Hola todos!
I pray that this email reaches you all well! We are in the middle of the second week of the temple open house and things have been sooooo crazy! We have had a record number of people come into the Visitors' Center and The Historic Liberty Jail. Last Saturday we had casi 900 people visit the VC and over 1100 visit the Liberty Jail. We are at the temple open house three times a week plus doing all of our normal duties so needless to say we are busy almost every single second. This is the most wonderful time of my life! I feel so exhausted but so very happy. We had the awesome opportunity last Saturday to bring our most recent converts who were baptized two weeks after I arrived in Missouri to the temple open house. I am going to attach a picture of this special time to this email. They loved the temple!!! Oh and they only speak Spanish so the tour that we went on was a Spanish tour and I was asked to help out. I am starting to feel more confident in my Spanish, especially this last week because at the start of this new transfer last Thursday my companion and I decided that we only speak to eachother in Spanish, never in English. We have tried to do this before but this time we are being much more diligent and I have prayed fervently to let go of my pride so that when I really do not understand her I tell her or I ask to please speak slower. I tend to say "otra vez por favor" (again please) many times a day. I love my companion very much! She is so patient with me and she really wants to help me learn this language well. I also feel good about my improvement this week because I have been praying that I could have confidence in my Spanish and speak it without being apologetic about how I am not fluent. Hermana Méndez says that when you keep apologizing for your lack of perfection in the language that the person/people you are talking to will not focus on your message but the way that you are speaking, and they will lose confidence in you. I have really worked on my confidence and I have seen a HUGE difference in the way that the people treat me. This has been such an answer to prayer!!! I really want you all to read the scripture that is the theme for this transfer of my mission and probably for my whole mission. It is D & C 103:36 and it states "All victory and glory is brought to pass unto you through your adiligence, faithfulness, and bprayers of faith." Okay so this says All victory meaning...ALL VICTORY. Not just victory but glory too. And what is it brought to pass by? Diligence, faithfulness and PRAYERS of FAITH. This scripture gives us all we need to know. Be diligent. Be faithful. Each and every day say prayers of faith. I know you all can do this because if I can do it, anyone can do it. This scripture is such and answer to prayer for me and I am so thankful for my dear friend Hermana Crystal who shared it with me last Thursday. It has helped change how I feel about the work and what I can do. I can speak Spanish and every day I am learning how to be better and better in the language, but also I am coming closer to my Father in Heaven. I submit that NOTHING has helped me to be a better person than my mission. I love being a missionary.
So I need to tell this little story. At the temple open house we are constantly greeting people and answering questions(and eating cookies, ha ha) and this last Monday this is what I was doing when I met this awesome granola-ish couple from Oregon. Within the first ten minutes of me meeting them they had found out a ton about my life and they already wanted me to come over to their house in KC so that they could give me their old wild life photography equipment and teach me how to use it and they absolutely insisted that I walk out to their pick-up and pet their two dogs! It was so funny! I tried so hard to talk about the temple but they were all like "Oh we know Mormons, we grew up around them and have even helped pay for four mission". Crazy right? Well guess what?! Turns out that they live in our area!!!! We are going to go over there for dinner and to teach them next week.
This week I do not have a ton of time because we are in a hurry to get to the Museum in KC. I love you all!
Have a great week!!
con amor,
Hermana Thorne
PS The picture of us on the golf cart is a hilarious story! I will try to remember next time!!!
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