West is Best: Espiritu Gato

Hola yall!

This week was definitely a quick one. I swear the days are the longest days of my life and then I blink and its the next week arleady! This week was awesome and being a missionary is awesome. Im starting to be tired 24/7 but its the best kind of tired. My brain hurts so bad at the end of every day but Im learning so much that I cant wait to share with the people in Salt Lake.

Also I dont know if I explained it in the past emails but when one of the other Hermanas, Hermana Graff, was learning our Purpose in spanish she kept accidentally saying Espiritu Gato (Spirit Cat) instead of Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit) lol. So everytime something unexpected happens we all blame it on the Espiritu Gato and tis the funniest thing ever. Yall probably dont think its that funny but it gets me every time hahaha.

So last tuesday, we had a General Authority come to speak with us! Gary E. Stevenson of the 12 apostles. He is amazing omg. Since it is almost thanksgiving he spoke on the 4 missionary Thanksgivings. 1.)Thanksgivings for the change of heart wrought by the Gospel 2.)Thanksgiving for Christ and his Gospel 3.)Thanksgiving for the spirit 4.)Thanksgiving for the message of the Restored Gospel. These are so true! Ive been thinking about all of these things to be thankful for this week and how grateful others will be once they hear how awesome these blessings really are. Another thing I learned from him was that it is important to always extend a commitment after every lesson or message shared. Our purpose is to help bring others closer to Christ through the gospel. This gospel is a gospel of change, and without commitments to be better, to do something, or to look for things in our lives we cannot change!

On wednesday Im pretty sure I was the most tired Ive been in the whole 3 weeks ive been here. I dont know why though because I get a solid 7 hours of sleep every night! But anyways me and my comp and the rest of my roommates were really not feeling working out that morning. We normally go run or go to the weight room but on wednesday we decided to just chill and do some yoga. Definitely a good decision! We also had a lesson with our investigator Brian that we felt super unprepared for but it ended up going a lot better than we expected.

On Thursday omg it snowed for the first time and i am nooooottttt a fan of snow. Like not at all. Obviously ill be living here for the next 18 months so ill get used to it but after not feeling the cold for 2 years this is rough. I was borrowing a cardigan from Hermana Graff on thursday and one elder thats going to my mission, Elder Ehlers has a bunch of cardigans too. so He wanted to try on the one that I was wearing of Hermana Graffs. His companion caught this super funny pic of Ehlers and Graff sitting next to eachother while hes wearing the cardigan and he captioned it "When he wears your jacket....<3" Hahaha it was so funny. And then the next morning when we were getting ready for our class, he tried on her cardigan again and the teacher in spanish said something and we thought she was saying "no cross dressing" but we looked it up and it meant no flirting. hahaha woops. But it was still funny. But on thursday we did an activity with one of the other districts where we write down on a sheet of paper some things that we need or are struggling with. And they didnt tell us but they swapped papers with the other district and then we had 20 minutes to prepare a lesson for them based on the things that they needed. So me and Hermana Budd taught these other hermanas from another district named Hermana Crepeau and Thruston. Me and Budd were really struggling with stuff to find for them to help them with what they needed. We knew we wanted to talk about Christ's atonement and how much he loves them but we didnt know exactly what we were going to say. But whenever we went we totally said exactly what they needed to hear and Hermana Thruston started crying. They taught us about being selfless and loving who we teach. Both of the lessons were on the same principle, love and charity, but had a different spin on it to fit each of us. It was really cool! The lesson was supposed to help with with revelation and teaching by the spirit. One funny thing was that Hermana Budd wrote on her sheet that she needed more pants. We didnt know what the list was for until after they gave it to the other district. So hermana crepeau shared a scripture (D&C 125:88) about how we should always be clothed with charity. Caridad es el mejor pantalones. hahahaha.

On friday we taught Brian with another member. He had some really hard questions. He is kind of having a hard time dealing with his mom and his sisters illnesses and is wondering How God can be so good when he gives us hard things to deal with in life and were doing the best we can and keeping the commandments. We did our best to explain to him that our purpose on earth is to learn and gain experiences so that one day we can become like God! Life wont always be easy but it will make us so much better if we endure our trials well.

On saturday we had our normal classes with Hermana Southard and Hermano Hicks, our teachers. I really liked one thing that Hermana Southard shared with us. She showed us a video clip from the movie "Facing the Giants". It showed one of the main football players talking about how bad they were proabbly going to lose against this other team because they were really good. So the coach called him up in front of everyone and blind folded him and made him do the death crawl with someone on his back. He was supposed to do his best and go as far as he could go. The player thought he was only able to go to the 20 yard line but the coach thought he could make it to the 50. So he was blindfolded and he started. Once he got going, he started moaning and excalaiming that it was really hard and he couldnt do it. But the coach was with him the whole time encouraging him and telling him to keep going. He made it all the way to the end zone. I thought this really applied to us in our lives. Often times life gets really hard and we think that we cant do hard things. But God wants us to do hard things. He wants us to do them and rely on the atonement of Jesus Christ for help and for comfort as we do these hard things. With him anything is possible! We can deathcrawl blindfolded and with someone on our back and as long as we try our best and rely on Christ we can get through it and become better than we were before.

Sunday and monday were kinda ehh. Just normal days filled with church and class and lessons.

I love yall! have a great week! Heres some pics.