I honestly can't believe I've been out for 6 months! Not gonna lie it feels like I've been out for 2 years/2 weeks all in the same moment (times weird on the mish) but I feel like Im really hitting my stride and enjoying the mission, I'm just really happy! Also this week I chopped 6 inches to celebrate my 6 months and "see" my growth over the next year so that's kinda fun!
Honesty hitting my 6 months I've done a lot of reflecting on what I've done and want to do with the time I have in my mission and I'm so grateful for the progress I've made and the time I have to grow still! last Sunday I gave a talk in my new ward and it was crazy to me bc my first talk I gave on the mish was the 2nd week of my first area and this one was the 2nd week of my second area and the talks were a night and day difference haha. Literally my first talk I read almost every Google translated word off the page and this talk I just comfortably talked hardly using my notes and didn't even have any problems or nerves! It was cool to see and it's been cool to see how much my testimony and reliance on the Lord has grown over these months! Trust me we literally need God in every moment of every day so don't forget that!
Some things ab being in this new area (bc my emails have been very vague haha) first off I LOVE it! I have been putting my all in the work, teaching tons of people, being exhausted every night, and I feel like it's actually really paying off! We have taught lesson after lesson and my Spanish has never been better. I think it has grown more in the last couple weeks than I ever could have imagined! Having a white comp I've really had to step it up in the lessons and every day life and it has helped me so much!
With teaching people the last couple weeks my love has grown So much for the people here and honestly people in general. Everyone has SUCH hard things going on in their lives and I love bringing people a message of love and hope in their despair. One of these people was Sergio. We found Sergio my first week here in my new area and in the first conversation w us he told me he had done a lot of things in his life that he has never been able to forget bc of guilt and through desperation he said he needed to find Christ and take away some of the pain. He looked deep in our eyes and said he was looking for Christ and he found us. Well it was so cool bc I testified how there was a way for him to overcome all of his past heartbreak and start with a clean slate and be baptized, and from that moment on, through a couple lessons every week for the past 3 weeks, I saw this man completely change and become a follower of Christ w a sincere desire and he was baptized yesterday it was so cool! So many times teaching him I felt like I was really teaching w the spirit-I could feel it SO strong- and one of these times when I felt like that he turned to me and he said (in Spanish) "Hermana Stone, you have such a bright light of Christ about you and I want to be able to have the spirit you bring w me too" and it was so cool to have him confirm to me in that moment that the spirit really was so strong in our lessons! It was so great and honestly we have a couple people in teaching right now that are great so I'm really hopeful! Also random little thing that was also great with Sergios baptism was the elders in another area that share our church called us and told us they needed our help w filling the font for THEIR baptism (which we found out they had a baptism scheduled for the same time awkward) so we combined them and there were no problems, but the super awesome part about it all was when the 2 people that showed up for their baptism that the elders taught I thought "wait I know them" because we were the ones who found them and referred them to those elders bc they were in their area and I got to see them get baptized!! It was a nice little extra blessing from Heavenly Father!
Other things going on-I'm pretty sure I've had covid here haha it's been going around the mission and for like a week I was super weak w bad headaches and a sore throat and basically a bad cold, and didn't think too much ab it, but apparently covid spreading around the mission so I'm just glad I had it before I knew it officially so I didn't have to quarantine haha. We just kept it on the downlow haha so sorry if that's bad to some of you but I'd rather die than be quarantined again! Honestly working hard through being sick was a little rough just bc I had no energy and my body was giving out haha and i was like come on I'm trying to do your work heavenly father, it would be a lot easier if I had good health lol, but I've realized sometimes we need to be sick and have things hard to realize how great it is when we have health and things go out way!
Anyways sorry this email was a little longer, who knows if anyone actually still reads this thing after 6 months-but shout out to the real ones who have gotten this far! Send me an update, picture, or voice recording this week if you have a chance! I love hearing from you all!! Also thanks for the prayes and support, I seriously love you all!!
-Hna Stone (pronounce Hermana Estohneh) if you want to sound like all the people here ;)
I felt so tired after every day of hard work and lots of lessons, but it just made me feel even better about what I'm doing and that I'm meant to be here. God is seriously preparing people for us and it's crazy how ready some people are!
