Thursday, September 18, 2014

August 11th

 
My new companion
 
With the elders... from left to right, Elders Oliver, Scheible and Vera. with us! .
 
So another week has gone by and another transfer has begun. I dropped off one companion at the train station Tuesday afternoon and then went to the mission home for the grand matching ceremony. I feel like we are at Hogwarts with the sorting hat. All the trainers sit on one side of the room and the trainees on the other side and you sit there all anxious, staring at each other wondering which one you will get until President calls the name of a trainee and then their trainer and where they will be going and you take the picture. Its really a lot like Hogwarts. BUT my hija is awesome. Her name is Hermana Hurtado and she is from Chimbote, Peru, but has lived in Spain for the past 4 years. She´s super sassy and we get along WAY too well. Also she´s really awesome, she already knows like everything. We just got right to work and haven´t stopped since! Also she is teaching me to cook REALLY GOOD peruvian food so expect some of that when I come home!

INCREDIBLE miracle last night. A few nights ago, the elders had contacted a young couple with a brand new baby (17 days old) on the street and turns out that the father is an inactive member! They live in our area, so they gave us their info and we went over last night. S.. is 32 and from Argentina and his family joined the Church when he was 6, but 14 years ago, he went inactive and his family has been fighting and praying for him to come back all this time. A.. is 20 and from northern Spain and is not a member, but is super sweet and their baby, V.. is SO SMALL and beautiful. They let us in right away and were so welcoming and we got to know them and invited to start doing family prayers and they held hands and were so excited to get started. Missionaries had visited them before a few years ago, but they weren´t ready then. Now, with the birth of their daughter, they are both in the place ready to hear the gospel cause they are seeing the importance of it for their little family. It was such an incredible lesson and S.. testified to us that he knows that this is the true Church, he just fell away because he didn´t like the hypocracy of members, but he feels dumb now for going inactive because of that. Really, it was A MIRACLE!! Pray for them and their little family that he can come back and baptize his little wife!!

Funny story: Our ward mission leader gave a talk yesterday in church and talked about how a way that the ward can help with misisonary work is by inviting us over to eat (us missionaries hardly ever eat with members in this ward) and at the end of sacrament meeting, EVERYBODY swarmed us inviting us over to eat! Haha we have an eating cita almost everyday this week!!

RANDOM THINGS

In our mission, we don´t use a lot of the same missionary terms as other missions since so many missionaries don´t speak English. We call them hijos and hijas (cause they are our children in the mission!) We are teaching a lot of people still, but since we have been finding a lot of new investigators lately, right now we are going through and figuring out if they are really going to progress or not, so we are dropping a lot right now as well, making room for miracles to happen and putting our faith in the Lord.

 My companion knows everybody and their dog here in Fuen! Haha its so funny having companions from within Spain because since the Church is so small here still, they all have connections (even worse within the young adults too!)
We want to start workign with the yw more and get them excited about missionary work since right now all of us in our ward are teaching ym and yw aged investigators and they aren´t really receptive to new people and its weird seeing the 14 year olds and all of a sudden I´m like, woah. When did I grow up?? Not that long ago but at the same time it is!
Thank you for that scripture. I needed it. I´ve been getting kinda frustrated lately. I feel like since I left Puerto that I have been doing everything I can and working hard and being the most effective I can be, but that I´m still not seeing the results. I miss hearing somebody turn to me and say, "I prayed and I know its true. I want to follow this." I just feel like I´m running in circles going nowhere right now. BUT I know that new missionaries bring MIRACLES and I have a great feeling about this time I´m going to have with Hermana Hurtado.

 Bahaha all of you guys assumed that I would get an american! Nope, I´m NOT the one with all the language skills. Its the other way around actually. But my Spanish has skyrocketed in just these past 5 days! I´ve had a few companions that struggled with Spanish, but what we lack in language the Lord makes up in Spirit. I love missions.
 
 My favorite part about the mission is how my testimony has grown and being able to use it to help others´ grow as well. If I could change anything, I would go back to the beginning and be more teachable and pay more attention to my trainer. Haha I still really wanna go to the Alhambra. ITs my dream.

One thing taht I have learned each time I´ve trained is that in the end, they won´t remember much of what you taught them, but they will remember how you made them feel. So just love them and love them and love them. It's the same with investigators. The things we teach them are completely new and weird, but what catches their attention is the Spirit and how they feel.

Well we were talking to a less active man about ways he can keep busy to quit smoking so he can go to the temple in October (thats his goal) and so we talked about doing family history and then also missionary work. As we were teaching him, a promise from Neil L Andersen came to my head. "As you pray to know with whom to share the gospel, names and faces will come to your mind of people who you know who are prepared to hear the gospel." I don´t want to get to the day of judgement and have somebody who has accepted the gospel in the spirit kingdom who I knew in this life come up to me and say, "but you had it and you didn´t share it with me! I could have enjoyed these blessings earlier!" As members of the Church, as we pray about who to share the gospel with, we have the right to receive revelation to be guided to those that we know who are ready to hear the gospel. Every member has this right!  Pray about with whom you can share the gospel and then SHARE IT! Have a great week!

I love you all so much and I hope you have excellent weeks. Os quiero!

Hermana Becca Folsom


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