p-day # 3

dear familia,

hola! how is everyone doing? can you believe another week is already gone?! it felt like the first week lasted a year, but this week was only like 3 days long. i can't believe i've only been here for 2.5 weeks though. with the amount of stuff i know and how much spanish i'm speaking in my lessons with my investigators, it's so crazy to me that i've only been here this long!

my teachers here are absolutely incredible. hermana self and hermano hepworth. they've started a new program called progressing investigator where each of our teachers pretends to be someone who they taught on their mission, and they act as if they are them with all of the same problems while we teach them. in spanish. it's really hard to say what we want to say because we still don't know very much spanish. i can usually understand the lessons well enough to respond to her questions. i just don't know enough words to be able to answer them how i wish i could in english. but that's just the nature of these practice lessons. they want us to focus on the investigator and not worry about spanish... haha. yeah. it doesn't really work that well. especially for us girls who are perfectionists and want to get everything perfect now. i'm actually really pleased with how our lessons are going though. this week, we've been teaching "gabriella", who is a mom of 2 kids, and her mother in law died at the age of like 45. she's really angry with god and we're trying to help her get over that. it's really difficult to answer her questions. but yesterday, we decided to not teach her a lesson and just teach her how everyone goes through hard times. i actually, very brokenly, shared my surgery story with her and told her a lot of stuff about my relationship with god and christ during that time. i wish it would have been more powerful, but what can ya do? it was still an awesome lesson, and we left her thinking a lot about how much god loves her. i hope anyways. she really likes us.

it's funny, cause even though "gabriella" is our teacher and we talk to her all day long, when she's acting like gabriella, i just love her so much and want her to understand how incredible this gospel is and what we are teaching her. it's a super weird feeling... but if i am already feeling like this about my fake investigators here, can you imagine how much i'm going to love my real investigators in chile? yeah, me either. haha.

on sunday of last week, in relief society, sister barbara bradshaw came and spoke to us about the importance of our mission calls and what they really mean. it was an incredible talk. i LOVE relief society because they have a member of the general relief society board come and speak to us every single week. they're always so spiritual and powerful and so applicable to what i need right at that moment. i loved her talk.

we watched the testaments after that. i hadn't ever seen it before, so i was so touched by the whole movie. i mean, i probably would have been anyways. near the end, i was just bawling because of the spirit was so strong in that room. and because of how incredibly powerful the message of the movie is. i loved it. :)

on monday, we got to teach some people in the TRC for the first time. seriously, one of the coolest experiences ever. one of our guys that we taught was so so nice. we taught him about the plan of salvation and we had him talk a lot, which has been one of our goals lately. it's really important to make sure the investigator feels comfortable enough to talk about whatever. and when we left, the guy who runs the trc told us that we did a really great job and that we did exactly what we needed to to make him talk a lot. so we felt really good about that. :) we have a long ways to go, but we're definitely building a very solid foundation to continue on.

on tuesday, for our fireside, we were priveleged to hear from elder dallin h. oaks. it was awesome. he spoke about the power and opportunity it is to have the spirit with us always. and how important it is to have the spirit with us, so we need to take the sacrament weekly. it is a sure promise that we will have the spirit with us if we are keeping the commandments and loving god. he said, "there's a difference between doing missionary things and being a missionary." it hit me really hard, and i've been pondering all week how to implement that into my missionary work. i feel like every day i'm becoming more of a missionary, and every day i'm here more will do the exact same thing. no one is perfect, and no one is ever going to be a perfect missionary. but with god's help, when i come home, i will have become someone who learned as much as they could about how to be one. :)

I'm out of time,  but I want you to know how much I love you family! Have a great week:)

 love,

hermana spencer