This week has been hard. Probably one of the more difficult weeks that I have had on the mission... and it turned out to be a time of trial right before the rain clears and the sky comes out and it suddenly all makes sense, and you end up being grateful for the storm that you just went through.
We've been working extra hard to find new people to teach, because all the ones that we had 2 weeks ago, just all kind of dropped off the face of the earth. They didn't answer our calls, they weren't there for our appointments, and it just felt like on rejection after the other. That's something that we get a lot on the mission, rejection. But this week seemed to be a double dose of "we´re really not that interested." I got a pretty good taste of it. But, we kept on working, planning things out for our training today, our activity this Friday, and the mutual we are in charge of Saturday, and searching desperately for new people.
Also, since we are in charge of 14 girls, that means that we have to do divisions 2x a week, so on Tuesday we did them with Miguel Grau 2 and then on Thursday with Miraflores 2. I love divisions so much- not because I don't like my companion or anything, but because I get to learn so much from these Sisters. On Tuesday I left to go work with Hna Kuhn, and it was an awesome division. She is finishing up her training, and it was her 2nd time leading her area, and she did a great job! She is very very musically talented, and also has the desire to share the Gospel with everyone that we ran into. She is a really obedient, hard working missionary. We had one of the best studies in my whole mission that morning. We shared what we learned in Personal Study, and then we decided to go over the Plan of Salvation. And go over it we did. Especially when Sisters start out on the mission, I like to make them stretch a little bit, I don't want a study of memorized points, I want to know what that aspect of the Gospel means to them and why its important to help other people understand it. So, after every point, we would ask each other "why?" and then share what we thought. For example, we talked about the Preexistence, and then we would ask "Why? Why does our Heavenly Father want us to know that we lived with Him before? Why do we have to help others understand this?" So, overall, those divisions were awesome, and I loved my time with Hna Kuhn.
Then, on Thursday, I got to stay in my area and be with Hna Bennion- from my group! It was my first time leading my area here in Paucarpata.... and I would be lying if I said that I didn't get lost once.... or twice..... or all afternoon. But hey- I guess that's how I'm going to learn, right? Right. We had a great time together, Ive always admired how driven Hna Bennion is, and I learned a lot from her. We had a cool study in the morning too, as we talked about how we can really take our missions home with us, and we shared all sorts of goals that we have for when we are home. We both had a pretty long list. :)
By the time that Saturday rolled around, and all the appointments we had fell through for the 5th day in a row, I was feeling pretty stressed. And then we found out that we had talks the next day, and that we had to teach Principios del Evangelio, and we had to make invitations for activity on Friday (we are celebrating Pioneer Day- a day late), and we had to gather all the last minute things for our training today, and it was already pretty late on Saturday night, we had worked hard all day to find new people and to visit less actives, with little success. So, we did the best that we could that night- I made the invitations, Hna Clemens filled out our Informe de Progreso for Consejo the next day, and we worked right up until 10:30 and then went to bed just hoping and praying that we could do it all the next day.
The next day, we woke up, got ready as fast as we could, and then raced over to our Pensionistas, so that they could copy the invitations and in form for us, then we went over to the church 15 minutes before it started (at 8am) , so I could practice the hymns (all of them with 4 flats, and songs I never played before...) while my comp called all the possible investigators that could come to church. And then, when they started the meeting, I sat down and started to try and think about what I was going to talk about.(Becoming Perfect in Christ, from the recent Liahona)
Attendance was not the best when the meeting started. 20 people. And our bishop was 10 minutes late. And none of his counselors were there. And the Stake President came. By the time the meeting was over, we got up to 89 people, and by some miracle, two new people of ours came to church! We were worried though, because a sister that we had planned on rescuing didn't come to church, and she was just missing her interview with the bishop... that she was supposed to have last week.
So, as soon as the meeting was over, we tried to round up all the people to be in Principios, and then taught the class. Then, we had to go find scissors to cut out the invitations, and finally found some in the Primary room. So we cut those out and then made it to RS and the Priesthood just in time to hand them out. Then, we had ward council- which actually went pretty decently.
And, our Ward Mission Leader, who is usually pretty busy all the time, invited us over for lunch at his house, along with the Bishop and his family, who is also too busy to meet with us during the week- so that was a prayer answered. We have been trying to figure out how to build a relationship with them, and that was how. We had a great time together, and I learned a lot about them. I shared all my weird talents, and that seemed to make their kids warm up to me.
The best part: after the lunch, we told the bishop about this sister that we wanted to rescue and report this week, and that she was missing her interview, so he actually came with us to her house, and did the interview there, because she was too sick to come to church. That was so nice of him. It really helped us. :)
Then, by the time we got out of there, we still had so much to do for the training today, so we ran around trying to get it done,, and we actually ended up finding all sorts of loose odds and ends that were exactly what we needed exactly when we needed them. And we actually ended up with 4 new people for the week!
It was getting later, so we decided to go by the sister who had the clothing that we are going to use today. We finally got there, and she was getting all the things out, when we realized that we forgot to get some sacrament cups that were going to be a huge part of the presentation, and we both just sat there and wanted to cry. We had done so much that day, and to get that done, it would take another hour. We just kind of sat there, not knowing what to do, and I just said a little prayer in my heart, asking for help, telling Him how tired I was, telling him I just wanted the training to go well. I felt impressed to ask the sister if she had any, and she said she didn't, but then 10 minutes later she walked out and said that she remembered that she might have some, but she didn't know how many. She went to look for them, and then came back with 14 cups. The exact number that we needed. A little miracle, that let us know that Heavenly Father really is looking out for us.
I will report next week about the training. I love you all so much!
Hna Leavitt
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