How I Learned to Love Stepping Down

This week was actually the hardest week of my mission. Scratch that. My life. I feel as though I say that too often, but alas, life always seems to find ways to one-up my past experiences haha.

Snow has already started to fall down in buckets here. Occasionally we get a break, but then there's always that beloved slosh that you have to walk in everywhere. This Georgia girl is still adapting. That time in Utah didn't prepare me well enough for this!!!

Cool miracle: I got to teach my first lesson in SPANISH. Sœur Cerdhé wanted to meet up with a lady she had taught and was baptized in Geneva while we were there for a conference, so we went, we taught, and now I have a new favorite human being!! She's a little 4'9" Peruvian with the strongest faith I've ever seen. She's been living in Switzerland for medical treatment (she has cancer) and she hasn't seen her husband for 8 years. She is the most incredible person. I can't express it any more deeper than that.

Update on our family: They've got DATES. Baptismal ones. And we're excited. Really, really excited :)

Ana Luz and Us

Me and Sœur Cerdhé

FACTS I LEARNED:

• Algeria produces some beautiful people. Good grief.

• Romanian chocolate cake = new Klondike bar?

• If you give an Italian woman the Book of Mormon, chances are she'll want to cook you lunch.

• If you give an American missionary with pride issues practically raw meat still gushing red juice for lunch, chances are her experienced Mexican companion will diagnose the both of you with parasites weeks later.

• If you give an inexperienced American missionary parasite medication, chances are her body will react as though she has cholera. At one in the morning. And at four. And for the next two days after that.

Despite this week being filled with EXTREME physical and spiritual opposition, we know that we're scaring the livin' daylights out of the adversary. How do we know this? Our last rendez-vous with the Rupa family was the most spirit-driven, most successful, and most eye-opening lesson I've ever had. We asked the grandmother if she had started to read the Book of Mormon, she flipped open to Chapter 16 in the first book and said she reads it every second she gets (we had given it to her three days beforehand). When we started to explain the plan of salvation, she began to cry (well, sob) and kept repeating over and over that this is true. All of it is true. She accepted a date for three weeks later to get baptized, along with all her daughters and daughter-in-laws.

There was one thing I noticed that I let myself do differently in this lesson. I stopped trying to think of everything I needed to say beforehand, like what they tell you not to do in the MTC. Just lean on the Spirit. God took control of that entire lesson, and now we can help this beautiful family take the necessary steps toward Him. I love my calling. Just so you know. There isn't another feeling that compares to having God work through you to help others feel that same peace. Swallowing pride and stepping down. Who would have thought that those MTC teachers were right??

I love you. I pray for you. If there was anything I could want more this Christmas season, it would be your prayers for this family. They've already started to get a wave of opposition. Thank you. Your prayers make all the difference.

Sœur Green