Chapter 33: Agency.

I have to admit, if agency wasn´t such a great gift, I would be really sick of it by now. On Tuesday, we went ot Aglaece´s house, super excited after the great lesson we had with her about the Word of Wisdom. The next lesson was the Law of Chastity, but we figured that she wouldn´t have a bit of a problem with it since she is slightly anti-man... haha She has told us that she thinks that men are just a political figure in the home. I guess she has had some bad experiences.  We decided to just teach it straight up since she sometimes gets our Spanish mixed up since she speaks....Portuguese –sort of.  What a mess!! We walked in the door, and I could sense something wrong....She could not even walk straight. Oh NO. I was just thinking, “Oh my goodness. She is drunk!” Well, here is where you just have to learn from your mistakes. Being the...determined missionary that I am, I decided to continue with the message. Ok, ok I know what you are all thinking right now -bad move. It was, I admit it. However, she wasn´t drunk as we came to find out, we just weren’t sure what was wrong with her.  Anyway it was an awful chastity lesson, so we asked if we could come back in a couple days. I was not happy with her for one, and so I lost the spirit trying to teach her. When we came back two days later, we decided to re-teach the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity. We took it from a different approach though and told her that she is a Daughter of God. She told us that she has never taken drugs, she hasn´t taken a drink of alcohol since we told her not to same with tobacco, and has limited her coffee to once a week. So what on earth made her act like that in the last lesson?!! Then a thought came to me to ask her if she slept ok the night before. Uhhh....I was thinking that is the weirdest question in the world; there is no way I am asking that. But I guess I have asked stranger things, so I asked her anyway. She told us, “Well, I haven´t been sleeping right, so I have sleep medication to help me.” Well, that answered the fact of why she was acting so weird the day before! So, we still have hope with her, but I am not really sure how to approach the fact that her sleep medication makes her crazy! Oh well, she is still super great. She accepted the Law of Chastity, finally, and recommitted to live the word of Wisdom. It was a much better lesson! This week, we have really been working with less active members. We met with the bishop to see how we could really help some of the inactive sisters, because for some reason, there are a ton! He said that no matter what age the woman is, to work with them about the Young Womens theme. I thought that was a little strange at first, but then he went through each of the values and described the importance of them for staying active and strong in the church. Focus on faith, then divine nature, etc. I was really excited to see that it actually has been working! I never realized how important or inspired those simple values are. It was the best thing to see a couple of the girls we have been working with show up at church this last Sunday. None of our planned investigators showed up, but I will take it! We had Stake Conference in Valencia, and so we all got on a bus to get there as a ward, and one of our investigators showed up that we have only taught once equipped with a white shirt and tie (that is a big deal.) And to top it off, a member brought us an entire family of investigators. It was like Christmas morning!  Especially since this week has been really hard. We saw rejection after rejection after rejection! We´ve been trying to find new investigators, but the Jehovah Witnesses have given us a bad name I think.  I feel like I can handle the rejection side just fine, it´s the fact that we have nothing to do if we aren´t teaching people, and we are just on the street or trying to get into buildings to knock on doors. A lot of people told me that Spain would be really hard because there are so many Catholics, but the problem is with the Atheists! I have never seen so many atheists in my entire life! I feel like it´s a disease swarming all over this country sucking the faith out of everyone. It´s honestly a relief just to hear someone say they still believe in God. However! I was praying one day just to find one person that would be willing to listen to us. And that is when we found Fernando. Oh Fernando. He is from the Domincan Republic (and don´t we all know how much I love my Domincans) and he talks a little bit like Darth Vader mixed with Batman, but that´s ok, because he is simply great! He said he would read, pray, and go to church. He called us Sunday morning and said something came up with his kids, but at least he called! I am really excited to continue to work with him. That night, bishop took us with the ward mission leader and his wife to go visit a menos activo that lives about an hour away in a little town on the coast, and he said he wanted to show us something really quick. We got out of the car and walked into this lush Spanish garden filled with fountains and thousands of twinkling lights. Then he told everyone to be still for just a second, and you could hear the sounds of the gentle waves of the Mediterranean Sea crashing on the moonlit coast. It was a moment from a movie—there was even the ever so slight strumming of the Spanish guitar in the background. In that peaceful moment, I knew that God was here watching out for me, and that I felt so much more at peace. Then it was back to work! When we got back, we still had an hour left of the day, and we felt like we should call our Spanish investigators to make sure they are doing ok. Sometimes I think they enjoy our company more than our lessons, but we felt particularly prompted to give them a call. The grandmother, the most Catholic of them all, answered the phone and said, “Oh I wish you would have called a few hours earlier, I am tired and I don´t have time for you to come over tonight.” I felt this strong feeling that I should keep the conversation going. We kept talking about how her week was, and how her family was, and then she broke down. I just heard sobs over the speaker and she said, “I have lost my faith, I have no desire to pray or anything, please come over right now!” Well, that was a change. So we rushed over there to find this poor woman bawling in our arms, and asked for us just to sing to her hymns. So we did, and slowly the tears stopped, and she decided she was going to read and pray again. The miracle kept going though because we thought this family wasn´t really paying much attention to what we were teaching, but then the daughter comes in with Book of Mormon in hand and said, “I was actually hoping you would come by sometime, I had some questions about this book...” It ended up being such a great, spiritual lesson, and they all said they would try coming to church. It was a hard week, but there seems to be a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel from these last couple weeks. Our mission President said this week that the success isn´t in the results, but it is in the effort. I have really seen that so far in my mission. Even when it´s hard, I know that God is there. I love the work here in Castellón, I can´t even imagine leaving now! Thanks for all the prayers,

Les quiero,

Hermana Hopkins