Miracle Week

Hi Family and Friends!

Things are going well down here in Valencia. We are finding a lot of potential investigators through knocking doors but every time we have gotten excited about someone and they seem to be progressing and we have set a baptismal date they fall off the face of the earth and we can't get in touch with them which has been hard. In this last week, we have had twice as many appointments fall through as go through and haven't had any progressing investigators. I have really been working on being patience, keeping a positive attitude when five people in a row will cancel on us in a day, and noticing miracles everywhere and in everything. It has helped a lot and I have started to really like contacting whether through street contacting or knocking doors. We got around 17 phone numbers in a couple days. Along with doing a lot of finding, the bishop has asked us to work with less-actives which might be more than half of our ward so most of our lessons that have gone through have been less-actives (they are surprisingly much more reliable than investigators).

Our miracle experience truly was incredible. We hadn't been able to get in contact with our only progressing investigator. We had been so excited for her so we decided to go to her apartment and just see if she would be there. Unfortunately, she wasn't there so we decided to knock the building. We received a couple of phone numbers but as we were walking down the stairs to leave the building, a man asked us where the church was. We were shocked and started talking to him. We learned that he had been baptized when he was 14 in Venezuela, had later graduated high school in Utah and attended BYU for a couple of years then moved to Spain. He said that he has been looking for the church ever since he got here five years ago but hasn't been able to find it and has been praying to find missionaries or someone that might know. He wants to come back to church, receive the Melchizedek priesthood, and go back to school at BYU next year! It was the craziest thing ever. His name is Gumer and he came to FHE with us the next night and he bore his testimony and he is basically awesome. I'm so excited for him. (Backing up to when we first met him) while we were talking to him there was a guy named Luis (from Ecuador, I LOVE Ecuadorians, they are so nice) who I guess saw how excited Gumer, Hma. Shaffer, and I were about church on Sunday that he asked if he could come too.

Then on Sunday we were hoping to have at least four people at church. I think there were about ten people who said they would be there who we had either contacted or taught in the last week so we figured four actually showing up was pretty reasonable. We got up early to meet Gumer and Luis to go to church and they weren't home and neither answered their phones. Trying to keep in high spirits we hoped that they had already left since they knew the address and would already be there. It turned out we didn't have a single investigator at church...again (Gumer and Luis both couldn't end up coming but we have appointments with them this upcoming week and they promised they'd come next week). I'll admit I was pretty bummed but then Elder Olaya asked me if I could sit by this Nigerian man and translate for them. (By the way, translating from Fast Spanish to Nigerian English (which is VERY simple and slow English) is super hard. We have a lot of Nigerians in our ward and I am sure that in the next couple of years they will make an English branch here in Valencia for them, they would have enough people now but there just aren't any high priesthood holders because none of them are married.) So I translated for Manuel, the Elders told us he had just showed up at the church asking for a Bible. He seems to be going through a hard time and searching for answers. We brought him to all of the classes and he really enjoyed them. He said they really touched his heart. After talking to him a little bit after Gospel Principles we invited him to be baptized on June 15th. He said "yes, but you might have to call me to remind me the day before." We explained to him that we were going to meet with him several times and teach him but he seems so excited. I love Nigerians! They all love God so much and are very inspiring.

So in case this letter isn't obnoxiously long already here are a couple of bullet points from the week:

So weird to think that I graduated from High School 2 years ago! It feels like it was a lifetime ago!

I reread my favorite talk ever by Brad Wilcox last week, if you haven't read it I HIGHLY recommend it. Just google Brad Wilcox His Grace is Sufficient or you can find it at speeches.byu.edu. It's amazing.

For personal study every morning I read a conference talk from last October. I love it! Last semester at BYU I used to watch a conference talk on Youtube every morning as I was getting ready for the day. That's my invitation this week. Read or listen to a conference talk everyday this week. They will put you in such a good mood and give you such a great spirit to have throughout the day.

Next week P-day might be on Tuesday because we might visit a castle which isn't open on Mondays.

Love you guys!

Hermana Tuttle

 

 

My Claim to Fame

Dear Friends and Family,

So this email might be pretty sparatic (like I'm sure all of them are) because I have several really random things to say. So if I struggle with "sentence fluency" like I always did in junior high and high school I am apologizing upfront.

So let's start with Monday. So we had an appointment with the girl named Maria Del Mar who is a less active, she is a sweetheart! When we went to her house for an appointment I kept thinking to myself "we just visited her last Friday, I swear we set up our return appointment with her for this Friday not Monday." Sure enough when we showed up she was a little confused because she had also thought our appointment was for Friday but we had brownies (we seriously make brownies like twice a week. People LOVE brownies here. It's the instant cure-all and ice-breaker) so we came in and all of her family was there with the exception of her dad which is nothing short of a miracle. To give you a little perspective her mom is only home a couple of days every couple of months. Most of the time she and her husband are in Ecuatorial New Guinea (where a lot of people here are from) to work. And her two brothers were there who are also never home. We talked about the atonement and it was such a powerful lesson. The mother was only in for that day and I know that it was not a coincidence that Hma. Shaffer wrote down the wrong day for our return appointment. It reminds me of a quote President Sitterud shared in the Madrid CCM. Coincidences are just miracles where God chooses to remain anonymous. So my invitation to you (we invite people to do something at the end of each lesson so I decided to do it with you guys to) is to choose to see everything this week as a miracle. I think it was Einstein or someone important that said "You can either live life as if everything is a miracle or nothing is." You'll be amazed at what you find when you choose the former.

On Tuesday, we met with Vanessa. She actually moved the appointment so her parents could be there. We are meeting with the three of them again tomorrow and we are really hopeful. We think Vanessa is ready and we are hoping she can be baptized this week or next. She is amazing.

On Thursday, we had a special zone conference with the islands zone as well. Elder Teixera, a member of the first quorum of the seventy and the president of the Europe area (so over all of the members, the missionaries, the church, everything in Europe) came with his wife to speak with us. It was literally a once in a lifetime experience and he was absolutely incredible!! As I mentioned in my last email I believe Hermana Shaffer, Elder Coombs, Elder Schindler, and I sang "Señor, yo te seguiré" (Lord, I would follow thee) and it went so good! We did four parts and despite my inability to sing I got stuck with soprano but somehow it sounded really good and the spirit was so strong that some people cried! After the conference, Elder Teixera wanted to interview a couple of missionaries (like four or five) to get to know them and to see how the mission is going and I was one. He was so sweet and we had a great talk. I also got to talk to President and Sister Pace which is always amazing, they are so sweet. I am so lucky to be able to rub shoulders with such incredible people.

The rest of the week basically consists of canceled appointments and knocking doors. However, despite most of our days not having any set appointments work out, we still have yet to have a day without one lesson. The Lord is truly blessing us and I am so grateful. Our baptism date dropped us which is hard but we will pass by in a couple of weeks just to see how she is doing. She is amazing and I know that she will be someone else's miracle one day, she just needs a little bit more time.

I love you guys! Thank you for all of the prayers and support, they mean the world to me. Have a great week!

Hermana Tuttle

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day!

First of all: I have the best mother and grandmother in the world and I hope you guys had the greatest mothers day ever yesterday! I hope you knowing that I was thinking about you. (to anyone else reading this, you should be super jealous, they really are the best).

Second of all: It was so amazing to skype with all of you yesterday! You guys all look like you´re doing well and are happy. I´m so sorry the time was short and that I could only talk to each of you for a few minutes and that goodbyes were rushed but please know that I love you so much and skyping with you was seriously the highlight of my mission thus far...I have only been out 8 weeks so it doesn´t have much competition but details details.

So I briefly mentioned the church here in Spain a little bit in my last email so here is just a little more background: There are three wards here in Valencia which is awesome! However, even though each ward has enough members to classify it as a ward it seems as though half of them are inactive so sacrament services are actually pretty small. A third of the ward (keep in mind when I use fractions I am TOTALLY guessing) is African, mostly Nigerian (can I just say that Spanish with a Nigerian accent is the coolest thing ever?). There aren´t very many youth in the ward but it is so cool to see how most of them have a goal to serve the mission and they love to help us out with citas (appointments). So last week was fast sunday right? Well the four of us missionaries that are assigned to our ward (there are four to each of the three wards) bore our testimonies. After the meeting a member of the bishopric asked me to give a talk this sunday. So I gave a talk yesterday, they made sure I knew that it was a talk not a testimony and that it should be over ten minutes about missionary work. I spoke for like twelve minutes! I can´t take any credit for that though, I had so little time to prepare (all of you returned missionaries are probably rolling your eyes now) and I just prayed that the spirit could be there. I was really nervous because there are always so many kids running around and screaming and people are talking and so I didn´t know how I could bring the spirit. But my companion later told me that when I started speaking the whole room just went quiet. It was such an incredible experience and I had about twenty people come up to me after and tell me how strong the spirit was. As I said, I can´t take any of the credit for that, I was just so grateful that God gave me the gift of tongues and answered my prayer for the presence of the Spirit to be there.

So this week we had each day filled with appointments. Unfortunately, most of them don't end up happening and people don't end up being home. I can see why people talk about missions being a bit discouraging at times but my companion and I have been very blessed. There have been several days this week that we had our days completely full and with only an hour to go before we had to head back to that apartment we hadn't had one lesson. I'll be honest, there were a couple of those days when I had to have a pray in my heart to have a good attitude even though my feet were hurting, I was hungry, and I felt like our day had been a complete waste besides a couple of pass-along cards we had handed out on our way to appointments but each of those days we were able to teach at least one lesson before we headed back. Hermana Shaffer and I would go back to the apartment with smiles on our faces and talk about how happy we were. This same experience happened so many times this week and looking back on it I am so grateful. I'm grateful that God pushed us. He tested us and our diligence with hard days but, as long as we gave the day everything we had, we always went back to the piso with smiles and a great experience.

A couple of random things before I get off:

We have two new investigators that were at church yesterday, they were references so we haven't actually taught them yet but we will this next week. We are very hopeful about them.

We had an unreal amount of less active lessons this last week which was what our bishopric has really been stressing to us as missionaries so we felt pretty good about that (we were supposed to have a lot of investigator lessons too but they all "fired" on us) but hopefully this week.

My companion is teaching me piano when we have extra time at the church.

My companion volunteered us to sing in the mission tour (where the Area 70 of Europe will be speaking) no big deal but she volunteered me to sing soprano and her to sing alto and I am FREAKING OUT!!!!

"Tuttle" is SUPER hard to say. Whenever I introduce myself they say "que raro"/"how strange" and they really struggle with it but it's really funny and we always laugh about how hard it is.

I would really advise each of you to go to the temple every week for the next four weeks. Change it as you need but make some sort of goal for yourself. The temple is so incredible and being able to go every week for six weeks was such a blessing and a strength to me and I can definitely feel a difference.

And finally, you know you are on a mission when you find yourself applying the church when random movie quotes go through your head. Like yesterday when I looked bad on our hard week, I had the Miracle movie quote "But no, Craig, Herb has a reason for everything he does" (when Doc is talking to Coach Patrick about Herbs extreme coaching) and I started thinking about God and how he is training me for something so much more important than my hunger or tiredness. He's training all of us.

If you ever have the opportunity to try Kinder Happy Hippos...my advice... don't. they are the most delicious things ever and super addicting... I think I'll actually try to send some home when I get the chance.

Love you all! Thanks for all the love and support! Talk to you soon!

-Hermana Tuttle

Valencia!

¡Familia!¿Que tál?

We received our areas and trainers last Wednesday. I am serving in Valencia (southern part of our mission) and my trainer's name is Hermana Shaffer! I am so, so, so, so excited! I LOVE Valencia! They speak Valenciano here (pretty much the exact same as Catalán) which is kind of frustrating but at least down here they have a lot more Castellano (whereas Barcelona everything is Catalán). My trainer is an absolute doll! She is 8 months into her mission but she VISA waited in Idaho for a while so she has only been in Spain for 3 months but all of it has been here in Valencia. She is amazing and has taught me so much. She and her old companion unfortunately had a really tough week last week, with investigators dropping them just a couple of days before their baptisms so when I got here Hermana Shaffer and I had 0 progressing investigators. Because we had to stay up in Barcelona an extra day for residency stuff we didn´t get down to Valencia until Thursday evening. We did a little street/metro contacting on the way to Xátiva. Xátiva is the city center of Valencia and it is BEAUTIFUL! It´s a lot more like what you would picture Spain to look like. Time is so different here in Spain. People eat mediodia (also referred to as ciesta but they don´t really nap anymore) from 2-4 then they eat dinner 8-10 pretty much. It´s a really pretty scene to walk around Xátiva at 9 and see people eating out on the plaza under lights, it´s kind of what I picture people doing in Paris.!

We share an apartment ("piso") with the two other sisters that are in this southern part of the mission and they are awesome! Our piso is in their area which is super convenient for them but Hma. Shaffer and me not so much. We are about 40 minutes away from our area but "no pasa nada" (no big deal). I had no idea how HUGE areas are on the mission. I imagine my situation is very common but it would seriously take a day to walk from one end of the area to the other. Hopefully with all that walking and daily P90X the tagline "happy and fat in Valencia" won´t apply to me. Oh just a little more background about Spain EVERYONE has a dog (a terrible over exaggeration....probably 98% of Spaniards of dogs) it´s kind of ridiculous!

So like I said earlier, we had 0 progressing investigators and we have had several meetings and random things to do the last few days so I don´t have too much to tell you about but I will say that we had a lesson on Thursday with a couple named Fran and Jessica. They are so cute! They finally set a wedding date which means we can count them as progressing again because we can schedule Fran to be baptized right after that. He´s totally ready to be baptized they just didn´t want to set a date for their wedding. Unfortunately it´s not until the end of July but chances are I will still be here then so fingers crossed everything works out with that. Other than that lesson we hadn´t had any success really, we basically had just been knocking doors and trying to get in contact with old investigators. We were getting pretty discouraged but yesterday we received an answer to our prayers and fasts. We went to a members house to help her out because she has been going through a hard time and she had invited a friend over to meet us. The woman is from Nigeria which is awesome because we have a lot of Nigerians in our ward and is very interested in learning more. We are teaching her this Thursday and she is coming to church on Sunday. I can´t tell you how good it was after four days of nothing to finally find someone interested in what we were saying last night. Please keep the missionaries in your prayers, that we can find people who the Lord has prepared to hear this gospel.

Real Quick: Hma. Shaffer and I started talking about how we decided to go on a mission the other day, I seriously just said "well, I had signed up for a study abroad to Spain and..." and then she stopped me and told my entire story to me. She told me about how the previous MTC president President Brown had told the story in a fireside. I remembered when Bishop Brown told me that his dad had shared the story but it was just a really cool experience to hear someone I had never met before tell me my story.

Alright well I have to go but I will talk to you all next week! It will be much more like a regular missionary week I´m sure.

Love you all!

-Hermana Tuttle