Happy Mother's Day

Dearest family and friends-

(I thought about saying ´Dear Utah´, but didn´t want to offend my few out of state family members, so we´re back to the usual greeting. Forgive my redundancy each week!)

Happy Mothers Day to you all!! I hope your day was as wonderful as mine. I GOT TO TALK TO MY FAMILY!!  Granted, we had a few Skype complications, but they were very patient with me and we had a great time. Like I told Kirsten in an email today, it felt like I haven´t even been gone. What makes that even better? It feels just as natural to be back in mission life. Family and missionary work really are one and the same, and I feel like we´ve all never even been apart, and like I´ll see them again tomorrow. (According to mission time, Christmas practically is tomorrow. The weeks are going by so quickly!) I know that each and every one of us is in the place the Lord wants us to be, and that the bonds of a gospel-centered family aren´t broken by time, distance, or minor differences.  Eternity is a real thing, my dear people, and we´re all working towards it.

We called from the house of Ana Cortez, my Chilean mother. She worked really hard to make a whole taco spread for us, which was SO GOOD. Best tacos I have ever eaten in my life.

This past week turned out to be a really good one. We saw a lot of improvement in different areas- our companionship, our work with members, etc. For example- we had 2 lessons with members the week before, and this week we had 9! Woohoo! I feel the Lord is really rewarding us for our dilligent obedience. Can I emphasize that enough to all the prospective missionaries and all you members our there? It is so key.

I´ll include at least one good spiritual story this week. Wednesday and Thursday we had a ´mini cambio´ in our area. Hermana Daglio went to another area to work with our Coordinating Sister, Hermana Mena, and Hermana Ruis came to our area to be with Hermana Mendoza. When we were eating lunch in Rincon Marino (restaurant owned by members. We eat there every week and it is so so delicious. Bread, cheese empanadas, rice, chicken, natural Chilean fruit nectars, and ice cream), Hermana Ruis said something in relation to our mission focus on finding families that really caught my attention. -Encuentra que busca-, which means -You find what you look for-. I realized that I had not internally focused as much on finding a family as I should´ve. That night, Hermana Peterson and I made specific plans to accomplish this goal of finding a family to teach. We prayed a lot about it and exercised a lot of faith.

The next we followed those plans, doing our best to use every single minute of the Lord´s time. Right at the end of the day, we ´hallo-ed´ at a house, and a middle age man answered the door. We introduced ourselves and our message and asked if we could come in. He poked his head back inside, asked his wife what she thought, then apologetically told us that she already has her religion. Perhaps I was a bit bold, but I said something along the lines of ´Great! Is that a Christian religion? Because we´re representatives of Jesus Christ and we bring a message from Him.´ He poked his head back inside, said a few words, then let us in.

There was our family! Rufi, the papa, Sylvia, the mama, Valentine, the 20 year old daughter, and a son that left just as we were entering. We really followed the spirit as we taughter that lesson, and it was one of the best I´ve had on the mission. In the end, they were hesitant to read the Book of Mormon, but we´ll pass by again and work with them more. As we left the house, I was so humbled and overwhelmed by the Spirit. We had really found a family. We find what we seek, we achieve what we plan for. It was a miracle and we were so happy!

I love you each so much and wish you the very best. My prayers are with all of you!!

Hermana Oldroyd