It's been an amazing week!! I have grown a lot. I made Chilean bread with a member and saw lots of dolphins! Dieciocho was this week too and it was pretty uneventful in the day haha. The real partying starts at night. We visited the hospital and went to see people who don't have any family or who rarely get any visitors. That was probably the sweetest experience of my mission so far. The Spirit was so strong there and I really felt like that is exactly what the Savior would be doing. Then we went and visited a widow, Hermana Carmen, and had a little dieciocho party with her for an hour. The gift of tongues has felt very real this week. I have really been working a lot harder and applying myself even more. It felt like one morning I woke up and could speak Spanish! I don't understand everything and cant say everything, but I can have conversations with people by myself, help teach a TON more in lessons, and talk on the phone with people now. There is no way that came by myself. Heavenly Father has been blessing me with the gift of tongues as I've really tried to work for it--as with every other spiritual gift. Also I've realized a lot that I'm continuing to grow in areas of communication. As a companionship, there can be absolutely nothing in your relationship that will drive away the Spirit, or you cant do the work. We get a long really well and are super good friends, but just like as with married couples or siblings, there are little things that need to be resolved. You have to be completely humble and constantly be working on having a stronger relationship so that you can bless the lives of others. If we treat all of our relationships like this, we are going to grow a lot. Its very important to keep the Sprit with you and be willing to let go of things that aren't important so that you can continue doing the work of the Lord. If we don't always have the Spirit with us, we are going to be harming ourselves and the lives of others. This week has been really good here in Estrecho! We have really been trying to keep doing everything Elder Bragg told us to do and we have been seeing miracles. I have been trying to study the Restoration everyday and I have really come to feel the importance of it. I have realized that the reason we should usually teach through the Restoration is because if we teach it right, it covers both the Plan of Salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we have used it to teach contacts and investigators, and as we ourselves have understood it more, we have seen miracles in contacts and lessons. We have had 2 very powerful experiences with teaching the Restoration this week! One of them was with an antiguo investigador named Myrna. Missionaries have been teaching her for a long time but she never has realized the need for one church. We have been struggling to help her realize this for the past 2 months. This past week when we were in her house, I just had a very small prompting to ask her if we could watch the Restoration video with her. We did, and by the end there was such a power in her home. It was probably one of the strongest overwhelming moments of peace I have felt outside of the temple in my entire life. She was silent for awhile and then told us that she believes Joseph Smith is just like all the other prophets since the world began and that she feels he was a good man and could have been called of God. We asked her if she believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet and after a long moment of silence, she answered yes. THAT WAS HUGE!! For almost a year missionaries have been teaching her and she hasn't made much progress. She has always felt that all religions are good (Which is very true. They are. They just don't all have the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ but they have pieces of it and they are good people) and she shares with missionaries of all different religions. But when we really focused on teaching her through the Restoration and letting the Spirit do the teaching, she was able to figure out for herself that Joseph Smith was a man called of God to restore the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth, never to be taken away again until the Second Coming of our Savior. The other experience we had this week was with a contact we had made from about a month ago. We were walking to an appointment and I felt like we should knock this house. There was loud music booming and a man cam out with long hair and lots of tattoos. He didn't appear to be super interested, but we gave him a Restoration pamphlet and asked him if we could come back. This past week we stopped by and he let us in right away. At first we were a little bit nervous for our safety because people don't usually let you in that easily, but we didn't feel the Spirit say not to. We started talking with him about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. He told us that he has always had questions that weren't able to be answered by any other religion or book, even the Bible, and that he wants to know more! He pointed to the Book of Mormon and said, "I want to know more about that book." It was a really powerful moment. He invited us to come back and continue to teach him and his family. Another huge miracle. I know for myself that Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father did appear to the boy Joseph Smith and they did restore the Gospel of Jesus Christ through him. Also one of our investigators CAME TO CHURCH AND BROUGHT A FRIEND!!! That was a huge miracle! During the whole meeting the Spirit was really strong and at the end, both of them said they loved it and want to keep coming. I think we are really going to start seeing leaps and bounds of progress with them! What a blessing it is to be a missionary and be able to see Heavenly Father work miracles in the lives of our investigators and my life as well. Even though there are hard days, it is SO good to be a missionary! I love you all so much and have an amazing week!!
--Hermana West
