"The standard of truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing. Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble and calumny may defame but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly and independent 'till the purposes of God have been accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done." -Joseph Smith

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Temple Day Quick Email

I was not worried that we hadn't heard from Hermana Myers but I missed the fact that we hadn't heard from her yet this week.  Knew there had to be an explanation. Today is Missionary Temple Day for her which means preparation day and a visit to the temple and little time to focus on emailing.

I know from other missionaries that I keep up with that after around the 10 month mark it gets harder to email.  Why? Because what used to be new to them has become second nature and so they don't think it is interesting or don't even think to share it with us.  I am ok with that. 

Here is her email:
So I'm just going to start this email off with a warning, it may be a little scatter brained because we don't have a whole lot of time and we're going to the temple today.

(In regards to her request for an electronic translator last week, we wrote:Oh, Dad said we shouldn’t buy you a translator.  He thinks when you don’t understand a word you should ask questions to find out what it means.  Well, so if you still really want/need one, you will have to state your case or just go buy one on your own with money from your personal account.  For me this one isn’t worth fighting for you with the limited information that I have on the need.)
First off: Sure, I could ask people for the information, and I do, but when it's just me and my companion and we're trying to figure something out, or teaching an English class (which we do), it's a little more difficult to translate from Spanish to English when the member is asking how to say it in English and you have no clue what it is in Spanish. Then they try to explain and you guess, then they accuse you later because you were wrong. But it's still up to you. It's just nicer, smaller, and faster than a dictionary.
 
So this week was an interesting one.
 
We picked up the daughter of a recent convert. Her name is Adriana. The whole family is super ready. They've experienced two deaths in the family within the two weeks we've been here and they're all looking for a little bit of comfort. We're teaching 5 members of the family and counting. Adriana is the only one on date though. We went over almost every day last week. It was awesome! We have to help Adriana read the Book of Mormon though because she doesn't read very well so that was some of the lessons. It's been awesome though!
 
We also had an awesome lesson with the Morales family. Apparently they're legendary in the mission because the kids are crazy (that is not an exageration... they turn off the lights when we pray and one of the daughters says she'll only get baptized if her cat can get baptized too. It's interesting, but we love them :)) and the mom rarely shows emotion. She's starting to smile a little more when we're there so that's good. We pretty much asked them why they aren't baptized yet because they've been coming to church for the last 6 months. The dad, second daughter, and youngest son are all baptized, just the mom, the oldest daughter and the youngest daughter aren't. Anywho, we found out a lot. Turns out Hermana Morales doesn't think that God answers her prayers and that she doesn't need to change, but she wants all her kids to get baptized in our church. Doesn't really make sense to me, but alright. S (the crazy cat daughter) doesn't think that God exists. So this is going to be awesome! We're interesting to see if maybe we can help them, or if (in Elder Holloway's words) "we end up in their boiling pot of missionaries that had failed to convert them." He's a strange kid... but he's great :).
 
We've also been doing a lot of Elder "damage control". We keep finding people in the area book that when we meet them, they don't really want to talk to us but when we explain that we're there to help them strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ and their relationship with their Heavenly Father, they soften up and say, "That's such a relief because all the Elders wanted to do was baptize me!" We then say, "Well, yeah, we want you to get baptized too, but only when you feel ready." And then we think, "And you'll get baptized when you do what we tell you too, like pray and read and go to church.(Because they will feel the Spirit and want to get baptized) You'll get baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints... So we kind of are here to baptize you..."
 
So yeah! I think that's about it for this week. I hope I can add some more stuff next week about this week, maybe some new insights about the temple! (Hermana Myers loves the temple, I am sure this will be a huge uplift for her.)
 
Much love!
Hermana Myers

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