Holding Birds and Accepting Challenges

Well, I finished reading the Book of Mormon. 

I love the chance I've had to take on Moroni's challenge again:

4 Y cuando recibáis estas cosas, quisiera exhortaros a que preguntéis a Dios el Eterno Padre, en el nombre de Cristo, si no son verdaderas estas cosas; y si pedís con un corazón sincero, con verdadera intención, teniendo fe en Cristo, él os manifestará la verdad de ellas por el poder del Espíritu Santo;  

5 Y por el poder del Espíritu Santo podréis conocer la verdad de todas las cosas. 

Next go round of reading will be in Spanish!


Speaking of Spanish, here are some things that have been fun to explain to one of our sister training leaders who is from Venezuela:
-The meaning of the word "edgy"
-Bop-It
-Scavenger Hunts
-What roadkill is

I'm sure there will be more to come. In return here are a few of the words that I've learned this week:
Merendar- to have an afternoon snack (I'll be using this a lot)
Ardilla- squirrel
Cazar- to hunt (not to be confused with casar, which is pronounced the same but means "to marry")


We were challenged to lead with an invitation to baptism this week in every contact, which I found wayyy intimidating at first. We can't even get our investigators to commit to baptism, how are we supposed to walk up to strangers and do it?? But, I know that if we take on the challenges we've been given, we will see results. We got 2 new investigators out of inviting everyone we saw to be baptized. Mauricio and Jennifer both said yes even though we had just met them! So that's super cool. This week has been a good one to see results. We aren't teaching a ton of people and our most recent progressing investigator literally disappeared this week, but on Sunday almost all of the less-actives we've been working with came to church! They told us that our visits with them really helped them remember that the Lord loves them and that church is the place they need to be on Sunday. We also got a call from the Vietnamese elders that a referral we had sent them had become a new investigator for them so that was awesome! Most of the time we send referrals and never hear about how it goes, and just hope that they actually contact and teach them, so it was really nice to hear from the elders and know that the short conversation we had with a man who didn't really speak much English, the seed we planted, was starting to sprout.  


I also supposedly drank cashew juice yesterday? But I didn't have an allergic reaction so it's highly likely that I misunderstood.
Thanks for the support as always!  Please enjoy this picture of me with a bird on my arm 😊 (on that same night I also held a bunny!)

Love, Hermana Thunell

"What's that hairstyle called? I want to do it on my sister so she'll look ugly?"

I could probably just pick a kid-quote every week for the title of my emails. It's a good thing I have high self esteem considering how many kids we're working with and how often they don't have a filter on what they say. The above quote is from 11 year old Celso, who made up for it by telling me sincerely that it slipped out of his mouth and that he really does love us. He just doesn't like my hair apparently 😂

Well, I officially don't know how to pray in English anymore. Hopefully that means I'm getting better at Spanish. I feel like I've turned a corner this week in my Spanish. Last Sunday I could understand all the talks and lessons so much more clearly, and all of this week I've found myself able to express myself in Spanish better and slipping into it much easier than I could before. A lady answered the door the other day saying "Hola" and before I knew what I was doing I was introducing ourselves in Spanish. 

This week has been on the rougher side. We've dropped more people than ever, and been dropped just as much. We probably lost about half of our investigators, BUT it's okay because now we get to fill that space with real truth-seekers. We're making a push to work with members and get referrals, so it'll be exciting to see how that turns out. 

This has been the week of crazy dinner appointments. For some reason the ward went crazy last week in filling up our meal calendar and the calendar of who can come out with us and when. We had some young women come up to us yesterday and offer their help if we ever needed anyone to come out teaching with us, which is awesome because when I was their age I needed a major kick in the butt to go out with the sister missionaries

 (#mydadwasthebestwardmissionleaderever).

We got double-booked for dinner appointments yesterday and today, so that was a fun challenge to work out. We had to reschedule the remaining two dinner appointments to during the week, which we can only go to if they bring a non member to dinner. Fingers crossed that happens, because I LOVE dinner with members. The last time we had dinner with Obispo (the time we ate cow stomach) he invited another family from the ward to eat with us too, the familia Diaz, who made this AMAZING dessert with plátanos, queso, and guayaba. We brought it up with Hermana Diaz in our last video call with her, asking her to make it again for our upcoming dinner appointment. We asked her what they were called and she cheerfully answered "Plátanos".

"No, hermana, like what is the dessert as a whole called?"

*thinks for a second* "Plátanos con queso".

"But is there like a name?"

*thinks again* "Plátanos con queso y guayaba".

Not as cool as I was hoping it would be called, but they're so good so I guess they don't need a cool name.

So I was reading about the 3 Nephites this week, which a super super cool topic. And then it got me thinking if maybe I've met one of the 3 Nephites before, and if I had, who would I guess it would be? So that's my question to everyone this week, just something fun and hypothetical: if you were to guess that someone you know was one of the 3 Nephites, who would that someone be and why?

This is fun to ask to random ward members or missionaries, because essentially the question is: who's the most interesting and simultaneously righteous person you know? It brings up lots of interesting stories. 

Thanks everyone for all the support! Three months down, 15 more to go. Not that I'm counting 😂

Hermana Thunell

Pictures:

There are lots of really pretty flowers and super cool plants. If people turn down salvation, I just ask if I can take a picture of their plants.

Whenever we make videos we always get distracted and just end up taking random videos and pictures of ourselves. I can't send videos, so there's just an example picture. 

A part of my picture collage on the wall at my desk. I have 80 pictures, so I had to do SOMETHING creative with them. 

The last one is a picture one of our kiddos took of us while we were teaching her how to post on Snapchat. 

The Spider Whisperer

Hola todos!

This week I have learned the importance of journal writing. I didn't write in my journal at all, so I don't really remember what happened or know what to write about. SO, I'm just going to share this really cool part of the Book of Mormon:

Alma 46:12-13

"And it came to pass that [Moroni] rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof and wrote upon it-In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children-and he fastened it upon the end of a pole.

And he fastened on his headplate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armor about his loins; and he took the pole, which had on the end thereof his rent coat (and he called it the title of liberty) and he bowed himself to the earth, and he prayed mightily unto his God for the blessings of liberty to rest upon his brethren, so long as there should a band of Christians remain to possess the land-"

Moroni was riled up, ready to fight the enemies of his faith and to defend the truth. I imagine him running home, rifling through things until he finds a coat, something to write with. He tears it and scratches out quickly the thoughts of his heart. I doubt he took the time to find the best material, or write in cute bubble lettering. He was inspired to defense and ready to show it. He puts on his armor, grabs his makeshift banner-and prays. Of all the weapons of war, he chooses the humblest, the smartest, the strongest. And then, armed fully with God's power, he shares his light and rallies others to his righteous cause. I love the intensity of these verses, like action scenes in a movie with this mighty, but probably quiet prayer tucked in between lines.

Prayer is our best weapon. USE IT!

Mornings are really hard for me out here. When most people are tired they're grumpy, but when I'm tired I feel sad. But on mornings that are the hardest, I always have to take the time to stop and realize that I haven't prayed. Prayer makes everything better, and we should never be going out to face the world without its protection.

We've met some really awesome people this week, and because of the power of the Book of Mormon we've been able to teach them and get to know them a little better.

One of those people we met just lost his wife on New Year's Day, the day I came into the mission. We shared Alma 40 with him, and later taught the Plan of Salvation. He shared with us the grief he feels over the loss of his wife, the guilt he feels for not being a better husband, and that he knows she's accepted the gospel and he asked us how he could live in paradise with her.

The Lord prepares people. It's crazy to think about where I was on January 1st, tired and nervous and missing my family, versus where he was: in a hospital, holding his wife's hand as she died, thinking it was the last time he would see her. I miss my family so much, but I'm grateful to know that this sacrifice is only temporary, and that I can live with my family eternally. That's why we're out here as missionaries: to share that message with people like Eddie and help them know that they don't have to hold onto that grief and guilt.

In less spiritual news, there has been a spider in our apartment for the past couple days that I affectionately named Reggie. I don't mind having him crawl around on my desk, but Hermana Bent HATES spiders, so this morning when he was crawling on the wall she told me if I didn't get him out of the apartment, she would kill him. Twenty minutes and lots of screaming later, we released Reggie onto the balcony to be free. I'll miss him, but it's probably better this way.

Thank you everyone for all the love and support! I'll be better at keeping my journal this coming week.

-Hermana Thunell