86 and still dancing

Dear Family,

Yesterday was such a long day and our phone call so short. I don´t recognize Jonathan´s voice at all! That was the craziest. We didn´t even talk about the earthquake ! I guess you´ll just have to wait to hear all the stories first hand. Hermana McNeil reminded me of one this week in zone conference when I saw her. So we didn´t really know what to do after the earthquake, because what do you do after an earthquake? So we had called our district leader, gone outside to make sure it was safe to stay inside, and then we thought we should try to go back to sleep because we still had to get up at 7:30 and we didn´t want to lose any more sleep. So we got into our beds and were on our knees to offer prayers and I said to Hermana McNeil, “Hermana do we have water?” She replied, “Yes.” I said, “Oh good because my hair is really dirty!” Hermana McNeil started laughing really hard and it took me a second to realize how funny that concern sounded after having just gone through an earthquake. Then I had to explain to her that I was thinking about leaving in the morning to help people out and my thoughts went to how my hair was dirty. So really the concern came from wanting to help other people. From that you can see that we really didn´t know the impact the earthquake had had, in our apartment we just got shook really bad.

Like I explained to Mom yesterday, we found an old lady named Lina this week. She is 86 and has the best of health. She wants to keep her mind active so she practices speaking in other languages. She speaks to us in English, but has an English accent. Most people here that speak English speak with an English accent. Or they speak with an accent that you would hear in the slums of a big city in the United States. I hope that wasn´t offensive to say. So Lina also plays piano and has a fifty year old piano that looks like ours. She is almost blind so she doesn´t read sheet music; she plays by ear. And she dances. She got on her dancing shoes and showed us the Flamenco and a Tap dance. She is so sweet and we are excited to visit her again Wednesday. From our lesson Friday it looks like she doesn´t really understand the relationship between Heavenly Father and Christ and she doesn´t understand why we need a Savior.

I get a lot of joy out of trying to find answers to my investigators questions. My study time is never long enough and I just get so excited. This morning I studied the difference between the light of Christ, the power of the Holy Ghost and the gift of the Holy Ghost. If anyone is interested you should study chapter 4 of Preach My Gospel. We come to learn the mysteries of God only through revelation and we receive revelation from the Holy Ghost. So it is important to understand better the Holy Ghost and how he works in our lives and what is his relation with Heavenly father and Christ.

Last Monday we learned how to make Lemon Pie and tried Piñones for the first time.

We escorted an old drunk man home this week. Don´t worry it wasn´t dangerous. He just smelled really bad.

We taught Estefano about obedience this week and we read the story of Nephi building the boat. It was a great lesson and he understood everything. The Book of Mormon is such a powerful tool in teaching. It is a book written by prophets and the Spirit just vibrates off the pages.

We have a new goal for our lessons. In our mission we are expected to extend the invitation to be baptized in the first visit. This has always given me a little bit of stress, trying to find the investigator´s need and help them understand how the gospel fills their need, so that they can understand the need to be baptized. Well this week we learned the importance of just focusing on bringing the Spirit to the life of the investigator. It is our job to bring the Spirit and after that they use their agency to accept or reject what we are teaching.

Have a stupendous week everyone,
Hermana Arnold
Remember that “evil communications corrupt good manners.” 1 Corinthians 15:33
A scripture we read this morning from the missionary manual that I liked. It is important to watch our words because they affect our actions.