Christmas Week-845

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