So this week I hit my 6-month mark. I actually find that a little bit terrifying. If the first six months went that fast, I can´t even imagine how fast the rest of it´s going to go! Aah!
I have SO much I want to tell you about. This week was for sure the best week I´ve had so far on my mission, so I´m going to try to take it slow and tell you all what happened.
First order of business: I have a big surprise. Julio...is married! And he has been married for 10 years. We finally got to have an actual lesson with him and I just looked him in the eye and said, "All right, Julio, we´re going to talk about the law of chastity." He just looked at me and grinned and said, "I understand the law of chastity. I am actually married." He then went on to explain that he hadn´t felt ready to get baptized on that date and he didn´t want to back out like that again (he´s already backed out of a few baptismal dates), so he just decided to tell us he wasn´t married because he knew he couldn´t get baptized if he wasn´t married. Hermana Floyd and I just stared at each other and then at him and couldn´t decide whether to laugh or slap him in the face. (We ended up doing the former.) He said that after lying to us he felt horrible and had to ask God for forgiveness and had to tell us the truth. He said he´s going to get baptized with his wife when he moves to Chile. (She left this week, and he leaves in November.) It was the biggest relief in the world to find out that they are actually married and we aren´t that horrible of missionaries that he misunderstood the law of chastity that badly. We were kind of laughing but also a little mad at him for putting us through that torture for 2 weeks and we told him he owed us big time. So he´s going to make us lunch on Friday. :) We told President Jackson when he came here for the conference and he laughed really hard. He thought it was a great story.
We had an AMAZING lesson completely led by the Spirit with Dora. I don´t know if I´ve told you about her before, but we were thinking we might have to drop her because she wasn´t progressing, but then we had a really good lesson with her about the Atonement and we watched her heart soften right in front of us. She´s going through a really difficult time in her life and I think she could feel in our lesson that this gospel can really, truly help her. So please pray for Dora this week!
This week for a lot of our lessons we have used our "princess story." In district meeting 2 weeks ago we listened to a part of "The Parable of the Princesses" about a princess who crossed the line her father had told her not to cross and found herself a prisoner in the enemy´s palace. In spite of all her efforts, she couldn´t free herself. As a last resort, she called out for her father´s help. He sent her older brother, who lifted her into his arms and freed her from her chains. The enemy attacked them, but he used his own body as a shield to protect her. I translated the story into Spanish and we´ve been sharing it with a lot of members, less actives, and investigators to explain the Atonement, especially with little girls. It´s a really powerful story and every time we use it, I can feel the Spirit so strongly.
Stella and Willy decided that they´re going to get baptized together, and after she prayed about it, she felt like that was the right thing to do. When she was telling us that, Hermana Floyd and I got the same impression. So we´re going to let her get baptized with him, whenever it may be that he comes back.
We didn´t end up being able to see Sofia this week, but her dad is trying to work out a time when we can meet with him, Sofia, and his wife! We´re really excited. And yes, Sofia is a lot like Emma. We gave her dad the picture Book of Mormon to read with her. He´s really excited to be able to share the gospel with her. We invited them to the conference but I don´t think they were able to come. (There were a TON of people there, we might have missed them.) It´s really sad because her parents have the desire to come to church, but with work they just can´t come.
On Saturday we invited our investigator, Mercy (her aunt, Marta, is an active member) to a YSA barbecue at the Buhler´s house with us, and when we went to go pick her up, not only was she there, but also Marta´s daughter Kenzi, who´s 21 and inactive. We all had a GREAT time and both of them ended up coming to the conference!
So let´s explain about the conference. Friday night we had a fireside with all the old mission presidents who had come or sent letters or emails and President and Hermana Jackson and Elder Reina from the Seventy. It was really powerful and also really fun to get to know the old mission presidents and Elder Reina and to see the Jacksons. Also Stella came!
And Scott, I got to meet Hermana Peña, who was one of the first members here on the island. She remembered exactly who you were and she had known that one of the Hermanas here was your niece. She told me that she just saw the back of my head and was like "that has to be her!" After the meeting she came right up to me and talked about how much she had loved having Elder Jensen over. She talked about how they had Sacrament Meeting in their house and everything. She said to tell you that her husband passed away 2 years ago, but that they both still remembered you! I have a picture with her, but I forgot to bring my camera cord with me, so I´ll send it to you later.
Then we had the adult session Saturday night with Elder Reina and Elder Teixeira (who´s from Portugal but has a FLAWLESS American accent. He speaks English perfectly, and Spanish pretty well.) We had invited a ton of investigators but at the end no one said they were going to come except Stella. So we sat down with Stella, not really expecting anyone else to come. Then in walked Marta with Mercy! We were really happy about that. And then, even later, in walked SUSI. I don´t really remember what I´ve told you about Susi, so I´ll just sum it up here. She´s really strong and has a good testimony of the church and really wants to get baptized, but she works Sundays and can´t come to church, ever, so we´ve kind of half dropped her. She´s a reference from our ward mission leader Willy Roka, and he invited her to the conference, so she came with her two girls! We were shocked to see her come in but SO happy. Afterwards we read the princess story with her and her daughters and Willy, and she kept taking about how much she had loved the conference and how good she felt listening to everything. She´s going to read a page of the Book of Mormon every night with her girls before they go to bed. And yesterday it was her daughter Estefania´s 8th birthday so we went to take her some treats. Her daughters are 10 and 8, I think.
Then the Sunday session. We don´t have a stake center, so in order to accommodate all the people from the other islands who had come we rented out a conference center. I want to say that it seated 800 and it was pretty much full.
Our new stake president was President Jackson´s counselor in the mission presidency, President Deniz. He is REALLY awesome and we all knew he was going to be the stake president.
Miracle people who came to the conference:
Boris and Carmen, who brought Boris´s mother and sister. His sister is less active as well, but we´re not sure whether or not his mom is a members. I think yes.
Delia and Fausto. Fausto worked ALL DAY yesterday so that he would be able to come to the conference today!
Rafael, who used to be the branch president but hasn´t been to church in years because his family got really offended by something. I don´t know the whole story, but he came!
Marta´s daughter Kenzi, who we´re going to get coming to YSA activities and church again!
Julio
Stella
Claudia and her family
Mercy
Lourdes, who´s going to Honduras in a week or two to get her youngest daughters and bring them back here.
Also, all the missionaries from Tenerife and Lanzarote came and so we all ate lunch together at the Buhlers´ and then all talked about the miracles we´ve seen in our missions. The Jacksons came too. It was so cool and so fun. And also I got to see my best friend Hermana Phillips, who hugged me at least 20 times throughout the day. We already decided we´re going to be companions next transfer.
Okay now that I´ve written the longest email ever I think I´ve covered everything I wanted to cover.
Pray for Dora, Mercy, Kenzi, and Susi especially this week!
I love you all, and I LOVE being a missionary on the Canary Islands right now!
-Hermana Lara Schaumann
No comments:
Post a Comment