Week 55 ~ I May be Nice, but I'm Not Rich

Hello everyone!!

This week we had Zone Conference IN PERSON!! Wahoo! It was super awesome and the meeting ended up lasting over 5 hours because everyone had so many comments! It was super spiritual and I ended up taking like 6 pages of notes!

 

We are still teaching George! We have been praying he would get a new job and he did!!! Unfortunately, he has to work on Sunday.. hahahah. Love when that happens. So we will have to move his baptism again, which is a bummer. But, he is still progressing!

 

We had another friend come to church with us! The sisters in our apartment were actually teaching him and then they referred him to some Elders who live closer to him, but he ended up stopping the lessons. I randomly reached out to him some day and invited him to church. He hit me with the "Si Dios quiere" and I hit him back with "Dios siempre quiere" hahah and so he came with us for the first time!! It was awesome!

 

I also had divisions this week with my STL, Sister Donaldson! She is awesome and we had tons of fun. She even taught me how to play the ukulele! Sister Marshall also lives in their apartment complex so it was fun to catch up with her from the flight here and talk about all that has happened!

 

Funny experience:

The STL's apartment is COVERED in cockroaches. I was terrified all day long, they just kept falling from the ceiling hahah. It was so gross. Their apartment also smells like the sewer because they live close to the sewage system.

I got to go to the border!!! IT WAS CRAZY. We hiked all the way down to the Rio Grande river and you could literally see Mexico across the way. There was even a guy fishing on the other side hahah. It was awesome.

 

Spiritual experience:

This one hit me hard this week.

All 4 of us sisters in the apartment had a very simple yet powerful spiritual experience this week. We were on our way home from picking up lunch from a member's house when we stopped at a light and saw a homeless man asking for help. Sister Turner took action and waved him over to give him her big, cold drink. I have never seen someone so grateful for anything in my life. Tears flowed down this man's face, and as we drove away I looked around to see that tears were flowing down all 4 of our faces too haha! We pulled off into a parking lot and decided to turn around and give him some lunch. I'm not sure why, but I have never understood the Atonement of Jesus Christ better in my life than when we gave that man our food. He cried and thanked us over and over again. I believe that it will be something like for us when we are brought back into the presence of our Savior some day.

 

As I've thought a lot about this experience, I just wanted to leave everyone with this question this week, and I hope you will each think about it a little.

 

What do you need to change so that you can be more ready to go back into the presence of your Savior?

 

Love,

Sister Spackman

 

PS. Also I named my group email this because Sis Collins told me before dinner she wanted to pay for my food but then when we saw how expensive the menu was I told her I could pay and she said "Oh good. I may be nice but I'm not rich!!" Hahahah

 

Have a good week everyone.

Week 54 ~ Satan Doesn't Take P Days

Hola!!

We've had another great week here in Laredo!

This week we put our friend, George, on date for baptism!! Yay! And his brother, Roy, got the priesthood! Double yay!! So many miracles happening each week here in Larusalem.

We finally got the word that we are able to move into Phase 1!! All that basically means is that we can eat inside of restaurants and that we can go inside of people's houses if they invite us hahah. So that's exciting!! A step in the right direction for Texas :')

Funny experiences:

George was unable to make it to church on Sunday because he literally got locked inside his house. Like he couldn't get out. I don't even know how that happens hahah. The devil works hard to make sure people don't come to church smh.

Spiritual experience:

We're allowed to contact people at the park and on Saturday we were contacting some people and Sister Collins felt a prompting to contact some lady who seemed to be listening to us singing. So she went up and talked to that person with Sister Turner and I started to walk up but then Sister Christofferson and I decided to wait. Some guy walked by and we felt prompted to talk to him. By the end of both conversations we had found a family to teach and another new person!! It was so awesome. I'm grateful for the Spirit and the little promptings He gave both the sisters.

This week during our Come, Follow Me study I loved this quote by President Ocampo. He was talking about how we have to always keep our guard up against Satan. He said "Satan doesn't take pdays." That really hit me hard! We have to continuously keep working so that we don't fall into the traps he sets for us. He is never taking a break, he waits for us until we are in a moment that we are vulnerable and we have to be ready to stand up against that.

Sorry this email is so short, I don't really have much else to write about! I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Sister Spackman

Week 53 ~ I FaceTimed an Apostle!

Hi everyone!!

This week was a little slower for us, but we're still goin! We had to refer a lot of people we are teaching that were progressing, but we had an awesome pass-off lesson and put a baptismal date with Jonathan!! Woot woot!! It was sad to have to hand him off to the other sisters, but they will do such a good job with him and we're so excited for them to continue teaching him.

Johnny still hasn't been able to come to church because of his work, so we moved his baptismal date to the end of August. Please pray for him that someone will trade him shifts so he can come to church, haha!

I also hit 1 year on Thursday! The sisters were so cute and got us all Chickfila to celebrate. It's super weird, the time has just gone by so quickly. I'm so grateful for the time that I've had out on the mission up until this point and I can't wait to make these last 5 months count!

Spiritual experiences:

During zone conference we talked about finding families through our faith and obedience. On Sunday we did a fast to find them, and we have seen so many miracles!! We called lots of people from area book and were able to set up appointments with families!! Yay!! I'm so pumped.

We learned how to do even more family history this week and it was SO COOL. I have gotten so much more into it over the past year!! If you need help, hit me up. We can do a video chat and I'll teach you what I know haha.

Funny experiences:

Sooo lucky for us, Hna Christofferson is related to Elder D. Todd Christofferson. Her brother got married this week and he sealed them, so after the wedding she was facetiming her mom and we got to all say hi to him!! So that was super sick haha. He was so sweet and it was probably the spiritual highlight of my mission hahaha. Scroll down for the pic below. 

My comp and I like to do something called the "spiritual finger click" basically you just close your eyes and scroll through your phone contacts or area Book and then click on a random person and call them. I'll tell you what yall... the spiritual finger click works!!!!! We have turned like 4 formers into new investigators and had some fire lessons. I can't make this stuff up.

We had someone call us this week trying to place an order for food because they had the wrong number hahahah. We ended up sharing a scripture with them and they are now new investigators that we are teaching, too!!

Thanks for all the love from back home!! I love you guys and think about and pray for you often! Have a great week.

Love,

Sister Spackman

My comp videocalled me this week and put herself in the maverick stadium at USU. She knows the way to my heart <33 #GOAGGIES