This week went excessively quickly. I feel like I just wrote to you. Anyway, I wanted to tell you all about going to the park. I think I mentioned it briefly before, but I wanted to tell you about the best experience I had last week. My companion, Hermana Goins, and I were assigned to be park companions (they switch the companionships up every week just for the park, but we got lucky and were able to go out together. We made some goals of how many people we wanted to talk to and share lessons with and give copies of the Book of Mormon to, and after about an hour we still hadn´t given a Book of Mormon to anyone. We started walking up this wide and crowded pathway and I saw an older couple sitting off to the right and Hma. Goins saw a man sitting alone off to the left. We both looked at the two options and she told me the decision was mine. I looked back and forth a couple of times and felt like we needed to talk to the young man. I´m so glad I listened to that impression because we had a great experience teaching him. His name is Fernando and he is from Bolivia and has lived in Spain for the last three years working and going to school. We taught him a good portion of the first lesson and I was able to tell him the story of the first vision and testify about Joseph Smith. He read the promise in Moroni 10:3-5 and told us that he felt really good and that he would read the Book of Mormon. We also got a reference for the missionaries who are serving in Madrid to go and teach him (I think they might be going there today...) It was amazing and I was so grateful for the chance to teach him. I pray that he will accept the gospel and I hope that I will get to hear about his progress!
Alyn- thank you so much for your letter - again! I love you and I love the way you write and tell stories. Thanks for the story about Maya too. What a funny little girl she is: up all hours of the night eating Ramen with her daddy. I appreciated the blog updates as well. I loved hearing about what Madi and Lia said at the art museum ¨What a waste of time.¨ ¨What´s the point of this?¨ (I love you girls and your excellent senses of humor!) and seeing pictures of how big your kids are getting. Charlie looks like such a little man in his trendy clothes! I never did see that Elder from Athens while I was in Provo. I made a few feeble attempts to spot him in the cafeteria, but if he had a different meal time than me my looking was probably in vain. There is currently an Elder staying in the Madrid CCM who is from the suburbs north of Atlanta though. His name is Elder Draney (which is the last name of my old roommate Chelsey) and he is serving in the St. Petersburg, Russia mission. There are currently 9 missionaries from Russia staying here right now waiting to see if their visas will get renewed. I guess Russia isn´t being very missionary-friendly these days and they make the missionaries who aren´t from Russia leave the country and renew their visas every three months or something. They get sent all over Europe and this is one of the options. The only way they get their visas renewed is if a city in Russia invites them to continue to stay. So sometimes missionaries end up having to go finish their missions somewhere else if they can´t get a city to invite them. It´s pretty stringent. I had no idea how difficult it was becoming to be a foreign missionary in Russia. I´ve been praying for them though. So... your guess for Eliza´s birthday and size was pretty close! Did you win the guessing contest?
Lia- thanks for the pictures. I showed them to lots of my fellow missionaries here at the MTC. (And thanks Alyn for Charlie´s hand-outline as well. I now have Spencer´s and Charlie´s! Maybe everyone could send me hand outlines of each of my nieces and nephews? That would be fun for me.) I loved the picture of the Spain temple on the envelope too. You´re a sweetheart and I love your artistry!
Kori- I´m glad you got to go on a date (also to the art museum like the Hancocks - what a cultured family I have!) What do you do when Spencer throws tantrums? Does he every tell you that he´s mad with sign language or just with screaming? Has he been talking more yet? Sorry to hear that baby Fred is making you fatter. What a sacrifice mom´s make on their figures for these little people! He´ll be so cute though when he gets here, it´ll definately be worth it. One of my teachers has a little boy and I think she´s going to bring him here on Friday for us to meet him. I´m excited to see him because I miss my little nephews (and neices too of course, but she only has a son.)
Cody- I just want to say how cute your daughter is. She has such a sweet little face and a head of beautiful hair... unless of course it´s fallen out since those pictures were taken... in which case, she has a beautiful bald head! Pregunta: how is Eliza being pronounced exactly? Stress on the E sound (Ee-Liza) or a short E sound (Eh-Liza)? Just want to make sure I´m saying right for the next 17 months before I meet her. Thanks for the plethora of photos.
Erin- now sister, I was wondering when I was going to hear from you again! Thanks for sending the Bucket List blog. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I have done quite a few of the things on the list. Next time, yo quiero fotos de Charlotte! ¡Por favor! Love you mucho.
Madre- I´m excited to hear about what is going on back at home. Hurray for the brick pathway! Tell Dad I´m proud of him for working so hard on it... and for being such a good samaritan in the snow the other day! What goodly parents I have. I´m grateful for you both. I was thinking the other day about how many things I´m able to know about heaven and earth because of this church that I´m a part of and it made me think about how grateful I am to my parents for teaching me the truth and right. Thank you for being so faithful mis padres. And thank you for your testimony mom.
I didn´t know that Stefani was having twin girls! That´s very exciting. Tell her I said felicidades! Finally some grandaughters in the family, eh?
Well, I told you all last week about my compañerO... well he has a back injury and had to go back to the U.S. a couple of days ago to get it fixed and we´re not sure when he´ll be back. It was a sad day for my district. It feels like having a family member leave... only we don´t know if we´ll see him again. We are all so close here, all of the other missionaries were pretty sad to see him go as well. It´s going to be hard next week when my compañerA leaves to go to the field (she´s going to the Mallaga mission). I hate good-byes. I can already tell it´s going to be hard to leave Spain and leave the people. I love this work. I have so many things I need to do better, but I´m working hard and trying to do my Heavenly Father´s will. I love you all, my family. Everyone needs to give each of their niños a kiss from me, mmmmk?
Love,
Hermana Diehl
