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| We visited this lagoon. |
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| My 93 year old friend |
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| Halloween! |
Hey guys. I love you so much. I love Mondays. I love every day. I am totally healthy :) I know that Heavenly Father is protecting me solely because of your prayers. Keep doing that :)
The lady on the computer next to me just about shoved her face into mine and shouted ¨O hallelujah! Dios es bueno! O glory glory, gracias Senor, Dios es glory! Hallelujah!¨ And then turned back to her computer :) hahahaha I love Guatemaltecos. It´s been a great week here in Guate. We are working hard and really trying to do all we can, every second of every day to plant and reap these seeds of faith. What a glorious work this is. It truly is amazing to see the Lord work miracles in our lives and in our hearts. I love being in His service.
We were walking home from our last cita last night and had a little time to spare. We were playing on heading to check up on an investigator that lives close to our house. There are two ways to get to where she lives but I just had a little feeling we should choose one of the ways. So we went that way... and a little bit down the road I saw a member standing outside of her house. She is great. She leads the music in Sacrament and could not sing louder. I love her with my whole heart. I had walked into Sacrament that morning 10 seconds before the meeting started and she pulled my arm as I passed her bench and told me that her eyes were hurting so she had told the Bishop that I would lead the music in Sacrament. Well, good to know. Good thing our investigators were on time so I made it right before the opening hymn. Anyway, she was the one standing outside her house so I stopped to ask her how her eyes were feeling. She immediately burst into tears and told me that her father who has Alzheimers (no idea how to spell that in english or spanish) had left that morning for a walk and never came back. We prayed and sang hymns and prayed some more. When we prayed, we felt a lot of peace and felt that the Lord would help her find him. The Lord always leads us to those hearts and homes that need a little hope and a little light. I love bearing His name and carrying His light. We haven't heard if they found him yet. We had to go home because it was curfew and I was so stressed about it. It was too dangerous for us to go out and look, but the members were looking. I haven't talked with her yet today.
My companion is a gem and we are loving the work here. I have learned so so so much while trying to help her learn so so so much. I am grateful that the Spirit is really our trainer and helps us through it all. Spanish is still coming along. Poco a poco... but all is well. She doesn´t love weekly planning so I´ve been inventing different things to make it more fun and more of a powerful spiritual experience instead of a bunch of paperwork and numbers and names. We had a powerful experience a few weeks ago at the very end of our planning. We had finished writing and planning and settling everything for the week and as we were kneeling down to pray I felt the strongest impression to bring all we had done before the Lord in a way different than I ever had before. We kneeled down and prayed about every single investigator we were teaching, every name we marked as progressing, and everyone with a fecha for baptism. We paused between each and really tried to listen for the promptings of the Spirit. These are His people and His souls. It has been amazing to see those promptings and whisperings of the Spirit come to pass. All of the people we felt good about are progressing. All of the people we felt like we should challenge to do a certain thing, we have challenged and they are doing it. And all of the people we felt like are ready for baptism are progressing, slowly but surely, towards that sacred ordinance. It is amazing to see the Lord´s plan unfold!
One sister, Cecilia, has a fecha for this Saturday. (She has infinity names... something my comp said that made me laugh so hard- ¨When I ask people for their name, I don´t want them to tell me all 8 of them. I just want them to say the one that I am going to call them.¨ hahaha she is great.) She is the one whose baby died but she has the strongest testimony, she is reading the Book of Mormon, she passed her interview and now is the countdown. Just keep praying for her. I love la familia M. They are so special and they are all active again. I love completing these little families.
Your prayers for Mayra and her family are working :) We had a miracle with them this week. She called me in the middle of the week and said, ¨my husband doesn´t want you guys to come see him so if you could just visit me once a week and not come at night when he is here that would be great.¨ Well that was super sad for me because I adore this family. So we were up in her area on Saturday morning and were hiking to go see Mayra when all the sudden my comp said ¨he´s there¨. I didn´t know who she was talking about until I looked over this giant field of sunflowers and saw that her husband was standing outside the house with the children. He is never there! I could not believe it so I hiked through the flowers as fast as I could and ran up to him. He was super hesitant and didn´t want to talk. I was chatting with Mayra and making her and the kids laugh and trying to help him know that we are normal... after a few minutes he warmed up and said we could sing a hymn and pray but then he really backed off again. My comp started with the first 2 points of the first lesson and then he just went off about everything... he told us that Mayra wanted to be baptized but he said no (that was good to know) and went into the longest story about his life. He talked for probably 15 solid mintues and by the end had tears coming down his face as he said ¨I was the only one in my family who believed in Jesus Christ and I tried to do everything I could to follow Him. Now He feels distant and there is something missing in my heart and my prayers. I want to be closer to Him again but it is just not the same.¨ The Spirit was SO strong. We bore testimony of the truth and power the gospel has in our lives to bind up our broken hearts, heal our homes and families, and fill our souls with the most incredible portion of love. It was one of the most powerful lessons I have yet had. He agreed to let us return for another cita and I am just praying with my whole soul that he will listen. I am so grateful for the Spirit and for the truth that lies in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson gave a talk called Redemption that I absolutely loved. In it he said-
¨This kind of redemptive work means helping people with their problems. It means befriending the poor and the weak, alleviating suffering, righting wrongs, defending truth, strengthening the rising generation, and achieving security and happiness at home. Much of our redemptive work on earth is to help others grow and achieve their just hopes and aspirations.¨
That is the work we are doing. Helping people be happy and achieve all the hopes and dreams they planned and imagined in the pre-existence. They all believed in this once upon a time. They all chose the Savior´s plan. They are all dying to remember and re-live those experiences that we so abundantly enjoy in our lives. Like the quote by CS Lewis that Dad loves-
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal...." "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship... All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilites, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
We are all one big family and we are all getting home together. This is the Lord´s church. He is leading this work. What a blessing it is to serve :) Our time is so short to do all we can! All my love and prayers! Thanks for everything, my dear friends and family.
Hermana McGill
