Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Week #5: Soda...is NOT my friend!

Week #5 June 28, 2016

Hola,

This week was another great week! We taught a lot of lessons and the spirit was really strong in each one. I really feel like my Spanish is improving everyday. I have been speaking Spanish like all the time now, which is really helping!

I forgot to tell you guys that I gave a talk in sacrament meeting just over a week ago in Spanish! I thought it was rough but i got a lot of compliments on it! Funny story actually, so I wrote a whole talk and put it in my Spanish bible (cause I was going to read a scripture from John) but then accidentally left my bible AND my talk in the classroom. So I totally winged my talk. good thing i had an idea of what i wanted to say and have been preparing to teach the gospel in Spanish for the past 5 weeks cause otherwise that would have been so terrible. The way that talks work here is that everyone in the zone writes a talk and you find out who is speaking after the sacrament has already been blessed and passed. so they announced that i was speaking and then 30 seconds later, I was up giving a talk.

If any of you wanted to know about my soda experience...it was awful haha. Soda...is NOT my friend. So at dinner I had like 7 sodas in front of me and I would have to close my eyes and drink one and guess what kind of soda it was. Lets just say that 4 of the 7 were "sprite" and only guessed 3 of them right. I thought Diet Coke was sprite...and that orange soda was sprite...but I did guess sprite when I drank sprite. Because I’m not used to all the carbonation and everything, I literally felt sick all the rest of the night and was throwing up from like 3am-5am...ya so I’m not drinking soda anymore. Throwing it up was no bueno.

So this week we got 22 new elders and 4 new Hermana in our zone...its so many people but they are all really fun and super sweet. a lot of them are struggling with homesickness so we have been helping out with that a lot. There was a devotional on Sunday about good/bad reasons to go home from a mission early and i think that it really helped them. 

The trickiest thing for me right now is finding the needs of my investigator. To help this, my companion and I are going to practice asking each other "get to know you" type questions in Spanish as a role play for different investigators. I think this practice will help because so often I want to ask more questions, but I run out of questions that I know how to say within the first 60 seconds of a lesson.

My best experience from this week was yesterday at TRC. Hermana M and I were in a trio with Hermana J, but our investigator didn't show up. J (an investigator of TRC) came out to the hall and starting talking to us because his missionaries haven't come the last three times. We decided to just teach him instead of our investigator. When we started off Hermana J asked him some normal get to know you questions (she is much better at getting to know people in Spanish than Hermana M and me), and he just kept talking and talking about one of his big struggles right now. As he was talking, I had no idea how the gospel could help him in his situation, but towards the end of the story what I needed to say came so clearly to me. Because I had shared what I did, Hermana J was able to share a related experience and testify of the principle. The lesson continued and I was able to also share an experience and testify, and Hermana M was able to share an experience and testify. The spirit was so strong! I know that in real life J is a member, but I think that we were able to help him in his real, current circumstances. I came to love J in just that short amount of time. At the end, Hermana J encouraged him to say the closing prayer, and after some convincing, he gave the most beautiful prayer.

Also! This was great! I taught my teacher Hno C as himself. and I had no idea what to teach him! He is so righteous and perfect, but he said his dad is struggling a little bit. While M and I were preparing, I got a clear impression that we should use Jacob 5 to help him. It ended up working out so well! We likened the parable of the vineyard to him personally. The lord= Lord. Servant= Hno C. Tree= his dad. The servant has to cut back the branches because they have overgrown the good roots of the tree. after the tree has been cut back and focused on it's roots, it brings forth good fruit and the servant is blessed with joy for his diligence. It was actually so beautiful.

It’s been a great week! Love and miss you all! 

Hermana Greenwood

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