Hola de Hermana, 27/3/12

Hola mi familia asombrosa!!!  :)

Mom, Way to go for figuring out how to do the upside down spanish ! and other keyboard stuff!  I still don't have the patience to add all the symbols and am still lacking comfort on the spanish keyboard...  Kudos for your work!  :)

This week was interesting.  My first Bible Bashing lesson with a neighbor of Lui, and I really didn't like it.  The Spirit wasn't there, and I totally lost my patience and was not the best representative of the Lord.  I was so eager to leave the lesson that I practically leaped out of my chair to leave, and then Carlos (smuggly) asked "Shouldn't we close with a prayer?"  Oooooo...  I was not pleased with myself.  I apologized the next day to Carlos for losing my patience and he was pretty pleased to accept it.  I felt so bad that Lui had asked us to teach Carlos, and that we weren't able to achieve anything of significance.  But we're grateful Lui is standing up for his testimony, with what little of the gospel he does know, and that's he's working to learn more.  We found him teaching about the Atonement to some other much more receptive neighbors a night or two later.  :)  I hope he gets his mission call while I'm still here. 

Today is the first day of the next cambio.  I'm still here with Hermana M and I'm grateful.  I want to write a scripture list to give to our investigators about the Plan of Salvation for Easter.  :) 

Sunday afternoon we got a call that Guatemala is changing some laws and some of the newer missionaries needed to go yesterday to the capital to "sign something".  So yesterday we left Xela at 4 am for a 4 hour bus ride to Guate, and then spent about 6 hours sitting in some sort of legal office.  Every one of the 30 missionaries just had to have a foto taken and some of them sign something.  It was a pretty funny way to spend a pday.  :)  But highlights included being fed Big Macs from a local McDonalds, and later getting a tiny chocolate frosty from Wendys.  They tasted pretty good.  :)  :)

But the best part was the four hour bus ride back to Xela.  It was the first meditative car ride I've had since from the CCM to Xela five months ago.  And I thought a lot about those awesome rides to the ranch.  While Molly wasn't fogging up the window with her doggy breath, I did see the bus driver wipe his window with a towel.  While I wasn't able to talk with Dad, I was able to receive personal revelation I needed from the Spirit and the scriptures.  While we weren't driving through Ogden Canyon, we did wind that huge tour bus through Xela's mountains with the occasional near stall.  Rounded Xela hills replaced WY's plateaus.  Sweet rain and exhaust replaced WY sagebrush.  An ancient pickup truck with men sitting in the back under a tarp replaced commercial haulers.  But I can still see some of the same constellations (Orion, pleides).  And somehow we can still see the same moon.  Oh, and spanish radio replaced Fleetwood Mac and Lucinda Ronstadt's spanish trills.  :) 

What I am so grateful for is that those reflections don't make me homesick like I would have been a month ago.  I feel appreciative.  I'm focusing on the people, and that has made a world of difference.  And the realization that I only have a year left has left me hopping.  Time flies so fast.  It is precious.

And my all time favorite quote resurfaced this week in Spanish. 

"El reino de Dios o nada."  --Pres John Taylor

I testify Jesus Christ LIVES!  He is our Lord and Savior, and we are preparing for His glorious return.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

LOVE YOU MORE THAN TONS!

--Hermana Ivy [-]