So I completed a year in the mission! I made 6 goals for my six months! I forgot the heart post it I wrote them on so I’ll share those next week! I'm excited to be making what I see as so much progress. It’s exciting. Things aren’t perfect but it's all getting better.
But to celebrate my one year guess what we did?! Stayed in the apartment...not because we wanted to plan...my companion got really sick and couldn’t walk. So we got her the medication she needed and then later I got sick and it was just a stressful week. Our dats (numbers) were horrible and we were sick and we had a baptism on Saturday and I needed to give a talk and it was our turn to teach the Gospel Principles class and I was just a stress case. It was awful! When I got sick I blamed it on the fact that I exercised every day except Sunday and Monday and I probably just freaked my body out...but I think it was more than that! Haha.
But today for pday I made pancakes for everyone and we played with my piñata :) I think the Elders had a pretty fun time with it haha. When we went to a few piñata stores to ask if they could make one of me my comp asked "¿tienen piñatas como ella?"....and they were like "tenemos algunas princesas por aqui?) cutest response! cuz all of them were blonde, that’s why they said it. We had to do a little bit of surgery so it looked like me, and we cut off the long sleeves and gave it a bigger smile and a missionary placa (name tag) and everything :) but we didn’t end up setting it on fire, we just hit it with a huge stick from the basketball court outside the stake center here! I attempted to make some brownies in the microwave for my one year, but they tasted weird and I ended up pitching it :( I’ll just wait till I get home for those brownies haha :) We kept the piñata in the front room though where the kitchen and mesa are and it scared us during the nighttime anytime we had to go back to that room for something...oh piñatas :)
You know the Mormon world is a small one when the mom of an Elder in your zone is in the same book club as your aunt....Elder N___ lives in South Ogden on the same street as my aunt and uncle! Crazy connections!!! Love it!
We were teaching a couple this past week and they were just not paying attention and we were using all the examples we could think of. You can just tell when someone doesn’t get it, but they don’t want to get it and it’s not important to them and they just want to argue...so I ended up looking the man in the eyes as he’s all acostado en su maca and I was like "Hermano, yo sé esto con todo mi corazon" (I know this with all my heart!) I swear I was almost shaking...I was so serious about it. It was pretty powerful and I loved being able to just be like "Look, after all is said and done, we know this is true!".
So once again the poor sister missionaries have been loaded on with serious information from a recent convert that only the family should know. It’s frustrating that people feel the need to tell us all about their sicknesses and the family gossip and things about their neighbors when we're just trying to bring the restored gospel to people. But it motivates me to keep my life in check and make good decisions and do things in the right order and timing. Because that’s when esperanza (hope) comes into play :)
During my personal study I was reading in the Book of Mormon about where they’re asking, "How is it that ye have forgotten?" and it was just really interesting....how is it that we can forget that God loves us, that he knows what’s going on...how is it that we forget to do what’s right and how is it that we forget that if we do what’s right, we'll be blessed for it?I don’t remember the details (surprise surprise) but we were visiting someone and we asked them to offer the closing prayer. In the prayer they thanked Heavenly Father for sending "these angels". It was the sweetest thing to hear. Even if we aren’t perfect and we make mistakes, it’s just nice to know that for at least one person, we're angels :)
On my one year mark, I was reading my Patriarchal blessing for my personal study and I was left stunned. as always I found things I hadn’t seen before, learned new things and put other things together I hadn’t in the past. It was the neatest experience. I felt the Spirit so strongly and I was just sitting there with my eyes wide open. It is like reading personal scriptures from a loving Heavenly Father. It helped me remember to see things in terms of the big picture.
I noticed this week probably as we were walking and walking and walking (like the pioneer children! hah) that as missionaries, we are always looking to the future. We use the past obviously to plan and make goals, but we are always looking ahead. We look to tomorrow, to Sunday, to three weeks from now, to six weeks from now. It’s probably so that we apply it in our lives when we're released as missionaries when we get back. I love it though. If we don’t look to the future, the past becomes useless and the present, just a useless speck in time. But when we look to the future we're putting faith in the Lord and trusting that He knows everything and that He wants the best for us.
There were some pretty funny things that happened this week...
1. People always call my comp "la chaparrita" (shorty) and we heard from the mom of an investigator, that there was a "chaparrita y un modelo...gringa...que se llama christeli" that were teaching him. I don’t know where they get those names.
2. Ít was like 2:30 in the afternoon and we were sitting in front of a pulpería as we were almost dying from the heat trying to get ourselves together when people kept going up to the little counter thing and me and my comp were so dead that she was like "quizás tenemos que pararnos para que nos sirvan..." (maybe we have to stop so that they serve us!) idk why but it was just so funny...we were so out of it!
3. We were having a hard time remembering the 7 continents this week....(life of someone who's been out of school for too long) and we were like "Where's Jerusalem?" and my comp didn't know who Martin Luther King Junior was (which is not overly surprising). When we were counting the continents, my comp was like "Egypt! that’s the other continent!"... We need to get back in school!...
But I gave a talk on Sunday on the baptismal covenant and I felt pretty proud of myself! I used the general conference talk from Elder Richard G. Scott about examples and tied it together with how by being baptized and keeping those covenants, we're examples, especially the parents for their children! So of course I had to use some personal experiences! I talked about how dad taught me how to change a tire, but that in order to teach me, he showed me how to do it first. Then I shared about how when mom taught me how to make cinnamon rolls, she cut it first, to show me how it was done. I loved sharing those experiences because I got so into it and I was smiling during my talk when normally I’m pretty serious because im concentrating on what I’m saying in Spanish and all that. but I hope the parents really took it to heart, I feel like they need so much help with that, seeing that their kids really are watching and they learn from them. It was a simple talk but I learned a lot from preparing for it. But the best part was? Seeing N___ there in his white shirt and tie :) That’s right! N___ GOT BAPTIZED!!!!
The next morning we were booking it to bring everyone to church and we passed by his house later than planned so we ran to the church and there he was sitting in the second row in his white shirt and super pretty blue tie he bought! He had walked to church all by himself! It was the cutest thing! He was confirmed and everything! Everyone is helping out a lot to support him and turns out his nephew is a member and some more of his family are members! His wife goes to an evangelical church but she just needs some time. We went to visit him on Sunday and we just asked him about his life, how he met his wife and just chatted with him. It was so nice. My comp went to the bathroom and he was like "aquí estamos...Mormones". And when I asked him at church how he felt he was like "estoy feliz". Lots of times people just say, "bien!" but he was like "estoy feliz" it just made me so happy. My little Honduran grandpa :) He said that he's an "otro soldado" (another soldier in God's army) and he was like "es un milagro que Dios ha hecho en mi vida a ser Mormon porque tengo 78 años....¿es raro verdad?" (It's a miracle what God has done in my life... to become a Mormon because I'm 78 years old!) The honest truth? Nunca es demasiado tarde :)
Love,
Hermana Despain
