Sister Samantha Sue: Week 3

Hello!

It's been another typical week here at the CCM! Each day we get up, eat breakfast, personal study, language lesson, learn how to teach better, eat lunch, language study, gym, companion study, more language study, eat dinner, companion study, teach an investigator, another language lesson, go to bed. Sometimes we have a devotional or something. If you can't tell we study A LOT. But it is so awesome. I have really come to LOVE my scriptures. It's amazing how I've had them for over 10 years, and every day I'm still finding new things to mark and new ways they can apply to my life and the lives of my investigators.

I had to talk in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday about the Book of Mormon, and I thought it went pretty well! Each week every member in our zone has to prepare a 5 minute talk about whatever topic the branch president chooses, in Spanish of course, and then on Sunday the branch president will just pick 5 or 6 people at random to come up and give their talk. So no one ever knows if they'll actually be speaking until they are standing up there speaking. But it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be!

Hermana Lucas (another sister in my district) and I go running every day during gym, and one day this week Presidente Call let us borrow his Garmin watch so we could figure out how far we run each day. And turns out our run is about 3 1/2 miles! Which is good because we eat so many tacos here. So many. BUT. The best part was that when we were going to return his watch, his wife came out with a plate of homemade cookies for us. Ahhh they were so delicious! I miss home-cooked meals so much!

On Saturday we had the opportunity to do what we call TRC (Teaching Recent Converts). But really you just teach whoever volunteers and shows up. So sometimes you'll be teaching life-long members, sometimes recent converts, sometimes little kids, sometimes non-members. You never know until you get there! Hermana Kemple and I taught 4 people, and my favorite person we taught was a 17-year-old named Gabriel. He was so awesome. He has grown up as a member of the church, but only half of his family is active. He started telling us how he really wants to go on a mission. And then after that I got completely lost because he speaks Spanish soooooo fast. So he talked for the next 10 minutes and I had no idea what he was saying! But by the end he started bearing his testimony to us, and he started crying, and we started crying, and the Spirit was definitely there in that moment. Just goes to show that the Spirit speaks all languages, and I hope that I can bring the Spirit to other people, even if they can't understand me, just like Gabriel brought the Spirit to us. (You're probably thinking: I thought you were supposed to be the one teaching Gabriel! Yeah, I thought so too. But the Lord definitely had something else planned for that lesson.)

Funny of the week: One day for dinner we had fish tacos for dinner. And Hermana Lucas sat down and said how much she loved "pecado tacos". What she MEANT to say was "pescado tacos" which means fish tacos. What she really said was she loved sin tacos. Yum. Why do the two words that mean fish have to be so close to gospel-related words!! Haha it makes for some funny stories.

Funny of the week #2: If you take the final "a" off of "Hermana" it becomes "Herman". So us sisters get a kick out of calling each other Herman. Okay, maybe it's not even funny but it cracks us up every single time without fail.

One scripture that I found this week that really inspired me was Mosiah 17:2 where it says "But there was one." This scripture has taken two meanings to me. One, that Abinadi only had ONE convert, who wasn't even baptized during his lifetime, and we still consider him a very successful missionary. Through Alma, and because of Abinadi, thousands of people were converted to the gospel. And two, that Alma was only one person but he made a huge difference. Every single person can make a difference, even if no one else seems to be doing what's right.

I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve a mission, to learn another language, to have the gospel in my life, to be at the CCM, to strengthen my testimony, to learn, to grow, and to come to know Christ more than I ever have before.

Love, Herman(a) Baker