THE CHURCH IS TRUE

This week was wild! Here's some cool things that happened: 

We had a car wash and so many people came!! It was so fun.

 

We had exchanges with the corpus sisters and went on a long drive to switch with them!! Sister McKee is so cool and I learned a ton from her.

 

Yesterday we went to visit a less active member and the Spirit was very present in the lesson.  He is a photographer, so we ask him to help us with our Facebook page.  He said yes, but he didn't know how to help us.

 

When we left, we asked him "How did you become a member of the church?"  He told us a beautiful story of how he had prayed to find the true church, and was told in a dream to find a church with a prophet and 12 apostles. 

The dream kept happening and then he he felt the Spirit tell him to move to Puebla, Mexico. His first day there, a woman invited him to church and he went. He casually asked her how it was organized. She said "well we have a prophet and 12 apostles and ..." and he said the spirit filled him and he knew he had found the church because of his reocurring dream. Later he was baptized.

 

We asked him if we could record his story for the Facebook page and he said yes.  We look forward to using his skills as a tool to help him get back to church!

 

The elders quorum president asked us to review our ward action list - which is basically a list of everyone not baptized in our ward. So this week we called them all and stopped by their houses. We found 2 new families to teach. One has 2 children who are already of baptismal age and yesterday we went to teach them.

 

The other family has 2 sons who are ready to receive the priesthood.  So we had sacrament at their home the other night and a few days later we stopped by to teach them about the priesthood.  We invited our recent convert friend, Juan, and everything turned out perfect!  They are going to speak with the bishop this Sunday to request an interview.

 

Our buddy, Rufino is still progressing. He is already halfway through the Book of Mormon (without us really even asking him to read it) and has nearly stopped smoking. He is such a beast and so ready to receive the gospel. 

 

I am so excited to be a missionary at this time of year! Miracles keep happening. My love for the Atonement and the Savior is growing. I love Christmas and so many people are open to the gospel right now.

 

Have a wonderful week!! 

 

If you have a family Christmas card, I want one! Please send it to this address:

2700 FM 802

Office #1014

Brownsville, TX 78526

 

Love,

Sister Spackman

Ants on my Pants

Hola!!

This week was a good week. Paty, Rufino and Angely all came to church! I had to play the piano for the sacrament meeting and so I was worried that our amigos might not have someone to sit by, but the members were awesome and sat with them, so my companion was able to sit with a less active member.

After the meeting, one of the greenie elders told everyone that the Christmas Devotional would be at the church at 7pm. My companion and I didn't know about it, but thought maybe our Spanish just wasn't as good as we thought and we didn't understand hahah. Later that night, my comp and I were in a lesson with another less active family helping them take the sacrament when our phones started blowing up during the lesson. So we quickly ended our lesson and went outside to find out that all our investigators were at the church...alone. No one else was there. We called the Zone Leaders to figure out what had happened and it turns out the greenie had misunderstood Spanish and there was no activity at the church. 

Luckily, there was a family that lived around the corner that said we could watch it at their house. We all piled into their living room and watched it there.

This week we had exchanges and I got to go with Sister Gonzales. This is only her second week in the mission field! She asked me advice on how to be more bold. We did a practice together on how to set a baptismal date with investigators. Later that week she texted me that she had set her first baptismal date and I was super proud of her!

We had a lot of good experiences with the members in our ward this week. We helped Hermana Pallero clean out her food storage and organize it. And we had a lesson with one of our investigators who has really been struggling with Hermana Robles and she was able to listen to her and help her. I am really impressed with the members in this ward and their desire to help us as missionaries.

On Thursday we got into the car, it was super cold so we turned on the heater (after months of not using it) - AND IT SHOT ANTS OUT OF THE VENT and I started screaming. I had about 20 ants all over me just running around hahaha.

Spiritual Experiences

There was a lady who came to church and my companion sat by her because we didn't recognize her. It turns out that she had had an experience where she prayed to know which church was true. Right after that, a member from the English ward left a card in her door and video of the Prophet came up on her timeline. So she came to church for the first time since she had moved to the United States.

We taught our cute nine year old friend, Angely, about Jesus and the Atonement and she was so touched by the Spirit that she started crying. It nearly made me cry, too!

Have a good week everyone! Go spread some Christmas cheer!

Love,

Hermana Spackman

(This weeks email is brought to you by my mom because I was too lazy to type it out so she did it for me - thanks mom!)

Chilly in Texas

Hello!!!

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!!

It is finally starting to look like winter in Texas. It's about 60 degrees today (which is really cold for Texans) and the leaves are falling!! Lots of Christmas trees and lights are going up 

Sister Hall is so cute! She's taught me some basic sign language and her Spanish is amazing. She has a really strong desire to work and get things done, we are staying busy.

We had exchanges this week!! It was fun to spend the day with Sister Christensen and give her some advice. People are starting to make fun of me for having so much time in the mission now haha. I think the 2.5 month break I had makes me feel like I'm still a greenie, but I will hit 16 months tomorrow!

We are teaching this wonderful lady, Patricia. She was someone we taught before and referred herself again this week after we couldn't get ahold of her. Her husband passed away a few months ago and she is having a really hard time. I have been amazed to see with her how the power of prayer and reading the Book of Mormon has helped her and lifted her. Christ lives and His power is REAL!

Spiritual experiences:

After Sister Taylor left, I was struggling a little bit. Right now many of my friends are returning home from their missions, and sometimes it can feel a little lonely being one of the last ones out! But I came across this quote by President Monson - "an unselfish spirit is essential to happiness." 

I realized I was being pretty selfish thinking about myself, when I could be focusing all my heart on serving the people here in Texas. As I changed my focus, I have noticed I have been a lot happier and there isn't time to miss home.

Funny experiences:

While leaving for an appointment the other night, there was a cat by our door. I reached down to pet it and it SPRINTED into our house hahah. It took us forever to get it back out.

The holidays are a wonderful time to serve. Text LIGHT to 71234 to join #LightTheWorld if you want suggestions for ways to feel the Christmas spirit and serve others! 

Have a good week!!

Love,

Sister Spackman

Pictures: tie trading is huge in our mission, they have a whole pyramid of the best ties. The Elders risked COVID and came and gave us some tier 1 ties before they went home !!

Cute dogs of Brownsville

A returned missionary in the other ward knows we love alfajores so he came and brought us more from argentina, and some mate :)

Sis Hall got here before Sis Taylor left. Being in a trio for the day was fun!

Sister Taylor is Going Home!

Hey everyone!

Miracles do happen!! Sister Taylor is going to go home on time!! Yay!!

The first part of this week we both got more sick, but after lots of prayers and rest we both recovered really fast. Thank you to those who said prayers for us!

Part of me was hoping Sister Taylor would stay a little longer! We truly have become best friends. We have had the best time this transfer, I know God put us together on purpose. I've learned so much from her. We spent 90% of our time laughing the past 6 weeks and I am going to miss her so much!

My next companion will be Sister Hall, I will be training her to be an STL. I don't know much about her but I know she has a little bit over 9 months in the mission and she has served in an ASL area for the past 6 months - so maybe I will be learning some sign language from her :) She seems super sweet and served in my same area in Laredo!

We are teaching this sweet, young, girl named Jaylene. She is very shy, but she has a huge desire to learn. We had a lesson with her this week and I ended up talking about the Holy Ghost and it kind of just spilled out of my mouth. As soon as I finished I was thinking to myself "Why the heck did I just share that?" Hahah and then she said "Wait!! I have a comment!" And started to tell us a story about a time when she felt the Holy Ghost.

It was a big WOW moment for me. This girl who had probably never said more than 10 words to us just told us about this incredible spiritual experience that she had. God really does put the words into our mouths when we need them. He new that we needed to teach her to recognize the spiritual experiences she has already had, in order to prepare her for future ones.

Spiritual experience:

Sunday was basically our last full day together, and so Sister Taylor and I prayed that we would have a day busy and full of lessons, even though we are inside.

Sunday ended up being so packed!! We taught so many people over video call. It was a big answer to our prayer and I just felt like the Lord has really been watching out for us during this time.

Funny experiences:

President called us "COVID girls" in front of our entire mission on a zoom call and we all couldn't stop laughing haha

I am like a mosquito magnet, but because we have been in quarantine my bites were finally healing. Well we decided to go on a walk one night and after literally just 40 minutes of being outside I got over 36 mosquito bites on my ankles and feet alone 

Lately I've been thinking a lot about some of my family and friends back home who have left the church. Some have left recently, others of you have been gone for quite some time.

I just want you to know I love you. I see you. I do not judge you, although our beliefs may differ. Thank you for still supporting me on my mission, even though it may not be something you believe in. I'm grateful for you.

I love you all! Have a wonderful week and please stay safe and enjoy Thanksgiving! Express your gratitude for someone you love this week!

Love,

Sister Spackman

I included an old pic from Laredo cause I miss those girls so much! Sister Adams goes home this week, too. Sister Lund will join Sister Collins on tech squad!