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| Canyon Lake, Texas |
a lot :)
So the Canyon Lake area is an English area, so I still have rarely used spanish on my mission. I definitely have felt discouraged at times to see that compared to others I still haven't gone to a Spanish area. But it's all about the little opportunities! President Polley in interviews this week talked about how he has felt strongly to not cut down how many Spanish missionaries they send here because of how spread out the Spanish speakers are. Sister Sunderlage and I had the opportunity to join our zone leaders last Monday in one of their lessons. They are teaching a little girl from Honduras who is learning English (which she has perfect English!) but she is really shy so they invited us to come and speak Spanish with her to see if that would help her open up. So little things like that is what I am grateful for. It gives me the opportunity to meet even more wonderful people here in Texas! :)
Sister Sedgwick came to my area on exchanges this week, and we taught Carol who is one of my favorite ladies :) She has been learning about the church for several years and has had many questions about our church, so she makes us work! It's so funny cause sometimes our district goes crazy with her learning process whenever we talk about her. But Sister Sedgwick was great and showed so much love for all the people we met that day, including Carol.
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| Sister Sedgwick |
I went to my first MLC (Missionary Leadership Council) this week, and it was SO GOOD. Wow, I felt like I could conquer the world coming out of that meeting (even though it was 8 hours haha). Basically the whole meeting we talked about how we can improve our goals of how many convert baptisms we have each month, and especially how we can work closely with the ward council and make their goals our goals. In D&C 107 it talks about how the 12 apostles and quorum of the 70 are "traveling ministers". They travel the world to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it's the same thing for us full time missionaries! We are assigned to any part of the world and move around to different areas, to preach the gospel while working closely with ward members who are "standing ministers". It was so cool to learn about that and it strengthened my testimony of how important the members are in missionary work. It truly is MEMBER missionary work!
So a miracle to go along with that! On Saturday night we met with Dolores to finish up her lessons before her baptism, and for a while Sister Sunderlage and I have been discussing who could be a good minister for her. We sought the counsel of our Relief Society President and she suggested a less active couple who live right behind Dolores. The husband is a convert who has a similar religious background to Dolores, and the wife still has a hard time coming to church for family reasons. It was a perfect lesson since the brother has a family history calling and that was our last principle to teach, and the couple just adores Dolores! She was basically teaching us the lesson and just kept talking about how excited she is to go to the temple and do the work for her deceased husband who passed away with a baptism date set. (Side note: President Polley said she might be able to baptize her husband in less than a year in the temple since her husband had a baptism date before he passed. So cool!) And the couple was excited for her baptism and offered to attend temple prep with her. I know that eventually this will help the couple to return to full activity to the church. Miracles everywhere!
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| Driving to thrift shop service! |
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| Our old Bishop's horses |
