Buenos Dias!!

 

Goodness. This has been a sad/awesome week! I have felt so blessed. First off, I got to read Elder Mann's email from Nicaragua...I can't even imagine living in those conditions. I'm glad he's loving it though. And he really did study and pray hard in the MTC because his Spanish was awesome when he left, the gift of language is so real. I am amazed at how much Spanish I can comprehend and speak now. It is really an experience to just start going off in Spanish and it actually makes sense. haha. I also had a dream in Spanish the other night about teaching a family the Gospel. That was really cool and I woke up ready to go and super pumped for the day. How is everyone doing back home?? I hope awesome! And I really hope that everyone got the chance to watch General Conference this weekend on the BYU channel. If not, I would encourage you to listen to the talks online at LDS.org because regardless of your beliefs, the messages spoken are there to draw us closer to God through Christ, and also help us if we are going through rough times in our life. I know for me personally, I appreciated the words of President Thomas S. Monson who talked about recognizing answers to prayers. I was able to reflect on my life a lot this weekend and I realized that a lot of things that seemed to be trials at the time ended up being the very thing I needed to bring me closer to God. I think that most everyone would agree that in times of our greatest sorrows and our greatest joys, our instict is to reach out to our creator beyond this earth either to ask "why" or to express thanks. The other talk that struck me was Elder Uchtdorf's discourse about how we sometimes wear our "busy-ness" as a badge of honor. Well I definately think that we all do that at times. I know I do. The message was centered around spending time with the meaningful things rather than being busy for busy's sake. This life is not a race, it is meant to be a journey and though we are all at different places and at different understandings, we can all ultimately slow down and take the time to enjoy the blessings the God  has givien us.

 

In other news, this week has been good. It's a little weird without Elder Mann around, but it is a lot easier to focus on teaching and learning Spanish now. Haha. But ya, so this last Thursday I had a really bad luck day and I kept doing really clumbsy things. I left my name tag in my room and had to go back up the 4 flights of stairs to get it...my companion was very patient this day (thank goodness), I tripped twice on the stairs up to our classroom, I then biffed it on a plastic tub in the hallway...I still don't know why it was sticking out that far..., and the best one was when we were cleaning bathrooms for our service that day and I was on the counter cleaning mirrors and my back hit the paper towel dispenser and it went flying to the floor. I BROKE THE PAPER TOWEL DISPENSER WITH MY BACK. Ya, the workers were really confused when they walked in and I was just laughing my head off. Other than that, things are better with my companion. We were bein a little unrealistic with our goals of following the schedule to the T. We realized that we didn't even give ourselves time to use the bathroom or talk to anyone, it was just go, go, go. Thus was our problem with wearing our busy-ness as a badge. But the sad thing was that we were failing at it. haha. We had a really good talk about how there is no way we can reach our expectations and since then we have readjusted to make reasonable goals and we are enjoying the experience a lot more. So life is going amazing! I absolutely love teaching, and having the opportunity to teach about our Heavenly Father and his desire for our happiness, to those who have never felt it before, just makes it so much better! I am so grateful to be here. It's difficult at times because I fight my lazyness a lot, but it has been worth it.

 

Shout out to everyone at home! Love you all! Thank you for the letters and mom I got you package today with the unicorn shirt...heeheee. Everyone loves my mystical magical clothes. : ) I feel very loved from you all!!

 

Love

Hermana Clement

 

P.S. Did you hear that they changed the missionary eligablity age to 18-Elders and 19-Sisters. : ) I was in the room with all of the missionaries when they announces it and it was a huge reaction that I will never forget. I'm super excited to see floods of sisters coming out here. The missionfield is expanding. Crazy. Oh also, Elder Bednar came to speak to us this Tuesday and his comment on the change was, "The Lord can do his work and hasten it in his time". Marissa, I can't wait! I hope you come to D.C. so we can sing our amazing songs door to door. And thank you Melvin Keller....I wish I could understand your writing...