Querida Familia,
This
past week I have been really stress-sick. I've still been working like
normal, but my stomach is upset a lot and I have a hard time eating. I
feel better now than I did a week ago, and hopefully I'll keep
improving:) I feel like part of this is to help me learn virtue. Virtue
is usually seen as moral purity. I think that in addition, it can mean
relying on the strength of the Lord. If you've ever read Machiavelli,
virtue refers to power or influence. Through this illness, I've learned
that I have no power--physical, spiritual, or emotional--of my own. I
need to be relying completely and wholly on the strength of our Savior.
As I've done this, I've been given strength beyond my own!:)
We've also begun waking up 30 minutes early to go to
the church to exercise. I normally run some laps around the gym and then
exercise as normal. This has helped me have more energy throughout the
day. I love running! I'm definitely not the marathon-type, but I'm happy
with 20 laps:)
As Dad would say, I've been doing "mo bettah."
Unfortunately, I've begun saying the same thing in Spanish. 5 times this
past week at least, I've said "mas mejor." It's just as wrong in
Spanish as it is in English;)
The Richmond Stake (which covers the Richmond East and
West Zones) is having a finding challenge! Every week for three weeks,
each companionship needs to find 3 new investigators. Last week we found
5!
Oralia was a referral from the Chickahominy Sisters.
They tracted into her, and passed her on to us. She is from Guatemala
and speaks no English. She isn't very educated, so we just talked about
El Libro De Mormon and read a few verses with her. The Spirit was really
strong, especially as we sang the opening song. At the end, we invited
her to pray. She replied that she didn't know how. I had already said
that opening prayer, so Hermana Pratt and Hermana Depablos each took a
turn praying. Then Oralia prayed. She said the most simple and humble
prayer I have ever heard! I couldn't help but bawl my way through the
entire lesson. I felt like Mom when she bears her testimony;)
Isabel is a woman that Hermana Pratt and her former
companion found. It took us a while to get back and set up an
appointment with her. We finally taught her last night. She's from
Mexico, but moved to the states when she was 10 months, so she is more
fluent in English than Spanish. She's Catholic. I didn't know this, but
she said it's a sin for a Catholic to meet with missionaries from
another church or to even attend another church. She seemed really
apprehensive at the beginning of the lesson. We sang a hymn and prayed.
After that, she slowly began to open up, and eventually told us her
whole life story. She comes from a difficult family situation. She even
confessed that she doesn't believe the Catholic church is true and she's
never been really active. It was neat to see how her demeanor at the
beginning of the lesson had changed completely by the time we finished.
Singing hymns and praying every lesson is so important
in inviting the Spirit! When the Spirit is present, the investigator
will learn more from Him than from the missionaries.
On Thursday we had Zone Conference in Henrico! Here are some memorable things I learned:
-"A wonderful thing to learn in life is how to breathe!" - Pres. Wilson (reminds me of something Dad would say.)
-Even as a missionary, I need to be praying for missionary opportunities.
-Inspired questions should help my investigators teach themselves.
-After
asking an inspired questions, don't nod my head "yes" while they
answer. If I do, they'll think that they've already given a satisfactory
answer. If I don't show a sign of approval, they'll continue to answer
the question. This is when the Spirit can really teach them!
-"The Holy Ghost can fill an empty mouth, but He can't fill an empty
mind!" (This is why language study every day is SUPER important!)
-View
personal study as a daily appointment with God--don't be late! If I'm
just a few minutes late every day, that will accumulate over 18 months.
Here's a picture of me at Zone Conference. It's the
"thing" to get Elder tags for scriptures. Mine also has a pink sticky
note addition to it that says "ucha." In Spanish, they add suffixes to
the ends of words. For example, "perro" is dog, and "perrito" is little
dog. My nickname is Crandallucha. Ucha is supposed to mean disorganized
or crazy or something.
*Anyway...
On Saturday
night, we had dinner with the Murrell family. Brother Murrell is the
Ward Mission Leader! They had a special needs daughter who passed away
last September. She was so beautiful and they had lots of pictures of
her around the house! Brother Murrell also has a false left eye. When he
was 12, a friend was playing around with a gun and shot him in the eye.
He let us hold one of his other fake eyes!:) It was so cool! They have a
really large property, and I took some pictures. They had a large
uprooted tree trunk, some chickens, etc. They used to have two peacocks,
but they ran away. I really love Brother and Sister Murrell!:)
Hermana Depablos had an investigator named Aamir that
she met on Temple Square that lives in Arlington (originally from
India). He had a business trip in Richmond, so he wanted to meet up with
us for lunch! It was a lot of fun! His 9 year old daughter, Zoya, also
came. He's not very religious, but they accepted the invitation to come
to church with us on Sunday!
They attended the Mechanicsville Ward. I'm guessing a lot of the ward
members thought he was Hispanic because he was sitting next to us;) They
seemed shocked when he started speaking perfect English with a thick
Indian accent. Here's a picture of us with Zoya.
Yesterday we received permission to begin attending the
Henrico Branch when we have investigators that are going to attend.
Josue has been taught by missionaries for a few months now, but has only
attended church a few times. He knows the Book of Mormon is true, but
he's concerned that baptism will bring him new trials. We convinced him
to go to church with us on Sunday and he did! We all got a ride together with Filiberto, a recent convert. This brings me to my next story...
*I've begun keeping a list of weird things that happen to me:
When
Filiberto picked us up for church, he had food in the trunk for us.
Mexican mango soda, fruit cups, and granola bars. He insisted that we
eat them. He also had a U2 CD playing and he said he loves rock-n-roll
more than Mexican music. We had to ask him to turn it off;) hahaha.
We were teaching a lesson to Josue and his front door
was open. A squirrel ran by, and we were worried it was going to come
inside. He said that he leaves his door open and squirrels come in all
the time. And he's totally okay with it.....
In the Mechanicsville Ward yesterday, someone quoted Robert E. Lee during Sacrament Meeting. Only in the South.
A
Hispanic man invited us into his bedroom to teach the lesson. Needless
to say, we made up an excuse and got out as fast as possible.
A woman started feeding her baby in the middle of the lesson. Oh Hispanics.
That's all for this week:) I love you all so much!:)
Hermana Crandalluchita
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