Maywood: Semana 7 Cambio Numero Dos!‏ March 22, 2010

Hola Familia!
 
So, transfers came and went and nothing changed. I am still with Hermana Salazar in Maywood and I am very happy about it. I am loving Maywood. :) My spanish is improving so fast. Hermana Salazar and I made a goal to speak completely in spanish, and we have been doing really good so far. We even did all of our weekly planning in spanish, which is a pretty challenging accomplishment. I still have a long way to come though.
 
I don't know if you heard about it, but there was an earthquake here! How crazy is that? Well, it was only a small earthquake, but still. It was four in the morning on Tuesday and lasted for about fifteen seconds, just long enough to wake me up and then give me the craziest dreams of my life when I fell back asleep. Yes, this was one of the highlights of my week, ha ha. No, actually I think that most of the interesting things about missionary work come from the interesting people you meet. This week was pretty incredible as far as meeting interesting people goes. There was a man who calls himself "El Tigre" (the tiger) who is a store owner in Maywood. He is about fifty and was wearing a tiger skin jacket and tie, a tiger ring, and had an elvis style hairdo. He also had a huge tiger picture in his store and a plaque with "El tigre," just to make sure its clear. He and his wife were really nice and really funny. We also met a French man while tracting, which is incredibly rare for Maywood. He told us is his very strong french accent that he doesn't need to go to church to talk to god; that he can talk to God while singing and dancing in the shower. He started to dance a little bit to show us a demonstration while he said "hey god, I'm here, it's me."
 
Besides the random interesting people we meet, the real reward of the work has been meeting incredible people with strong faith in God that are waiting and willing to listen to our message. We met a man yesterday while tracting named Johnny. He is forty and has a cute little family and the personality of a carefree islander, and tattoo sleeves that show he had a very hard and interesting past. He told us he was into drugs and everything but he saw how it was completely destroying his life, so he changed his life around and recently he has been talking to God and trying to figure out what he needs to do. He said that he feels like we are the answer to his prayers. He was like "no, like seriously, I know its kind of crazy but I think you're here for a reason."
 
We are also preparing for a baptism next week for an boy named Jose Martinez. He is really excited to get baptized and is so receptive to the spirit. He came to an activity we had Wednesday and he was asking so, is there something tomorrow I can come to? It is so refreshing when you get people that are so exciting about the gospel they are asking you what more they can do. We spend a lot of time working with people that end up not keeping their commitments, and it is so sad because you can see how much it would bless and change their lives if they would just do these simple things, but still they don't. They're too busy and they have a million excuses, and they miss out on all of the blessings and the help they could be getting from God. The only way God can bless us is if we are obedient. It is the same with parents and their children- if parents give children everything they want no matter if they follow your rules or they don't they aren't able to learn and grow. Heavenly Father really is the perfect example of a loving caring parent that knows how to raise his children. He makes sure we don't get spoiled or become prideful, and if we do he punishes us and humbles us, because he loves us. I've been learning so much more about his plan for us and what that really means, and how we are supposed to learn and grow here. A lot of people ask "If God loves us, why is there so much suffering in the world?" I've come to realize that in a strange way suffering is another evidence of God's love for us. He loves us enough to let us learn and grow on our own, without protecting us from everything. If you kept a child inside the house in a plastic bubble, how much would they learn? What kind of person would they become? And yet when we lived with God before that is kind of how it was- we couldn't feel pain, everything was good and happy, but we also couldn't learn and grow and progress. The state that Adam and Eve were in in the garden is symbolic of what we all were in with our Heavenly Father before. Also, Eve's choice to take the fruit even though she knew it would lead to suffering and death is the same as the choice we all made to leave our Heavenly Father and come to earth. This is what we signed up for- including all of the suffering and opposition. We had to have opposition to learn what happiness truly is. Every single person that has ever lived and will ever live will suffer in some way in their life- so either God loves no one, or God loves everyone and suffering is part of his plan he has for us, because "after the tribulation comes the blessings." Pain, grief, death, sorrow, are all experiences unique to this life, and this life is but a small moment, but if we endure it well we will be blessed. I know that Heavenly Father loves all of us, and he is aware of our pains and anything hard that we have in our lives, and that is why he sent us his son, the Savior, to help us and be beside us every step of the way- to bear all of our pains. I still don't understand how it works, but I know it does- if we pray and ask God will help us.
 
I love you all so much! I'm not sure how much sense that long tangent just made, or how doctrinally sound it is, so please don't quote me on it- just a few of the thoughts I've been having in my ponderings lately. Have a good week!
 
Love,
Hermana Dansie