Week 44: Want vs. Will

Happy Saturday the 14th! 

I know that’s not really a thing, but I didn’t write on Friday the 13th, and I figured I could make it a thing. Just to be a trendsetter. We’ll see how it plays once your responses start rolling in.

I love this poster outside the stadium so much.

As I’ve said in two previous email subject lines, what kind of week has it been? Well, my beloved brothers and sisters, a truly wilding one. Let me break it down for you.

So Gloria and Manuel, the couple we’ve been teaching, have been doing super well, when suddenly their phone number stopped working. They had given us a vague address, but they hadn’t given us their exact address, and all of our lessons were in the church. We were pretty lost as to what to do. Thankfully, we knew where Manuel worked, so we went over to the restaurant at dinner and asked if he was working. The waiter came back and told us that Manuel had straight-up disappeared. We were like, that’s not bueno. Finally, Gloria responded on WhatsApp, and it turns out that they’re spending some time on the coast. We’ll see what happens with them.

Amazingly enough, we found another family to teach! Jesús, Sandi, and their little 3-year-old, Lisbet. They are progressing really well. They just moved to Xela, and they have a lot of trials they’re going through, but their faith is so remarkable. That family reminds me why I love being a missionary every time I talk to them.

Intercambios were super fun! (Also taking over an area in a place where you can’t rely on Google Maps)

I was able to go on exchanges with the lovely Hermana Ramírez! She’s so fun, and she was very patient with me when I had to slowly tell all of my silly stories in Spanish. Hermana González is very good at understanding English, and so I’m often able to rely on that to explain more complex things. It was not the case with Hermana Ramírez. But we were still able to do the work and have fun.

Still confused about the Korean-Guatemalan connection I didn't know existed until I came here.

These last few days, Hermana González and I have been hitting the streets hard. Our mission has standards of excellence in different categories. They’re basically weekly expectations. We’re asked to have 10 effective contacts a day. That means you have the person’s name and number and/or address. The entire time we’ve been together, Hermana González and I have had to work really hard to meet this, and most days, we don’t. But our focus changed to talking to everyone, and suddenly, the game changed. In the last two days, we’ve had 40 contacts, which is over half of what we’re asked to reach weekly. I can’t really explain the change that I’ve felt in myself because of this. Not in having a number that’s higher than normal, but in the shift in perspective. Every goal we set in finding really comes down to us reaching out and offering what we have to all of God’s children here. We’re still not perfect, but we’re trying our best, and it turns out that it’s a lot more than we realized.

Who knew we were so global?

The people we talk to have wants, too. They want a happy family, a good education, a relationship with God. And Hermana González and I have always wanted to reach the standards of excellence. But the difference in this week was that we actually did something about it.

One of my favorite scriptures is in section 4 of Doctrine and Covenants (the missionary section, haha). It reads:

3 Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work.

I am most definitely not a perfect person, and I’m an equally imperfect missionary. But I have found a desire to share the gospel, over and over again on the mission, and each time I rediscover it, the more my joy grows. I’m thankful for that joy, and I’m thankful that I get to have more as I cultivate and work for it, one footstep at a time.

— Sharing that joy with you,

Hermana Newton