January 19, 2015 Letter

SO THE BIG NEWS ARE YOU READY??? 

I have been transferred!!!!! I am so so so excited. It may not sound very cool, but you have no idea how cool it is. I got transferred from Barrio 2 to Barrio 8. Not a huge jump, but a very different part of Madrid and I´m so stoked to be here- what I´ve seen in my last 30 minutes here has been BEAUTIFUL. I´m going to be training a new missionary here, as well, so that´s pretty dang exciting. Her name is Hermana Judd and I´m actually half training her. She´s been out for one transfer and her first trainer is going home today, so I´ll be taking her spot as mommy number two for the next transfer. Training is two tranfers long, so I´ll be doing this half of it with Hermana Judd. OH MY GOSH SHE IS SOOO COOL. I´m so excited about this new transfer and what it will bring. She´s from Sandy, Utah and went to Waterford High School and then to BYU for a year. She said she knows Casey, which is super cool, and she is just such a sweetheart and her Spanish is seriously so good. I´m so excited. I can´t believe I´m training, I really can´t, but it´s going to be such a great opportunity to learn and grow and become more of the missionary that the Lord needs me to be. 

 I was praying ALL WEEK to just be happy about whatever transfers would bring. I really was hoping to get to go to the Islands or to the North, but when I found that I was going to Barrio 8, it was pretty incredible. I didn´t want to serve in the Barrios anymore! I really, really wanted to have a super cool, exotic area, but as soon as I heard where I was going, I just got this overwhelming feeling of excitment and happiness and peace. The Lord really did answer my prayer there. I know that this is where I need to be, with the companion and people that I need to be with. Gonna need to rely on the Lord A TON because I seriously don´t know what I´m doing (like, why the heck are they entrusting me with a new companion...) but I´m so excited to just get going! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY. It´s the hardest and the very best time and I have a feeling this tranfers is just gonna be a great time for me. 

Leaving my area was such a heartbreaker. I LOVE Barrio 2 so much. The people there are just seriously incredible and I will never forget my time there. There are some members and investigators that I will always consider some of my closest, dearest friends. It´s such a special relationship to have with somebody- to be their missionary. Not something I was expecting in the mission at all, but something that I have really come to cherish. 

Something that I learned this week is the importance of focusing on other people and that successful missionaries really come in all shapes, sizes, and forms (same thing with successful people in general, I suppose).  I am finally realizing that I can be a good, successful missionary as well, being myself. By being Hermana Samantha Seegmiller, I can be an instrument in the hands of the Lord. He´s given all of us the formula to find that success (obedience), and as long as we do the very best to be as obedient as we can be, He will bless us to become the people and missionaries that He needs us to be. The other very important way to become the missionary that He needs me to be is by literally forgetting about myself. That doesn´t just mean forgetting about my desires and my distractions and everything else that doesn´t pertain to missionary work at all, but by forgetting about my inadequacies and my struggles and my fears and just putting all of it aside and by doing all that I can for other people. Because this work isn´t about me. It´s about the Lord and about His children, so I´m going to do the very best I can do exemplify that in the way that I work. This transfer is an opportunity for a fresh start and I am so excited to just do the very very very best I can and be the best I can be here. Oh I cannot express to you all how very truly excited and happy I am. 

So, funny story of the week (I will include pictures of this as well, don´t you worry). So, as you know, I chopped my hair at the end of my first transfer in the mission. I really liked it, but when it started growing out I realized that I really missed being able to do different things with my hair, so I made the decision to grow it out. So it grew and it grew and grew and grew and this transfer, I realized (with the helpful and not so subtle help of the Elders in my district) that I was rocking a pretty nasty mullet. Like, I´m talking buisness in the front and a very long and super sketchy party in the back. I knew I needed to cut it but I just kept putting it off because I never have time and because I was really embarrassed to go back to the haircutting place that I went to the first time and ask her to fix the lovely haircut that she gave me... 18 weeks ago (I know, I get embarrassed about really stupid things.) Finally, Elder Williams, who happens to know how to cut hair, basically told me that either he was cutting it or he was making me go somewhere to get it cut. Not in those exact words, but I got the idea that my hair was a lot worse than I was realizing. So, after eating lunch with the Bishop and his wife as a district on Friday, he borrowed her haircutting scissors and we all went out to a park near their house. He sat me down on a bench, I used a scarf to cover my neck, and as homeless people walked by and watched, he chopped my hair. WHY IS MY LIFE SO WEIRD. Here I am, sitting on what I am pretty sure doubles as a homeless woman´s bed during the night time, getting my mullet chopped in the freezing cold by an Elder who really actually has very little experience cutting hair. He actually did a pretty decent job, though. So, yeah, hair is doing better. The comments ranged from "Wow your hair actually looks decent" to "You better keep growing it out" to "You were way more sexy with long hair" (that was from my Hermana Irigoyen, who is both very blunt and doesn´t realize that sexy is sort of a weird word to use to describe people in English). So, yes. Priorites on the mission: 1) The Lord. 2) Other people 3) My hair (sort of a joke. But sort of not at the same time). 

Pictures from our Snow Day in Madrid and Christmas

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. 

 

January 5, 2015 Letter

Ok I am so sorry but we got stuck in the mountains today on our self-proclaimed snow day and we weren´t able to get back till really, really late so I literally have like, no time to write. We got out of the city and were there for awhile and it was the best!! So you´ll have to all forgive me for not writing too much this week, I´m so sorry! But I will send pics and stuff next week, so no worries. I´m doing great! We had a great week this week and I felt the Spirit a lot in our lessons. We found a new guy from Dominica who is golden! I´m really excited to be teaching him. New Years was spent contacting for hours and then sleeping a LOT. But happy año nuveo, everybody!! Hope that this one is even better than the last. I have this whole year to committ to serving the Lord and I couldn´t be happier. :) Life is good. I have two more weeks left here in B2 and I´m excited and sad at the same time. It´s time for me to go, I feel like, but it´s so weird to think about basically starting over somewhere else. But I´m just planning on working hard! I love you all!! Sorry again, have a GREAT WEEK!!! 

December 29, 2014 Letter

 I loved Skyping with all of you, too!! It was so fun and so happy. Everyone really thought you guys were cool. I wish we could have had more time, but at the same time, it´s good that we didn´t. It would have just made it harder. I was fine for the rest of Christmas, but getting back to the grind the next day was a bit hard for me. I got pretty homesick for a little bit, but I learned in that moment that just forgetting yourself and working as hard as you can for other people is the only way to make feelings like that go away. I´m doing great now!! We had a great week and we both feel really, really good. Hopefully that can continue for my last 2 weeks in Barrio 2.

Tell everyone thank you for the money, that´s so sweet of everyone. It will be put towards warm mission clothing (as in the scarf that I am wearing right now). The mission is going really well. It freaks me out that a third of it is already over, but I have this entire year to give everything I have to the Lord and work as hard as I can, so I´m excited for that.

 I´ve been learning a lot about the 12 Tribes of Israel as of late and about the significance of the Restoration and missionary work and how everything goes together. This is the dispensation of the fullness of times because the covenant that God made with Abraham is finally available for everyone in this Earth- that covenant basically being that if we live the Gospel, we can live with our Father in Heaven again. We have the enormous responsibility to bring the knowledge of that covenant and the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of the world that are not aware of the fact that these blessings are now available to them. When people are baptized, they enter into that covenant- to serve and to be saved. When they are sealed in the temple and their kids are born, their kids are born into the covenant of living forever with their families. It´s really very simple. There are people everywhere that have been scattered and are lost, lost from the Church and also lost in their own lives. So that is where we come in. We do ALL that we can to find these people that will listen, and in that process, we save them. The Lord pulls them into this covenant. It´s so interesting and it brings a whole new dimension to missionary work, understanding and realizing my part in the Abrahamic covenant. I just know that this Gospel is the only true way for people to be saved, not only in the future, but now, in their own lives. Everyone has a story, and their needs can always be answered with a principle or blessing in the Gospel. It´s amazing. The more people I meet, the more I see that. I hope I´m doing the best I can to spread this work to more children of the Lord. I´m glad that I have this chance to do so.

Pictures December 8, 2014

December 8, 2014 Letter

So I´m doing pretty good! Owned some Hispanic men at soccer this morning with my new shoes, am in the middle of planning a dance that the missionaries are going to do at the ward Christmas party (why did they put me in charge of that) and had a crazy lesson with a crazy Scottish lesbian in her piso last night... so I guess you could say that life here is crazy as usual. I am still in Barrio 2!! One more transfer and Christmas here, woohoo! It´s pretty normal to stay 4 transfers in your first area, and the last two or three sister missionaries that have left here have spent 4 transfers here, as well. I´m excited to have more time here and to have more time to try my hardest to leave it better than I found it. I´m still with Hermana Irigoyen... woohoo.

It actually wasn´t fast Sunday for us this week, seeing as it was stake conference in Pavones, but I can tell you how they usually go! We start fasting on Saturday afternoon, after we eat at Medio Dia, and wait till the next day at Medio Dia to break the fast. It´s not too hard! Actually not bad at all. We eat every Sunday afternoon with a member family that loves the missionaries! They´re really sweet and the hermana has really improved in her cooking since I got here... but they do have two very sheddy dogs... I just try to pick my way around the dog hairs and then it´s all good!

To answer your other question, there is nothing but city in my part of Madrid. Nothing but city. I actually get very homesick for the mountains and grass and yards and everything while being here. I hope that someday I can go to the North or the Islands, where it´s green and pretty (in most parts). I´ve learned that city life really isn´t for me. I love it here.. I really do!! But when I get home, I´m going to definitely spend a long time in the mountains and like... laying in grass, I guess (what else do people do in grass, I forget). But if I have to be in a city for this long, I´m glad it´s Madrid. I really love it here. I don´t know how to explain it... it´s just a special place.

So this week has been good! I´ve really been improving a lot and I can feel it on the streets and in lessons. I still have SO much left to improve on but it´s a work in progress. The mission is not a race, it´s not an event, it´s a process. So I guess you could say that I´m a work in progress. Nothing too exciting! We have a new Spanish old man investigator named M. He´s really amazing. We contacted him in the street and he let us come over the next day and teach him. He has a read a little bit of the Book of Mormon already and it´s so cool! I think he has a lot of potential, I felt the Spirit really strong when I stopped him that day.

Our familia bonita is doing well! They love the Gospel and are excited to progress. I don´t feel like I´ll be here for their baptism, I think it will take more time, which sort of breaks my heart. But at least I get to play a small part in their process. We haven´t been feeling like we´ve had a lot of success lately, which I think has been hard for both of us. We really are trying to improve and get better every day, but sometimes as we improve as missionaries and people and servants of the Lord, the results get worse and worse. It´s a weird thing but I guess you just gotta roll with the punches! I´ve been reading a lot of last conference in my personal study lately and I really loved the talk by the Ukranian guy, Jorg something?? It was very straightforward and direct and super, super good. I loved it. I loved what he said about how sometimes, hard times in our lives (and in our missions) are a sign that we are doing something right and that the Lord is testing us and helping us become better. I hope that´s the case at this point! I loved his counsel to make the Atonement a living, breathing entity of our lives by constantly repenting and using the Atonement at all parts in our lives, because it never runs out. I have felt that out here. The enabling power of the Atonement has become very apparent in my mission and I´ve come to understand it better and better.

Life goes on! I love being a missionary, as hard as it can be at times. I hope that I can continue to become better and improve. Every day is an adventure, and I´ve learned that the harder I work, the better I feel. I hope that I can become the example that I need to be and the missionary that the Lord needs me to be, as well. Life just keeps going! Time keeps rolling. I hope everything is good at home and that people are happy healthy and good, and super excited for Christmas!! I love you all!!