Tatouine! Transfers on Thursday!

What a great week! Man. At the end of a transfer I always feel like I reach a whole new point of...missionaryness. I struggle and work all transfer and finally achieve a new level of being able to handle this. I have now reached LEVEL 2! Which is the equivalent of Tatouine in Pod Racer.

I feel like I finally reached higher altitude than the big cloud of confusion and darkness that comes with adjusting to the actual mission field. I feel like I can understand people's questions now and oh my goodness it is SO satisfying to hear myself explaining an answer in understandable Spanish! I now know how Spencer felt when he came home and had this habit of going into teaching mode with me and just explaining things really well and asking me questions for understanding. Once he exclaimed, "Oh man, I just LOVE teaching."

So it is nice to feel like I understand what is going on and can coherently handle myself in 60% of teaching encounters.

BUT, the biggest thing I learned this week is that we can do nothing in the process of converting people. We can prepare the most eloquent lessons or explain things in the most simple ways, but the only agents of change in their lives are the Spirit and the Book of Mormon. When our investigators actually understand the need to read the Book of Mormon to find out if the gospel is true and to come closer to God, they invite the Spirit into their lives ALL THE TIME. And then the Spirit changes them slowly and steadily everyday.

We started teaching this man this week. He is about 50.  We found him at our first taqueria hop and he was drunk (which I didn't realize until my companion told me later. I just went up and talked to him. I mean, everybody seems a little crazy to me when they're speaking Spanish a million miles an hour.) He gave us his address and phone number and let us come teach him because he felt something different around us, "the angels that God sent to change him". He is definitely not the kind of man you would pin as someone searching for the truth. He is never drunk when we teach him because "we deserve more respect than that" according to him.  The Spirit penetrated his heart, and he has taken seriously the commitment to read the book of Mormon. He reads about 5 chapters every day which is INCREDIBLE. And in the one week that we have known him he has become a completely different man. At one point during a lesson about The Plan and our purpose to become like God, he slammed his hands on the table and just started saying, "voy a cambiar. Voy a cambiar. Voy a cambiar!" (I am going to change) Louder and louder. I thought he was going to get on the table and start chanting it. He tells us he has to change slowly, little by little, but he is doing his part and the spirit is doing the rest. And it has nothing to do with us or what lesson we prepare. Just him and the spirit.

Have a wonderful week,

Hermana Carter