Hello all. It's been a super good and crazy week! We have had a lot of success and a lot of unexpected changes. We got two new elders to share our spanish ward with us: Elder Cuthberson and Burgos. They are super good elders and we're excited to have them with us. Elder Burgos is hispanic, so the ward adores him. But there is a catch to these elders: they were called as assistants to the president (APs). Now in the mission we have 4 APs and they are two of them. For the majority of the transfer they will be travelling all over the mission to give trainings and such, so we won't have their help much. It's a little scary because Hermana Norton and I will have to do a lot of the work ourselves, but it's a good chance for us, especially me, to learn and grow in my capacities. I'm excited!
Also this week I have recieved a lot of needed encouragement from people at home. For what ever reason I've had 3 or 4 people write to me about not worrying and about being confident in both myself and in the Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you! As we've gotten these two new elders in our ward, and they speak spanish perfectly by the way, and still having the awesome example of Hermana Norton, I've felt pretty self-consious. I feel like all of my confidence has left. This morning I actually was able to study confidence and how I can have greater confidence in myself and in the Savior. I know that as I try to do my best, but also to REALLY RELY on the Savior and forget about my worries about being perfect, the Lord will work through me and my personality to reach others. I know I don't have to be perfect, but sometimes I trick myself into thinking that I do. Thank you all for the needed encouragement this week.
This week we taught so many lessons! We were able to teach so many people and to help a lot of our investigators come to Christ more and more. I have been learning to be more bold too. Hermana Norton is helping me with that and to realize that there is a difference between being bold and overbearing, as it says in Alma. I've been trying to be more bold and I have felt the Lord's encouragement and happiness as I've tried to be better. Many of our investigators have showed us a sincere desire to learn about Christ and to follow Him by being baptized when they know from the Spirit that this is true. We are so grateful for the Lord's help this week!
We have been teaching one man, Beto, for a while. I don't know if I've written about him before, but he is married to a member and has been off and on with the discussions for about a year. He knows that he needs to be baptized, but somethings have been holding him back. One of them was that he hadn't read the Book of Mormon before. We have been working with him on that for weeks and weeks and this week, he finally read. And he actually enjoyed it! And he wanted to read more. So for our lesson we read 3 chapters in the Book of Mormon and showed him how to use the footnotes to learn more about what he's reading. He's a smart man and he loved it! Then we asked him about what he was thinking about baptism. Miraculously he told us that he wanted to be baptized and commited to praying for a date that he should be baptized this month! Wonderful! After that lesson we were on cloud nine and had a little party on the ride back to our apartment that night! We were so excited!
One funny thing that has been happening to us lately is that we've had a few different people ask if Sister Norton is my mom. :( So sad! We can't figure it out, but it's always been older people that have asked us that, so we hope the reason is just that their eye-sight is lacking a little. Poor Hermana Norton!
We were blessed so much this week and I know that this is where the Lord would have me be without a doubt. I love the people so much and I've felt that I have known some of them before this life. I know that I need to help them. I know that I can help them as I rely on the Lord and be myself. I was reflecting this week on how my short life has been so far and how different it has been than I have planned. I am so grateful for this chance and for the way my life is going. There really is no other place I would rather be and I am so glad God knows better and cares enough to tell me what He would have me do with my life. Being a missionary is like Heaven!
Have a good week and everyone in Utah, be safe! I'm not sure how serious the warning about flooding is, but I'm worried and nervous! I'll be praying for you!
Con Amor,
Hermana Hansen
No comments:
Post a Comment