June 16, 2014

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!! You didn´t even tell me anything about your birthday celebrations! Did you think I´d forgotten? Yours is the easiest to remember because it´s flag day! That being said, I didn´t remember in time to send you a letter, sorry :/ But I hope it was amazing just the same. Also. . . HAPPY FATHER´S DAY! Are they always so close together? I never noticed. I hope you also had an amazing day and that everyone did nice things for you. 

What a great chance to tell you both how much I love you and to thank you for all you´ve done for me. I´ve come to realize so much more on my mission the importance of the family and especially how blessed I have been when it comes to family. It´s thanks to both of you that I have the gospel in my life, that am I person who knows my Heavenly Father and trusts in Him, that I am even here on the mission! I owe all the incredible experience that has been my mission to you as well, because without you I wouldn´t even be here. I don´t say it often enough. Thank you, so much, for everything. I love you guys so much! 

So this week. . . (sorry if I´m a little distracted, they´ve got the Germany Portugal game on the TV in here). Well, speaking of fútbol, what the heck happened to Spain?! We´re all shocked. And nobody can explain to me what happened. 5 goals? Poor Casillas eh? But, I maintain my pride and my hope! I still wore my Spain jersey out to play soccer the next day. There is still hope, but I fear Chile is going to be hard. Goal Germany on a penalty! Dang they´re playing hard. So. . .missionary stuff. . . man this is hard. You have no idea. 

So you´ve got my travel plans already? Dang, I haven´t seen anything yet. Where´s my transfer? It should be a lot better than the first time. Once I can stop crying I should be able to just sleep the rest of the way there. Lord knows I´m tired enough. 

So Edgar is going to get married, but in September. He and his girlfriend go back to Bolivia in September and they want to get married there while they are with family then come back. He is sure about it though and about getting baptized afterwords so I´m super happy for him, even if I´m not going to be here to see it. Iván and Paula didn´t show to church and we actually haven´t been able to see them again since the first visit. I´m little worried but hopefully we´ll be able to get in touch again and teach them. On the other hand we passed by Andrea this week to say hi and she said she is less busy now and that we can come on Tuesday to visit her, so hopefully we will be able to start teaching her again. That would be awesome! Thank you so much for praying everyday for my investigators. I wish I could express to you how much that means to me. I know without a doubt that it makes a difference. I can feel the love you have for them, even though you´ve never met them, and that´s amazing. Thank you. 

One other thing from the week then I have to go. Yesterday I had a really awesome experience where I was able to teach my companion how to trust in the spirit. We had a lesson with Joaquín (he´s having some troubles right now) and it was really difficult. He was more stressed out than I´ve ever seen him and we just couldn´t seem to calm him down or help him out. It got to the point where I just didn´t know what to say. And so I waited for my companion to say something. And waited. But he didn´t, so we finished up (we were able to help him cheer up a little and he´s doing better today), but we sat down to talk about it afterwords. Turns out that Elder Forsyth had had a scripture in mind, but he didn´t share it because he wasn´t sure it would apply and he was afraid of looking stupid. I explained to him that that was selfish. That he allowed his own pride to get in the way of helping Joaquin and following the spirit. I helped him recognize that that was the spirit, that that is how the spirit speaks to us, but that he hadn´t followed it. I also explained that I am hard on him, because I can see his potential. I think maybe no one has ever really pushed him before. It was a good talk, he said he´s grown a lot in our time together and he understood what I was saying. In fact in the next lesson we had he applied it. He pulled out a scripture that was perfect that I would never have thought of and we taught the best lesson we´ve ever taught together. It just went perfect. Afterword I explained that that was because the spirit was guiding us. (Gooooooooooooooal! Germany again!) That´s what we want in all our lessons. And I think he knows how to do it now. I´m okay with being transferred now if it happens. He´s ready. 

Remember, wanting to be perfect hinders the spirit. Trust in those feelings.

Transfers are next Monday. So next week we´ll know my last area and last companion in the mission. Until then. I love you guys, be safe and be true. 

Love 

Quinn