January 21, 2013 Stephanie

Dear Family,

                So below is the letter I wrote to the mission president this week. It has a great experience in it and I need your help to pray for Hermana Gregoria so she will make the decision to get baptized !!!  She is the strongest person I have ever met and I haven’t met a person who needs the gospel more in her life.  So please help me with your prayers to help her take this step towards Christ and feel the wonderful healing power of the atonement.   

          I am loving my mission I think I am starting to feel like I am helping the work along. We have so many investigators and so many that are ready to be baptized and we have goals for 6 new fechas by the end of this week. We are seeing miracles left and right I love seeing the hand of the Lord in the lives of those we teach and the work it is incredible.
          I have been teaching a part member family. We are teaching a 16 year old and also the grandma for many many weeks and the grandma is really hard headed and wouldn’t have anything to do with us at first but I have seen the Lord work on her hard while we are visiting her and her family. It is incredible. She told me yesterday that she started to read the Book of Mormon and that she hasn’t told anyone but she told me. She is praying to find out if she should get baptized!!!!! For her this is a miracle .... this is a woman that would not even think about baptism unless we could take her to the river Jordon and baptize her where Christ was baptized.....now she is thinking  and praying to find out if she should be baptized here!!!! I love this family with all my heart and it is my deepest desire to see the whole family united in the faith and helping one another go to church and endure to the end. The grandpa is praying so hard for his wife to be converted so that he can get sealed to her in the temple. I know she will get baptized I know it.  I am so excited to hear or see that day come.  I love this work. It is the most rewarding work there is in the world and I feel privileged to be a part of something so grand and important as this.

        So I am really happy and I don’t know why. Ha, ok, So I know why but I am surprised with how happy I am.  At church yesterday someone asked me how I was. I said really good and he said you always say that. I have never seen you with a sad face or sick or what ever. Just always really good. I was able to testify that is was because of the gospel and he was a little surprised but he said that’s true ....Sorry this person is an investigator  Jose Alfredo and he has an amazing testimony.  He is always at church and he wants to get baptized...the only problem is his family. They do not feel the same and his wife doesn’t want to get married to him so he can get baptized so we are working with them and need your prayers for his wife and his children that they can open their hearts to our message.

         Ok, and I should tell you all that I didn’t have cambios.(transfers)    I am still in the same area !!!!!! I feel it a great blessing to be here and help the people here. I love these people so much I will spend half my mission in this area after this change !!! crazy hu?  I don’t ever want to leave. Oh that will be a hard day ......so  you ready for this. I do have a new companion......I know.  Every change I have a new one. I am really starting to wonder if what Dad says is true and I am the hard one to live with. Ha.  But get ready for this.  My new companion is Hermana CAAL. She is amazing. We were companions before in the mission. Well for like 4 days on our way from the Guatemala MTC to El Salvador !!! She is a power house.  We are planning to baptized like 8 people this change and it’s a shorter change it will only be 5 weeks instead of 6. So  I will come home one week earlier from the mission ....I am not to happy about that. The time is already going too fast. But Hermana Caal has an incredible story. She is the only member in her family. Her sister just got baptized but went inactive ....oh sorry. She is from Guatemala and lives in the mountains. Her name is native.  She has 6 brothers and sisters but she doesn’t live with her real family. She left her house at the age of 13, a year after her father died......for very sad reasons that were not related to her Father’s death. But circumstances what they were she needed to leave and she went to work and was taking in by a family who are members. This is how she was introduced to the gospel. She has had a hard life but she has an amazing testimony and is such an example to me......her prayers are WOW.  I  wish and I am working to have my prayers like hers.  You know she is talking to her father every time she prays. It brings the spirit so fast I love to have her pray in the lessons because it brings the spirit so fast. So we are working hard and effectively !!!!  I am so happy.  Each night I have a great feeling and we can see the hand of the lord in what we did that day.  I love it.  We are seeing miracles..... oh we are going to have a baptism this week.  Jesus Marces is going to get baptized if we are feeling good about it.  He didn’t come to church this week and we are kind of worried. But we have faith and hope that everything will work out for this Saturday. We are also going to have a baptism the 2nd of Feb ....well if our plans work out we will have 3 baptism that week and two the next !!! Pray really hard for us to accomplish our goals I feel like this is one of the reasons I am still here. There are still so many people I need to baptize here.

      What else to say ......I hope Maren is liking the MTC. I am getting her letters thank you so much for sending them to me.  I just don’t have very much time to read them while on the computer. I am planning on printing them out and reading them tonight.  I got the Christmas cards from the ward and I felt so blessed and I remembered how many people have helped me get to the place where I am now and the person I am and I was so overwhelmed with gratitude.  Thank the ward for me.

     So I have been reading the general conference magazine and its like the first time hearing all the talks because when I heard it, it was in Spanish and I couldn’t understand really well. But I have to say that wow this conference was like incredible. Every talk, I have found answers to questions and see the solutions to so many of the world’s problems.

   One quote that I want to share is from the talk about the bees !!! Love that talk !! Read it. Love it.  Lets live it !!! I love the quote that said " Only when our testimony transcends what is in our mind and burrows deep into our heart will our motivation to love and serve become like unto the Saviors.  It is then, and only then, that we become deeply converted disciples of Christ, empowered by the Spirit to reach the hearts of our fellowmen." We must learn to put what we believe into action and live it.  One thing I have learned about myself is that I have really good thoughts but that I have a hard time putting them into action. It is good to have good thoughts but it’s better to do good deeds. I am working on that right now.  I love this work and I love you all. Thank you for your support and your prayers especially for my investigators. This gospel is true and ...wow what else is there to say.  If it is true, the Book of Mormon is and I testify that this book is inspired of God. I have come to love that book with all my heart. God lives and loves each and every one of us.  Christ lives he is our Savior and is willing and ready and has the power to help us in our daily ...  lives. If we but will ask for his help and show forth the effort needed to show our faith, to let him in and work through our faith to help us.  I love him so much and know I will see him one day with my whole family and have the joy he has promised us.

     Love you all ...Maren enjoy the MTC it’s the best. You learn so much.

   Hermana Hale