Wow what a week! I hope that you all are safe and sound and having a wonderful time wherever you are! I love you all so much and am so thankful for your love and support!
This week was really humbling. There was one lesson we had with a family that is really struggling money wise, they live in a pretty small house, have basically no income, and there's a set of 43ish year old twins, one who was married and has kids, and one who never got married. The one with kids as a result of a serious accident about 10 years back is unable to walk, talk, and can barely move (only her neck and lift her arms up and down about 5 inches). Her sister has been faithfully taking care of her and her children ever since. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for each and every one of us. I'm sure at some point in her life, the sister who never married or had a family of her own wondered why...but how much harder would it have been to help her sister out if she already had her own family to take care of? Sometimes I think that the things that happen in our lives have reasons that we may not understand or recognize, but I know that Heavenly Father has everything all worked out, and for that I am SO grateful. They are just about the most giving and humble people that I've ever met. They don't have hardly anything...let alone anything to eat, but they insisted on giving us some soda before we left. It was so sad to see their refrigerator--almost completely empty--and know what a sacrifice those two glasses of soda were for them. It sounds so silly telling it, but really I don't think I've ever drunk soda more gratefully in my life.
This week we had another incident with more than one lunch.....seriously I don't know why it's so hard to tell people no to food here...but seriously they put so much love into it and give just about everything they have you just can't break their hearts like that! So yeah, on Wednesday we ate not only two, but THREE lunches...peruvian sized portions. I honestly have never hurt sooo badly from eating so much. We literally couldn't move after the last one..man it was bad. It makes me feel so bad knowing that I'm stuffing myself for curtousy's sake, when there are families (like the one I described above) who literally don't have anything to eat. I am so thankful for how the Lord has blessed me in my life, and that I've never had to worry about whether or not I'll have food to eat, along with so many other things that I take advantage of in my life.
This week we also had our Zone Conference, and it went really well! I love our zone already, there's a lot of really great, hardworking missionaries in this zone, and it's been a good time :) Also, there's an Elder that's from Mesa that went to Red Mountain HS....small world right?
Thursday night I had a really neat experience. Hermana C. and I went to the chapel because we were supposed to have our correlacion missional, but our ward mission leader wasn't there so we went into a Visiting Teacher's training meeting that the RS was having. Our ward mission leader never ended up coming, so we ended up staying for the rest of the meeting with the RS (it was too late to really be able to get in another lesson). We were only there for the very end, but the president had everyone come up in pairs and tell the other how much they love them and give them a gift that she had brought for each of us (a really cute little salt shaker). It sounds SUPER cheesy I know. And at first I was like woooowww we're really going to do this? But as the sisters got up and sincerely expressed their love for one another, an extremely beautiful, fulfilling spirit filled the room. It was such a neat experience. I was in the second to last pair, and I was way stressed about what to say...but when I got up there, somehow the Spirit spoke through me. It was the neatest thing to hear myself speak, but feel like I was listening to someone else talk. I was touched by how such sincere acts of love can bring such a powerful, sincere emotion into a group of people. I know that it's true what the scriptures say about people gathered together in the name of the Lord--He really was there among us.
On Saturday we were able to have the baptism of a man named Julio. It was a super stressful day because of course everything fell through and everyone was late and we were left doing everything ourselves...but the Elders were SUPER helpful, and in the end it was a really beautiful service. Julio bore a really powerful testimony after his brother baptized him, and that alone made everything worth it. I am so touched by how sincere of a desire he has to change...he's gone through a lot of rough times and faced a lot of challenges, but he's taken this decision and run with it. It was the kind of moment where I was really able to see that THIS is a convert. The neatest part was that I felt like I was just a small part of the story. His whole family are members and have been waiting and praying for this change for a long time...and he's been visited by so many missionaries he basically had the lessons memorized. But it just goes to show us all to never give up hope...because people really can change. The Lord hears our prayers and our expressions of faith will always bring forth fruits...even if it's not in the time that we want.
I just want to finish off this letter with a scripture...2 Nefi 32:3. It's a scripture mastery (or at least it was...I haven't seen the new list so I'm not sure if it still is...but yeah, no importa) and so I'm sure many of you are familiar with it. But it's so powerful. It says something along the lines of "Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost, therefore they speak the words of Christ. And now behold, feast upon the words of Christ, for the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do" (Sorry I don't have it word for word memorized in English...rough translation from Spanish). Here in the mission, so many people expect us as missionaries to be "angels". An apostle once said that it's our responsibility as missionaries to not give anyone a reason to believe we're NOT angels. I love that. And here it's essentially saying that those who speak the words of Christ by the power of the Holy Ghost speak as angels. So, if I'm doing that as a missionary, then essentially I can be an angel.
Also, in Preach My Gospel Chapter 1 there's a bunch of quotes from the prophets in the past that tell us their feelings about the importance of teaching the gospel. There were two themes that really impressed me from all of the quotes: 1) ALL members of the church have the calling and responsibility to preach the gospel--it's a part of our covenants with God and 2) the work of preaching the gospel is the MOST IMPORTANT work on this earth. I'd encourage you all to take every opportunity you possibly can to develop your relationship with the Holy Ghost, and learn the words of Christ so that when you're presented with an opportunity to share the gospel, you can be an angel to the people you share it with. Remember that we are in the Last Days and that there is an urgency to this work unlike ever before.
Love you all so much! Have a wonderful week! And sorry that I couldn't send pictures this week!
Hermana Garner
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