All Working Together

Dear Family and Friends,

I wanted to start this email with what is officially the best conversion story that I have heard on my mission. 

Here in Valdivia we don’t have a Mamita, so we have lunches with the members…I always ask for their conversion story, and on Tuesday the perfectly respectable fifty-year-old member told us his story:

"It all begins with the huge parties that they throw in the streets for the 18th of September. Have you seen those? You know all the youth dancing and drinking like crazy? Well, twenty or so years ago I was enjoying myself, onto my third day of drinking…and the last thing I remember is falling asleep under a park bench with a beer bottle in one arm and my best buddy in the other. I closed my eyes and the next thing I know--I must have wandered in my drunkenness--I woke up and I was under a church pew with a bunch of little youngsters that were drinking juice and looking at me with big eyes. WHERE IN THE WORLD AM I? I thought...looking around, at the families, the party, and realized that I was in a church!! And then, two tall gringos came walking towards me in dark suits and I realized the bouncers were going to kick me out so I SPRINTED. and that was my first taste of the Mormon religion"

And that, ladies and gentleman, is how he first came to know the church. His story kills me. Love it.

But things are going well here in Valdivia. I am on the fast train learning ALOT about myself, about my defects, and about the mission in general. 

It was the most incredible moment this morning, I looked up from my scriptures, looked up and over the dawn on Valdivia and felt an utter calm. I realized that it was going to be okay. That the Lord knew I needed this, and that I was going to learn. I am learning SO much, growing, stretching, and cleaning out my soul of the cobwebs that I never realized were there.

We had a really special day yesterday--all of the stake of Valdivia and all of the missionaries had a fast to help the obra missional in the stake...and afterwards the bishop told us that we are having a special meeting with all of the ward council every Sunday, where they ask and discuss how many investigadors, menos activos and baptisms there have been in the ward THAT week. I gaped, open-mouthed, as each organization for the first time, all got on the same page in the united goal of helping us grow the ward. The bishop was standing there, intent on knowing the next person with a baptism date, and all the presidents with their notepads…and I realized "This is it. This is how we can work together. This is the power the first presidency talked of. Wow. I thought I could do it all alone...but I can´t. It is so much powerful when we are united!" It was a lesson I needed to realize.

And the bright side is that we are finding people!! We are teaching a pareja (another wedding, anyone?) and two other people that are seriously just prepared and so enthusiastic.

Oh!! Highlight!! I got to go on two exchanges this week...LOVE those!! Not going to lie, its slightly stressful when the sisters think I know all the answers when I am just a little young thing in the mission...yikes!! 

But I love you all! 

 Hermana Monroe