09/03/23 What did we even do this week? Umm good question

 Hi, 

-puppiiiiieeeesss:
this also happened to be like
3 hours before I threw up  

-swingset time hehe I was in

 an hermana leader meeting on zoom 

I feel like there's not much to tell in terms of what happened this week! I asked my comp what we did this week and she was like,umm good question  so here's the best I could come up with: 

-: I threw up this week on Thursday evening. Like 4 times within a half hour, 2 of which were on the side of the road on the way to the church. The other 2 were in the church bathroom. We had to miss a ward activity (because I was clearly sick) and our ward mission leader was angry at us for not going... people  

- Francisca y Jessica: our two friends who are absolutely escogidas!! They only have one problem... they're wayyyy too busy. Which makes it really hard for them to come to church. But like they want to! Jessica is the mom and Francisca is her 9 year old daughter, but the daughter is super intelligent and has a lot of questions about life after death and the nature of God and things like that. They also gave us jam!! Apricot jam specifically. And anyways they have a baptismal date for the 24 of September that we put this week!! But if they can't make it to church, they can't really get baptized, so we'll see what happens. 

-Sofia: our little atheist friend (15 years old)! She has really warmed up to us and enjoys talking and listening to us and arguing with us (in a mostly friendly way). She also reads anything and everything we leave with her. She just says she doesn't believe in God. And doesn't want to go to church. At all. But for now the goal is to get her to activities!! In the meantime, her family all go to everything. They went to church, they accept lessons, they're reading the boom of mormon, everything! I have no doubt that the rest of them will progress along the covenant path. 

But anyways, here's the miracle: my comp and I were super discouraged because the elders were in the middle of the baptism of our friend that they stole (long story) and we've just felt like the ward is trusting in them more than in us with a lot of things and that they see us as less than the elders... I don't know if I can fully explain it, but it just feels like we're in a man's world or something in this ward. They don't always respect us---> or they see us more as little girls or something. And the elders also think they're better than us, so... yeah. 

... ward and elder drama aside, we decided it would be a better use of our time (and much better for our mental health) if we didn't go to the baptism. And we had a bunch of friends that needed visited as well! So we went to the apartments that we're always working in and started visiting everyone! And like, all of the people we wanted to visit were around!! It was awesome! And we left one lesson to go to the other building to try and find a couple of teenage girls we've been teaching, and on the way there we passed the swingset. And seated there was... Sofia! Before that we had only ever taught her with her parents around and she's always been super closed off with them around. But outside on the swingset we were really able to talk to her and teach her!!! She likes English, so we taught her in English and helped her to understand what we were teaching. With the need to translate, she was waaayyy more attentive and surprised herself with how much English she knows.

 What we taught her is that praying every day is important because prayer is like a muscle. The more you practice and stretch that muscle, the stronger your faith becomes, and eventually you can build the muscle to be much greater than you may have imagined beforehand----> o sea, you can learn to feel and understand the spirit through practicing feeling the spirit! 

-the hermanas moved back in with us---> their house had major water problems and they can't live there anymore. They're with us until the end of the transfer (in 11 days). 

-sushi and exchanges!!
That is not in fact my sweater!
The sushi was excellent,
fun fact they have chicken sushi here! 

A spiritual thought from this week: 

Have you ever heard of love languages? 

They are as follows: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gifts, and physcial touch

They are ways in which we receive and express love for one another. They're really a cool way to analyze relationships and they don't just apply to romantic relationships either. If you have a friend who's constantly high fiving or patting backs or hugging or touching others' hair or something, that person's most dominant love language is probably touch. 

But anyways, this week I was thinking about how the love languages can apply to our relationship with God as well! So that got me brainstorming about each love language, and here's what I came up with: 

• words of affirmation

    ----> prayer of course 

    ----> singing praises (or hymns) 

    ----> sharing your testimony 

-my shoe broke

- I fixed it

• quality time

   ----> the length and quality of your prayers, especially personal prayers

   ----> dedicating time to Him/service/ church, etc. 

   ---->sacrificing/consecrating time to study His words 

• acts of service 

   ----> "when you're in the service of your fellow beings you are only in the service of your God" or something like that, right? So serving others of course! 

   ----> serving in the temple! 

   ----> church callings and cleaning the church buildings 

• gifts

   ----> tithes and offerings 

   ----> being generous to others 

   ----> giving of your own broken heart and contrite spirit unto Him as a sacrifice 

• physical touch 

ok so this one was possibly a little more challenging, because like personally I've never touched God in this life... so what can we do? 

   ----> I think feeling the spirit is maybe the closest thing we have to touching God, so if we do something every week or every day to really take time to feel the spirit, we will be able to accomplish that category 

   ----> bearing one another's burdens. Being willing to lend a shoulder or a hug to someone in need 

It didn't work very well with the tape,
I'm now using other shoes...
 hoping to make these other shoes work
until 6 weeks (SIX WEEKS??????)

from now when I go home 

Anyways, that's my spiritual thought for the week, thank you for reading it  

Love you all!! 

xo-hna griffin

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