Hola!
This week has been tooooo good! Its starting to warm up a little bit here I think! Well, I cant really tell...but there is a lot more sun! We have been trying to help it feel like a new transfer because we are staying together so we changed up our house! We switched rooms and made it feel more homey (how do you spell that hahah). Its been really fun. The only downside of this week was when we were knocking doors and a dog jumped up and bit my companions elbow and then tried to attack me! Luckily we wear HUGE coats so nothing happened. Mostly it was just really funny and we laughed about it for awhile after. Friday night Hermana Egbert and I slept HORRIBLY! We aren't sure why, but both of us woke up about every hour. When the alarm went off Saturday morning we were EXHAUSTED, but we were obedient and got out of bed to start our exercises. It was all I could do not to fall asleep while trying to work out. Hermana Egbert ran downstairs and looked out the window and said, "Wow there is a super pretty reflection of a sunrise in the window across the street! Want to go see it?" If you know me, that wasn't even a question! We booked it out the door in our sweats, slippers and all, and raced down the street to see the sunrise! We got to the street and It was really pretty, but we knew there was more that we could see! We ended up jogging like 5 more streets down to this big open area on top of a hill and we were able to see even more, but it didn't cut it! Hermana Egbert and I looked at each other for a second, had the same idea, and the next thing we knew we were on the beach watching the sunrise!!! IT WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SUNRISE I HAVE EVER SEEN!!! The sky was GOLDEN and full of sooo many beautiful colors and the ocean was incredible too (its still weird to see the sunrise on the ocean instead of the sunset). But it was honestly one of my favorite times in my whole life! It took longer than our 30 minutes of exercise time, but we just got ready extra fast! Anyway, even though we were super tired and had no energy, because we were obedient and got up on time and were willing to do our exercises Heavenly Father blessed us with one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen! If we hadnt been exactly obedient, we would have continued our day and never have known what we had missed out on! There are HUGE blessings that come from being obedient, even if sometimes we dont see them right away! DONT MISS OUT ON YOUR BLESSINGS!!! Also, the work is going really well here in Estrecho! This week we really took weekly planning super seriously instead of just doing it because thats what we do. We made a list of exactly how many investigators we have, less actives we can work with, and people we could follow up with. Then we made a plan for each individual person and how we were going to be in contact with them and what lessons they needed, etc. It took a little over 3 hours to do, but we really felt like Heavenly Father was really happy with us. We are figuring out how to be more like the Savior everyday in the work. Before this, we didnt feel like we were having a TON of success, but we knew we were giving our full effort to the work. After we made a list, we figured out we have 24 investigators, 7 of which are progressing, and from there if we were able to teach the people that live with them we would have 14 new investigators! That was a really cool realization! Heavenly Father is very much in charge of this work and He goes about doing it almost unnoticed and we have to be paying attention to all the little miracles we see in our lives everyday! Then we listed the less actives that we have been working with and realized we have 11 of them and if we taught the people that they live with we would have 13 more investigators. So in total, we could potentially have 48 investigators to work with if we work inside out. It reminds me of that quote that says, "The gospel of Jesus Christ doesnt take the people out of the slums, it takes the slums out of the people and they take themselves out of the slums." It really does start from the inside because thats where the core is and where the strength starts! So we are going to really try to work harder to work inside out this transfer. We are also really working harder to follow the Spirit on the first prompting! Usually we do, but sometimes we make mistakes. Yesterday we were walking along the beach contacting people and both Hermana Egbert and I had the thought to contact a woman who was walking in our direction along the shore. We were kindof far away and would´ve had to go out of our way to talk to her when there were lots of other people around us we could contact. We ended up not doing anything about it. She kept walking and we stopped for a minute and watched her walk away wondering if the feeling to talk to her would leave or not. We looked at each other, realized how dumb we had been, said sorry to Heavenly Father for not following the prompting right away, and then ran in the sand for about 3 minutes to catch up to her. Im sure it looked really weird, but we gave her a Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet, talked to her for 20 seconds because she wasnt super interested, and then left. Who knows why we needed to talk to her. Maybe somewhere down the road she will be converted or someone in her family will read the pamphlet and be interested, I probably will never know. But I do know that God knows, and He is in charge of this work. Im so grateful for Jesus Christ and that because of Him we can repent and have second chances! Im still learning how to be better everyday and its going to take a whole lifetime and more, but the happy thing is that we CAN be just a little better everyday! I love being here and being a missionary!! I love you all and hope that you have an incredible week!!
--Hermana West
