This has been the single busiest week off my life, but absolutely phenomenal.
The weather here is seriously bipolar... more bipolar than Washington. At the beginning of the week it was freezing cold! Rainy and windy and cold, cold, cold! Its a good thing I didn't pack any warm clothes since I'm going to Arizona!!! The only thing I brought is my Columbia jacket that I wore in the -20 degree weather of Idaho winters... So at first it was helpful, but then I was getting too hot. Word to those who ever come to Mexico during winter... it does get cold. But as the week went on it got hot again. Yesterday at one point it was like 85 degrees. There was also the craziest lightning storm last night. The sky was flashing probably about every 30 seconds, but there was no thunder. It was strange.
Last week Hermana Enniss and I started reading the book of Mormon in Spanish. We read it out loud every morning for about 30 minutes before breakfast. We heard a quote from President Hinckley that promised if you read the book of Mormon in the language that you are learning, in six weeks you will
know what you need to, to be able to preach the gospel in that language. So one week down, five to go. I can already see a difference in my Spanish though. My pronunciation is getting a lot better and I am usually able to kind of understand the gist of what we are reading. It is so crazy how simply changing the first 30 minutes of our day, has affected our Spanish so much.
know what you need to, to be able to preach the gospel in that language. So one week down, five to go. I can already see a difference in my Spanish though. My pronunciation is getting a lot better and I am usually able to kind of understand the gist of what we are reading. It is so crazy how simply changing the first 30 minutes of our day, has affected our Spanish so much.
We also memorized the first vision. First in English and then in Spanish. The English part was pretty easy considering I have heard it repeated over and over for most of my life. The Spanish part, on the other hand, is quite a bit harder. So far all I've got is "vi una columna de luz, mas brillante que el sol, directament arriba de mi cabeza; y este luz gradualmente descendi hasta descanzar sobre mi." Not much, and that is probably spelled wrong... but hey you gotta admit we've done good!
Okay, the scavenger hunt. So after I got done writing last week, we headed out to find the treasure. It actually didn't take too long. We found the hiding place before we found the clues haha. And what we found was... the plates of the CCM! So awesome! It is basically a bunch of stories written my Missionaries who have already left, about things that happened to them while they were here. The best part is that they are written in biblical language so it sounds like "and it came to pass that they served pizza for dinner" etc, etc. They were so much fun to read. Now we have to write our own stories and find another worthy district to pass it on to. No new districts have come into our zone, but we are hoping that tomorrow we will get some newbies.
This week in class we watched a video that had clips of talks from Elder Eyring and Elder Holland, with the Jesus the Christ video playing in the background. Something that Elder Holland said that really hit my heart was "I am convinced missionary work isn't easy, because salvation isn't a cheap experience". I have heard that quote before, but in reference to the rest of the talk, and with Christ's life being portrayed in the back, it was totally different. The couples days before we watched this, I had been having a hard time. I always feel so tired and run down both physically and spiritually. Everyone told me that I would never be more tired in my life than while I am on my mission, but for some reason I did not totally believe them. Now... I believe them. Anyway, this exhaustion was starting to affect my learning and my focus. I wasn't concentrating as hard as I should have and I definitely could be doing more to learn. So we watched this video and it was basically a punch in the gut to get working. He also said something along the lines of "When we go through times where we are rejected, yelled at and spit upon... remember to stand tall. We are serving side by side with the most pure and perfect missionary". We are on the Lord's time here and have no excuse to mess around. We have six short weeks here in the CCM to prepare to go out into the "lone and dreary world" (that's what we call the field here haha) and if we don't use this time, we will not be prepared. We just saw a district leave that has been here for six weeks and knows less Spanish than we do at our third week. They will all be incredible missionaries, but I just want to feel that when I leave, I have done as much as I can to prepare.
Now for the most amazing, exciting experience yet. On Saturday Hermana Enniss and I had the incredible opportunity to teach our first real lesson. We had just finished our practice lesson and were sitting with our district waiting for class to start. And Hermano, who works here, approached our group and explained that he was there with his sister and his sisters boyfriend (who is not a member) and was wondering if any of us would be willing to talk with him. We volunteered right away. I'm pretty sure I wasn't myself for a second in time because the minute I realized what we had done, I freaked out. We have only been here for 3 weeks! Thank goodness the guy spoke pretty decent English. Hermana Enniss and I said a quick prayer and then we went into the classroom to teach him. His name is Daniel (pronounced Naniel). He was raised catholic but doesn't really go to church much anymore. He is going to school and has been dating Maria for about 5 months. He hadn't really heard anything about the church, not even who Joseph Smith is, so we got pretty lucky. We had a clean slate to work with. We went ahead and started teaching a lesson about the restoration of the gospel. We were able to bear our testimonies a couple times and the spirit was so incredibly strong. I had to hold back these tear ducts from exploding a few times haha. His main question at the end was why we consider our church to be so much different than other churches and for a second I got a little worried because I couldn't think of an answer right away. But my amazing companion explained that we believe that God still gives us revelation to this day and that the Heavens are not closed to us. We talked about the Book of Mormon and how if he reads it and prays about it, he will receive an answer whether it is true or not. I had my Book of Mormon that we were all given when we got here that is combined with the Peal of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants, and at the very end, I whipped it out of my case and gave it to him. He was totally shocked. He kept insisting that I keep it since it is nice. Even the Hermano and Maria were telling me to keep it, but I insisted that he needed it. I hope that was proof enough of how strongly I believe in its words. We finished the lesson, thanked them for their time and then headed to class. Not 2 minutes later I busted out in tears. I feel bad for poor Hermana Enniss, I cry about pretty much everything haha. But it really was a powerful experience. First real lesson and first Book of Mormon given away. It was definitely one of the most spiritual experiences I have ever had in my life.
Challenge of the week: I challenge you to start a gratitude/hand of the Lord journal. This is something that I started while I was taking a religion class at BYU-I and I brought my journal with me to Mexico and started reading through my entries. You don't have to write huge things, it could be as small as "someone complimented my shoes" or "the weather was good today and it cheered me up". But as times goes on and you write more and more, you start to become more aware of how present the Lord's hand is in your life.
Thank you to everyone that writes me each week. It honestly makes me so excited when I get on my email and see how much support I have. I love you all and hope everyone is doing swimmingly!
Love,
Hermana Lundquist