Happy Halloween :)

October 27th, 2014

Time is just flying by isn't it? This week we had an emotional roller coaster of events. It was one of the best weeks of my mission but also the hardest. So get ready for this. 

On Monday we had a super fun zone activity (we're actually going for round 2 today) we played volleyball and scatter ball. I have no idea what was up with me but I was ready to take on the world so I was bouncing off the walls hitting everything. If my friends saw me they would be so surprised at my participation in these games, I know I was. And you know what? I'm super pumped to go back today. They weren't kidding, you come back from your mission a changed man. 

Most of our lessons this week were with our investigator Heyley. Which was really awesome, but ends in a sad story for us. Heyley is 9 years old and both of her parents are members. She lives in the elder's area but we teach her because the ward mission leader thought that we could apply to her better. So we've been teaching her since I got here. Her parents work out of town a lot so she spends weeks living with members that live in our area. Up until last week I had never met her parents, so I had been teaching her forever and we've formed a relationship. Well this week her parents came back so we stopped by to visit them. Let's talk about the awkwardness there was. It was just weird. But they told us that their nephew was living with them and he wanted to know more about the church. Awesome. We took that opportunity. We had a really awesome powerful lesson and Heyley and Louis (the nephew) both accepted baptismal dates. So we set up a time to come back and we came back a few times more that week. The elders went over to visit and apparently Heyley's mom has a giant beef with me :( but I'm gonna spare the details that I was given. Let's just say her mom doesn't want her to get baptized as long as I'm teaching her. So we have to give Heyley back to the elders, it would break my heart if she couldn't get baptized just because I was teaching her. So that's something really sad that happened over the past few days. 

Something cool that we were able to do was to teach the seminary class (that's right, 5 50 in the morning) and we were "special guests" to help them learn the scripture mastery of the first vision. These kids are killer, like all of them learned it in the time we were there... I wish it would have taken me 1 hour instead of 6 months. Haha jk. But seriously. But it was so much fun. I fit in SO much better with the youth! Probably cause I'm super immature haha

We also had a really inspired lesson with Carmen and Juan. This house was a mad house, okay? There were like 3 kids running around screaming and hollering and I wasn't even sure if they could hear what we were saying. But we read in 3 Nephi 11 about when Christ comes and visits the Americas and I had the strongest impression to just ask them what they thought of the chapter and Carmen said "I need to get baptized correctly" so then I invited her to be baptized and she was hesitant, but then I asked her "Okay we've talked about prophets, do you believe that God still talks to his children through prophets?" "Yes" "do you believe that we all chose to come to the earth before this life?" "Yes." ect. she said yes to everything! SO then I whipped out Moroni 10:3-6 (I think) that talks about if it is good it's of God and told her that the good feelings she feels is of God. She and Juan accepted a date and they're now preparing for baptism :)

It's so awesome how sensitive the feelings of the spirit are. I am so blessed to be able to share that feeling of the spirit with others and to help them feel joy. 

Other than that my breaks completely stopped working on my bike yesterday so I was going ape grabbing on to poles and things like that to stop myself. We were going down this hill that leads to a few intersections and I couldn't break and I just starting saying probably the strongest prayer of my life (Obviously I was safe) but I am so grateful that Heavenly Father is watching out for me! I hope you all know how much I love my mission. It's one of the greatest decisions I have made/will make in my life. Thanks for all your love and support. Keep strong and carry on! LOVE YOU!!

Hermana Groves

PS: BIRTHDAY SHOUTOUT TO JESSICA :)