Week 57 in Florida (Naples 5.5)

Ok, this week was pretty much life changing. Basically, I wish I could
go back about a year and start over! I'm a little jealous of Hna.
Paulsen who gets to start the mission with all this cool stuff! It's
crazy how much the work has changed, even in just a year!
First of all, we have exchanges on Tuesday. The sisters didn't have
any work in their area, so they decided to keep us both in the area,
just go on splits! Which meant we got 16 lessons in one day! Hna
Paulsen did awesome, teaching solo spanish, even though the night
before she was freaking out a little bit.
Then Wednesday was interviews with President Cusick, always good! This
one was a little funny, or different. I asked him if he thought I was
a happy missionary. He told me no! He says I'm a hard-working,
get-it-done missionary. I do lots of good work. But he doesn't think
I'm enjoying it. News to me! He thinks it's just part of my
personality...? Anyway, I asked him how to balance doing lots of work
and being happier. He couldn't really give me an answer. He said
something might have to give. I guess I'll try to figure it out! As
long as souls are being saved, I'm pretty happy! But maybe I'm just
not very good at showing it? Anyway! We also had a training by the
assistants. We've been trying better as a mission to have "an eye
single to the glory of God", meaning we eat, breath, and sleep
baptisms. But not in a bad way! We're not herding for numbers, just
people to be saved. We make sure the members know it, only talking to
them about the work, showing everyone we mean business and are
focused. When we contact people on the street we just tell them how it
is: "we left EVERYTHING behind for 18 months or two years to prepare
people to get baptized and get to the temple so that your family can
stay together for forever. Are you baptized?" We don't introduce
ourselves until they ask, we teach in the church as much as possible,
and people get baptized in as little as 2 or 3 weeks. It's awesome!
But there's so much more to do. So this week, I've started wearing my
name tag all the time, even when I'm sleeping. I have no idea how much
time I have left, I just know I go home in December. The investigators
are our children and just like a good mom, all I want to do is talk
about my "kids". If anyone asks, I'm from Bahía, and my first name is
Hermana :)
Sister Update! While we were at interviews, President told the sisters
they're being transferred! They're leaving Naples and going to Bonita
Springs. They should still be in our district, but we're back to being
the only sisters in the city, and in the meeting house. Ahhh! That's
ok, we'll survive.
Thursday, we learned WAY better way to plan. Every week we have 3
hours to weekly plan for the people we're teaching and what else we
need to be doing. Usually we start with a prayer, and end with one,
and pray if we ever get stuck and don't know what to do with someone.
But that doesn't actually make any sense. We're planning for God's
children, and we're only involving Him when we don't know what to do.
We need to be involving Him the whole time! So basically, we stay on
our knees the whole time, because we pray to set a goal, pray to get a
confirmation, pray for each person, and then start again for the next
goal. We use to pray 2-5 times, and now it's more like 30-50. Duh! Why
didn't we think of this before!?
Later on Thursday we headed up to Tampa! We did some metro work,
personal contacting for 2 days. Yay! Hna. Newbill, my MTC companion,
came with her trainee too,who is Hna. Paulsen's mtc companion! Metro
was awesome, but it rained most of the time. Meaning we got soaked,
and very little people were out. But we still had a lot of fun!
We got home and went to stake conference! I love conferences, of any
kind. I just love being in a huge groups of church members and knowing
that we're all on the same page!
Last night we met with Ivis. We've been worried about him wanting more
time to get baptized, but we went through the interview with him
yesterday, and he's good to go! He'll get officially interviewed
tonight, and baptized on Thursday! Enrique was suppose to get baptized
with him, but we couldn't find him or contact him yesterday, so....
I'm not sure yet what will be happening.
It was a big week! And we still got lots of work done!
Thanks for all your support! Make sure you're helping out your
missionaries wherever you are!
And keep studying in PMG!
Los quiero!
Hermana Despain

I've never seen a live, wild, armadillo! They're usually smashed on
the road... :( but there was one on our path in the way to the gym
this morning. It's so cute!