Exercise Faith

¡Hola, hola!

Spanish Lessons with Hermana Clark:

Loca- crazy. As in, "This week was one of the craziest of my mission. But we enjoyed it."

 

 

 

 

Despedida- farewell. As in, "One of my great companions, Hermana Hernandez, finished her mission this week. For health reasons she was given and honorable release and she's headed back to Honduras today. We had a farewell with President and Sister Owen yesterday for her and another great Sister who went home for health reasons too. They're both exemplary missionaries, and we miss them a lot."

Fe- faith. As in, "I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." Ether 12:6.

Even though we were running all over the place with decisions and preparations all week, we still had a couple cool experiences in the proselyting time we had.

Monday after our district meeting we went to see a part-member family. The mom isn't a member, but she's always gone to church with her family and she's listened to a lot of missionaries. We went to meet them, and it was super interesting because she speaks more English than Spanish. So I taught the lesson in English. (Let me just tell you that it's bizarre for me to teach in English. Everything comes to my brain in Spanish and I have to translate it to English.) She's super cool though, and she said that she wants to get ready to get baptized soon. She has a testimony of the truthfulness of the church and she wants to prepare herself to make a covenant with God so that her family can be eternal.

We went to visit the lady who I contacted in English last week. She's great! She's super sassy and I love it. We teach her in Spanglish...she speaks Spanish super well, but she prefers English and doesn't know how to read or write Spanish. So we taught mostly in Spanish so that my companion and I could both be teaching. But she would ask questions in English if she didn't find the words in Spanish. (I feel like she speaks my true language.) Her eyes lit up when we gave her a pamphlet about the Restoration and a Book of Mormon in English. She's super excited to learn more. We taught her to pray in English and it was great.

We also visited another part-member family where the husband isn't a member. From what we had seen of him and heard from other missionaries, he wasn't all that insterested and didn't participate in lessons, he just went to church with his wife sometimes. But we taught about the Restoration and asked them how they felt about the Restoration. We were super surprised to hear him bear a powerful testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith. He said he's researched and prayed a lot about it and that he feels like he really was a prophet. He's also hoping to be ready to get baptized soon.

"Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise faith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to him." 1 Nephi 7:12

These two weeks have been a bit stressful, but we all grew a lot through the experience. We've learned to have faith and act upon the faith we have. Aside from the personal challenges that our companion had, Hermana Ramirez and I were getting a bit discouraged about our proselyting situation in this ward. But we fasted together to work well with the members to find people who are prepared to receive the Gospel, and yesterday we began to see results. We're hoping to have a great week and find a lot of people. We know that if we move forward with faith and work hard, we'll find them.

Have a great week!

~Hermana Hannah Jo Clark