Hannah in España: #16

*from Hannah's mom - I asked her a couple of questions last week so I have included those emails as well. Here are the questions I asked:

Can you share your greatest joy thus far in your mission and maybe your greatest struggle?

Hannah's response:

Okay greatest joy: there are a lot of little joys I feel from being a missionary. Just little bursts of joy that random things give me. But one of my favorite joys is the prayers of investigators and other menos activos and other members. They are so sweet and personal and I just love them, I first started loving their prayers when I heard Aldair ( he's 17. He was baptized when he was 14 and basically hasn't come to church since. He's the only member in his family and he's such a joven3) so we have been working with him to help him out. We committed him to start praying every day. And then invited him to say the closing prayer and I LOVED his prayer so much I wrote dow what I could remember haha so I'll share that. He says "please bless the hermana that they will be able to preach your word and that the people will have faith to know that your church is the true church" and then at the end was my favorite part he said very quickly "and bless me with my prayers this week" and then he closed his prayer. I don't know why but I thought it was just the sweetest thing. And our investigadora Loe gives the BEST prayers. We always tell investigators that a prayer with God is like a conversatio. And her prayers are a sweet conversation with God giving thanks for everything, just simply telling Him what she learned that day and always praying for a closer relationship with God. She absolutely loves praying on her knees and so every prayer we say is on our knees. Spaniards really pray with their hearts and with might. I absolutely love it. So as of right now, that's the best part of being a missionary.

Struggle: oi. I'll just be completely honest here okay? Recognizing the Spirit is DIFFICULT I'll be the first one to tell ya. It is no easy thing for me; it is insanely difficult. I know I am worthy enough to feel it but recognizing it is hard. I talked to President Anderson about it and he told me that as missionaries we live in a way that the "norm" is to always have the Spirit with us. Because 100 percent of our day is dedicated to The Lord and feeling the Spirit. We live so close to the Spirit that we've kind of lost how it feels to not have the Spirit. So that comforted me a bit, but I don't know. All the stories about having the Spirit tell you to go somewhere or talk to someone or something like that, I know that the Spirit is completely capable of doing that for me, but nothing like that has happened to me (that I can recognize) and it can be a bit discouraging. Sometimes I think that trying to learn to recognize the Spirit has been harder that learning Spanish. It's like learning a language, it takes practice . I remember President Messer telling me that the most important thing for me on my mission was to learn how the Spirit talks to me and I'm still learning and that's okay! I know I'll get it one day. I know that the Spirit will always 100 percent testify to me of the reality and divinity of the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ so I just go with that, the Spirit is my testifier.

Okay I hope that was sufficient. Ask me that question again in about 4 weeks

I bet I'll answer differently.

Hi all, this week was just full of all types of good things. But this coming week is FULL of so much more, WAHOO how fun!

So I'm just gonna tell you about some of my friends

JESÙS- We knocked on Jesus's door about a month ago and we just a really friendly guy we left him with a Restauracion folleto and said we could come back another day so we went back the other day and he wasn't home, so we went again, like 3 more times and he was never home. So randomly we went again on Monday and he was there! And he had read the folleto and he had so much interest in this Joseph Smith guy and the book of Mormon, so we gave him one and we have a cita tomorrow with him! We have had so much hope for Jesus so cross your fingers that he shows up!

LOE- I can't remember how much I have told you all about Loe but Loe is our miracle. She was taught by the missionaries a year ago and we got a call from her about a month ago and she said Hi can you come to my house right now and teach me? And so we did just that, and we have been seeing her about three times a week since then. She is incredible. She works all day and makes time for us in the night time to come see her. She is praying and reading every day and she has come to church for the past three weeks straight and she has just sacrificed so much for this religion already and now she is preparing for baptism for the beginning of September ( we are working on getting it a bit earlier 😉) she just soaks in everything and understands it so well. We are so proud of her. She even reads the BOM in English so props to here, because that is difficult! We were able to kind of start new with Loe so we are really trying to do it right! I think we are doing alright!

JUAN JOHN- Juan John is a man that comes to our English class and he speaks very well. He is the nicest man really. He has come to English classes for a while but we don't think anyone has taught him so we finally sat him down and basically just told him that we want to teach him! So we have a cita tomorrow with Juan John and we just think he is so prepared and golden, he just doesn't know it 😁

We have had so many opportunities to teach people this week. We just meet people and just start teaching; it has been great! Definitely a good habit to get into, teach when you find, find when you teach.

Hmmm what else!? The mission does weird things to my memory, I just forget everything! Everything just kind of smashes into one big memory. If you want to know about anything else in specific, ask me questions cuz it helps trigger my memory 😄