Tuesday, May 28, 2013

''Fear not what man can do, for God shall be with thee forever and ever.'' D&C 122:9

Hi Family!
So what's really weird is that on Friday I hit my halfway mark in the mission. And as of Saturday, I've been in the Spain Madrid Mission longer than I was in the Utah Provo Mission. Time has seriously flown. I can't even believe I'm on the downhill.
This week was good - pretty typical. Tuesday we had a lesson with a lady we were hoping to make a new investigator. Well, she told me she lived in Vicálvaro, but once we got there, we could not find her house to save our lives. We asked this older gentleman if he knew of the address and he said we needed to hop on bus 100 and that the bus driver would tell us when to get off. So we did just that. But the bus driver didn't tell us to get of til the very end of the line, so we ended up having to walk an extra ten minutes. We got so frustrated with finding the dang address, we almost just gave up and called to reschedule. But then we found it! And it's a good thing we did. After a few minutes of getting to know her we found out she was actually a member. She got baptized in Paraguay, but hadn't been to church since she moved to Spain. I shared a scripture with her and afterwards I asked what it meant to her. She got emotional and said it was just what she needed. She said she suffers from severe depression, that she'd really been struggling that particular morning, and that my scripture may have saved her life. I'm glad we didn't give up on finding her, and I'm grateful that the Holy Ghost told me what this sweet woman needed.
Later that day I got a call from Elder Pizarro and he goes, ''Hermana Munden, what does ah-way-sew-may mean?'' Obviously very confused, I asked him what the heck he was talking about, but he just repeated the word. Then he said that on his to do list in his planner it said ''tell Hermana Munden she's awesome'' and he didn't know what awesome meant. Hahahahahhahaha it was so hilarious. I'd forgotten I wrote that. He's picked up a lot of English from serving around American missionaries and I figured he knew what awesome was, but I guess not.
Wednesday was the best day ever. I was anxious all morning because on Tuesday Elder Forrest told me that Yo had gotten to Spain and that she was in my district! I got ready super fast and after studies we went down to wait for the rest of the district to show up. And THEN I saw Hermana Scheu! It was the best thing ever. It's probably a good thing we're not companions right now because instead of working, we'd probably just talk about our Ecuador babies all day. Haha I love her so much and I'm very happy she's in my district.
That afternoon we had a lesson with Jaime. We taught him the plan of salvation and took a good 2 hours because the man talks so much. He's really sweet though. And when it felt right, I asked him to be baptized on June 7th and he said yes! He's so excited and we're really happy for him. He's a good man and he's going to be such a faithful and strong member of the church.

Thursday we had a lesson with Rafa. He showed up 20 minutes late so we didn't have time to teach our planned lesson before we had to be at correlation. I wasn't really sure what to each so I asked him how his reading was going. He grabbed the book and started flipping through. He stopped at the introduction page and said, ''Well, I've read this... Uh, I've looked at the pictures...'' Hahaha what a punk. And then he said he read the scripture we gave him. I had no idea what he was talking about, but then he flipped to Helaman 5:12 and I remembered I'd texted that to him the other day. So we talked about the wise man and the foolish man and how Christ is the rock upon which we should build our lives. It was really good. He's a punk, like any 17 year-old kid would be, but he surprises me a lot and he's awesome.
K so I have to talk about Gusto, our Filipino investigator. Oh my gosh I love this man so much. He's so so so funny. And he always shows up early to lessons. By early I mean like two hours early. So on the way to the Filipino family's house he said he'd been riding the metro back and forth to kill time. Haha who does that? The man kills me. And then ten minutes later, out of nowhere he just says, ''Jesus was born in Bethlehem.'' I love Gusto. Anyhow, we had two really good lessons with him this week. I'm so happy there is a Filipino family in our ward who opens their home to us and helps us teach Gusto because it's really hard on our own because of the language barrier. But I love teaching him and I love the family who helps us.
After our lesson with Jaime earlier in the week we found out that he actually doesn't live in our area, which obviously was hard because it meant we'd have to give him to other missionaries. So on Friday we had a lesson with us, him, and the other hermanas who will teach him from now on. We taught the lesson on the gospel of Jesus Christ and it went well, except when Hermana Stepp said the Holy Ghost is like yogurt and discotecas are like jalapeños............. Nobody really understood where she was trying to go with that. Poor thing. Overall it was a really good lesson and it provided a smooth transition from us to them. Jaime is in really good hands.
This week a lot of spanish-speaking missionaries and people on the street have told me how good my Spanish is, or that it's improved a lot. I just remember back to the MTC when I felt like I was struggling a ton with teaching in Spanish, and I'm so happy I've gotten to a point where I feel so comfortable with the language. I'm blessed that I don't struggle with what to say aanymore and that my accent doesn't immediately identify me as an American. It makes everything so much easier.
Well, I have to go. I'll finish this week next week. Haha I wanna go home and take a nap before pday is over. I love youuuuu!

Love,
Hermana Munden
 

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