Monday, November 17, 2014

Week #13 - I Love these People!

Hello!

Funny: This week one of my investigators said that when we first began meeting with her that SHE was praying for the gift of tongues in order to understand me. Now, she remarks on how good I've become at Spanish and requires that I pray at every lesson, calling it my "Spanish Lesson" for the day. She's the best! Very Cuban!! The other day, someone asked her if she was pregnant and she adamantly stated "NO BABIES!!" multiple times while making air pregnant belly with her hands..... She doesn't speak English but she knew that :) 

I LOVE people of other ethnicities. They are always so warm and open. They love to talk, laugh, and have a good time. They are humble. They wear hilarious outfits. They treat their families like GOLD. They love the Lord. They are AMAZING! I joke around with a sweet Nigerian sister that I'm going to get a full body transplant to look, talk, and act like her because she is seriously the best! No worries everyone, I'm still tall, gawky, and blonde :D) 

Well, we got in a car accident! Whoo! It wasn't bad, really. We were stopped at a light and this guy came up behind us WAY too fast and rear ended us, then in turn ran into the lady in front of us. Both of us are more than just a little bit sore. 

Book of Mormon: I've been learning more about covenants and about how sanctification works. As I understand it - Christ was sanctified for us; however, if we don't know what sanctification m5. is it makes that difficult. So with a little more digging we find that Sanctification is when we align our will with the Father. Because Christ aligned His will with the Father's and provided that the only way we could return to God was through Christ....well, we have to align our will with God as well. We align our will with God and then are called by the name of Christ. Because we are converted to Him and have no more desire to do evil, we are worthy of this name. If we were called by the name but not truly sanctified then it would make God a liar and that isn't possible. So yeah. I learned that I want to be sanctified! More than anything I have fallen in LOVE with Book of Mormon and the Bible. Who needs marriage? I've got my life set up. I'm going to be a hermit. A Mormon hermit. I'm going to go to school, learn all that I can about the religious world and then retire to a life of backpacking and sending my knowledge to random colleges for their enlightenment. I'll be that crazy lady :) I tried to convince my mom that eloping would be a better way than all the trouble of receptions and weddings but she didn't listen....so I'm just not getting married.  :)  

Miracles: This week we were sitting in our car before going out to Harvest and prayed that we would be able to find someone that had been previously introduced to the Gospel because we knew that they would be one step closer to accepting it and had been prepared. We walked down the street and turned the corner when we saw a house and felt prompted to go there. As we walked up, this sweet older lady saw us and welcomed us in with no hesitation. As we sat talking with her at the table after our harvest prayer she all the sudden turns to us and goes, "Wait, what church are you?" We said the name of the church and her face just lights up and she says, "My son is a member in Panama! He wanted me to get in touch with missionaries since I've been in America!" We felt so humbled that the Lord knew He could answer our prayers so quickly.  

Yesterday we went to go teach a Guatamelan named Pascual. He is a Less Active and very shy. He wouldn't even look at me when I first met him. Perks of being tall... he really couldn't really see me unless he looked up :) Anyway, I for some reason felt very drawn to wanting to help him. I don't know why. I can't explain it. I had been rather blunt with him in lessons past because he wasn't doing anything to show he really had desires to come back to church but talked about wanting a temple marriage all the time. So dumb. Mom, I understand why it frustrated you so much when I didn't follow up with what I said I wanted. Anyway, I started to talking to him just like a friend and he REALLY opened up. He is talking with the bishop TODAY!! The best part is that I can never understand anything he says. Nothing. But right then...I could. The gift of tongues is real! 

More than anything I have felt like the Lord trusts me. He has placed so many amazing people in our path and allowed us the opportunity to teach them. All our investigators are insanely elect and so sweet. We should have a LOT of baptisms in the next few weeks. We need to get 21 by the end of the year to make our ward goal....needless to say, it'll be white Christmas here in sunny Florida after all!  I hope that continues! 

I love you all!

Hna Lake

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