whatadramatic7days

Mom, you are absolutely right about the whole, cycles and waves thing, because although the last couple of weeks were rough, this week was AWESOME. Chito. Or chido, I don’t know, I’ve only ever heard people say it, and the Spanish ‘d’ sounds kind of ‘th’y sometimes and ‘t’s sound like ‘d’s so sometimes I have no idea which of those letters is actually in this word I’m using. Anyway, that’s just awesome in Spanish. Point is: this week was amazing.
It was looking like it was going to be a struggle at first. We had an Elder in our Zone who had to go home because he almost died. Elder Geldmocker. (I think I’m wrong on how to spell the name, but that’s how it sounds) He’s gotten some kind of an injury in the MTC and not gotten it properly taken care of and then he came out here and it kept getting worse, but he wouldn’t tell anyone anything about it until he couldn’t walk anymore and had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove a 2 inch-wide, foot and a half long blood-clot in his leg and a ton of dead muscle. He still doesn’t know how serious it was an neither does his family, because the President hasn’t told them yet and because he’s all drugged up (last I heard, that’s probably different now) Anyway, he’s missing a huge chunk of his leg now and has to go home, but they say he’ll have full use of his leg in about a year, which is a MIRACLE considering how bad this is. They asked up to fast and pray so he wouldn’t DIE, but they really weren’t expecting the possibility of a full recovery. So, the whole mission fasted and prayed like crazy and he made it through the night, opened up his cute little eyes and looked at his companion Elder Rost and said in a very ‘out-of-it’ way, “Did you do anything fun last night?”
“Kind of. I prayed for about five hours and didn’t eat anything and cried a lot.” –I’m sure was Elder Rost’s response. (Elder Rost has been voted most likely to be prophet one day, by the whole mission, FYI. He’s going home this transfer, along with the Elder Briscoe, who was voted most likely to be a general authority.) These are not formal ballots just so you know.
So, now, Elder Rost is temporarily companions with a Member who’s leaving for his mission soon, and Elder Geldmocker is going to go home in about six weeks when the doctors allow him to leave his hyperbaric chamber.
We FINALLY got Emily confirmed! And we got her brother an interview for his baptism. Triumph… what a battle that was. And, Junior (Eduardo Junior) the brother of Patricia and Antonia, finally agreed to talk to us. We gave him a Book of Mormon ages ago and have been trying to get him to open up to us, but whenever we ask if he wants to have a lesson, or wants to talk to us he always refuses and goes back to listening to Insane Clown Posse and Korn, redoing all of Pink Floyd’s stuff. We refused to give up on the lad however… anyway, we finally got him to talk to us. He’s read like all of first Nephi and started into second Nephi and he loves it! When we asked him to come to church, he agreed and then he actually came!
I think he’s a got kid… he’s just got a way crappy life and lives in the ghetto and is really angry, but he’s got a shot, especially with his two sisters to help him out.
And our home is Ghetto. Let me tell you… Just this last week I’ve taught lessons to drug addicts and prostitutes. We had somebody get up to go meet his dealer in the middle of our lesson. We had to explain to a woman that the Holy Spirit definitely did not help her find the keys to the car she was trying to steal from that man. There was a big old party last night covering about three blocks in totality where we had a couple of appointments and the cops came and periodically arrested people.
And one of the less actives we’re working with is a really awesome high school senior/football player, who’s afraid to leave his family alone in the house because there’s a group of other high school kids trying to kill him because of some way ancient grudge with his older brother, (he insists they’re not in any gang he knows of, they’re just cholo-wanna-be punks). They attacked his mother already and hauled his brother off to somebody’s house to mess him up and he broke in and threw him over his shoulder and beat people on his way out of this place. Crazy life this kid had. So, his family is kind of afraid (especially his mother) for him to not be around to protect him, and the police apparently do nothing here, accept occasionally arrest people at loud parties and turn on their lights so they can run red lights every five seconds (which I see ALL the time). But he still needs to come to church. He’s just really confused about life and desperate. He started talking about how everything will be better when he gets out of school because then maybe he can get a job somewhere far away and get his family OUT of the ghetto. We told him about BYU and the football scholarships and how he still needs to go to church as going to church will help you out with all of that.
So. Life is going really well. We’ve got a LOT of work to do, a lot of people to work with… We’re making progress with all of them. I’m doing really great right now actually!
We had Zone conference (the meeting with the three big zones close by, which is about 64 missionaries, and President & Sister Hansen) And our 70 was going to be there. Elder Villareal. I’ve heard him speaking before when I was invited to Zone Leadership training/meeting thing, a few transfers back (Since sisters aren’t Zone leaders outside of the temple square mission—correct me on that if I’m wrong, some people have said that there are sister zone leaders in other missions too—anyway, there are no sister zone leaders in the Texas Houston Mission, but they invite a lot of us to come to the leadership meetings at random so we can help them out, and since there’s only like… I think 16 Sisters in the whole mission, with about a hundred and forty Elders. It works out that you’re more likely to go to Zone Leader meetings as a Sister than you are as an Elder. Which I find amusing.)
Anyway, Elder Villareal is a great, powerful very Dr. Kimber-esque speaker, accept that at this particular Zone Conference, he confused about 64 missionaries way bad.
You see, President Hansen spoke to us first, then had to disappear for a while, to go find out about and held poor Elder Geldmocker (sp?) (because all of that was going on at the same time) for a reason I’ll expand more on later—and we were left alone with Elder Villareal for about three hours. So, the first half on Zone conference, with President Hansen, was all about the Love of God, and how so many people just gloss over that in their lessons and in their LIVES. They know that God loves them, but they have no idea what that means, and they don’t really feel that it’s true. Or, they just straight up don’t really know that their Father in Heaven actually loves them. So President Hansen was talking all about how we need to help people understand this principle and show how it ties into everything else, as the whole reason for everything that we teach and everything that we do in life. It was REALLY great. Then Elder Villareal got up and basically started to refute a bunch of President Hansen’s teachings and showed us a lot of scriptural evidence to suggest that God actually only loves people who aren’t sinning. He said it like this, “God doesn’t love sinners. It’s like you with your groups of good friends, if one of them starts behaving in a way that’s contrary to the standards of the group, their kicked out.”
So… This is all much more complex than I’m making it sound, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to explain the conclusion we finally came to about what Elder Villareal really MEANT to say, without llevar a cabo-ing all my time here, but the summed up version of this is that our zone conference in short felt about like this: 2:00-3:00 “God LOVES you, so much.” 3:00-6:00 “Actually, he doesn’t really love you all that much because you’re a sinner.”
And 64 missionaries went back to their campos to work, feeling very confused and questioning their testimonies.
I know this wasn’t his intention, but that’s pretty much what happened.
But, it turned out to be a good thing, because then I went home and for the first time in my life actually asked God if he really loved me. I’d never questioned it before, so I’ve never bothered to ask him.
Hermana Friezell is ending her mission this transfer, along with most of the other missionaries who I love (All my friends are OLD!) In her parting testimony, she says she thinks the reason why missionaries grow so much on their missions, and why they come back with these unbreakable convictions about the gospel is because we all get told, every single day, by everyone and everything around us that we’re wrong and we’re stupid and we should just go home. And all that battery that our testimony takes out here is what makes it grow. When we doubt, and are able to overcome that doubt, it fortifies the base.
So, then, I was randomly selected, two days later at Zone Meeting (Just our little zone of like 20 people) to share my testimony about Heavenly Father’s love, specifically. My concluding remarks were basically just that even if God can’t show us his love because we’re far removed from him, it’s still there. He loves the vilest sinner in the world exactly the same way he loved that person when they were born pure and innocent however many years before; exactly as he loved them when he was raising them as a loving father, in the world before this one.
The next day, in District meeting, we decided to openly discuss what exactly had gone down at Zone Conference and basically check to make sure that everyone in our district had made peace with this and was no longer struggling with doubts as a result of that rather interesting 3 hour meeting with Elder Villareal. They asked me to go first, so I said “Well… I already cried hysterically and shared my feelings,” to which Elder Meade replied brightly, “I remember that!” and we all laughed and I was incredibly depressed because Elder Meade is going home with almost everyone else I love at the end of this transfer. Anyway, I summed up my thoughts again and then Elder Meade made a really interesting point. He said that God can’t directly be with people when their sinning because… he’s God, but that’s why he has US. Missionaries. And Saints and other good people, who are none-the-less sinners, and capable of going down into the dirt to show these people God’s love by proxy. I’m pretty sure this is what Elder Villareal was trying to say, it’s just that his way of saying it was confusing.
I’m SO glad to hear about all of the goodness back home. Your dinner with the Candiloras sounds like fun! And yes, and hour and a half is way too long to hang out, but that’s about what happens with dinner appointments sometimes. I think the official rule is no longer than an hour, but a lot of the time, you get there and they’re still cooking or something like that… time management is one of the hardest things. I’m sure they were stressed, that’s probably why they left without teaching anything. But still, it’s way good that you were there and able to visit with them. I sure do love and miss that family, they are such good people. Really wonderful folks, I’m praying for those missionaries with you.
That’s so fun that Becca and Megan came to visit! I love them, so much. And I miss them. I was going off about Serenity the other day and Hermana Forsling called Serenity “A Utah thing” (She’s from LA and greatly dislikes Utah.) So I had to correct her and let her know that there are plenty of sophisticated Californians who dig Firefly as well, citing Becca and Megan as ejemplos.
Thanks for the monies… and Lucille Childs is SO sweet! I’m going to write her a little letter today, I think I’ve got her address in my book here, if not, I’ll just send it to you and you can give it to her? Raging Waters! No fair! It’s so HOT here. I’m dying for a little raging waters… I’m glad everybody had fun, I’m making sure to collect all the promises of fun things from you!
I’m way looking forward to my package too, I’m going to try not to spend too much money this week (we’re going to the temple Thursday and I’ll be tempted to buy everything. I need to get some fabric today to make a case for my English scriptures, and I think there’s some other stuff I might need to get from the little distribution center there… but I’ll try to be thrifty.) Everything sounds SO lovely back home, are you excited about teaching Kimber soon?! What do you think of the curriculum?
I really love and miss you all A LOT. But I honestly can’t believe that it’s agosto ya. Time flies, and I think it’s because I’m truly happy, busy, engaged in the harvest of the Lord etc. I love you all SO, so much. Sorry, this letter is a little long and random this week, but there’s so much more I’d love to say, but I’d better get going! OH! I just remembered as I was typing that… remember that woman who had that problem that I talked to you a little bit about on the phone on mother’s day? Well… She got baptized YESTERDAY! I couldn’t go down to see it on account of never having taught the woman, but I was still so overjoyed to hear that she was ready to take that step. Her story is so amazing to me. I can’t wait to torture Elder Herrman for details when he gets off his mission six months after me.
Anyway, I LOVE you. Besito, besito, besito and glory to God!
Hermana Lillywhite