that makes me me and just focus everythign I have on other people. It´s the only way to have success in this work, and it´s what I´m determined to do.