Hello family and Friends!
life here on the little outer banks is just treating me wonderfully! I am loving it for the most part. :)
This week we had a lot of opportunities to do service and we had Zone Conference! Which was INCREDIBLE!!
This week we had the chance to visit a less active, hermana chinchilla. She is just this adorable old lady, 80. She is just the greatest. She just whips out her scriptures each time we go over. But this time I decided that we should watch finding faith with her. She LOVED it!! She just was glued to the screen the whole time. And her son joined in for about 15 minutes. So we have a potential with him. I think it sparked his interest. She is just this sweet lady though, I feel bad, she seems so lonely. So hopefully our visits help. mostly she just doesn't come to church because she is old and it's in english. haha. But we will hopefully get her son driving her there again. =)
This week we had an extremely excellent lesson with Doris. She is just the greatest. She was a former investigator and I know she has so much potential! She has so many wonderful questions. I know that she will get an answer if she looks for it. We talked about the book of mormon with her. And read paragraph by paragraph the introduction and just talked with her about it. I think this was probably one of the BEST lessons of my whole mission. The spirit was just so strong. She was truly in tune and listening intently. She was intrigued that this book had only been translated one time. She committed to read it. :) I think my testimony at the end really helped her too. I also told her that I could testify that it was the same in each language because in all honesty I think reading from the book of mormon is what has helped me learn spanish. It is just that it does directly translate so you can understand it. I thought it was a wonderful lesson.
This week we also had ZONE CONFERENCE!!! Which was incredible!
The spirit was so strong throughout the whole conference. :)
We drove up to Virginia Beach for the conference. So it basically was a road trip kind of day. ;)
the conference was themed on 'doubt not fear not' and it was just incredible. The mission doctors spoke to us and the therapist from lds family services. It was really neat. It was basically on stress and eliminating fears. I really enjoyed it.
President and sister baker also introduced our mission's hymn. 'Brighter Beams the Fathers mercy". I am excited, this hymn explains our mission perfectly. (especially because we have about a bazillion lighthouses in our mission too!).
We also had a training about the play coming to Norfolk. The mormons production is coming into two parts of our mission so we had a training about it. It was actually really interesting. Due to this we are going to have a social media split, where members will be with us throughout the whole day! And they will capture what missionaries really do and highlight our lives. Then they will post it to social media websites. It is going to be a wonderful opportunity for us. I know that many blessings will come. This production has caused many people to have interest in the book of mormon and missionaries. So hopefully we will see many investigators come from this. :)
We also had a really excellent lesson with Eduardo, Adolfo and Adolfo's son Jason. It was on the plan of salvation. We talked a lot about it and the importance of it. They had some really excellent questions, one having to do with the difference between a spirit and soul. It was great. I tried to set them for baptism on November 1st (our social media day) and they started laughing. That is definitely the day of the dead in Mexico and all other hispanic countries. ;) I thought it could be perfect though. . . baptism, laying away or your sins 'dying' you know... ;) They said they needed to know a little more before they set a date with us. So we will see with them. Each week they seem to be adding more people to the lessons. There was actually about 5 people in that lesson but those three were teh active participants.
This week we had the chance to do lots of SERVICE! it was wonderful! The ward herer was having a yard sale and all the benefits went to the food pantry here. So we ended up helping set up,take down, etc at the yard sale. Personally it made me miss yard selling and what not. I think we need to do another yard sale when I get home. :) So be prepared!!
Overall it was a success though. We raised over a $1,000 to donate to the local food pantry. So it was really neat. There were also a few hispanics that came so we talked to them a little. ;)
We had a marvelous lesson with Israel. We did it at Sister Decker's home and Torin came with us (he is one of the only ones...literally who speaks spanish in the ward). But Torin came too. We watched the Restoration video and talked about prayer. We ended up really focusing on prayer because he really was relating to Joseph Smith. He has sincere desires to know what is right and what to do. =) I see lots of potential with him. He is going to be a great addition when he joins the church. We challenged him to pray about Joseph Smith being a prophet of God. We didn't talk about the Book of Mormon because he can't read, so we are trying to get him a cd of the book of mormon in spanish. :) So hopefully we will figure that out soon. =)
Basically that was our week. Nothing too exciting happened. But at the same time everything as a missionary seems to be the same. The 'normal' routine. haha. But I love it! Being a missionary is so wonderful. I know I will be so sad to leave this when the time comes. It is such a unique experience to have the chance to testify of Christ each and everyday and become more like him. Collin was telling me how much he misses it and I know that will be me. I will definitely live it up while I can. =)
I was reading in the scriptures in 1 nephi 20:10 and I really loved it. It reminded me of what my mission president told me at the beginning of my mission when I was struggling. "the lord will refine your personality and character as you serve this mission, but you will still be the wonderful self you are; just shinier and with greater spiritual capacity..."
I know that it is so true. The lord makes us the people we are supposed to become. The more we trust in him the better we will progress in this life. =)
I love you all so much! It looks like life is going well. I am so excited to see all the wonderful changes heavenly father is doing to you! i know you all will be so much better than when I left (like you weren't wonderful already... you will just be better!). I can't wait to see you all again. But until then, be a missionary! live what you know. Remember who you are and where you came from and that someone in North Carolina cares. =)
I love you! Have a wonderful week,
Hermana Gray
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