Hi beautiful daughter,
I hope you had a great week!
And that some of your many contacts are turning into investigators. That’s always a challenge. I remember my mission president telling us
that we had too many contacts and not enough investigators, and that we needed
to somehow move people from our contact pool into our investigator pool. He said we must be the friendliest
missionaries in the world because we had so many contacts. Ha.
Yesterday was quite a day.
We had stake conference which usually means a day off for the
bishops. In this case however, it seemed
like a long, long day. We started off
with the High Priest quorum meeting at 8am.
The high priest quorum meets together one time a year. As I’m sure you know, this is the stake quorum,
and the stake president is the president of the quorum. Then I had interviews, and then we had stake
conference from 11 to 1. It was pretty
good, but not as good as I had hoped.
Maybe my mind wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind. I suppose I should be ready to be taught by
the Spirit regardless of the messages.
Then I held our high school senior meeting about missionary
work and ecclesiastical endorsements. I
gave them a few conference talks to start with, along with the new standardized
questions for missionaries, and then gave them some homework. I asked them to identify a few more
conference talks on missionary preparation, to study those as well as the
materials that I gave them, and then to meet with me again in 6 to 8 weeks with
a proposed missionary preparation plan that they develop with their parents. I hope they do it. I’m a little concerned that they will resent
it. But I just feel like our young
people, and sometimes even our parents, think that the missionary can just show
up when he’s old enough and go on a mission.
In some ways, it’s largely true, but I would sure like to prepare
themselves. Sarah helped put together a
missionary video of everybody opening their mission calls. It was very very cool. I’ll send it to you and maybe you’ll be able
to watch it, but maybe not. Some of
these people were not the most prepared, but others went and did great. And of course some are still serving and
doing amazing. Especially those ones serving
in the Barcelona Spain mission. The
missionaries in Barcelona Spain are my favorites.
After that, I had a stake priesthood leadership meeting, and
then finish the day off at a young women in excellence meeting. I like our young women. They are good people. Audrey will be 12 in April. I can’t hardly believe it.
Well, that’s the news on my day yesterday. Sarah texted me and said she shared her
testimony for fast Sunday yesterday. She
said she also went to the temple. She
cracks me up. I’ll send a screenshot if
it will work. I hope she decides to
serve a mission. I think it would be a
blessing to her for her whole life. I
look at you, knowing that things have not always been easy. But the lessons you’ve learned and the wisdom
that you obtain through these experiences, including hard companions, can help
you better handle the challenges of life.
It also helps you understand just a little more perhaps, what you should
be looking for in a future husband. You
need someone with ambition and drive and desire and passion. Oh yeah, and handsome. And humble.
No pressure. The Lord will provide. J That’s way down the road for you. We can discuss this further when you’re 26.
The primary is having a bit of a dilemma. We don’t have enough Cub Scouts or leaders to
have a very effective Cub Scout program, so everybody wanted to combine with
the Southlake 1st Ward. But
the primary president there, Sis. Dayle Eliason, does not want to combine. So that’s that. We’re looking for some better solutions. Our primary president sister Ord is
considering cutting cub scouts back to twice a month, which I think is a
wonderful idea.
I’m excited for the Church’s light the world Christmas campaign. We are having a combined third hour meeting
about it this week. It should be
good. It’s a worldwide push, so I’m sure
it will be there in Spain as well.
Christmas time is simply the most wonderful time of the year. And a great time to be a missionary.
Anything I can do for you?
You are the most amazing person I know and I love you and am proud of
you in every way!!!
Love dad
From Mandi
Yeah that's our problem right now actually. We've found 38 people in the past 3 weeks who have all agreed to meet with us to hear about the gospel. And of those 38, 7 have actually met with us and of those 7, 1 has a baptismal date. So that's our struggle. And the person with the baptismal date is Claudia (the friend that a members brought to church last week). And she just moved to Valencia to stay in a womens shelter thing because the reason she came to Spain was becuase her husband beat her in Peru. So. There goes what was literally our PERFECT, SO prepared investigator.
And in the training meeting (in Barcelona
with President), we were promised that every single companionship that
was training would see a baptism this transfer. So we're getting to the
point where we've got to start making that promise happen. And I'm not
quite sure how. So if you do have any ideas on that one, PLEASE let me
know because we're kinda dyin over here.
Life
is good good good. We're not actually dying. But we literally spend so
much time just hanging out in buildings knocking doors or on the
streets. Which is fun I love it, but it's hard because all that work
isn't quite turning into anything yet. Like we literally had visits
planned for every hour of this week, and only 3 of them happened. Like
whaaaat??? It's good. I know it just means we'll see a miracle, but I
feel like I'm not doing enough or something. I don't know. There's got
to be a better, more effective way to get the work rolling.
But
anyways this week was good. We met with Claudia and taught what was one
of the best 1st lessons I've ever taught in my whole life. Hermana
Vance is so good, she's making us better. She's got tons of good ideas.
So for this lesson we planned out questions to ask Claudia after every
single point. And it flowed BEAUTIFULLY and she answered our questions,
and asked us questions when she didn't understand something. It was
beautiful. And then we invited her to be baptized and she was all for
it. And she wanted to know everything she has to do to prepare and
everything. So she's gold. But then she moved to Valencia. So.
Adios:(((((( Well we'll see. We're still talking to her. Not sure how
that's gonna work out fully yet.
Also
we're STILL teaching Hassan. We're gonna try to put him on fecha again
and if he's not feeling it, we'll probably just drop him. Because he's
gotta go somewhere.
We're also still teaching
Denisse (the Brazillian who wants to get baptized but can't because her
boyfriend won't marry her unless she gets baptized into the Catholic
church and they get married into the catholic church). Pray for her.
She's had this recent fire desire to get baptized so we're really
thinking things might start happening and the wedding plans will get
rolling. We fasted with her this week on Wednesday. And she said the
cutest prayer to start the fast and was like "please bless me with a way
to get baptized". Love her. I always think about you when we meet
Brazillians, mama. They have the cutest accents when they speak spanish.
It makes me wonder if you'll have a portuguese accent in your spanish
or an american accent. Fun thoughts. And dad you might just have a crazy
japanese accent!
What
else did we do this week. Today was the BEST preparation day in a long
time. We were going to meet up with all the Hermanas in our zone and do a
girls day but the valencia metro and bus system was super slow today so
we didn't make it. So we ended up just walking around and exploring.
Took pretty pictures. Bought winter dresses at zara (HAPPY:)))) A member
bought us sandwiches (because we saw them in the sandwich shop), and we
found gelato! It was a super fun, relaxing, we felt like tourists day.
Those are my favorite.
Yeah I don't know what other details there are from this week. We played futbol on Saturday. Fun fun.
Oh
Maria Jose has a fecha for Dec 2, but she's being really iffy. Not sure
exactly what her problem is. So pray that that happens and she'll let
us prepare her. She's in Palma right now actually. That lucky lil girl.
From Dad
I'm so glad today was such a great day! Sometimes unstructured
time on the streets to wander and eat ice cream and decompress is a good
thing - just hanging out in Spain. Ice cream helps me a lot.
You
are doing amazing and I'm so impressed with your desire and faith!!! I
would love for you to see more people make covenants. Don't worry and
no dying. You do your part and the Lord will do His. This is His
work. Mom had good advice there. By the way, you were already blessed
to be a part of pink-lady's baptism. That was amazing. And what a
great introduction for Hermana Vance. You are an amazing missionary.
But I understand the desire to serve and find someone new where Hermana
Vance can be a part for the whole cycle.
Mom's
contacts ideas are great. You might also consider a special fast one
day as a sign to Heavenly Father that you are ready and waiting and all
you need is the right person to come along and would He please take care
of that for you. You got this. But there is no need for guilt or
second-guessing in the Lord's work. We strive and stretch and reach.
It's all He asks. The blessings will manifest themselves in any of lots
of different ways. I LOVE that you try to stay busy. Even if knocking
doors. What an amazing missionary. I love this all and your example
and leadership and desire. Hermana Vance is so blessed to have you.
I'm glad you two seem to be working well together. Keep up the great
work. You're crushing it!!!
I love you!
From Mom
I married such a good man. This is a great letter Dustin. Mandi, you've got one amazing dad.
love you both.
Mom
Yeah that's all I have for you two for now. I'll try to think of more things. If it comes to mind I'll write again.
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