Transfer 6 week 5

December 28, 2010

Dear Family,
So great to talk to you on Christmas!!!! Jacob sounds like Dad and Josh´s voice has changed so much that we just spent our short conversation laughing. Christmas went great here...Christmas is the season of CHOCOLATE. A lot of the sisters in the mission are starting to think seriously about not eating so much as soon as the new year hits. We´ll see how that goes.

On Monday we did interchanges for a day and I went with Hermana Long. I always learn a lot in the interchanges...this time I learned a lot about food. The sisters that live with her are master chefs. I didn´t think that cooking would be one of the top ten things I would learn in the mission, but living with so many people for so long has really paid off.
Hermana Long seems really great. Her Spanish is very good for her "age" in the mission. She works hard.

We had the greatest lesson while I was with Hermana Long. We taught a guy named Angel. She said that Angel had contacted them and asked where he could receive the charlas. Apparently he has a friend and some cousins in Ecuador that are members of the Church and he was curious. He is studying medicine here...I don´t think he has been here very long. He has attended institute a couple of times and they gave him a Triple Combination (The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price together) so he gave us back the copy of the Book of Mormon that the missionaries had given him so we could give it to someone else. We taught him about the Restoration using the example of a tower of cups that fall and represent the apostasy. I guess that isn´t a great explanation but the example makes the apostasy very clear. The Spirit was very strong there and Hermana Long had invited a girl from JAS(Young single adults) who helped testify and explain. Angel had done reading and pondering and he was just so open. He agreed that January 15th would be an acceptable date for his baptism because it would give him time to read more from the Book of Mormon. Angel´s story strengthened my testimony that there are really people searching for the truth and will be open to us. We just have to put in the time and live worthily to have the Spirit and the Lord will guide us to the people in His time.

We have been stood up and had lessons canceled a lot these past few weeks and of couse my first thought was "what are we doing wrong" but I realized something cool: We are human and we can´t really know if people will be home or not or what changes will happen in their schedules or who will forget, but the Lord can see everything that happens and He can easily orchestrate a meeting between us and someone who is open to talking, searching for the Gospel, or just sad. All we have to do is be willing and brave enough to start talking to the people that are right next to us. Every mission is different and one of the biggest focuses of the Madrid Mission is contacting. I realized how great that is for me personally because I would not have said that opening up and talking, asking questions etc was a strength of mine before the mission, let alone with strangers in another language as we invite ourselves over to their homes. The Lord knows us well.

Hermana Long gave me a talk by Elder Ballard from Conference April 2004. "Atonement and the value of an Individual."
Elder Ballard said that the world judges importance based on the size of the audience of the person, but by that as the measuring stick fathers and mothers for example don´t rate very high. But the individual is important to the Lord. It is the little acts of kindness and service that will bring about the Lord´s great purposes. I thought about you Mom and Dad and how you might just have an audience of five but you have been the world to us.

I love you so much!! You sound great!! Not gonna lie, I can´t wait to see you but I am so glad I have more time here!

Love, Hermana Shayla Moulton