Here's the email I wrote after the first day (sent to only myself, of course.)
Journal time has proved thus far to be rather limited. Who knew.
I've had a wonderful first day and 3 hours as a mini-missionary. I am still enormously grateful for the opportunity and in awe of the precise set of circumstances that led to it.
Sister Moreno Cordero is WONDERFUL WONDERFUL WONDERFUL. She has had incredible success, especially considering her calling was to speak Spanish and she has spent the last 5 months in an English-speaking area. She spoke little to no English when she first got here, and now she is teaching investigators and recent converts clearly and effectively in English.
We had a pretty good day yesterday: we taught 2 lessons and visited 3 people in total. We didn't have all the opportunities we wanted to have, but we did have a few unexpected ones pop up.
Here's what I've learned so far:
Don't give up on people. We visited last night a recent convert named Daniel who was baptized November 30th. The first few times Sister Moreno and her companion Sister Avery met with him, he was totally drunk (and had been drinking heavily for years.) Then they visited him again and saw on his wall a goal to stop drinking, with the last date he had had a drink being several days prior. They asked him about it and he told them he really wanted to stop drinking because he hated being drunk and wanted to be a better and more free person. So they continued to teach him and by the time they taught him the Word of Wisdom, he had completely quit drinking for several weeks with no intention or desire to start again. I was amazed as we visited with him by his incredibly strong testimony and the depth to which he had studied and understood the gospel. No one would have thought from first meeting him that he would turn out to be such a solid convert, but he is!
Always hope for and expect the best. A lot of our plans yesterday went awry, but we still hoped that every person we wanted to visit would be there and be willing to accept our message.
ALWAYS have a backup plan, and a backup for the backup. Even though a lot of the people we wanted to visit couldn't meet with us, we never sat around doing nothing. We sought out people to teach and found them one way or another.
Teach children! The other lesson we taught was to a recent convert named Paula and her almost 13 year-old son Celestine. It was empowering for me to see how much Paula's example had impacted her son and how great his desire is to learn and know the gospel, to come closer to his Heavenly Father, and to be baptized. We also tried to visit a less active family named the Vermilyeas, and Sister Moreno explained their story to me: she and Sister Avery had been teaching them, trying to get them to come back to church, and they started to come. They taught the lessons to their family and 9 year-old Billy wanted to be baptized. Seeing Billy's faith inspired his parents, and they continued to progress until Billy's father was able to baptize him. Since then, they've waned in their church activity, but we talked to Billy last night and he expressed a faith-filled desire to study the scriptures with his family. Sister Moreno told me that when they first started teaching Billy and he said he wanted to be baptized, the Primary President hadn't wanted him to be. She said she didn't want just another inactive kid who wouldn't come. One of the elders in that meeting had then said that they shouldn't deny a child the chance to be baptized and to receive the gift of the Spirit just because his parents didn't have the same faith he had. It's already been clear how much Billy's example has blessed and impacted his family, and if he continues to share that desire with his parents, they could be able to go and be sealed in the temple.
Use the power of prayer. Missionaries pray A LOT, and it's definitely for a reason. I felt more in tune with the Spirit throughout the day than I usually do, probably as a combination of the virtue of what I was doing and also how often we prayed and called for Heavenly Father's guidance and help in our efforts.
A lot of funny things happen to missionaries. Our GPS is of questionable reliability and got us rather lost when we tried to walk from the church to the home of a less active sister. Two pass-along cards later, we finally headed back to our car to keep from going in yet another circle. Not to mention it was COLD outside.
OKAY WOW that was only from yesterday. I'm never going to be able to send comprehensible weekly emails from the field.
Stay tuned for more info (and pictures! Because for once in my life I actually took pictures!)
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