El Camiño de Santiago‏

Today's email will probably be shorter. The Bakers (the missionary couple assigned to Galicia was nice enough to take us to Santiago today to see the cathedral. They are the best! I've been wanting to see this cathedral since I first heard about it in my art history classes in High-school. Dreams are coming true.
My first week with Hermana Graff has been pretty awesome. She's a really hard working missionary and she's full of energy. I feel really lucky to be working with her. Despite the awesome companionship, we had a pretty slow week. Honestly, it felt like all of our appointments failed on us. Of course that's just sort of what happens with transfers.
Nonetheless, we saw some pretty cool things.
First off, on Tuesday we saw G. He's progressing retry nicely. Hermana Graff in order to get to know him asked him a few questions one of which being "What do you like to do?" His response: "I like reading this book," motioning to the Book of Mormon. We read a little with him, which he always loves. We talked with him again about baptism, and he was still worried that he's not ready to get baptized. We explained to him that that's why we're here, to help people prepare themselves to get baptized. After thinking about it for a while we were able to recommit him to be baptized on March 19.
A small miracle we've been seeing with him is that he's really opening up to the concepts we are teaching him and starting to connect the dots. We asked him at the end of the lesson what he's been observing about himself as he reads and goes to church. He said that he feels like he's learning a lot of things he never knew before. I asked him where he thought those feelings were coming from. He paused for a moment and thought about it and then said, "Well, it has to be the Spirit of God."
He's starting to recognize the Spirit within himself and follow what it's teaching him.
Later we met with Ad, El and La again. We needed to finish teaching the Plan of Salvation to them, but we felt prompted to explain the Gospel of Jesus Christ to La.
La REALLY wants to get baptized.
We had beautiful lesson with them on the plan of salvation and Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even though she's a child, she knows the importance of having faith and repenting. She knows that being baptized is the right thing to do. We explained the principle of receiving a remission of sins through our worthiness in taking the sacrament and keeping the covenants of baptism. She REALLY wanted to get baptized after this. Especially so she could receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. She said she's willing to keep those promises throughout her life.
Her mom hit a home run when she explained that after learning about the Gospel that her daughter has become more honest and good. She bore her testimony about the Gift of the Holy Ghost and how it has changed her. She wants her daughter to have it as well.
At first her parents didn't want her to get baptized because they thought since they were so new to church, that she'd never be able to take baptism seriously. However, we have finally gotten Ad on board after explaining the necessity of receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost at a young age in order to make good decisions. In fact she got really excited and said she hopes she serves a mission someday.
The catch is with the father. He doesn't think she's ready. We need to help him understand that making these covenants empowers, strengthens and helps us. The bar is set high, but the Lord gives all those who want to follow him the help they need to live up to his standards.
Also I learned something in my personal study this morning. Joseph Smith had taught about the story of Cornelius. He had received the Holy Ghost in order to confirm his testimony, but he needed to GIFT of the Holy Ghost in order to continue learning. If he didn't, his testimony would be fleeting. We're hoping that her father can understand that soon enough.
I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the sudden thought came to my mind to testify about the simplicity of it and how it does require us to become as children. Hence the reason we are baptized starting fairly young. I could see his face out of the corner of my eye and he was thinking pretty deeply on that.
Aa also got up and challenged her husband to get up and bear his testimony. He didn't. But she did also challenge the whole branch to pray for him to let his daughter get baptized. She has a strong personality, but I really appreciate it. After the meeting, apparently he just sent up the white flag of surrender and said "Yeah, yeah, whatever you want." It's a step, but we're going to work for a little more... We need his full support.
Ya veremos.
We also saw Kla this week. Oh boy... The sent us through a loop.
She really is ready to be baptized, she has a really beautiful testimony and she knows it's true. BUT she has started having a ton of doubts. This week she wanted to know all of this stuff about church history and President Monson and everything. She's So close, but she needs to learn how to resolve her own doubts. In Preach My Gospel it talks about how it's not our responsibility as missionaries to answer everyone's questions, it's our job to help them learn the Book of Mormon is true. Only they can do that for themselves. We can only point them in the right direction.
Kla does know that the Book of Mormon is true, but she's overwhelming herself. We're going to change her date.
Please pray for Kla, El and La this week.
We met again with J. He's doing pretty well. We taught him the Plan of Salvation, which he liked, but admitted at the end of the lesson, he feels he doesn't know that much. We committed him to be baptized the 5th of March. He's a little afraid, but frankly, I think he can make it.
We also met with his dad, Jo. It was nice to see him again, but we had kind of a weird lesson with him. It didn't look like he had been reading, so we picked back up where he left off in 1 Nephi 4 where Nephi kills Laban. We got to the part where the Spirit tells Nephi to kill Laban and he says that he doesn't want to. This is how it went:
"So Jo, if you were Nephi, what would you do?"
"Well... I guess I'd take the sword and kill him or something..."
That wasn't the answer we expected. Normally we get an answer mostly like Nephi's where he explains that he doesn't want to etc. But not o ...
Moving on.
We met with Mn and Mfe again to do Family History. I taught them how to index, and they thought it was really cool. Also, big news. Mn apparently found something about his family this weekend. Mfe called us last night to tell us the Good news. We're going to meet with them tomorrow to see what it is.
Also, Tuesday night, a man named Valere got our phone number and called us. He was interested in the English classes we offered and he came to the class. He actually speaks really good English... And Spanish... And Russian (he's from Russia). So he put us all to shame.
At the end we shared a message about the Book of Mormon. There is this great Mormon Message about this bishop in England and what he had learned through the Book of Mormon. His face lit up and he said he really wanted to learn more. He was really interested in religion in general, but he has doubts about churches. He wants more faith. We're meeting with him again this Wednesday.
The highlight of last week was that we got to go to a zone conference with a general authority. Joaquim Moreira from the seventy came to address us. He gave us a great talk about repentance and how that means we need to change our attitudes, beliefs and actions to become more like the Savior. For example, when we say something like "I'm in the North of Spain, there's no way that we're going to baptize anyone..." Well... We need to repent.
Also, I think he somehow knew that I don't keep a journal and looked directly in my eyes and told us as a group that we need to write all of our experiences down so we can remember our own paths to repentance. He called me to repentance...
We had a really good meeting with him afterwards with the zone leaders. He gave great suggestions on how to help our branches be stronger.
I went up to him afterwards and expressed my gratitude for what he had taught because it had answered a lot of my questions. He gave me a hearty handshake and genuinely thanked me for my comments and questions. I felt like a million bucks.
Also I thought like this was all pretty funny. He seemed really nice. We had gotten a phone call from one of the zone leaders last night relating to us how scary he was. Apparently when he did the zone conference in Madrid, he didn't just singe their eyebrows, he took them right off. I was really scared of the meeting, but honestly I thought he was great!
That's all for this week. Hasta pronto!
Hermana Sykes

¡Feliz Año Nuevo a Todos!

¡Feliz Año Nuevo a Todos!

We had some really awesome miracles this week. I thought nothing could beat last week, BUT I WAS WRONG!

Honestly, I have no idea how the Lord somehow thought we were worthy to see these miracles. Nonetheless, I'm thoroughly enjoying them. I love Lugo and I love the people here.

We met with Ka again, and we decided that we wanted to talk to her about eternal marriage and temples. We've been through the first few lessons and she had a particular interest in temples, so we showed her a video that explained temples (Between Heaven and Earth). We tried that morning to show it to her, but we couldn't get the DVD player at the church to work, so we set up an appointment with her later that day. She showed up with potato chips, popcorn and Coke. We watched it with her and her daughter, and she LOVED it. She kept telling us that she's been having dreams about going inside the temple.

We thought it was a good idea to teach her about the temple because, in the end, that's really the goal. Her desire to get baptized has increased since we started teaching her about the temple.

Actually what's cool is that she has appeared to have just decided that she's going to be a member. She comes with good questions about the lessons and what she's reading, and really wants to participate in everything. She even came to church this week and really loved it.

We had a good lesson with Aa this week, even though we didn't get a lot of chances to get in contact with her this week. We watched "A Summer With Great Aunt Rose," Elder Uchtdorf's talk from the Women's conference this year. She had a friend over who was visiting from
Germany. She's not of our faith, but she really loved the talk. I think it's a good stepping stone for her in the future.

We met with Ad, a member who loves missionary work, and almost always has someone for us to try and visit. We are preparing her to go to the temple, and we talked a little about temples this week. She's really cool, and I'm convinced that she has the gift of prophecy! We spent a lot of time talking about the dreams she has. She also got me cozy socks for my birthday.

We met with Eo again this week. The first time we met with him, we decided we were going to teach him the Plan of Salvation. We thought that maybe his lack of progression might have had something to do with the fact that for the last 5 years the missionaries have never
really progressed with the lessons after teaching The Restoration. We actually discovered that he has A LOT of doubts about the Plan of Salvation. He doesn't believe it all the way. Which is partially
because he refuses to pray about the Book of Mormon.

We saw him walking around one day by the Muralla (the city wall)  (like about 4-5times) and asked if he wanted to sit down and chat for a while. In his prayer he mentioned something that went like this:
"Well I guess you have a message for me, God... Because I saw the hermanas 5 times today..."

We talked about the Book of Mormon AGAIN. How's that for your message?

The next time we met with him, we decided we wanted to take him though the scriptures to help him resolve his doubts. We read some VERY clear passages about the plan, and asked him to pray about it. Still no. We even were able to show him that he does, AS A MATTER OF FACT,
have doubts about Joseph Smith, and told him very clearly that if he wants to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, he needs to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. Because, duh. If you know the Book of Mormon is true through the Holy Ghost, then you also know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Because how else would we even have the Book of Mormon? It doesn't go the other way around. Much to the dismay of the members, who love him dearly, we've decided we're going to take a break from him for 2-3 weeks. Give him some time to think. He'll still have a lot of contact with the church because he reads the Book of Mormon every day and comes to church and the
activities every week. He even came to the church to fix some electrical problems. Also, he and the branch president appear to be best friends. He apparently stayed at the branch president's house for a couple of days this week.

We met with a less active member, Goo, who wants to come back.  He's really cool. He's Spanish and apparently came to church one day a few years back because he read a little of his dad's Book of Mormon. The missionaries snatched him up and he got baptized a few weeks
later. On his teaching record it says that he's one of the "other 3 immortal nephites." He went inactive a while back because his feelings got seriously hurt by a few people, including a friend who a year or two ago fasted and prayed to find to bring into the church (successfully I might add; she's one of the strongest members). This being a small branch and all, it got super awkward, and just stayed aloof.

His friend asked him to come back to church and we got to meet with him this week. We talked about repentance, and he committed to come back. He even helped us drive out to a town called Viveiro to track down a church referral. It was false, but we were grateful for the help anyways.

Later his mom (who loves us, by the way) called us and invited us to dinner for Noche Vieja (New Years Eve). We had lamb, shrimp and a lot of other traditional Spanish things. We spent most of the night talking to his sister who lives in A Coruña and she actually seems really interested to learn about the Gospel. We showed them a video before we left, and she and her husband and kids really liked it. We're passing the referral along to the missionaries there.

Ya  and Ge brought an old professor to family home evening on Friday. She loved the activity, and when we gave her a Book of Mormon she got really excited. She had apparently been looking for a church in Ciudad Real where she lives and asked us about it. She said she'd read it on the bus to Ciudad Real.

We met with Ya again for the first time in a long time. She's still reading. We're really impressed with her because she's studying and that's a huge commitment. We talked about temples as well, and she really liked it. We don't feel like it's quite her time yet, but she's progressing really steadily. She's really wonderful.

Sunday was the best day this week! This is the list of our friends that came to church:

Ya, Go (investigator), Eo, Ke and Al, and Aa's husband and stepson (E and Sa). That is SEVEN people. We beat both of our records. Also, they all appeared to really like the meetings.

After sacrament meeting Ad yelled over at me to come and talk to Sa, Aa's rebellious stepson. She told us some of the sad news that his older brother had passed away this week, and he was really struggling. His dad even recommended that he talk to us. Apparently Ad felt a strong impression to come and sit with him in Sacrament meeting. He sat there and asked questions about Jos, the boy who was passing the sacrament:

"Who is he?"
"What's he doing?"
"Can I do that?"
"How can I do that?"
"Do I have to talk to the sisters?"

We met with him later that night and talked to him about the Plan of Salvation. The spirit was really strong. I could feel that he felt a lot better after the lesson now that he knew where his brother was. We set up a return visit. We felt strongly that he'll be the one to do his brother's work for him in the temple. We set up home teaching assignments this week. Pray for the branch president, as he wants to do be in ALL of the companionships.  We met with Chr, the mother of two, young recent converts, Rl and Cs. Rl, as a side note, is a really good kid. He's the one in the family who takes church the most seriously. Also, he loves the missionaries and wants to help us on appointments. We had the rare privilege of meeting her husband who NO ONE has met. We're the first missionaries to teach him.

We also met with Er this week. She appeared to be doing a little better, albeit a little sad. We read about the atonement, and after the final prayer, we could tell she was about to cry. We both gave her a big hug and she felt a lot better. We can tell she likes and trusts us. We think she'll be ready to begin praying again soon.

That's all for this week!

Con cariño!

Hermana Sykes