The Gift That Keeps on Giving!!

Good morning everyone!! I hope everyone else had an awesome week! Our week started out real good. On Tuesday we decided to be really good neighbors and we also got bored so we made cookies for our neighbors. We plated them up and ran them from door to door. Well after coming home, we had a plate of cookies on our doorstep! haha someone returned our gift. We laughed about it cause we just got cookies! But with everything that is going on, I understand that it can be hard to take something from someone else, especially if you don't know them! Later in the week, one of our neighbors said thank you for the cookies. That felt really good! 

We had zone conference this week, but it was with the whole mission! It was really cool and I saw a lot of new faces that I have never even seen before. I have served in El Paso for the last 17 months and so I don't know anyone up in the north part of the mission. Our mission is HUGE! You are looking at a 8 hour drive from the bottom to the top. But zone conference was so uplifting and we are starting a new Facebook thing that is super exciting. We the first mission to do it as a whole mission. Other missions have been doing it but only parts of their missions. But not us, we are all doing it and it is going to be awesome in helping the work go even faster! Super excited for that.

 

Damaris is back! She got back from Mexico city on Wednesday! Still working on helping her set a new baptismal date but she is awesome! I have been blessed to get to meet so many amazing people here in El Paso and her and her family are one of them! We are already planning Family home evenings with them or when all this blows over. But we did get to take them he sacrament yesterday which was a blessing. I love them so much! After taking the sacrament her mom asked what they needed to do so they could carry out sacrament by themselves. So we had a good conversation about that and it so exciting to see the gospel start to spark in them to have this desire to progress in it. The Gospel is so amazing

Thursday we picked up dinner from these two sisters who live with each other. They have had some real tough things happen in their family recently and it has been super hard for them. Friday came and this gentleman in the English ward here who we call Grandpa gave us some Iris flowers. He gave them to us but we felt very strongly to go drop it off at these hermana's house. They were so grateful and just keeps saying, "que hermoso.... muchas gracias!" We were so happy we took it to them. But that day they had just made Menudo, which for those of you who don't know, is a soup with cow stomach. I love it. A lot of people don't because it is very very chewy and if you don't clean the meat out good, it is even worse. So they gave some to us along with some pozole. It was all so good! It was Elder Esplin's first time trying it and I wish I would've had my camera out when he tried it. Needless to say, I got all the Menudo. I was grateful we got those flowers from Grandpa. Because he gave them to us, we were able to light someone else day up! 

Honestly it has been an amazing week full of miracles. For some reason, Elder Niel L. Ansersen's talk from general conference has been on my mind a lot lately. He talks about spiritual experiences and how we need to hold those close to us and never forget them. He says, "When personal difficulty, doubt, or discouragement darken our path, or when world conditions beyond our control lead us to wonder about the future, the spiritually defining memories from our book of life are like luminous stones that help brighten the road ahead, assuring us that God knows us, loves us, and has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to help us return home." What a unique time that we live in and to be able to experience this as a missionary is something different. I am grateful for my spiritual memories and how they help lift me and keep me going. For all of us, difficulty, doubt, and discouragement will come, but as we rely on what we know and the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can make it through. We don't have to worry about what is ahead because "all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things." (2 Nephi 2:24) Hold on to your spiritual experiences and trust in the Lord and His timing.