AAH!! It´s Christmas! It totally snuck up on me this year.
It´s never happened before. I´m the type of person who has bought my
Christmas presents by Thanksgiving and starts listening to Christmas
music before thanksgiving. So it´s weird. But good, because it means no
homesickness :) I´m just working too hard to notice.
Last week I mentioned that we were going to have a week of
finding new investigators with a goal of finding 800. Everyone worked really,
really hard and prayed really hard and we found....
845!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you believe it? I can! I´m part of the most amazing
mission ever! Everyone worked really hard and had lots of faith. Unfortunately,
we didn´t find the 8 we were hoping to find, only 5. But we know we´d done our
best and we still have lots of people we can try to contact this next week.
Even though we didn´t find our 8, we still saw miracles.
Manuel, the man who has a date to get baptized came to
church yesterday! This is HUGE! It´s really hard to get people to church from
our area because the church is really far away and there aren´t many members
with cars on our side of town. But he was so eager to come and we worked
something out at he came! And he loved it! He has so many questions, but good
questions. Sometimes people with questions are looking to find holes or
problems, but Manuel is earnestly trying to learn and understand. He asked in
Sacrament Meeting if he was worthy to take the Sacrament (we´d just explained a
little of what it was the night before, how it was a ´´´mini baptism´´). I
assured him that he was. My heart was just singing, the thought ´´he
understands! he understands!´´ kept running through my head. We´re seeing him
again tonight and I´m really excited to see him.
Besides Manuel we have this other lady we´re working with
from Nigeria named Violet. It was so weird teaching her about the Book of
Mormon in english. She is going through some really hard times right now,
trying to raise her son alone while her husband is in Germany. She doesn´t have
any money to go join him and they´ve been seperated for 3 years. I can´t
imagine! It must be so hard. But we left the lesson feeling like we´d given her
some comfort and helped bring the Spirit into her home. I don´t know where
things will go with her, but I have faith.
Another miracle. We ate mediodia with a family we know.
They´re son is baptized (he´s like 30) but they aren´t yet. They aren´t super
interested but they are very Christian and love that we are trying to help
people and friends with their son (he helps us out with investigators a lot).
As we were leaving she gave us a big bag of oranges and this other fruit. We
call it alien fruit, but I have no idea what it´s actually called. We didn´t
need the fruit, but we´d been looking for a way to help serve people this week.
So we´re going to go hand out the oranges and alien fruit tomorrow to the
people who beg in our area. Its such a little miracle, but it really means a
lot to me to be able to afford to do that.
I´ve really been learning this week how the Lord changes our
hearts. He´s been helping me so much. First he changed my heart so I would be
okay with coming out on a mission. And now that I´m out here he´s been changing
my heart to love Spain and Spanish and serving a mission. I finally noticed it
this week, but I´m really falling in love with being a missionary. I was so
dissapointed that we didn´t find our 8 people, not because of the number but
because I want to help those people find the gospel. I get so excited for
Manuel and love seeing how much he´s changed in just a few visits. I´m really
coming to love the people here and want to serve them. Even if they don´t want
the gospel, I want to help them be happier. It´s such a miracle, the Lord is
really changing how I view things. Of course I still have a really far ways to
go. But I love the glimpse I was given this week of how I´ve grown.
Last thing. I saw this quote on another missionary´s planner
earlier this week. I´d heard it before but it´s made such an impact on me this
week.
¨Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of hte
day taht says, I´ll try again tomorrow.¨ --Thomas S. Monson.
That really hit me. It´s so true, especially out here. It
made me feel better about my efforts and really helped me be more at peace with
not reaching our goal. Sometimes it takes all I have to even keep walking and
knock on that next door. To wear a smile even when all I want to do is sit down
and cry.
And the Lord knows that. Lately I´ve been asked to
really, truly give my all. I´ve given everything I have to this work. And I´m
going to keep doing so, because I love the Lord and I love his gospel. I know
this gospel is the truth. There´s nothing more beautiful than this gospel, not
even Spain. ;) I´m going to keep trying, and the Lord knows that. He
understands that we tried our best, and thats all he asks for.
Love you all a lot! Have a very Merry Christmas!
Loves,
Hna Woolley
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