Ch..ch..changes

Dear family and friends,

Wow, okay so sorry that I am writing a little late. So here is why...well that's no fun I'll go through the week a little bit first.

This week was crazy! Monday and Tuesday were a little slow with a lot of appointments canceling on us but we were still able to have a couple good appointments but then the week quickly got packed and we ended up running around for the rest of the week.

On Wednesday we taught Mensen a lesson, then we went to a member's house for lunch. So I don't know how much you know about Paella but it's amazing and it's super common in Spain, you can get it everywhere but Valencian paella is known to be the best in the world, that's one of the defining characteristics of Valencia. So that is what we ate, made by a true Valenciana. It was so good!!! (oh and be proud, I ate 3 snails). Then we had a visit with a family from Ecuador. We taught them the Restoration. When we got to the part about Joseph Smith we felt prompted to show them the 20 minute movie. During it Hermana Walker and I were both a little nervous. People usually take the story of Joseph Smith one of two ways: either it makes perfect sense to them or it is just too incredible for them but with them it was definitely the former. They loved it. The spirit was so strong in that room as we asked them how they felt and testified of what we had just seen. As we were leaving we thanked them for the time and the mother said "no, thank you. I can feel so much peace right now and everything makes so much sense. So many of my questions have been answered."

Thursday we taught a few lessons, one of which was our last lesson with Mensen, and went to a stake family home evening.

Friday was a lot of traveling because the other hermanas in our piso were doing intercambios so we were in a trio part of the day and had to go back and forth from the train station to pick people up and drop people off. But we did have a couple really good lessons one of which was with Stella (the one who just doesn't feel any excitement to get baptized). We taught her about the stripling warriors. After we read the first couple of verses and asked her what stood out to her she said nothing and that none of it really "touched [her] heart" at that point I was super worried but I really appreciated having a member there because as we went on his testimony was so strong and by the end she was volunteering things she liked from each of the verses we read and talking about ways she could apply it to her life. PROGRESS!!! We also had Mensen's baptismal interview and correlation today.

Saturday=Crazy. Along with finishing up the other hermana's intercambios (trips to the train station), we had to pick up two mini missionaries (the Barcelona stake is doing a youth activity where their youth who are nearing mission age are serving for a week with missionaries in our mission and two of them are going to be with Hermanas Steenblik and Liu), then it was Mensen's baptism. It went perfect! You wouldn't believe how beautiful it was! Everything went perfect. She is so sweet and was just smiling from ear to ear the whole time. She said that she could feel the spirit so strong and she felt a peace and a happiness she had never felt before.

Afterwards I got a call from President...I have been called to serve as a Sister Training Leader! For those of you who don't know what that is: it is a recently instituted leadership for sisters, somewhat equivalent to a zone leader. There are 8 in our mission right now (myself included) and all of them have much more time in the mission than I do. I feel pretty inadequate for the position but I am also very excited.

Sunday, Mensen was confirmed and we taught a really good lesson with a man named Isdi. Then I headed up to Barcelona with the zone leaders for the monthly Mission Leadership Meeting on Monday (the reason I am emailing late). I got to stay with Hermana Shaffer, which was a blast and of course the meeting was incredible! I learned so much, President and Sister Pace are so inspired! But as fun as being up there was, I missed Hermana Walker it really made me realize how attached we have gotten. Traveling around a lot now to do intercambios will be hard but it's going to be especially hard when I get transferred one day.

Oh random tidbit: Mensen's real name we found out is Mercy. Oops. We found that out when we had to fill out the paperwork for her baptismal interview... with her accent it really does sound like Mensen (did any of you guys just try to say Mercy with an accent to test my theory. I promise it does) anyway, I think I'll continue to call her Mensen just because Mercy seems way too unfamiliar.

Well I love you all, sorry this letter is a little dry, a lot to catch up on and not much time since we are heading back up to Barcelona to get Hermana Walker's residency card tonight.

Have a great week! Please keep me in your prayers!

-Hermana Tuttle

 

Saying goodbye to Elder Egito :(

On our way to Mensen's confirmation

That awesome moment when you find out that your last baptism and your next baptism are super good friends! (Princess and Mensen)

Happy & Hot in Valencia

Dear family and friends,

Air Conditioning...it's the best. I honestly have no idea what I would do without it. I don't know who invented it but whoever it was I will be forever indebted to. We are still just loving the heat down here. That being said we have had a couple of days that were pretty nice and the nights are actually getting a little chilly which  is super nice because I think that means  that summer is winding down. Wow, okay enough about the weather. I'm sure all of you that took the time to check out my blog today were getting on with the thought in mind: "I really hope she talks about the weather today,  I wonder if Valencia is still hot or if that was just last week."

We worked a lot with less actives this last week which was great. They are so good and with one family in particular (where the whole family is less active) we sang, shared a couple of scriptures that we felt inspired to share and then they asked me to say the closing prayer, I can't even describe how strong the spirit was there. I even got choked up a little bit saying the prayer. Another woman we visited was absolutely amazing and all she needed was a little encouragement to go back. We have also been trying to get less-actives to come to visits with us. As they help us answer the investigators questions you can really see them recognize how strong their own testimony is.

We had an eating visit everyday this week. It's crazy! The members feed you so much here. It is all super good (I'll admit I still get a little freaked out when I eat random parts of animals but I just try not to think about that) but it is A LOT. No worries though, I am  rocking out this whole "running" thing and P90X. I did eat sardines this last week (like as in the whole fish eyes and everything,  granted it was like four inches long but still) I was super proud of myself!

So this week we have a baptism! Mensen from Nigeria is getting baptized! Yesterday we had a lesson  with her and asked her why she wanted to be baptized and she told us how she had gone to other churches and didn't feel any different when she was there so she prayed to find a church that worshiped Jesus in a way that when she was there she would feel His love and the next day was when I contacted her in the street. I can't even tell you how amazing it felt to know that a little prompting I felt over a month ago was an answer to a lifelong search for someone. I am very excited for her. 

We also had a lesson with Stella who hasn't really been progressing and finally last night she told us that she knew all of this was true. We were super excited to hear that she had recognized her answer. The only problem is that she just doesn't feel excited about baptism. We have talked about the blessings but nothing has really reached her yet so we are going to try going at it from a different angle this week. I'll keep you posted.

Okay other random awesome thing that happened this week. So every once in a while like in the morning and during medio dia...you know when everyone is heading off to work and basically just sit/stand in their method of public transport thinking about how much they hate life... the metro people decide to help the customer's moods by playing classical music. Most of the time I don't like it but the other day guess what came on!!! The song from Shawshank Redemption! You know the one where the two Italian women are  singing that Andy Dufrane plays over the sound system. I was dying!...unfortunately no one else showed my same enthusiasm...awkward.

Well I love all of you, sorry for how long this email is but CONGRATULATIONS! YOU MADE IT TO THE END! I also sincerely apologize if half of what I say doesn't make sense or is grammatically incorrect. I don't have much time to revise it before I send it (I hope Jess is helping me  out with that a little when she posts it to the blog), I am seriously losing my english, I say weird things all of the time like today I said "he sleeped" instead of "he slept" I'm losing it.

Have a great week! Let me know if there is anything specific I can include in my prayers!

-Hermana Tuttle

Happy Birthday Dad

Dear Friends and Family,

To start I just want to say happy birthday to the most amazing man I have ever met let alone have had the privilege of being his daughter: my dad. Happy Birthday Dad! I hope Grandma made you some delicious lemon pie and you had a great time on your Timpanogos Hike! (Ya, my dad hiked Timp on his **th birthday, he's the man!) Love you dad!

So is anyone else impressed that I have made it this long without an email-worthy clumsy moment? I sure am! But lest any of you be concerned that this is not the daughter/sister/friend/etc. that you have loved all of your life (or however long we have known each other) I'll just say: though the mission has of course brought its changes (I'm more mature...?), some things never change. Last Tuesday we were going to pick up some new elders for our ward (we now have 4 Elders and 2 sisters in our ward including us, woot woot!) and me and three other sisters were booking it up an escalator to catch a metro...dumb idea I guess. I tripped and fell so hard! An Indian man in front of us just turned around and stared, I don't think he knew whether to try and help or to burst out laughing neither did the sisters I was with. We still had to make it the metro so I just hurried and got up and kept running but later noticed the effects escalators can have on the body, specifically ankles, shins, and hip bones. I've got some pretty sweet cuts and bruises, one bruise which is definitely the least serious of all of the battle wounds I received looks like the canyons logo. I'll send you a picture :)

As I said we now have 6 missionaries which is great. One of the new elders is from Brazil and I can understand about 90% of what he says in Portuguese.

We had a special training conference this last week (kind of like a mini zone conference that we have every three months). It was super good! President and Hermana Pace are amazing. I always learn so much from them! Hermana Walker, Elder Glenn, and Elder Benton, and I sang All Creatures of Our God and King. I sang alto which I LOVE, the alto part to that song is so pretty!

Yesterday all of the lessons were focused on missionary work. It was a great day! All of the members were bearing their testimonies on mission work and a lot of them offered to help us with our visits. We also had a long meeting with the bishop and he gave us a lot of less actives he would like us to teach. I think the ward-missionaries relationship is really going to improve from here and I am so excited!

Today for P-Day we went to the park, had a picnic, played games, tossed around a frisbee and just relaxed in the Dry River, probably doesn't sound exciting but it was super fun with 8 other missionaries.

Life is still going great over here in Valencia. It's starting to cool down a little bit. We have a few people we are focusing on right now: Stella, Mensen, Sandra, and Victoria. They are amazing and we are hopeful that any, if not all, of them might be baptized this month.

Lots of love! Have a great week! Spread the gospel!

-Hermana Tuttle

It's seriously August

Dear everyone,

This week I decided to write my weekly email as one of the first things I did so that I wasn't just scrambling to get out a couple of boring paragraphs at the end. After all, if you all are sweet enough to read these updates then I figured I need to try to make them a tad more interesting...emphasis on try...don't raise your expectations to high, I mean I am still slightly-lacking-in-the-creative-department Shannon Tuttle (...super weird to say my full name, hope I didn't just break a rule or something).

So training is going great! Honestly, Hermana Walker is amazing! We had intercambios this last week (yes, again) where she had to go up to Hospitalet (Barcelona) and my STL came down here. And while the intercambio was great and I learned a lot and loved the STL that came down, I realized how attached I have gotten to my trainee. I missed her so much! But now she's back and we are taking Valencia by storm, you know, the usual.

We had set our goals pretty high this week and once again Saturday night came and we were a little nervous about getting 6 investigators in church the next day since we only had like 3 people say they were for sure coming. When we got to church only two of those people we were sure of came but then two more that we haven't taught for a month just ended up being there and two more showed up for the sacrament meeting right after ours and it was such a miracle. The power of fasting is real. It truly can bring miracles. It changes dramatically when you fast with specific people and blessings in mind from when you are just not eating cereal in the morning because you want to avoid a guilt trip from your parents. With how hot it is here and how much we were running around saturday night (because we started our fast Saturday after medio dia), I was so hungry and thirsty and I was just craving the Pops cereal that I just bought (ya... Pops... I don't think I have had them for YEARS but they had them at Consum and I got so excited to eat normal cereal that I got them and they are SO good...way too much information) but I just kept thinking about how much we and our investigators truly needed the things I was fasting for and I truly saw miracles on Sunday. We also found a lot of new investigators. We were able to get in contact and set up appointments with some people that Hermana Shaffer and I found knocking doors back in May as well as some people that we contacted in the metro last week. We ended up getting 10 new investigators which is a lot.

So lately us Valencia missionaries have become obsessed with the game Mafia (except we change it to Apostates where Mafia = Apostate Missionaries, Detectives/Police Officers = Ayudantes (Assistants), and Guardian Angel = President. It's pretty hilarious. Last P-Day we all just met up in the chapel and played that, ping pong, and random card games, it was super fun. This week we took a half hour train ride to a castle in Sagunt but it ended up being closed (as pretty much everything touristy is on Mondays) but it was a nice hike, pretty view, and fun to be with the Valencia missionaries, then of course we played Apostates like 3 more times. Oh and we stopped at a convenient store!!! It was great! It's crazy how excited we get about the little things that feel like home/the states like gas station stores.

A couple of other bullet point miracles before I end about this week:

When we were street contacting the other day we had a woman ask us what time church started. She came to church yesterday and in the testimony she bore she said that she hasn't been active for a long time but when she saw us walking in the streets she had this overwhelming feeling of "what are you doing?" and she knew she needed to talk to us and come back to church. She was so sweet and I was very grateful the Lord placed us where we needed to be.

A woman literally asked us if and when she could be baptized. We haven't taught her any of the lessons yet but I will keep you posted.

Victoria is doing so great. She has such a strong desire to know this is true. She reads everything we give her as soon as we leave and is praying and asking lots of questions. We are preparing her to be baptized on the 24th and I know she will receive her answer by then. 

So that's life in Valencia, it's going pretty great still hot and humid but my little hand fan helps a lot (plus I feel like a TOTAL spaniard).

I love you all! Thank you for all of your love and support!

-Hermana Tuttle