PAUTAS

DEAR FRIENDS FAMILY AND LOVED ONES,

So this week we got las pautas de excelencia. I have told you about them before but let's do a little refresher shall we? So every mission has their standards of excellence. Ours are: 1 baptism, 3 investigators with baptismal dates, 12 lessons with a member present, 6 investigators in church, and 6 new investigators in one week. If you get 3 or more of the 5 you have "hit pautas" and your name gets put in the noticias and President calls you to congratulate you and it's awesome. Well we haven't hit pautas for a while but we set the goal this week and prayed so hard!! I'll be honest I didn't know how we would even be able to reach the zone goal this week of 4 new investigators on Saturday but by an absolute miracle we found 2 great people on Saturday night and then a great family that has been receiving the lessons for several months in Hospitalet and just moved into our area so by an absolute miracle we found 6 news and then we had 6 people come to church and at 9 at night we had our 12th member present. It was the first time Hermana Swenson has hit pautas so we were CELEBRATING (...Spanish grammar).

Other big news super fast because I don't have a ton of time today:

Last monday we went through the Sagrada Familia. It was GORGEOUS!!! We all absolutely loved it even though the whole rest of the zone was sick. Then we went out for ice cream (anyone who knows me at all knows how awesome that was for me)

Next week is Nuria's baptism. I can't even tell you how much this little girl means to me. I love her so much and I absolutely know I'm going to lose it at her baptism. We couldn't be more happy for her. They are such a miracle and I feel very blessed to have prepared her for baptism.

Today for our preparation day we had a BBQ with our friend Juan Carlos for my farewell. BBQ is sooo different in Spain but it was AMAZING!!! gigantic pieces of beef cut up to eat with your hands and lots of sausage. We then got in a water fight (which turned into lemonade and whipped cream) it was
hilarious and such a blast. Lot of great pictures but I'll have to send them next week. Because I'm out of time.

 I love you guys!

Hermana Tuttle

What a Week!

Wow I'm just going to warn you upfront I will not be able to do this week justice. It was AMAZING!! I had some of the most spiritual and humbling experiences of my life and so many things happened that I will never forget. This week I am going to go by days. The three main highlights:Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday!

Monday: So I think I have told you about Triny, the older Catalán woman who has pretty much adopted us as her American granddaughters, well this last monday she wanted to do something special for us to say thanks for everything we have done for her (we haven't done anything but love her, she is just the sweetest woman on earth) so she told us that after we emailed our families she wanted to take us out for lunch. She told us to dress up because we were going to a nice restaurant. When we got to her house she had a taxi downstairs (she pretty much has a personal chauffer  that she calls whenever she needs to go anywhere). And she took us to a castle!!!!!!!!!!! It was gorgeous! She told us to get whatever we wanted and not to worry about the price. She suggested the lamb or the filet (which we all know how much H. Tuttle loves her Filet) but Hma. Swenson and I decided that when in Barcelona we do as the Catalan do and ate a total authentic Catalunya meal, complete with pa amb tomaca, green olives, etc. etc. It was SO GOOD! I would tell you what I actually ate for my main meal but...I have no clue how to spell it. Just know that it was delicious. And of course the desserts... ummm ya maintaining the same weight would be SOOO much easier if Spain didn't have such delicious postres. Their fault, not mine. When we were done she called the taxi driver and said "Juan we are ready for you to come pick us up now" I felt so high class. She took us to another castle to take some pictures it was great.

Wednesday was our mission tour. Elder Kearon the first counselor of the European area presidency (and a member of the 1st quorum of the 70) came. He is so inspired. He talked about finding and how missionaries that develop the attributes of Christ will automatically find more people. We just need to be loving but bold, humble but creative. He talked a lot about the importance of recent converts as well. At lunch he asked to sit by Hma. Swenson and I which was so cool (keep in mind there 150 other missionaries he could have sat by) because we got to learn a lot about him and ask him some questions we had. So ya, no big deal but I got to eat pizza with a 70. He is also very funny we laughed A LOT in this conference.

Thursday the leadership council (the zone leaders, sister training leaders, and the ayudantes) had an extra mini concilio (our monthly meeting) with Elder Kearon. My little claim to fame was that he asked for a scribe and everyone looked right at me (President Pace was even pointing) so I got to be his scribe for the whole meeting. What I loved most about Elder Kearon was that he has the best balance of fun and spiritual just like President and Hermana Pace. He made sure we all felt very comfortable in the meeting we had and joked around a lot but he also told us some sacred experiences he's had and that he had never shared with anyone outside of close friends and family. He said that he felt such a strong spirit with us and a love for us that he wanted us to join him in a prayer for some stuff that is going on in the church. I got to kneel next to him and President and I can't even describe to you the power I could feel being by both of them. After he offered one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard in my life we all stayed on our knees for a moment and the spirit felt tangible. It was so incredible. I wish I could do it justice and I wish I had the time to tell you about everything we talked about but I'm sure I will refer back to it many times in the months to come.

I am so grateful to be a missionary. I am grateful for all of these amazing once in a lifetime experiences I am having right now and for the spirit I get to feel everyday as a missionary.

I love you all so much and I wish you the very best!

Hermana Tuttle

P.S. The other day I told my zone leader something my mom always said growing up "if not me, who? if not now, when?" When we were in the concilio with Elder Kearon, the zone leader brought up that quote as we were talking about the urgency to the work and the importance of the missionaries. Elder Kearon asked him to repeat it and for me to write it on the board. My mom's the greatest.

Miracle Week 2.0

Another miracle week: (spoiler alert) we have baptismal dates!!! 

But before I get into that I just thought I would answer some questions from my mom's email because I figured other people might have the same questions:

What does ‘enfoque’ mean? focus. So a zone enfoque meeting is when we get together as a zone once a month to talk about our goals and our "focus" for the month

Does “fired” mean cancelled the appointment? Yes, it comes from the verb "fallar" which means to fail or to cancel which sounds like fire in english so since we are pretty much always speaking in spanglish we use the term "fired"

What does "Hola! Quieren entrar?" mean?  Hello! Would you like to come in (enter)? Did you stay for dinner when you were invited by the people you had just met? You bet we did and it was delicious! They were super sweet. We tried to say no but they kept insisting saying they didn't want us to leave.

Now onto the three most important people (in no specific order):

Nuria: This is the daughter of a menos activa we found through metro contacting. The mother's name is Marlene, her whole family (brothers, sisters, and parents) are super active but she left the church like 15 years ago. When we came and visited her she opened up so quickly and talked about how she has been feeling lately that it's time for her to come back to church. This week her 8 year old daughter Nuria decided that she wanted to baptized (which she was planning on doing in Bolivia eventually but says she wants to do it here so that Hermana Swenson and I can be there), we told them that they will have to come to church these next two Sundays so that she can be baptized on the 22nd and Marlene said "that won't be a problem, I never want to miss church again"...WHAT?!?!?! Such a miracle!!!! They came to church yesterday and absolutely loved it.

Defrim: I'm not sure if I have told you about the Albanian investigator we are working with. A month or two ago he came to our weekly activity that the missionaries hold and his friend who is also Albanian and is a super great member and friend of ours asked if we could teach him. Defrim at that point in time didn't speak much english and even less spanish but he has come so far! Not only in spanish (he doesn't need Nardi to translate the lessons at all, he understands everything) but also in the Book of Mormon (he is almost done with 2nd Nephi). This last week we taught him the plan of salvation and when we invited him to be baptized he said "of course!" He has a date for the 22nd as well. But what was amazing to me was that Nardi has worked so much with him on his Spanish but even Nardi was surprised when he understood some of the things we were talking about and he said "He isn't learning these lessons in Spanish or Albanese, he's learning them by the voice of the Spirit"

Carlos: Heidi (recent convert)'s husband who we have been working with for several months but hasn't wanted anything. Last night we taught him lesson one again and had a super fuerte (intense) lesson with him where we just testified that we know these things are true and just asking him why he still doesn't want to be baptized. He said that he knew everything is true but that he is just worried about failing. We testified that this church isn't for the already perfected. If we were perfect we'd already been in Heaven. We are on this earth to learn, to grow, to exercise faith in Christ, and this church helps us, the doctrine of Christ gives us what we need to get back up each time we fall. We set a baptismal goal with him for the 29th. Lots of prayers his way.

Oh, by the way, and Josef is not dead we finally got in touch with him after a month of trying, but he has changed a lot and I'm not super hopeful about him "picking up where we left off"

Well I love you lots!!

Hermana Tuttle

P.S. We went to teach our ukranian investigator that we haven't talked to for a while. We were so excited to finally have a visit with him. Only to find out that he had invited us to march with the Ukranians in their protest against Putin. Another thing to add to my list of unexpected missionary moments.

The Miracle of the News!

Hola!

Okay so I have to start off with the huge miracle we had this week so that it has all of your attention before you start fading out: So we had zone enfoque this last week which was amazing! We talked a lot about recent converts and less actives and that it's not all about getting a certain number of baptisms but about inviting people not only to "come unto Christ" but to return to Christ. But then because we kind of struggled in our finding new investigators last month we set a goal that every week each companionship would find 4 news. We were kind of worried about that Saturday night when we only had two. We had a visit set up but they fired and so we started heading towards the house of a family we haven't seen for a while. We were both sick with colds and so we were just praying that we could find an open door so that we wouldn't have to walk a long ways in the cold. There was a door wide open and so we knocked it. The first three floors we had the worst door knocking experience I have had in my mission. Each door yelled at us and slammed the door in our faces and it was only made worse with the end of the week tiredness and the cold. I tried to motivate us by telling Hermana Swenson that Harriet Uchtdorf was found on the 4th floor, 4th door, at 9:25 at night. We kept knocking. A guy opened the door, he was so sweet and when we asked him if we could share a message with him he said yes. We talked about the Book of Mormon a little in the doorway expecting no one else to be home until we heard "Hola! Quieren entrar?" and his was his mom inviting us in. We told them about the Book of Mormon and who we are as missionaries and asked if we could say a prayer for them and their home. Afterwards the mother was so grateful and invited us to stay for dinner. They were amazing!

The other two news we got were incredible as well, one was from a street contact several months ago who had been living in Madrid and called asking for Hermana Tuttle. When I told him it was me he said that he had moved back to Barcelona and wants to know how to be baptized. He said he feels something as he reads the Book of Mormon we gave him and he knows something is missing in his life. Then there is Jimena, we were contacting in the metro, and there were a couple of Bolivian women who said they were heading to the hospital to visit a friend of a friend they had never met, we asked if we could go with them and they said they would love that so that we could say a prayer with this girl. We have since visited her two more times and she is as sweet as can be. One day when we went to visit her we had some extra time and asked a few of the rooms that were open if we could sing them a hymn. We ended up singing hymns to a bunch of people and it was so incredibly powerful people called us their angels. This church brings so much peace.

As for the crazy side of missionary work: Today we surprised an elder outside of his piso for his birthday with silly string, water balloons, horns, and whipped cream. Then we played beach volleyball for our zone activity and it was amazing! The weather was perfect! We had so much fun!

I love you all lots!!!

Hermana Tuttle