Loving Me To Cut Me Down

This week truly zoomed by! These past two weeks have been incredibly busy. Last P-Day was the busiest day of my life. I thought I would not be able to write a letter, but luckily I have an amazing Mom who recognized this and decided to take it upon herself to write my letter. So I just want to give a big shoutout to my incredible mom and sister Sarah for writing a letter that you probably assumed came from me, because it was that good!

Week Summary:

So the one bummer of my companionship with Elder Bretey is that he is the District Leader of our District. Basically this means that he has to go on divisions with 2-3 missionaries every week. Divisions last a whole day, so it is pretty heartbreaking having to say goodbye to him every other day haha. But the days that we were together this week, WE WORKED MIRACLES! We got 3 people to commit to baptism and are starting to get a consistent schedule of lessons. My days of splits were pretty interesting as well. Elder Bretey is preparing for me to be able to do everything on my own, because of this he has left me in our area for 2 of the divisions this week. It was super stressful and pretty hard to be in charge of an area I really know nothing about! But I grew so much these days! My Spanish still is not great, but boy has it improved. Honestly this week was just so fast that I feel like there's not much to catch you up on haha.

Funny Story:

So I have a few funny stories and one is from last week so buckle up.

So last week we had Transfers (When I switched to being companions with Elder Bretey). We got assigned to a white washed area (Basically it means they are putting in two new missionaries in the area, when usually one person stays in the area and only one new missionary comes in). Because of it being white washed, we had NO IDEA what situations we would be walking into. We traveled to the house and went up the 5 stories to open up the front door. When I opened the door I thought I had walked into an episode of Fixer Upper and they were on the demoing faze. We were in SHOCK! There was no bathroom, the toilet was in the middle of the room, the sink was upside down, dust was everywhere, tile was ripped off the ground, and the shower was completely broken. Elder Bretey turned to me and said, “Elder this is NOT normal!”. I was pretty sure before this that this situation was not normal, but it was nice getting the confirmation that this would not happen to me again. We immediately started making calls because I mean you kind of need a toilet and a shower in order to live in Mexico City. Our Mission President was in SHOCK. And told us immediately that we should start looking for a new house (which is such a pain to do). But for the meantime he told us to head to a house next to another companionship that was empty. So we headed over there. When we arrived the Elders who lived close to this house seemed a little nervous to give us the keys to the upstairs house. We found this interesting but did not take any big assumptions of it (We definitely should have). We went up the stairs and opened the door. The house hasn’t had any missionaries in it for the past 4 months due to our mission still not at full capacity. So I want you to imagine all of these things I will be listing but with 4 months of fermenting in this house. The smell was overwhelming when we walked into the house. There were 13 massive trash bags in the middle of the house, with fruit flies flying everywhere. Then we looked to the kitchen and saw a massive pile of dishes with mold on every single one. The ground that used to be a beautiful white marble floor was black from who knows what! I was starting to not believe Elder Breteys statement that walking into a dirty house was not normal. We asked the Elders downstairs how often the trash people come. They informed us that they do not really know but think that it is only once a week or even sometimes every two weeks. We found out pretty quickly from the bell ringing of the garbage trucks that they in fact come by 3 times a day. Putting the points together we found out that the Elders downstairs (Who have been in this area for 3 months) have been throwing their garbage into this upstairs room instead of taking it to the garbage man and paying the 30 pesos. So Elder Bretey did one of his classic Elder Bretey presses and they folded pretty fast to omitting what they were doing. The problem is we did not trust them to clean it and we had to live in this house for 3 days. So we went and bought bleach and a bunch of cleaning supplies and sacrificed a whole day to cleaning. The house is now BEAUTIFUL and probably one of the nicest houses in the mission. That day Elder Bretey called the landowner of our real house and told him if everything was not fixed today we would be moving out. This dude got to work! And as you would have guessed had it fixed by the next day. Was it a pretty fix? Absolutely not! But we had a bathroom haha. The day we arrived in our real house was another day we had to dedicate to cleaning. The mission has given us the nickname of the cleaning ladies haha. So that was the disaster of moving into our house. 

Small funny story miracle. I woke up around 2:30 to the sound of an Elder snoring as loud as I have ever witnessed with my own ears. I attempted to just go back to bed, but it was to no avail. I began to look for some earbuds in my suitcases but no success fell upon me. I began to get a little frustrated when the dogs outside started barking, and when one dog in Mexico started to bark, ALL DOGS IN MEXICO START TO BARK. I felt hopeless laying in my bed exhausted and desiring with all my heart to go to bed. The noise was overwhelmingly loud! When in that moment a scripture I had read came to my mind. I can not remember the verse of the scripture for the life of me. But it is something along the lines that God is willing to help you both in your needs and your small good noteworthy earthly desires. When this thought came to my mind I got on my knees and I just asked for all of the noise to go away to help me prepare for my next day of serving him. As soon as I said Amen, the noise all stopped. My jaw dropped! It was one of the craziest small minute miracles of my life. GOD IS WILLING TO HELP US IN ALL THINGS! As long as we desire it through the will of Christ. This is a small miracle in my life that I will cherish for a very long time.

Spiritual Thought:

Elder Bretey really pushes me to be better as a missionary and as I mentioned in my last email he specifically pushes me to excellence in Spanish. It reminds me of a video called the Will of God. If you have not watched this video it is about a Current Bush and a gardener cutting it down due to it not producing the fruit the gardener wanted. After years of growth, the Garner imagines the Bush saying "Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me". This single line has pierced my soul since the day that I first heard it years ago. It has been running through my mind A LOT this week from Elder Breteys consistent correction of my language. There were times I wanted to say to Elder Bretey the exact same words that the Gardner imagined "How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth." There were days where I thought my Spanish was really good but then at night Elder Bretey would just cut me down. One night I shared my thankfulness for his role of cutting me down to make me a better disciple of Christ. At that moment though I realized he in fact was not the gardener but a pair of well oiled scissors that were willing to cut me down whenever Christ put pressure to cut. I am indescribably thankful to Elder Breteys daily corrections in my life. I know as we look at others' corrections in our life with love and a desire to draw closer to Christ, we will see ourselves grow into beautiful children of God! I also strive to be a disciple of Christ like Elder Bretey. He is not scared to hurt my feelings. He feels the Spirit to correct and he does. He does not wait and he does not fear it will hurt our relationship. I invite you to embrace correction this week and embrace correcting others through Christ's love.