p-day # 2

hola familia!

 well... i have some incredibly shocking amazing news. haha. last night, when me and hermana neilsen were planning, our branch president came in and asked us if he could speak with us. we thought we were in trouble or something! so we followed him into a room, and sat down. he told us that god works in mysterious ways, and that we have been called to take a detour on these missions of ours. the Lord has called hermana Nielsen and i to serve 6 weeks in the mtc in guatemala, and we will be leaving in a week and a half. there is a sister who has been called to honduras who will be opening a new pilot program to learn spanish in 6 weeks, and we have been called to be her companionship during her stay there. there are no problems with visas getting into guatemala, and so we will be leaving our time here and our district to continue our training down in guatemala.

of course we were both absolutely shocked. hermana nielsen was really peaceful throughout the whole talk with the president, but i was freaking out. but, without a doubt, i accepted the call from my president, and after asking a few questions, we went back and told our district. we will be in a threesome with this girl, and she is going down there with no mtc experience at all. apparently this mtc is much smaller, so i will be one of about 100 missionaries, the president said. we will be able to proselyte to people right outside the mtc, obviously it's going to be very similar to here while obviously having a ton of differences. we are definitely going to learn the language faster because we will be so immersed in a culture that only speaks spanish, but i think that is a huge blessing, and after going through my freak out, i am so grateful that the Lord has called me to be one of the sisters to open this program down there.

i read a lot about faith last night before i went to bed because it is going to take a lot of faith in the lord to put my life in his hands knowing so little about this language and this gospel. Alma 32 and Hebrews 11 were the chapters that comforted me the most. i think it would be really great if you all could read those chapters while you are embracing this decision i have made to accept this calling.

our district took it pretty hard. These people that have become my family here are people that I know i knew in the pre-earth life. I am so grateful for all of the personalities and spirits that every single person in our district brings.  i love all of these people more than i can express with words. in fact, it's bringing tears to my eyes right now just thinking about how much i love them. right after the branch president left, everyone started crying and we had a little testimony meeting. we were all crying and talking about the gospel, and we decided to have a district prayer on our knees in the classroom. before i began, everyone expressed how much they were going to miss us and how incomplete our district will be without us in it. they all said the classroom would feel so empty without us there. it was really touching and i am so grateful for all of these brothers and sisters! i said the prayer in spanish, and i was so overwhelmed with love that when we all opened our eyes, everyone had started crying again. i can't believe i have to leave this family behind! it's insane how close we have gotten in a little over a week. it feels like i have been a sister to all of these people for my whole life. they are absolutely incredible people, and i know that i have learned so much from all of them already. it's going to be so hard to leave them. 

this week, we had the opportunity to continue to teach a man 3 times. on saturday, we decided to teach him about the plan of salvation and the atonement and the spirit. obviously, we were not extremely prepared and we don't know very much spanish, but the spirit in that room was so powerful. the gift of tongues is real, and i was so overwhelmed by the feelings that we had during that lesson. Even though we are extremely inadequate, we did everything we could and it was enough. :) just like it always is with our Heavenly Father. We invited him to be baptized in that lesson, and he accepted. :) over the course of the next couple lessons, we invited him to read the book of mormon, to pray night and day, and to attend church with us on sunday. it was all obviously in extremely broken spanish, but he understood us and he accepted every invitation with so much excitement. We were very pleased with our progress, but also just extremely grateful that our heavenly father helped us in our time of need. i know that when we work hard, even if we feel it isn't good enough, god will always make up the difference and provide us with his spirit to help us in our times of need.

Sunday was absolutely what i needed in order to realize that I actually do have a purpose here and that there is a reason that I am here, and all of the talks and songs that were sung were just for me. All of those things made me re-realize how much i love this gospel and how much i want to share it with others. what we have is too good not to share.

i will write more in my letters! i love you all so much, and I think i will be able to call when i leave. i'll let you know of my travel plans as soon as i know them.

love,

hermana spencer.