Week #61 - Transfers

Hola Familia!

Como estan? This week has been a good one. The first bit was sad as there were a lot of saying good byes and all. Hermana Stevens has served in this area for 7 1/2 months and made a big difference in a lot of people's lives. 

The funniest good-bye was with Cynthia Flores (she is the elder's investigator but she has come to church a lot and we have been working to help fellowship her.) She told me that I was going to cry the most at seeing Hermana Steven leave (she's prolly right) and then we took pictures. Can I say that there is nothing quite so awkward as missionary pictures. The first two were completely normal because the first one was Hermana Stevens with Cynthia and Agupito - Cynthia's boyfriend. Next one completely fine because it is Hermana Stevens and I on either side of Cynthia. The third one however was Hermana Stevens and I on either side of Agupito with Cynthia telling us to get closer... yeah, I did this weird twisting thing to look like I was closer but not really and Hermana Stevens just refused to move... So yeah, they look super funny.

We drove up to transfers... 

We got to the meeting RIGHT on time...

And transfers were announced... 

Hermana Stevens is now serving in Russelville (they just had a baptism this last Saturday - Lord's blessing for all the hard work she has done in this area) ...

And I am now serving with (I bet you can't guess... do I always repeat companions?) HERMANA SMITH!!!! Boo-yeah! I am pretty stoked! This is actually her last transfer, so in missionary vocab/slang/i-don't-know-whatcha-call-it, I am 'killing her off'. Pretty crazy stuff! I am so happy that I get to serve with her again! This is going to be AWESOME!

There was a trunk-or-teat activity this last Saturday. We actually had an investigator show up... but we didn't find him until he was leaving :(  But it was still exciting that he was there. And we have an appointment with him this coming Miercoles so we are pretty excited about that. 

I've learned this week that we should never close ourselves off from opportunities. We went to this one neighborhood that I considered "spiritual harvested out" but with Hermana Smith's new eyes we found a new family to teach and a referral that we had never knocked before. Super awesome!

I loved your quote "Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill. It reminds me of a section in Preach My Gospel in Chapter 9, called No Effort Wasted. There are things that we do everyday of our lives that we may consider failures because they might not have rendered immediate results. But like a story that Elder Zwick shared with us when he was here, "There was a time when the Brazilian government was being rather stringent about how many visas they would give to churches. It so happened that the law was that each church group would only be allowed 60 visas a month. This was clearly not sufficient as there were 15 missions in Brazil. So Elder Zwick and a local leader were given the task to prepare a presentation to give to the President of Brazil and to ask for more than 60 visas per month. The time came that they were to meet with the President they arrived for their meeting. But there was an emergency that the President needed to take care of so they were given the option to either wait for the President, to reschedule for tomorrow, or they could meet with the secretary of state instead. They chose to talk with the Secretary of State. Before they said anything the Secretary of State came in and said,'oh you are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints? My family used to be taught by the missionaries when I was younger. Those missionaries were awesome, they were punctual, polite and we learned a lot from them even though we didn't get baptized. So what can I help you with?' Elder Zwick hadn't presented anything and they didn't even really know how many visas they should ask for but it came to him to ask for 200 visas a month. The secretary of state arranged it so that the Church received 60 visas per week." What is so amazing about this story is that the efforts of those missionaries even though their efforts did not result in a baptism at that time resulted in thousands of baptisms years later because of their diligence and hard work.

Moral of the story. NEVER give up. You know what you are supposed to be doing. So do it. And even though we will never know the full extend of influence we have had in this life we will be able to know that in the next life and I am sure that we will all be astounded. We will be astounded that some of the experiences we considered failures were absolutely crucial years down the road. 

Well... That was about it as far as super awesome insights... 

A little funny, My companion walked into a spider's trap... there was a tootsie roll on the ground so she went to pick it up and when she stood up she stood up into a gigantic spider's web... we were picking off bits and pieces of web off of her for a while... It was pretty funny. That diabolical spider hoping to catch some innocent little kid and it got a missionary instead. 

Well, I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Love you bunches more than oats!

Hermana Ives