A quick rundown of what we did for Christmas...Christmas eve we had the big Christmas dinner with a family in the ward that we have grown very close with in their process of reactivation. They invited us in OCTOBER, wanting to be certain that they had dibs on the sister missionaries. A few weeks ago, they asked if the other hermanas that we live with had been invited to have dinner with someone from their ward, and when they heard that the answer was a no, they invited them as well. Which was really special, one because we are really good, close friends after this short while of living together, and because they could also enjoy Christmas eve with this great family.
The tradition in Chile on Christmas eve is to do a BBQ. You better believe we just went ALL THE WAY with that BBQ. So delicious. They gave us chocolates and lip gloss as Christmas gifts and sent us home on our merry way laden with cakes and leftovers. Once we got back to the pension, we started in on a mini Christmas devotional that I had planned a few weeks ago, singing some of the Christmas hymns, reading in Luke, watching the He is The Gift movie and sharing our testimonies of Christ. We then opened our presents and went to bed, content. In the morning we made a gringa breakfast of french toast, muffins and bacon. Accompanied by lemon and triple stuff oreos.We had gotten special word from our mission President that we could stay in the pension till one that day, so we all sat down at the kitchen table and just took turns sharing our favorite scriptures. I just LOVE being a missionary and being with other missionaries, because how many times can you just sit with 3 of your closest friends and share your favorite scriptures with each other? That is a pretty unique thing, if you ask me.
Then there was skype :) That was just #joyful
And for the rest of the day, we power-walked like madwomen from house to house to house sharing He is The Gift and testifying of Christ's birth with as many people as we could in the short period of time of talking with our families and our missionary curfew. All in all, a delightfully jolly Christmas. I will miss being a full time missionary next Christmas, because this has been one of the most spiritually-centered Christmases of my whole life. I tried to wallow in it as much as possible.
I wanted to share with you all a very interesting experience that we had this week. Yet another experience in which we were able to get to know the Holy Ghost just a little bit more, to figure out how he works in us and in others. I will try to find the right words to describe exactly what happened and exactly how it made us feel afterward.
This last Wednesday, we were working in the allotted time that we had between our weekly district meeting and our Christmas dinner, and were blessed to have been able to visit quite a few people in "our flock" as Hermana Damian and I have come to start calling it. One of those was with a family that we are helping to come back to church. We felt prompted to share with them one of my personal favorites in Mosiah 18 that talks about the covenant and promises we make with God in our baptism, the specific things that we promise to do when we take that step into the waters of baptism. They all are members their whole lives, baptized when they were 8 years old, everyone else in their family is a member...they have been in this for quite a while, and yet, this last week was the very first time that they were brought to the awareness of what they had promised their Heavenly Father.
And let me just say, the spirit was CRAZY strong! It gave us the most wonderful opportunity to touch their hearts through testimony and really testify, of the love of our Heavenly Father, of the blessings that he has waiting for us, and that the sacrament is there to help us in our ever ongoing process of TRYING to keep our covenants. As Elder Holland said in his talk at last Conference, "(we) must do what (we) can" to serve our Lord and Savior and to keep his commandments and stay true to the covenants that we have made. I would dare say that it was one of the most spiritually guided lessons in my whole mission. We left feeling emotional and feeling triumphant, KNOWING that we made a difference for them.
So we took that emotion and kept going, taking a chance and dropping in on a recent convert that went inactive almost as soon as she got baptized about 6 months ago. In my 4 months here, we have only ever spoken to her through the gate in front of her house or when we run into her in the street, she never seems too happy to see us. Always too busy or too tired or "just about to leave." But we keep trying, and wonder of wonders (#fiddler), she let us in! We were joyous! We had to promise a 5 minute message and that we would leave right after, but she let us in, and that was huge for us.
But it was so interesting, because almost as soon as we sat down, my mind went absolutely blank. It is something that has happened a handful of times in my mission, when I feel so potently that the spirit is not present. Something else that I have noticed is that, when we are accompanied and guided by the spirit, I am able to fluidly and understandably speak Spanish; something that was more cherished in the beginning of my mission when I struggled with the language, but still something that I acknowledge as the help of the Holy Ghost. And when I don't feel it, I cannot speak. I just cant. I forget words, I forget vocabulary, I mix up masculine and feminine forms...simple things that I overcame many, many months ago.
And that happened as we tried to share a message with this sister, but we both found it difficult to teach, the testify, even to speak. Even my latina companion was simply left with a blank mind and an empty mouth. D and C 84:85. It will be given to you in the moment that it is needed, but only if the spirit is present. We left feeling stunned.
As we discussed it afterward, we both admitted to feeling a little at fault; I mean, we are the missionaries. We should be able to bring the spirit with us wherever we go and touch people's lives, we study and prepare in every possible moment to minister to these precious sons and daughters of God, especially those who are recently baptized AND going wayward, we were finally able to enter in and have the opportunity to help her...but it seemed that the spirit just wasn't having it. But WHY?
Because sometimes, we simply cannot control the situation or we cannot control the choices that others have made or are making that make it possible for "the dear Christ" to enter in. Perhaps that is strong, perhaps it's not the most giddy mission experience...but I want to share with you all the things that I learn. And I learned so much about the spirit in that short time span of 45 minutes. When the spirit is not present, there's not much we can do. And when the spirit IS present, it is "glorious", as Elder Uchtdorf said. (can you tell I've been studying the General Conference Ensign?)
May we all do our part to allow the spirit into our lives. Be bold, Stay rad, do what you do and let your light so shine :)
Hermana Harkins
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