March 9th, 2015 Letter

Ok so first off, a few things-

FREAKING LITHUANIA ARE YOU KIDDING ME. That was the last place on my mind. I seriously thought he was going to Africa. That´s so cool. There´s CCM teacher here that´s from Lithuania that comes to our ward sometimes, so I´m going to try to find her and talk to her this next week and get some info. I was so excited all week, but I kind of thought it wasn´t gonna come, so it really caught me off guard when Hermana Jackson called me Saturday afternoon. We were eating lunch at D´s house and when I saw the phone ringing from her, my heart about stopped. I was so excited!! I can´t believe Elder Seegmiller is heading out in a few short months. Literally every member of the family has emailed me about it except for Parker... haha. But it´s ok, I´m super excited for him, as is everybody here that I tell. I do not envy having to learn those languages, though, but who the Lord calls, He qualifies. I know that´s true.

Ok so my week was awesome. Well, it was super normal until the weekend, which was awesome. We had some really great experiences and I wanted to write about. So, to answer the question about the sister training leader thing, yeah. It´s not a huge deal, but basically what I have to do is go on intercambios with the sisters from our zone and they report back to President. We also have concilio once a transfer when we all get to go to President´s house and meet with them. Then I have to speak at zone meeting and that´s awesome. I´m excited but also nervous because I feel super inadequate in regards to this calling. There are sisters in our zone that are way more experienced than I am and most of them are native Spanish speakers, so that´ll be interesting. I´m grateful, though, because it´ll be a great chance to learn. I´m excited! We´ll see how it goes.

Our investigator, D, had her baptismal interview this week. She passed with flying colors and she is so excited for her baptism. She got sicker than she ever has, of course, the week of her baptism, but she isn´t phased! The district leader got hit by a car on the way to her house to give her her interview... yeah. I´m not kidding, he literally got hit by a car. He´s ok, just flew like 10 feet and hit his knee super hard on the concrete. I just think that the adversary is trying really hard to keep her from baptism, but I know that everything is going to work out! We´re really grateful to get to be here for her on this super special day. D, her son, is baptizing her, and he´s seriously so sweet about it. He´s nervous and I think it means a lot to him that he gets to do it. We had a lesson with them right before her interview and we all cried (except my companion that never cries because she´s just too dang happy all the time). The Spirit was there really strongly and I´m just humbled to be able to be a part of this experience. She´s so prepared and ready for this next step!!

Also, D and E finally came to church!! They walked in late, but they came and stayed the whole three hours. D made her presence known her first time in Relief Society by effectively starting a war about repentance. All she did was ask a really good questio- "If we sin all the time anways, what does true repentance really mean?", and jolín, you would not believe the reaction. There was this older Spanish woman just YELLING at her... patience, Hermana Seeg, patience. It got to the point where the Relief Society president, who is wonderful, had to get up and calm everybody down. It ended up ok, but throughout the entire lesson, I couldn´t even look up. I was dying. I occupied myself by making some little origami missionary shirts for people and writing them notes... I still don´t handle contention very well. D didn´t care at all though- "They just didn´t know the answer, either!" What a trooper. Oh, and E fell into one of the temple fountains after church. I was talking to D outside of the capilla and looked over, and whaddaya know, E is face down on the concrete wall of the fountain, reaching in with his right arm and holding himself out with his left. I looked at Daisy and she was just like, "Oh, he likes to swim," and I was like, "holy crap this day couldn´t get weirder". So I took initiative and ran over to him to try to get him to leave the fountain alone, and he just goes, "hold my arm! Hold my arm!" So, like a good missionary, I supported him as he tried to keep from falling into the fountain, but I failed, and he fell in. He didn´t seem to care at all, though- he just jumped right out and started trying to reach in again, which I didn´t get. Finally, he goes, "I´m trying to get my euro!" Sure enough, there was his coin, right in the bottom of the fountain. So I had to reach in and get it for him and long story short, it was probably the funniest experience ever. That´s what happens when we don´t teach the investigators about the temple before we bring them there- the fountains become pools.

Yesterday during our nightly session of pillow talk, Hermana Judd and I started talking to each other in Lithuanian (our version). Basically it was just 20 minutes of us snorting and hissing at each other, and then defining what we were saying. Solid 20 minutes. Parker, I think you´ll do great.

Missions are personalized, like you said. They are what we need, when we need it, and I know that. I needed Madrid, Parker needs Lithuania. It´s an amazing opportunity to do purely the Lord´s will, or try our hardest too, for the time that He needs us to do it. He wants us here, He wants us doing what we´re doing, and we have nothing but time to do it. And it´s a really incredible blessing. I´m doing really good. I learned a lot from this week and I will continue to learn and grow more and more. I´m grateful that I still have so much time on the mission because I really can´t imagine life not here- sounds super weird to me. I love being a missionary!!