Yeah so I hit my 6 month mark this last week! How crazy is that? Man I can´t believe that, but at the same time I can. But things are going well here in Badjoz (I hope you learned how to pronounce that one now dad). We´ve had our rough moments, and this last week was hard, but that kind of just how mission life seems to go. It´s a constant roller coaster and you have to work hard for everything you get, only to turn around and work 10 times harder to keep it.
So this week started out good with a nice, fun p-day (the castle that I sent you a picture of last week). And then things went a little weird after that. Tuesday we basically spent all day, apart from 4 hours, on a bus. We had intercambios (exchanges?? maybe that´s the word??) with the sister training leaders on wednesday so that was why. We caught a bus on tuesday morning to go to Cáceres (a 2 hr bus ride) for district meeting there. Then we stayed there until we had to catch our bus to Sevilla (a 4 hr bus ride) where thank goodness we got to watch a movie! That´s the nice thing about the longer bus rides on nicer buses. So we read the spanish subtitles of the movie Megamind. Haha, it´s a pretty funny movie. I enjoyed it. In Sevilla we met up with the SHEs and then Hna Brown came with me back to Badajoz (a 3 hr bus ride!). Haha oh man, traveling, I never thought I would spend so much time on a bus. It´s a dang good thing I don´t get car sick. It´s still not fun, not at all, but it´s at least managable.
Wednesday was a good day. Just a normal day. We emailed a menos activa a spiritual thought for the week because she lives too far away for us to go out and visit her, then went to our Ward Mission Leader´s house for lunch where we are liver. Yeah, not a fan, haha. Then we met up with the elders and went to a residency home to go spend some time with some elderly people. That´s always fun! They´re so sweet! A little hard to understand sometimes, but they´re still fun. Then after that we had some good citas with 2 of our fechas. Well ok, we thought we had one good lesson, and the other one kind of through Hna Muse and I for a loop when she got back and we talked about it. I´ll tell you about it in just a sec.
Thursday we traveled again to Sevilla to re-exchange companions and then Hna Muse and I headed back to Badajoz to get back to work. So now about the tricky parts of this week. The first lesson we had on wednesday was with Gladis. We talked about the importance of coming to church and what it means and that she needs to be there on Sundays. We thought everything went well, she told us she understood it all and she got why she needed to be there and everything was fine, until she didn´t show up to church yesterday, again, and when we called her later we found out that she went to church with her husband (who she´s been seperated from for a while and we haven´t heard good things about him from her) in her other church. Oh man, that was a rough one. Especially since the rule here is that your investigators have to come to church twice before you can baptize them and next week is stake conference in Sevilla, so now we´re going to have to move her baptism back a week, at the least.
The second lesson we had was with María. She was very iffy about everything. We found out she isn´t consistently reading the BoM which we didn´t know. And then from other people, we found out that she´s got some fears of commitment and doesn´t really understand the Atonement, so her baptism in a week and a half isn´t feeling too strong right now either. We´ve got a whole lot of work to do with her still, but we´re praying for a miracle that she´ll be able to make it work for the 8th.
As for Fransisco, we´ve seen him in the streets and talked to him a few times there, but haven´t been able to meet with him this week. He spends all morning in rehab for his legs and then this past week spent the afternoons in the dentists office. He´s getting a whole lot of work done, teeth pulled, replacements being put back in, all that fun stuff, so he hasn´t had much time or energy to meet with us, hopefully this week though. But yeah, we will probably have to move his baptism too.
So there´s the info for this week! Haha, oh man. It was a week of lots of prayers and frustration and fasting. And if there´s one thing I learned this week, it´s that I do absolutely nothing in this work. Everything that happens depends on other people. The missionary I am and can become is so dependant on companions, the people you meet and get to teach depends on the Lord, and the decisions they make and things they do depends completely on them. This work is so very much not about me. I may be here, I may be the one doing the actions, but I am not doing anything. That´s what I´ve learned this week. It was funny, Hna Muse and I were talking yesterday about how last week all these miracles just kind of fell into our laps, and we asked oursleves "could it really just be that easy?" And this week we found the answer to be a big strong NO!!! Haha, man, we really had to work hard this week with the little time we felt like we had, and hopefully it´ll pay off soon, because we felt like we just back-tracked the whole week.
Yet somehow in the midst of this week, I could honestly see my love for this work grow. I could see myself being sad to think of leaving this life that I´ve begun. I found myself being ok with rejection and laughing it off instead. I found my testimony of my Savior grow and I knew that even though it was a rough week, I have nothing to complain about, because I have my Savior, and there is nothing that I´ve felt that He hasn´t. There is nothing that gone on that hasn´t been a part of my Heavenly Father´s plan. There is nothing that happened this last week that wasn´t left in His hands. And how grateful I am for that knowledge, that everything in the end is in His hands.
I know that this is the work of the Savior, there is no doubt that He is in it, that He only needs us here so that we can strengthen ourselves and become better, I know he doesn´t need someone as weak as me out here trying to bring His children back home to Him. He could do it so much easier with others, but I know He knows what I need. The things I need to learn and grow, the experiences I need to push me to become the person He needs me to be, all of this can only be found through the experiences of the mission. I´m learning that now. And that´s why I´m here. To be the instrument in His hands. That although I am weak, He has called me to this work, that I may bring some soul unto repentance and back to live with His and receive His glory in the next life. There is no greater work than this, the salvation of our brethren. I love my Savior and am grateful for His atoning sacrifice. I cannot understand fully the atonement, but I know enough to be grateful for it.
I love you all. Don´t worry about me out here, I´m living on the Lord´s time and always in His hands. Know that I am always praying for you and I love you more than all the stars in the sky.
Hermana Walton
One of my favorite picture of Badajoz! Look how pretty it is!!!!
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