Mom, I did get the ipod package. I realized right after P-Day ended
last week that I had forgotten to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!
I've been listening to MoTab and Prince of Egypt in the shower and
while I get ready in the mornings, and it's been great. It's funny how
songs like "May It Be" from LOTR suddenly take on new meaning when you
look at them from the perspective of a missionary. It was especially
great to listen to MoTab sing about the Savior on Easter morning. Thank
you for the iHome as well. I didn't end up bringing an alarm clock with
me, and those aren't provided in the apartments, so the music, alarm
clock combo is an added bonus. I just got my Easter package this
morning! The office is supposed to call when a package comes in, but
they don't usually. So we just went and asked and they had it there in a
pile. Thank you! I'm eating a Reese's egg as I type and I'm enjoying it
thoroughly. I love the thank you cards. They're super cute. More
especially, I love you and I really appreciate the time you took out of
your hectic life to throw that together for me.
This week for our district meeting training on Tuesday, we did an
activity where everyone wrote a teaching scenario on a piece of paper,
and then they were passed around and we came up with a brief teaching
plan based on the situation. To preface, I love the senior couple that
serves in our area, but this example highlights to me what I have heard
all my life from adult leaders and never really understood. They always
tell us "your generation is so much better than mine was" and I didn't
ever understand that because I always looked up so much to my leaders
and their experience, and I still do. So, Elder G. was given a
scenario where he was teaching a woman whose husband was 75ish, had
smoked all of his life, and had liver cancer. This woman's goal was to
see her husband baptized before he died. Elder G.'s lesson plan was
"well, this gentleman is at the end of his life, he isn't likely to
change now, and so I would just teach this good woman about temple work
for the dead and wait until he kicks the bucket to get him baptized."
When all is said and done, that may be what would have happened, but none
of the junior missionaries were content with that answer. We all felt
that this man deserved a chance in life to accept as much as he could
and to have the opportunity to pray for miracles that he could overcome
his addiction and be baptized if he would choose to do so. I think the
difference is that we have grown up in a different generation where all
of us have had to rely on our testimonies of the Atonement to make it
through to this point. The world is harder to navigate than it used to
be, and because of that, we have had to withstand buffetings from all
sides for as long as any of us can remember, and that has made our
testimonies stronger. I see a difference from what I had to go through
to what Aidan will have to go through, but I do know that because the
world is getting harder, the youth of the church are going to keep
getting stronger as they hold onto what they believe and stand firm in
the faith. I loved Sister Dalton's talk about that at the YW broadcast
this weekend. Everything she said is true.
This story just bugs me. We have the opportunity to visit
every week with our ward mission leader and ward missionary. They're
both good guys, but this week at our first correlation, they were making
generalizations about women, how "every woman is just so flighty and
flaky and scatter-brained" and "I don't know what they did. It was one
of those weird girl things that you guys do" and just saying things like
that, that I'm sure they didn't even think twice about. It made me SO
MAD! Because even though they were just tiny little comments, and I'm
sure these young leaders will grow up and be just fine, we do not have
room for stuff like that in our world. Although in a minor way, this is
an example of "unrighteous dominion." These guys feel like because they
are men, because they are returned missionaries, they have the right to
criticize women, to criticize non RMs (meaning all of us that they work
with who are serving missions now) and to criticize members of the ward
that don't do things the same way they do. We do not have room for this
kind of attitude. I
will NOT let my children grow up to think that way.
Anyway. On to happier things! Easter
sounds like you guys had some fun. The Easter Bunny seems to have
maintained if not upped his standard of hiding excellence, and Dad had a
unique forray into Biblical Acting.
Dad, you asked about my companion. Hermana B. is the best!!
She likes to say she grew up in Albaquerque, New Mexico, which is true,
but really that means she doesn't want to be in the 90% of missionaries
that are from Utah. Her family lives right now in American Fork, and
when we were watching the YW broadcast, she knew about 10 of the girls
in the choir, and the closing prayer. Before her mission, she was at
Utah State studying early childhood education because they have a really
good program up there. Hna. B is really fun. She likes to be
spontaneous, so when it rained for the first time in a long time in Del
Rio yesterday, we ran outside and got ourselves pretty soaked. At the
same time, she's a really hard worker, and I love teaching with her. She
loves the scriptures and has a lot to say about them, so sometimes
lessons end up being a little lopsided, but it works out great. As my
Spanish is getting better, I'm more able to jump in and participate.
She's really good at turning contacts into Quality Gospel conversations
(QGCs), so while we don't ever contact the mission standard of 120 per
week, we do pretty well on our QGCs, and we're teaching the mission
standard of 15 lessons per week, which is why we don't have time to
contact 120 people, besides which, the population density isn't as high
here as it is other places. Hna. B likes to run and also has eating
challenges like me, but that didn't stop us from going to Rudy's and
eating 1/2 lb of turkey, the biggest smoked potato I've ever seen in my
life topped with butter, cheese, sour cream, and 1/2 lb of brisket, a
pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream, creamed corn and some cole slaw
(I'll include a picture at the end). I feel like we're a really good
combination, and yet again, I feel so blessed to be with another
companion that I love so much. Oh, I also found out that she plays the
Viola quite well, and is vaugely aquainted with Aunt Kristine from one
orchestra or another that she was in in the valley area. Maybe
Timpanogos?
The flavor of Del Rio. It really depends where you are. "In town"
feels about like Pocatello if you took away the mountains and added a
lot more Mexican and BBQ. There's a mall, but there's not a lot in it as
far as we have been told, and a WalMart which is where we went shopping
today. Closer to the border, there are areas that feel more like you're
in Mexico. The houses are slummier and packed closely together, the
roads are dirt, and most people speak Spanish. Then, there's the
airforce base which has it's own flavor. I imagine it's about the same
as Wright Patterson with government issue housing with tile floors and
lots of rules about what you can and can't do and when and where. A lot
of the members of the 1st branch are young families from the airforce
base, and I've been told the turn over is pretty quick because of that.
There's also the regular residential part of town, and further out of
our area, there are ranch style homes spaced far apart on large pieces
of dusty, cactusy property. The biggest problem we have with our
investigators is church attendance. Growing up Catholic by inheritance
but not belief, most people love their families, but just don't get what
that has to do with them going to church. Catholicism is also the most
common and convenient excuse not to listen to the missionaries.
This week at church, we actually had three investigators!! We spent
a lot of time helping N and her family move on Saturday and
packing earlier in the week, and we actually didn't invite them to
church, but one of N's member friends had, and since it was
Easter, she came and brought all of her kids. Woot woot!! They only
stayed for Sacrament meeting, but it was still really great to see them
there. We also met a guy on Saturday named F. He's about 5 feet
tall, old and wrinkled, and the cutest man alive. He lives alone after
the death of his wife about five years ago, and he told us that he loves
to hear the word of God. He came and stayed all three hours and I think
he made a lot of friends among the members who just scooped him up and
showed him what to do.
For Easter Dinner, we were invited over to the W's (a young
family on base) and they fed us a delicious dinner and Sister W sent
us home with an Easter basket. It was such a fun dinner appointment. We
taught their boys about prophets by playing Prophet Says No, Prophet
Says Go (Red light, Green light), and then we sang follow the prophet,
read a scripture, and talked a little bit about general conference. By
the way, I am SOO excited for General Conference. Our big thing is
inviting people to invite people to come, because it's a great
opportunity for non-members to feel the spirit and see the restoration
in action.
Friday, we had a really cool experience that testified to me that
Heavenly Father is mindful of his "lost sheep." We've discovered that as
we're contacting, we actually seem to bump into a lot of inactive
members as much as we find non-members willing to listen. The other day,
we had about two hours and couldn't decide where to knock, but finally
settled on Hodge street. The first lady we talked to was named R. She
was like "yeah, my daughter got baptized Mormon about 12 years ago, but
hasn't been to church in a while. You should come back tomorrow and we
can sit down and talk for real." We haven't been able to catch her at
home yet because of the Easter holiday, but I'm really hoping we do and
that we're able to find out more about her daughter. She didn't want to
talk then because she was about to go make dinner. So we kept knocking
doors and ended up knocking at a door that looked empty. While we were
standing there, the lady in the house next door came outside and was
trying to turn off the lights in her car. We weren't quite sure what to
do, but we went over and helped her as best we could. She didn't seem
like she wanted to talk, but after we figured out how to get her lights
off, she walked into the house, wiped fried chicken grease off her hands
and invited us in just like that. She sat us down and we talked to
her, and out poured this story about how she had lost her son about 5
years ago in an accident and since then, she had just been totally numb
to feeling anything. Tears were shed and we testified to her of the
power of the Atonement, that when put into action, it has the power to
heal her and to help her feel again. Her response was "yeah, I know. I'm
Mormon too." What?!?! Hermana B has been in this area for 6 months,
knows everyone in every house and had never heard of her before. The
craziest thing, is that she doesn't even live in the house we were at.
She was just there visiting her granddaughters and we happened to stop
by at the right time. Right after she said that, she gave us references
of people she wanted us to teach and then her son walked into the house.
I had no idea who he was, but Hna. B did. He's also an inactive member,
and this whole time she thought he lived in the Elder's area where we
aren't allowed to teach. So, I'm not sure what will happen next because
Hermana R lives in the Elder's Area, but we'll see if we can't help
her out as much as possible.
We taught M and J and A again this week. The lesson
went great, but then they didn't come to church, which means we have to
move their baptismal date back a week, and that's kind of frustrating,
especially because she didn't seem that broken up about it. I'm a littl
worried and praying that we don't start losing them, because they're
doing so well!!
We also found this really cool guy named A. He's probably
about 60, we've taught him twice, both good lessons, and he told us when
we asked him to be baptized in the first lesson that he'd had a thought
about three months ago that had persisted, that he really needed to be
baptized again, but wasn't sure why. So he has a baptismal date too, and
from things he told us, I really feel like he has been prepared for
this. He told us about dreams he has had where he was told that he
needed to be looking for the true church, so he has been, and felt
really good about what we taught him. The only problem is, he didn't
come to church this week, and we're not sure why. He told us he was
nervous about the social aspect of it, and not knowing anybody in the
congregation, but we brought some friends for him to our last lesson,
and the seemed to hit it off pretty well. It might also be his work
schedule. As a plumber, he doesn't make a lot of money, and he said that
sometimes he gets called in on Sundays. So that was a little
frustrating as well, but we'll keep on him and see if we can't get him
baptized yet.
Steven! I know somebody you know!! We were at dinner this
week with the Rogers family, and I found out that one of their sons,
X, served in the Cleveland mission with you. He says hi. Small world
in the church. Even smaller in Del Rio, haha.
I think that's all the biggest news I have for you guys. The title
for this week's email comes from one of the hymns in the Spanish hymn
book that I love. It means "pleasing to us is the work" and was written
by a missionary (possibly not LDS) that was thrown into prison (I think
in Chile) as he was preaching. While he was there he wrote this hymn
about missionary work. I picked it, because this week I have started to
feel more and more that "pleasing to us is the work." I know that
feeling will continue to mature right along with my sun tan lines, but I
am grateful for a Heavenly Father who has answered my prayers and
helped me to feel that when I needed it. The church is true which is why
we can testify of it boldly. There's no need to be afraid because the
message we have can only bless the people we share it with. I love it. I
love being able to teach people how to have happier families, and I
learn more and more every day that all of these blessings are given to
us only because of the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. I love him
for it, and he loves us all right back in return.
I hope you all have a marvelous week. Thank you all for your letters!!
Mucho amor,
Hermana Em
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