The Beauty of Missionary Work‏

From:	Callie Horton (callie.horton@myldsmail.net)
Sent:	Mon 11/18/13 8:56 AM

Hola familia!

 

This last week was weird. Great, but weird! We just had meetings almost every single morning (which were AMAZING!) and so it just made the rest of the day go a little differently, but it was great. We had a meeting with all of the Spanish missionaries in the mission last Thursday. HOLY COW. It was soooo good! A lot of it was in English, but I just felt so edified and even more excited to go out and do Spanish work! I meant to bring my notes to the library, but I forgot so I will try to remember some of my favorite parts. We had a really great lesson on language study and just on learning the language. The missionary that gave it was pretty much fluent in like 4 months so it was really great to hear everything that he had to say. One thing that I loved was that he talked about how fast we learn the language depends on our dedication. I know I won't be the first to say this, but learning another language is HARD! You really have to put your mind to it and have a desire to do it. There are a lot of things that I have done in my mission that I probably would have never done otherwise in my life. Asking someone to be baptized in a language that I don't even know on my 5th day in the field? Yeah. (And I totally didn't even say it right haha) But the Lord has called me here to Virginia to speak Spanish to the Hispanic people. That's why I did it. That's why I was even able to do it! And you have to speak Spanish a lot of times when it is the last thing that you want to do at that time. But we do it anyways because we need to be dedicated to learning this language. Another thing he talked about was how we need to constantly be progressing in the language. Learning new words, new language rules, and always perfecting our accents. It was great! President Wilson gave some amazing thoughts about learning Spanish too. He talked about how we need to keep using it after our missions because the Lord may have other uses for it. AND he said that we can now communicate with about 90% of the members of the church! How cool is that?? I am really grateful for Spanish. Its probably been one of the most humbling experiences of my life trying to learn this beautiful language, but I am extremely grateful for it!

 

So transfer calls were last night and we didn't get a call so Hermana Bingham and I are staying here!! WOO! We are so excited! We were hoping that we would at least be able to stay together during the holidays and with this ward, so our dreams came true!

 

We had a really great lesson with Filiberto this week about temples. Man I miss the temple!! But missing it has made me appreciate it more and helped my testimony to grow. But we were talking about temples and reading some things in the "Preparing to go to the Temple" booklet. Half way through the lesson he looks at us and says, "I'm going to go here someday!" Our day was complete. Actually, it pretty much completed our whole week. He is so ready for baptism. He just needs to set a date and he will be set! Hopefully he will set one this week!

 

I am so extremely grateful for the guide of the Spirit in this amazing and precious work. Last night we had done everything that we could think of and we had time left and we just didn't know what to do. We were sitting in this parking lot of an apartment complex trying to figure out what to do. I was just praying so hard because everything had fallen through so obviously Heavenly Father had something else in mind for us. So after just thinking and praying so hard I looked at the green door near by and had the thought, "Go knock that door." My first thought was, "I think He is just trying to see if I'll do it." Sooo we went and knocked the green door! We talked to a really cool guy and gave him a restoration pamplet, but he really wasn't interested. But after we saw this lady near by doing something so we went to go help her and we ended up talking to her for a good 40 minutes and she is just so spiritual and totally interested in coming to our church! The Lord works in mysterious ways. But he lead us to this lady through the guy behind the green door. We definitely wouldn't have talked to the lady if we didn't first go to the green door. We had another experience like that with a less active. After we had walked through a store looking for Hispanics, we came out and saw a less active that we just love so much but who has been too busy lately for a visit. This place was outside of the Mechanicsville ward boundaries so we are the only missionaries that could have been at that place at that time. Even though we didn't find any Hispanics, we were able to talk to her. Such amazing tender mercies!

 

I am so so grateful that this is the Lord's work and that He is there to guide us every step of the way. I hope that I can always be worthy to receive His help.

 

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you all mucho!!!

 

And now I close mine epistle. I am Hermana Horton.