Last Monday evening we went out to Asherton and did some great work in that area! We had an amazing lesson with Esmeralda, and we taught the Restoration of the Gospel using the introduction to the Book of Mormon! It is one of my favorite ways to teach the Restoration, since it explains almost every point (we have to sneak a couple in between paragraphs) and it also gets them to read the introduction of the Book of Mormon! Esmeralda was great and she asked some really good questions as well! She accepted the invitation to pray about it and gain a testimony herself! We also stopped by and saw her on Saturday and she had followed through by reading her invitation/assignment that we invited her to read, so that was awesome she had done that! We invited her to church as well and she really seemed excited and like she was going to come, but then she didn't :( We are really working and praying on how to get people to follow through with their commitments in this area, haha it's rough!
I hit 9 months this past week! It has been such a crazy and amazing 9 months of my life and something I wouldn't trade for the world! I have had the best companions and met the most amazing people, and learned soooo many important lessons that I will forever be grateful for! It sure hasn't been all peaches and roses, but the good times and experiences have for sure exceeded the hard ones!
We had a lesson with Chito that night as well, and we were able to review the Restoration with him! He is excited to be able to have the restored priesthood of God one day, and also looks forward to going to the temple and doing work for his ancestors! He has pretty much had all of the lessons like five times haha so we are reviewing them once more before he gets baptized! We unfortunately had to move his baptism date back a week because he didn't come to church yesterday even though he promised us he would :( So we are continually praying that people will feel the importance of attending church on Sundays!
We had an amazing lesson with Daliah this past week! She is the wife of one of our inactive members, and a couple weeks ago when we had gone over, she was completely out of it (if you know what I mean) but she confided in us a lot! She started telling us about how she has been comfortably numb since everything has happened with the passing of some of her loved ones, and we were really just able to testify that this gospel has the answers she has been looking for, and will give her peace about where her loved ones are right now. She doesn't know hardly anything about our church since it isn't really anything that she talked about with her husband, so she agreed to learning more about the gospel! I felt a big impression to tell her that she is in the perfect time in her life to learn about this gospel and to accept it, and she started crying and the Spirit was so strong, it was so amazing! We have a visit set up with her this Thursday, and we are so excited to continue helping her recognize what the Spirit feels like, and to help her with her relationship with Christ :)
Thursday was a suuuuuper long day! It kind of felt like we did nothing haha but here is why! We did our regular studies and then we also did weekly planning, so we were in the house for so many hours doing weekly planning! We did a little service at the nursing home and then our senior couple missionaries, Elder and Sister Beck (they're serving in Eagle Pass) picked us up and we all drove out to Encinal, which is an hour and a half away from our house.. so it was a day just packed full of sitting in the car hahah. We have one family who lives in Encinal, and they are a part member family and he occasionally comes to church, and he is an awesome guy! It is so hard to get out there and visit them though haha we try to every other week but even then sometimes it doesn't happen! We had a great time visiting with them though, they fed us a delicious dinner and then we had an awesome visit planned! We had prayed about how we can best help their family, and we decided that we are going to take the focus off of the nonmember husband and give him a little break for a while! So we planned our lesson around the teenage daughter, and it was so cool because the Becks had an awesome object lesson about the importance of building a strong fortress around our cities, like it talks about in Alma 50. After we had built a strong fortress around our city, we changed it from a city to a picture of their family and then talked about how we can make sure that the outside / worldly things don't affect their family, and it was an awesome lesson! The Spirit was definitely there and that family is so awesome :)
Friday I had exchanges with one of my great CCM friends, Hermana Towery! I left my area for the day and went to Adams Hill, which is where my CCM/BFF companion, Hermana Carlson served! It was fun to see where she was and sleep in the same room as her ;) It was a great day in Adams Hill and it was so fun to be in the city again and see civilization haha. Since we don't have many food places here in Carrizo, I begged Hermana Towery if we could go get some food for lunch instead of eat in the apartment and she was great with it haha so we went and ate some curry and wow, it has never tasted better!! I haven't had curry in a while and it's my favvvvvorite!! We also did service at the food bank and there were so many missionaries that do that haha it felt like a zone conference! The exchange overall went well and I am grateful for it, especiallly since I learned how grateful I am for the missionary that I was trained to be, and for the missionary that I have become now!
We exchanged back on Saturday morning and my companion is so dang cute haha the whole way back to Carrizo (it was an hour drive just to meet them in the middle... our area is huge haha) she talked about how much she missed me the whole time and I just love her!! It reminds me a lot of how I was in training and every time my trainer left me to go on an exchange and how much I missed her haha but my comp had a good exchange too, and they even found someone new to teach that day!
After we exchanged back, we went out to do service at the ranch again and we got to help them hold down the goats while they clipped their toenails hahah it was sooo fun and even more funny watching my city girl companion do stuff on the ranch ;) (she allowed me to call her a city girl) as we were about to leave, we were watering the animals and somehow we got into a water fight with everyone, and I had thrown a whole bucket of water on Brother Tollett and then for some dumb reason I GAVE HIM THE BUCKET while we were still in the pen which was dumb on my part haha so I didn't really have a way out, but I had to find a way to I ran to the fence and I jumped over it and he tried throwing water at me from inside but didn't get me much hahah it was pretty funny and everyone was impressed that I just hopped over the fence!
Saturday evening we also spent in Asherton, and to be honest, we weren't sure what we were going to do because there isn't much work to do in Asherton.. We had troubles deciding whether to go to the festival which was going on in Crystal City and use it as a good finding resource, or to go to Asherton when nobody would probably be there.. We felt we should still go to Asherton so we did! We were able to contact a few of the people we are teaching, and then we also stopped by a lot of potentials! We had a miracle night, for sure. We met Gloria, who is the mother of Jay which is who we were looking for, and she was so cute and sweet and accepted a Book of Mormon and also accepted for us to come back tonight!
We tried stopping by a potential named Jaime, but there was no answer at the door and the whole time walkng up and down to Jaime front door, I kept looking at her next door neighbors house and having a feeling that we should knock it after Jaime's house, and as a missionary, it's really hard sometimes to get the courage to knock a house that you don't have any information on, but I just started walking towards her house and made sure that my mind wouldn't stop my body haha my companion was a little confused cause it was the opposite way to our car (we had planned on stopping by other potentials) but she just followed me to the house, and we knocked, and Olga opened her door and we introduced ourselves and what we do, and asked if we could share a message about Jesus Christ and she said yes! Then out walk her four ADORABLE daughters! One of them walked straight up to us and hugged us and another gave us some gum haha they are seriously so cute. Come to find out they had just moved into that house about 2 months ago and have been having a little hard time, and she literally told us we were an answer to her prayers. I don't know if there is anything better to be told that as a missionary, because that is all we want is to be lead by the Spirit and having that reassurance that we are is amazing. Right before we were going to give Olga a Book of Mormon she asked us what the book was called again because we had shared Helaman 5:12 as our message and she said she was going to go look up the book after we left but then we told her this book was for her as a gift from us and she looked at it like it was pure gold, it was the best thing ever. One of her daughters took it for her and almost dropped it and she got a little upset haha I love when people treat the Book of Mormon like the gem it is though, it is the best! We invited them to church and were so excited because they also really sounded like they were going to come, but they didn't :( But we asked before we left if we could come by when we are in town on Monday and explain more about our beliefs and about the Book of Mormon and she said yes, so we are so excited for that lesson tonight! We left her house and I immediately started tearing up because I was so happy. Being led by the Spirit and finding the people that are prepared is the best thing ever. Literally there is nothing better. Heavenly Father is blessing us and giving us the prepared people and we are soooo incredibly thankful!
Church was great yesterday as well! We both gave talks and it was pretty fun! I talked about missionary work and what played into my decision of serving a mission, and I also talked about the branch mission plan and all of the members really seemed to like the idea and a lot of them told us we inspired them and they want to do more missionary work! It was even more special because our branch president got up and said a few words after we finished and he gave us a lot of credit and thanked us for all we do and it was just cool to hear that because (from what I have been told) the branch president has been not super supportive or kind of hard on the past missionaries, so it was awesome to hear everything he said about us! We had some visitors walk into church as well and they are from Utah and Idaho, and it was fun to talk to them! One of them knows the older brother of my trainer, and so that was pretty fun to make that connection since she said she was from Alpine. We only had Jackie come to church yesterday and obviously we are super happy she was able to come, but we had really high hopes for the people that told us they would come to church and we had a goal of 5 people and I was almost convinced after the night Saturday we had, that we would exceed that goal but people in Carrizo are having a hard time seeing the importance of coming on Sundays or are just lazy :(
Our last miracle for this week was our visit with Jackie and Rita last night! Jackie has been so amazing and staying so strong with all of the crap that her family and friends have been giving her since she has been meeting with missionaries, but we still haven't been able to get permission from Rita for her to be baptized, and we had a really good visit last night with them all and we were able to talk to Rita about what is holding her back, and she is pretty much just nervous about commitment, and doesn't want her children to choose something too fast but she said she is thinking about it which is a start! We were also able to give her a Book of Mormon and we are going to start teaching her the lessons as well, so she can know what her daughter is choosing to do and what she believes :) Rita's heart is softening so much and we are so grateful! The prayers are working and we are so excited! We told her (didn't ask) that we are coming by Tuesday in our service clothes and told her to have a list of things for us to do, and she accepted it! We are excited to serve her and soften her heart more :)
Happy Birthday this Wednesday to my cute little cousin Harper! She is turning eight and will soon be making that first covenant with her Heavenly Father and I am so proud of her! It was so fun to be able to see her a few times in my last area, I think I saw her more on my mission than I have the past 5 or 10 years ;)
Something else exciting that is happening this week is that on the 15th, the new missionary handbook is coming out and we have heard a lot of rumors but we also know (because our mission president has one) that all of the rules are more broad and it is leaving a lot more room for missionaries to use their agency with the rules, so we will see how it affects everyone haha.
This week will be 2/3 of the way through this transfer and my comp and I were talking about how incredibly fast it has gone and that's just what happens when you're doing the Lord's work and having fun while doing it!
Thank you all SO MUCH for all of your love and prayers, as you can see/read in my emails, we are seeing so many miracles from all of your prayers and we are so thankful. You are all so amazing!
Have a wonderful week :)
Hermana Griffin
My new background picture! Isn't it Beautiful!
One of my childhood best friends, from Newton, serving in the same mission!
9 month dinner celebration!
Zone sports last Monday!
Delicious Curry!
Exchanges with Hermana Towery!
Hot cocoa is the best!
Sitting in my BFF's spot! :)
I felt at home, haha!
Working hard, or hardly working?
Our awesome visitors at Church from Utah and Idaho!
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