September 21 Letter

Dear Family!
How is everything??? I’m so glad to hear everything is okay with everyone! This week was sooooo awesome! We had a rough start, but it ended with an amazing companion study after lunch yesterday and finding an amazing family the first house we knocked after leaving the pension. It was so great! Here’s a little bit about how the missionary schedule works. After church, we either eat with a family in the area or in the pension and after lunch, we study for two hours before going out to work. I had an amazing personal study. I studied 2 Nephi 32 and 33 (continuing with the study of the Book of Mormon we’re doing as a mission) and I can’t believe the spiritual epiphanies the Lord was giving me. After reading those chapters, I read in chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel. First about faith, then that led me to read about hope which led me to read about patience. It was incredible. Hermana Miller and I have been racking our brains trying to figure out what we can do to have and show more faith. We’ve been asking, as did the Lord of the vineyard, “what more could I have done for my vineyard?” Trying to figure out what to do different so we could find more people to teach...so we could find PEOPLE to teach period.
In my reading, I found out that Hermana Miller and I, yes we need more faith, but that wasn’t our problem…our problem was having the hope the Lord is going to bless us and then having PATIENCE enough to wait for them. Patience that the Lord will bless us in His way and His time. In the section about hope it talks about bearing with afflictions with confidence, happiness and something else, I can’t remember. So…we made a quote, because we are so spiritually deep C: that says: Patience with the attitude of hope and the actions of faith. Also, something I thought was interesting is that in the paragraphs about patience, it says the words “ability” and “able”. I had never considered patience an action word. Interesting.
So what did we do when we went out to work yesterday? Everyone that rejected us until that first house we knocked, we said, “That was a really good contact Hermana, maybe next time we could say this or say that. Don’t worry, the next person will listen.” When we knocked the house, a woman called Edith answered the door and let us in. We taught her, her husband, Fernando, and their daughter, Melisa who’s 24. We taught the restoration and Fernando kept interrupting us with things that had nothing to do with what we were talking about. It was interesting , though, because instead of getting frustrated, my companion and I were patient and kept control of the lesson and little by little, he said less and less. They had never heard of the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, which was such good news to us! However, one of the members that lives next to them gave them The Testaments. Edith told us she really liked it. We committed them to reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. We left them 3 Nephi 11 and the introduction which I am so excited about because now they will understand 100 times better the movie The Testaments. We were so excited that we immediately gave a prayer of thanks. My companion told me that’s the first family found in two months. We’re so excited and so grateful for PATIENCE!!!!
Funny story for the week. Last night I was talking in English in my Mexican accent and my companion was dying laughing. It wasn’t a very good idea though because when we were in the area where there are more people, when I went to contact someone instead of saying, “Hola” I wanted to say, “HYELLO!” Hermana Miller told me that she loves that I can do that, but thinks it’s so creepy that I can do it so well. Haha I had fun C:
Anyway, we're going to go play soccer with our zone so I've gotta get going! Have a wonderful week everyone! Lots of LOVE from Argentina!

Hermana Shumway C: