First off to catch up with thank you´s
:)
Thank you Grandpa Dougie
and Nana for your recent letter, thank you Grandma Rhead for your letter and
fun newspaper insert about the Paraguayan orchestra, Amy and Sara for your
letters AND CONGRATS AMY I was so excited to find out you are pregnant!!! Thanks
to Katie, Kyle, Sweeney´s, Wrights, and fam for the letters, Thanks Lizzie and
kids... so fun to see pics and all. I love my family. Thank you
Megan and kids for you fun letters and drawings. I think that´s it for the past
few months... letter wise. Love you all so much, your letters seriously
make my life! It´s like Christmas!
Speaking of Christmas, this week has
felt like Christmas a little bit. Just been playing Christmas (church
focused don´t flip) music and it has been a little chilly and over cast the
past couple days I LOVE these days.
But let´s get down to the good stuff...
this week was unreal. To start out, we visited a family (a reference from
Hno Flor) whose 7 year old daughter just died from an accident about 2 weeks
ago. Famila Reyes is their name (Alberto and Ramona). Everytime we
meet someone named Alberto I already feel like I have a special connection with
them Dad. :) (Steve baptized Alberto Medina when he was on his mission in Argentina, and Alberto is an American citizen now and is part of our family) Anyway this family is taking the death of their daughter
really hard and it is hard to give someone faith when they are just bawling
their eyes out hopelessly saying, ¨I don´t want to have faith or believe there
is a God.¨ Hermana Goimarac and I bore testimony of the Plan and tried to
comfort them through testimony of the Savior and how he knows exactly what they
are going through. Our first visit with them Hno Flor (whose kids are all
inactive and struggling right now) and his daughter Gabriella came with us.
It was so neat cuz she shared a bit of testimony and I could tell the
strings that use to be torn were being mended in such sensative moment.
It is so powerful for those with weak testimonies to bear testimony
because you feel it being strengthened. She said she will try and come
back to church. Anyway back to the Reyes family, at the end of our first
visit with them Alberto shook my hand with tears streaming down his face and
said that I remind him (or have the same smile) as his daughter. My heart
ached for them. To think about losing one of my family members (KAte or
Nick or Nate) I couldn´t bear it. I admired their strength to at least
listen to us. I know it brought them peace and I have no doubt in my mind
that what ever trial we are facing in this life it´s nothing the Savio doesn´t
already know. He overcame the world. (John 16:33)
Second of all, we have an investigator
Natalia Rivarola, WHO IS INCREDIBLE! She is the mom of Ale y Sofia (I think I
have told you about her before). Anyway, she has had an addiction to
drugs and drinking for the past 15 years and the past couple months we have
been teaching her on and off. It was unreal the lesson we had with her
the other day. She has had such a change of heart. We set goals in
the Palabra de Sabiduria folleto al otra semana and she has only drunk like two
times and has been cutting back a TON on cigarettes. She said right
before we came she was headed to buy some but then she saw us walking up to her
house. We taught her about the power of the atonement and using D&C
58:2-4. The Lord gives us tribulation to better us. He can see the
outcome when we can´t. She has been reading so much in the Book of Mormon
and is LOVING it. She marks it and the other night was writing en su
diario. She said I am writing my testimony... what I want to share at my
baptism, because my heart is so full. How cute is that! Oh
seriously my heart was brim with joy. Then she tells us (and she cries
all the time... so sensitive to the spirit)with tears in her eyes that she
wants more than anything, and not for anyone else but for her sake, to be
clean. She said, I don´t want to be before Heavenly Father after this
life and stand guilty at the judgement day. She gets it. She gets
the purpose of this life, of the atonement, of this gospel, baptism.
Salvation is personal and will always be, but the Savior is our advocate.
She expressed to us how grateful she is for our help in helping her.
I never though I (of all people) would be able to help someone overcome
the addiction of drugs. The atonement is incredible. I know it isn´t me
but that I am only a small tool by which the Lord is able to accomplish his
work.
Third, now THIS was probably the
sweetest part of my mission yet. We are teaching a cute couple and their two
little girls (Cristian and Celia, Ema (3, reminds me of Boo from Monsters Inc.)
and Jasmine (7, brilliant... read like half the intro to el Libro de Mormon).
Anyway, they are progressing faster than I have EVER seen anyone
progress. They are so open to listen and accept what we have to teach and
fulfill commitments. Cristian says it is unreal that his wife is getting
interested in something spiritual, he said she has been reading the Book of
Mormon at night. Celia says Cristian has always been the religious one in
the relationship. Anyway, our lesson the other day was off the charts!!!
I wish I could have recorded it somehow, Hna Goimarac and I joked that we would
listen to it over and over again for the rest of our lives. That´s how
good it was. The spirit was just incredible. During the lesson is
when I had the sweetest moment of my mission. He was expressing to us
that right before we came he was reading the Book of Mormon and contemplating
the fact that this Book could be true. He said, ¨ I feel something
incredible inside that is hard to describe.¨ I had the thought to share Alma
32:28. The moment we did he sat in silence, then looked up at me and
asked, ¨Did you prepare that before hand?¨ ... no! oh it was the most
satisfying, gratifying, and joyous moment yet in my mission. It was such
a small thought but I knew it was good and followed it. He said it was
EXACTLY how he is feeling. I am learning to just follow those good instincts
and learning that it really is the Spirit. It is the companionship of the
Holy Ghost. Hna Goimarac and I read a talk in the August Liahona by Elder
Dallin H. Oaks on the spirit and recieving revelation. He said, ¨We pray
continuously for guidance, but we shouldn´t expect continuous revelation.¨ Hna
Goimarac had written in the side, ¨We have the constant companionship, not
revelationship of the Holy Ghost.¨ It is so true. We need to trust that
those good feelings/thoughts that we think are us are us and they are
influenced by the Holy Ghost because we are living righteously. Follow them!
Also, we called them yesterday morning
to see if they were still planning on coming to church, only to find they were
in the midst of reading the Book of Mormon together. What! Who does that!
Seriously they are like already members! Plus you should have heard
Cristian after church. Someone gave a talk on Family Home Everning and so
afterward, Cristian was telling us his plan of how is going to plan a FHE and
surprise his wife, and then Tuesday we are going to pass by and they´ll tell us
how it went. So awesome!! It is so cute how in love Cristian and
Celia are. Their little girls are really miracles in their lives cuz it
was almost impossible for them to have kids. I just love their little
family.
I could write like five more pages to
tell you about this week but those were the stellar moments that I will never
forget. Love you all and don´t forget how much the Lord loves you.
xoxo Hope you all have a wonderful week!
Con Cariña,
Hermana Owen
P.S. Hermana Toctaquiza says thank you
thank you thank you for everything and she loves you tons(I´m thinking she got
other mail from you guys) Not sure if she got Bro. Johnson´s letter (she
might have but I wouldn´t know cuz we are comps anymore) But tell him
thank you so much. I really appreciated everyones effort in helping me
make her birthday special. :) xoxo
