Reassignment - Mesa, Arizona!

Que Pasa everyone?!!

It's snowing right now, LOVE IT!!!! I.love.snow.

YAYY!! REASSIGNMENT! I have been reassigned to the Mesa, Arizona mission!!!!! SO STOKED! Hna Stark and I are both going together and I am super grateful that we will be with each other for like our whole mission haha SO AWESOME! The newest thing we've heard about Spain and their stupid Visas....It is pretty much a lottery. So, it doesn't matter when you put your Visa application in, which is good for me because I put mine in pretty late hahaThe Church says that we should be getting them starting at the end of November. I am guessing I will get there HOPEFULLY by Christmas time :) We leave Tuesday morning at 5 am and we will officially land in AZ at like 10:30am. HECK YEAH!! I am just beyond excited to get out of the MTC. I am definitely going to pass out a few times out of nervousness, but I'm ready haha oh, and my other Hna's...Haglund is going to Anaheim and Shaffer to Pocatello!

This week has been FANTASTIC as always!! Started off a little rough because we did our first "door contact" approach and it was pretty intense haha We had a sub teacher and he didn't really teach us much about how to do it. We then spent the next hour watching each other going ONE BY ONE. Pretty dang scary and it was just a teacher hahahaha yup, I'm so ready for the field...not. So, first up, Hna Shaffer. She gives a big smile and says some sweet things about what she wants to share with the guy about the Gospel and about 6 minutes later, he shuts the door on her face. Mind you, this is in flippin spanish. All of us are like, oh shoot, this is like legit practice...allllrighty then! A few more people from our district go and they all just keep getting rejected. Everytime the door opened, our teacher would play a different person. FINALLY, one of our Elders successfully got into the room and stayed in the room. We then realized, oh crap, we seriously have to keep doing this until we are let in. Kill me now. I still haven't gone yet and like half of the class has already been rejected. Hna Haglund and Stark were the next two to get in and finally, it's my turn. Bring it. I knock on that door with such confidence that it would've slapped him in the face. I smiled ever so sweetly and told him that one of his neighbors down the street told me that he might be interested in our message. He then twisted some things on me and said that he didn't believe in God when I asked him about it. I was like, great...now what. I then asked him if he had a set direction in life. Of course he said, no. I was like, yes, I finally got him where I want him. I told him very quickly that sometimes life can be hard but our Church as the gift of the Holy Ghost. This can help you when life gets confusing and hard and it can help you with hard decisions...bla bla bla, Spirit freaking rocks!! He was like, woah, yeah I want to learn more!! BOOOOOM! Owned it, nailed it, I'm ready for the field haha but not really. There ya go. Door contacting is super hard and I am so glad that we don't do that too often in the field because it's not super effective. PHEW! I'll only do it if the Spirit tells me to. Other than that, I'm stickin to using the members haha jk, I bet I will be told otherwise by my future companion and she will know way more than me. I hate door contacting. End of story.

New story. Our district was chosen to be a pilot district for this new way of practicing teaching investigators. We were told that our two teachers were going to be brand new investigators. They would tell us their situtation with where they were at with the lessons and what goal we needed to accomplish in two lessons: baptism date. We were so ready for it! We also were evaluated at the end of every lesson, which usually doesn't happen. So, we taught Mayra, a 15 year old, who was pretty dang easy to teach and we totally got her to agree to be baptized. CHA-CHING! Our evaluations were top notch and awesome. The second one was our teacher Hno. Doxey being Manuel. HOLY HECK! He was the most frustrating investigator. He was super religious and loved the Bible and loved Christ and all of that. He hates the Book of the Mormon, hates Joseph Smith, yet he is super nice to us, missionaries. He has been taught all of the lessons from other missionaries and it was our goal to pretty much soften his heart and get him to be baptized. Great. Are you kidding me? So first lesson, went ok, not too bad. We just tried to understand why he was so against the BOM and J.S. and all of that stuff. We didn't really accomplish too much. We didn't want to argue because that's stupid to argue, so we just bore testimony of the BOM and told him to read 2 Ne 29. I left that lesson thinking, if this were a legit investigator, I would've dropped him so fast. Probably not what I should be thinking but seriously, this guy was the worst. Second lesson, my comp OWNED IT! We prepared so hard. We had him read in Alma 32 about how he needs to exercise faith for like 10 minutes so we could tell him about how the BOM talks about Christ visiting the Americas in 3 Ne 11. He REFUSED to even try to have faith. Then, my freaking awesome companera just told him straight up: (in spanish) "Manuel, please, have this faith for like 5-10 minutes and listen to what we are about to teach about Christ. If you don't have faith, we cannot teach you this epic story about Christ on the earth." BOOM! Right in the FACE! He was so shocked and just sat there for like 2 minutes with dead silence. We just stared at him. Finally, he says quietly, "ok, what did you want to share with me." The Spirit was IMMEDIATELY felt in the lesson and we read 3 Ne 11 about Christ coming. So awesome. He loved it. We asked him to be baptized and he said no, but he really wanted to read more from the BOM. It was so awesome :) Hno Doxey then told us after the lesson, "you two are so ready for the field. I was blown away by that lesson. Manuel is a hard hearted man and he was not going to get baptized. But, you softened his heart. You're ready." :) :) :) SO AWESOME! It was all thanks to our major preparation and of course the lovely, Hna Stark :)

Sorry, I don't have super funny stories to tell this week and I am quickly running out of time. I will say that our four names were called on the intercom speaker thing while we were about to go to class and they told us to come down to the Travel Office and we just knew...those are our reassignments!!! I screamed sooooo loud and sprinted to travel office in a skirt hahaha. Greatest moment ever. I continued to bawl like a little baby that I am because I knew that I was not staying in Utah haha. What a great feeling.

Just want to quickly say that I know that my mission AND reassignment are going to change my life. I know that the Lord has prepared people for me to teach and I cannot wait to find them. My Spanish is no where near great and I didn't even know how to say, "It's snowing outside!!" in spanish...but hey, I don't need to know how to say that in AZ and Spain hahaha. I know the Lord will make up for my inadequacy and I will have the gift of tongues soon!! I learned in our last Devo with W. Craig Zwick-of 70- that I just need to THINK like Christ, ACT like Christ, and SPEAK like Christ and all will be well. I love you all so much!!

Scripture for the week: 2 Ne 9:51...Don't waste time. I will make sure I don't waste the Lord's time and that I serve with urgency. I love you all!!! I will send my AZ address soon and hopefully someone will update it on the blog and FB :) Take care everyone and serve the Lord!!!!

Love,

Hermanita Daly