Hey -- what's up, my friends? Here's my group e-mail for the week. I'm real tired right now so I don't know if I'll actually remember everything that happened, and also a lots been happening. Like we're always busy. We don't really get a full study in, at least not often.
I'm focusing on trying to have fun, not get overwhelmed, not get stressed. I can only control if I get stressed by something, and even then it's hard it's hard, but that's the thing that is most in my power right now so that's what I'm trying to do.
I think I'll just answer the questions that Mom sent me.
1. What has made me laugh this week -- I've really been just trying to laugh with my companion. So we've been laughing more, even if it's like dumb things.
2. An experience where I really felt the Spirit this week -- I'm going to be honest. It was a hard week. I had a lot of tension and stress and the Spirit wasn't always, like, with me because it was more like stress. I think it was but I just felt the stress more, you know? It kind of, like, pushes it out. There was day and we had this lesson with J and she kind of just argued with us about the fall of Adam and Eve and how Adam's not a prophet, he was maybe before he left the garden but then he's not a prophet. And we're like, no, he is literally the first prophet. And I said, "J, do you really think that Adam didn't repent for partaking of the fruit? If that's a sin in your mind do you think he repented? Also, that wasn't a bad thing anyways." It was one of those days where I couldn't even talk to people on the train because I didn't have the Spirit with me. I was just angry and I wasn't in a mental place to talk to people about the gospel. But we had an appointment with C and his family, and C told us that his wife is pregnant now because we brought something into his house and he's really happy about it and he said, "God bless you!" and we said thank you. By God's grace. We taught them the plan of salvation. In the morning I had tried to make them a little paper representation of the plan of salvation but it was incredible after that lesson. Literally. And there's this missionary leaving in our ward this week and he said this in sacrament meeting -- "a missionary is someone who leaves their family so others can be with their families forever." It was, like, with C's family, teaching a family the plan of salvation it was just like, "Yes!" And the Spirit was really strong and it was incredible how much I was able to change my mood after that.
3. How was church and what did I learn -- Good. Like I said, this missionary is going to England and leaving this week. He gave is farewell talk and it was so weird. It was similar to some of the things I've said in mine and I realized that before you go out you don't know anything. You literally don't know anything. So it was just crazy, like he's such a baby missionary, and I felt like, "Awwww!" I gave a talk in the African branch and then we had an impromptu meal appointment which was sweet! They made us homemade pesto and I know how to make it now so stay tuned. It's really good.
4. How have I served someone this week -- that's a good question. I don't know. I tried -- I promise I did. I did the dishes in the sink today. We taught English class. C said we brought the blessing of pregnancy to his family.
5. Do I know how much you love me -- Yes.
6. What am I working on in my scriptures right now -- I'm reading in Helaman. Last week we were given the invite to study faith and this week she gave us the invite to study repentance. And, it's like, the simplest things and we always need to work on them, you know? It's crazy. Like, I've kind of been studying faith and I think a big thing that I need to work on and focus on is faith in myself. Faith in the fact that God has called me to be here, faith in the fact that God has called me to be here, faith in the fact that God has called me to be in this city and to be in this mission and to be training and to serve the people that I'm serving. And faith in the fact that He will provide, He will hep me accomplish His will. I think that's a hard one. I think it's easy to be like, ok, I jut have to do it -- I just have to do it. But really, this isn't my work -- it's God's work -- and I need to have more faith in the fat that He wants me to succeed, you know? Any scriptures in specific...not that I can think of right now. I just can't remember. And repentance is our topic for this week, and your girl needs a lot of repentance! Also one cute thing -- this isn't a scripture -- but there's something from 2013, it's something about keeping your covenant. It's a talk and I've used it in a few spiritual thoughts It talks about the Provo City Center Temple and how before it was the tabernacle and then it was burned down and everyone was so sad, but then 10 months later it was announced to be a temple. And the fact that God can take us and, like, a tabernacle is great but He wants us to be more, you know? I've been thinking about that and I've been a little overwhelmed this week, I can't lie. But I liked that quote so if you guys want to find it it's really cute.
7. Am I able to get any exercise time during the week -- Yeah. We exercise every day at 6:30 in the morning for 30 minutes. I do P90X most days and I will say that I've been doing legs and butt and I can tell things are getting smaller. I want to start running twice each week because I need to keep up my endurance but also do a sprint workout one day. I'm going to be honest -- it's hard! I'm tired! But yes, we do get to exercise. I try a little bit to exercise at lunch but then I'm tired and would rather just sit down and read.
8. Is Palermo right on the ocean -- yes. The place where we run (we can't run on the beach) is on a sidewalk where we can see the ocean when we run. Yeah, we're on the ocean. And it's so close to our house. Sometimes it will smell like the beach but not too much.
9. How is P doing -- P is doing good. P and J are doing well. We made their baptism dates again -- August 10. Pray for them. It's hard because I don't know when people are truly converted and that's a hard one....
10. Who is the guy in the pictures with us -- his name is S and he's n English group student. He loves the missionaries, he took out to pizza and he, like, loves us a lot. He's so cute. It's funny.
11. How do we run English class -- we just wing it every time. Literally. Sorella B likes to do pronunciation. Last time we did vacation. It depends.
12. Anything else happened this week -- F is a cutie. He's starting to read the Book of Mormon for the second time. We're so busy. We're going to get our African dresses fitted right now, actually. We picked out patterns and asked them to make them. And we're going to go meet FR and we're going to two gelaterias. He's the guy we met from New Jersey and he bought us gelato.
OK, bye!
