Virginia Is For Lovers {Of The Lord}: Letter #6 10/14/14

Hola! Como le va?!

This week has been a crazy whirlwind of emotions/life lessons/tragedy/triumph, the whole sha-bang. I love love the mish because, no matter how well you think you're doing, or whether or not you think you've 'got it down', you definitely don't and The Lord has the kindest, sweetest, most loving way of showing you that. There's ALWAYS room for improvement when our end goal is to become like Christ. I've seen a whole bunch of my weaknesses laid out in front of me like a 10 course meal, but i'm super grateful because, although they taste worse than the CCM cafeteria food (jk, it's good, but for the sake of an analogy) at the moment, I know at some point in the mission, or in my lifetime, or even after they'll turn into strengths and be absolutely delicioso to the taste!

Hm, hm, hm.. Hma Flitton and I gave our worst lesson this week, and that was no fun. Idk what it was, well actually it was a lot of things, but I was already struggling and the spirit was just not there. Simple as that. We've begun teaching people in our class in addition to our teacher/investigators and that is a lot harder than you'd think. Not the amount of lessons, just the classmate teaching is weird. Anyways, I had a good ol' fashioned 'I can't do this and I thought I was making so much progress and now I feel like i've regressed right back to my week one self and why why why me' which is never good for anything but I just wanted to wallow. After I wallowed for a little while, I started studying my scriptures for personal study and came across 1 Ne. 3. The good ol' "I will go and do" scripture where Nephi basically tells his bros what's up. Except for this time, it took on an entirely new meaning to me! I knew that was exactly what I needed to do 'go and do' this thing the Lord had commanded me (mission), and took straight to heart the promise that He ALWAYS provides a way to accomplish the difficult tasks he asks of us. WE CAN RECIEVE PERSONAL REVELATION THROUGH THE BOOK OF MORMON. It's so important to read it because, as you see with investigators time and time again, it literally has NO point if it just sits on your bedside table. But when it's in your hands, and in your heart, it really does become a golden book.

The next day in class, Hmo Vargas said he had something to share with us, that he'd had a random (never ever random) impression to talk about and bear his testimony on obedience. I had prayed really hard the night before to know what I could do to feel more close to my Padre Celestial and to be a better, more inspired missionary and *BAM*, Hmo V answers EVERY SINGLE ONE of my questions ever. And I knew it was for me. And I cried and cried and I am just eternally grateful for a loving Heavenly Father and teachers who are in sync with the spirit and love us enough to take time out of the lesson to follow their promptings. It's true, y'all. The Lord KNOWS us. He hears our prayers! Estoy MUY agradecida.

After this ever so loving spiritual claps on the cheek, we went outside to play a game. Hmo Vargas absolutely loves this game where you all have to stand in a circle and each person says one word of the particular thing we're memorizing (this day it was Santiago (James) 1:5,) really fast and if you say it to slow you lose and and he just got wayyyy into it and started getting in our faces and waving his hands around all intense like and it was quite literally the funniest thing I have EVER seen, I think. I dunno, maybe you had to be there, but for some reason I wrote that down as something worthy of my email, so you can just know that you should wish you were there because I've never laughed that hard in my whole life. Jajajaja! (Typing spanish laughs is a dream come true- you should try it sometime)

Sunday, we watched a really solid devotional by Jeffrey R Holland that blew us completely out of the water (as per the usual). LOVE ELDER H. It was, yet again, full of a's to my q's. The spirit here is just nuts town, I can't even describe it! It makes me super stoked because.. GUESS WHO'S COMING ON SATURDAY! Neil L. Andersen, babyyyy! Hma F and I have known for a while that someone really special was coming to visit because we are BFFS with the lady who knows everything, cute Hma. Jones, the wife of the executive secretary to the Mission Pres, but now it's a hot topic of conversation for everyone. Tonight at Tuesday Devotional we are practicing how to shake an apostles hand. Yeah, you heard me, we're doing a RUN THROUGH of a handshake. It might be a titch silly, but Presidente Pratt did warn the Elders that if they ask him to trade ties they will be shot. What i'm trying to say is the reason we are practicing handshakes is most directly correlated with the crazy antics of the elders. Haha.

We got to go to the temple today and it was SO NEAT. Getting outside the gates was the happiest thing that has ever happened to me, Mexico City is literally the coolest place in the universe. I often times feel like The Hunchback of Notredame, or Ariel when she sings that she wants to be 'Part of your woooorld!', and I was like a kid in a candy store to finally be able to see the outside world! I love latino humans more than life! Ah, it was awesome. We could only go to the visitor's center because the temple is closed, which is a TOTAL bummer because I am craving the temple more than life right now, but it was still beautiful. The spirit in the Christus room completely enveloped me, I am so grateful for His example. I became BFFS with the workers in the 'Zarahemla store' as the little gift shop is called and it was so magical trying to talk with them en espanol. We took way too long in there and were almost gonna miss our bus when we still had to get a photo, so we did and then this cute couple came up to us and asked if they could get a picture WITH us.. hahah, wut? They were so excited to get a picture with the missionaries! It was the first time it hit me that I really am a MISSIONARY. Like, in the CCM, everybody is a missionary so you don't realize, but it was just so so neat. It got me super stoked for the field!

The Mexico City Temple

Yesterday will forever go down as the single best day of my mission to date. Honestly, I don't think I have ever been so happy in my entire life! I tasted the joy that you always always hear about in terms of the mish! So, we have this investigator Daniel, right. He's played by Hermano Silva and he's sometimes a bit of a stinker. Like, we love him, but he's 16 and a lot of the time doesn't seem to care about what we have to say. SO, i've been worried about how to reach him for a while now and the other day I was praying to know what to do and I had the thought that we should sing with him. I had never thought about it before, but he'd previously told us that he liked music a lot so we decided to go with it. One problem that I have before lessons is I get SOOOO incredibly nervous. Like, so. It's a complete lack of faith and trust in the work, but sometimes I just get scared that I won't know what to say or that it'll just be way bad. But I've had the thought over and over again that if we ask in FAITH, he will help us with whatever we ask. So in this lesson, our last lesson with Daniel, mind you, I decided to be bold. We prayed before, I waltzed in there and we started to talk. We told him that we'd like to sing a hymn with him, and I told him with all the boldness I could muster that I KNEW the spirit would come when we sang. And I wasn't scared or anything, and we prayed for the spirit, and began singing I Stand All Amazed, or 'Ambroso Me Da'. We sang the first verse, then told him to join in for the second and third. He did, but he couldn't hardly sing because he was crying. The spirit was NUTS. Then, afterward, we asked him how he felt. He basically just poured his heart out to us about how he was so grateful for Christ and how he wanted to do all the things we asked and wanted to change and knew he needed to and it was so incredibly powerful. We talked about repentance, and at the end I bore my testimony of The Savior's love for him. It was the coolest thing I've ever experienced. I gained such an incredibly deep appreciation and love for the Savior, and I knew that He loved Daniel. That He knew him and wanted nothing more than for Daniel to do the things necessary to come unto Him. It was incredible! I am SO grateful to be a missionary. It is seriously the neatest thing in the world.

Hermana Melendez and Hermana Beltran both from Mexico. Hma B speaks really good english because she grew up in the Mormon colonies in Chiuaua, so she was our translator when it was absolutely dire that we got our point across, but we learned so much and felt so much love from these Hermanas. They will always be in my heart and they are going to help me find a cute latino boy when I get home to marry, so that's neat. :)

I love my investigators, I love my teachers, I love my district, all the people I've met here, I love the gospel and I LOVE the Lord. He really does love each and every one of us, He cares, He knows, He understands. I am so, so incredibly sad to leave the CCM on Monday but SO excited to meet real humans with real problems and help them to know that there is someone who understands PERFECTLY!

Love, love, love you all! Next time we chat, I'll be headed home to the states! VA here I comeeee!

Love, Hma Yost <3