Alright, so here´s the news. I´m training Hermana Heaton! She´s 19 from Ogden, Utah. Holy cow did I ever
hit the jack-pot with this girl! I absolutely adore her and we get along so
incredibly well. I can already tell that these next 3 months are going to be
great! I think the Lord blessed me with such a good companion because the area
of Valdepeñas is extremely difficult. We have literally had to start from
nothing.
We´ve just spent
the last few days wandering the streets trying to find people who are
interested. No one here really wants anything to do with us. I do know,
however, that the Lord has at least one person prepared for the gospel here in
Valdepeñas. We won´t stop working until
we find them. There is someone in this pueblo who is looking for happiness and
answers but doesn´t know where to look. The Lord will lead them to us and us to
them. He´s done it before and he´ll do it again.
We just have to keep looking. The branch here is quite
small. Smallest I´ve ever seen actually. On Sunday there were 12 people at
church and that includes the missionaries and the babies. My companion and I
literally doubled the Relief Society. haha. It´s so different from Elche but I
know I´m going to come to love this place just as much as Elche. The members
are all so kind and they were so RIDICULOUSLY excited to have hermanas. We were
quite surprised by their reactions. They´ve
been so kind to us but they all live pretty far away. There is one family who
is about a 30 minute walk from us and then the rest of the members are about a
30 minutes car ride away. The problem is that they don´t have public
transportation here so we´re trying to figure out how we´re going to be able to
visit the other members. I´m sure we´ll figure something out.
Despite the lack of interest in the gospel here, I am
really coming to like it here. It´s more of the old fashioned Spain that I
imagined when I first got my mission call. It´s actually pretty cool! There´s
so much wine here. We actually arrived just as they were having a wine
festival. Every night they would all lean out there windows and throw glasses
of wine onto the passerbys below. Lucky us. It was so hard to get home spotless
each night.
It looks like we have got a big
challenge in front of us but we´re confident that we´re going to see miracles
as we work as hard as we can. We´re going to face this challenge together with
the help of the Lord. I´m actually really excited for the coming two transfers.
They are going to be very hard and even discouraging at times but they are
going to increase my faith and reliance on the Lord. The Lord is going to mold
me into the person he needs me to be. I have complete faith that we´re going to
see miracles here. No matter what challenges lay ahead the Lord
will provide a way for you to overcome them. He always does. It all starts with
faith.
D&C 6:36 ¨Look unto me in every thought. Doubt not,
fear not.¨
Love you all! Thanks for all of the love and support!
Hermana Israelsen
Ok one last thing, I don´t know where on earth the rumor
started but I have definitely NOT lost 20 pounds.hahahahaha!!!! Maybe 10 pounds
but no more. My companion and I were laughing so hard when we saw that! I got a
lot of concerned emails about that. hahahahaha! Just thought I’d set that
straight. Don´t worry, I’m not dying out here. :)
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