Blessing in Being Diligent‏

Hola Familia!

I love you all so so much!  And I am so proud of all you are doing.  Mom, you got a job!!!  I'm so happy for you!  I knew you could do it!  I've been praying so hard for you.  And all your hard work is finally going to pay off.  You did it, Mumsie!  And that will be so nice to have a break from clinicals for the rest of the quarter too.  I have no idea who Brandon Mull is, but I'm glad that you and Taz were able to go do that.  I'm so surprised at how fast the weeks have started going.  I never ever thought I'd say that, but yesterday I realized that it was already Sunday again.  It felt like it was just Sunday.  And also, transfers are this week.  Wild, right.  We just had transfers.  And yeah, this has been only a five week transfer, but I can't believe that we're already almost through.  I'm getting really nervous though.  I really don't want to leave Old Town.  I love it here.  It has really become home to me, and I can't imagine leaving the people here.  I love them so much.  Really truly.  I can't really even explain it in words.  But I know whatever happens will be the Lord's will, and it will be hard, but I'll go where he needs me.  We'll find out what's going to happen tomorrow night.

This week we've had some really amazing experiences.  Some of them came out of trials, but my testimony gets strengthened every single day that the Lord is so involved in this work.  So we'll start with the hardest part of the week.  On Tuesday morning I woke up at about 5:00 and I was so sick.  I was throwing up about every half hour.  It was miserable.  I couldn't keep anything down, not even water.  But we had lessons to go to and district meeting, so it really wasn't an option to stay home.  District meeting was miserable, I couldn't even sit through the whole meeting without being sick. Afterwards the Elders offered to give me a blessing.  It helped.  We had to take a little break Tuesday night, but it was more miserable not to work than to be sick, so we headed back out.  I was really worried for Walk About Wednesday, but Heavenly Father is so good.  Somehow I made it through, and wasn't completely miserable.  We walked about nine miles, I hadn't eaten anything for almost two whole days, but we made it.  And we were happy.  We met a ton of people and taught some lessons in the street.  Hopefully some of these people will turn into investigators.  It was so worth it to work and to do my best, even though I felt like dying, and I know that Heavenly Father blessed us for being diligent.  It was a great lesson to learn.  He is always waiting to bless us when we put Him first.  And we were way happier too.  And don't worry, I've gotten over those sickies and I'm doing great now.  And I got the box!  Thank you so much!  I got it on Tuesday night when I was so sick and so sad and it made my whole day!  It was kind of a bummer not to be able to eat those fruit snacks right away, but I've more than made up for it.  Thank you, thank you!  You're the best mom in the entire world.  And Kelley, I love the earrings.  They're so cute.  Thanks for thinking of me.

On Thursday we had one of those experiences that I've been waiting my whole mission to have.  I know that doesn't mean a whole lot because I haven't been out that long, but it was beautiful.  So we have this investigator named Junior.  He's 22 and he's the nephew of Hermana Castaneda who is a member in the ward.  He's super shy, but we've been teaching him since New Year's and it's been fun to see him warm up to us.  The problem is, we haven't been able to get him to pray.  He always says maybe next time.  But he really hasn't had a spiritual experience and he really didn't even understand why prayer is so important.  So we decided to dedicate an entire lesson about prayer.  We read Matthew 7:7 and he told us that he didn't really understand it and so we explained it.  It's a little different in Spanish than in English, but basically we explained that it's like we're on one side of the door and Heavenly Father is on the other side.  He's waiting to open the door and He wants to let us in and answer us, but we have to let Him know that we're ready and that we want to come in.  We asked Junior if he believed that and he said yes.  And then we turned to 3 Ne 19:24 where Jesus is praying with the disciples.  Part of Junior's problem with prayer is that he doesn't really know what to say and he's embarrassed that he'll say the wrong thing.  We read this verse where the disciples aren't really worried about what they're saying, and it touched Junior so much.  We asked him if he understood the verse and he said, "It doesn't matter so much the words I say as what's in my heart."  Hermana Castaneda then bore a beautiful testimony about how much Heavenly Father wants to hear from us and how much he wants to talk to us.  And then we asked Junior if he would say a prayer with us and he said yes!  He didn't even hesitate.  It was so beautiful.  Hearing people prayer for the first time is such a neat experience and the Spirit was just so strong.  Afterwards we asked him how he felt and he just had this big grin on his face and he said, I feel kind of strange.  And he put his hand to his heart and said, it's something I've never felt before.  He was so happy, we were so happy, it was so good.  I wish I had more words to say how it feels, but it's something that words can't really express.  But it's so true.  I know it, and I love helping other people come to know it too.

Yesterday we had another neat experience.  After church we had plans to check on someone we had found knocking the other day.  We went to his apartment and knocked and he wasn't home.  We were kind of bummed out.  So we were trying to decide what to do next.  We both really wanted to go home and break our fast (we were starving) but we had a potential that lived in the same complex, so we decided that it would be best to see if we couldn't get a lesson in with her.  So we did, even though we didn't really want to.  And Heavenly Father blessed us. We realized that we had gone to the wrong building to find Marvin, and the building that we were heading to was actually his building.  So we knocked on his door (the right one this time) and he was home!  And so was his wife so we could go in!  We taught them the first lesson and they loved it.  His wife, Jenny, said, I didn't realize I could pray like that.  I guess it's really important that I come to know if this is true so I can know if I'm really doing what God wants me to do.  And to think, we wanted to go home and break our fast.  Such silly hermanas.  Heavenly Father is so good to us.  There are blessings in being diligent.  It's truly how to be a happy missionary.

I love this work, I love the Lord, and I love His gospel.  And family, I love you!  I pray for you all the time, and I miss you oodles, but that's okay, because I know that we're all where we're supposed to be.

xoxo

Hermana Simpson

p.s. Isn't it wild that they're splitting Brady's mission too?!  The work is progressing!  Our bishop told us that they're opening 58 new missions in the world!  So exciting.

Also, here's a picture of the baptism for the week.  This is Alisson and she's the cutest little girl ever.  Her parent's have been less active for a while and they've just started getting active again so they asked us to come and teach her and help her prepare for her baptism.  It was so good!