Becoming as a Child

Que tal todos!!

I'm officially the worst at writing. It's been a few weeks but everything has been so great!

Story of the week!
Our recent convert has a 6 year old daughter who we will call Sofi. We teach Sofi and her 9 year old cousin once a week and they love the gospel. Sofi pays tithing on all her allowance money, reads the children's Book of Mormon, prays, loves church and dreams of someday being a missionary. She is seriously ADORABLE. She calls me her big sister and if I had the option to bring her home to Utah with me I WOULD!

Anyways, so Sofi, her mom, Hermana Hasek and I were at a lesson with this couple. They are friends of our recent convert and she invited us over to teach them about the gospel. We were pumped! Then the husband quickly started becoming defensive and angry towards us when we introduced more scripture that wasn't the Bible. He would raise his voice, interrupt us, roll his eyes, he was just not having a good day I think. Haha! It started getting hard to feel the spirit and really invite it with his attitude towards our message. Suddenly as he was speaking 6 year old Sofi interrupts him and says "Excuse me sir, I would like to share my testimony with you." And she goes on to bare testimony of the restored gospel. No joke the man was amazed. The spirit instantly returned, the man didn't interrupt the rest of the lesson, he was able to understand how the Book of Mormon doesn't replace, add on to or take away from the Bible and him and his wife agreed to take a copy, read it and pray about it. All because of brave, humble, little Sofi.

I think this is EXACTLY what it means in the scriptures when it says we need to "becometh as a child". I think that as adults we can be filled with different forms of pride. Anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, etc. We might hold back from sharing the gospel or following a prompting from the spirit cause we may not be exactly sure what to say or our anger might fill our mouth with words of frustration. Children though, are very humble, brave and full of love. They really don't care who is watching them, we do. Sofi and I went up to the pulpit yesterday at sacrament during testimony meeting and together we shared that experience with the ward members and Sofi encouraged them to always share their testimonies. I then shared the following scripture:

Mosiah 3:19 "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

As we strive to become as a child we will be more patient, teachable, humble, and brave. I know little Sofi has a testimony, I know she loves Christ and feels the promptings of the spirit and it pushes me to be more sure of those things as well. We have so much to learn from little children. I hope we can strive to be more like them and overcome the natural man by avoiding pride and allowing love to take over.

Big events of the last few weeks/updates:

• We had our Noche de Hispanidad this weekend and it was a blast! It's an event where we celebrate our Hispanic culture and represent all the Latin American countries in the ward. There's music, food, dancing, singing, etc. Everyone is dressed up and tons of members bring friends. We had over 15 people we are teaching come and they all made friends and had a great time. It was AWESOME! Hermana Hasek and I sung a corrido with the family of our recent convert and another family in the ward. So fun. 

• Conference was amazing! Holy cow! I received so many answers to prayers, motivation and made goals to improve. How blessed are we to know that revelation didn't end with the writing of the Bible?! We still have it today because God loves us and won't leave us in darkness and confusion. The talks are online now so if you missed it watch them on lds.org! It was so cool to watch it with people who were experiencing conference for the first time and hearing the experiences of family members back home.
• I'm still in Spring Lake with Hermana Hasek and loving it. We have transfer news in two weeks and I am crossing my fingers that I get to stay here till the end of my mission. And if I stay one more transfer that will come true!
• The people we are teaching are incredible! They are progressing, preparing for baptism and really strengthening their relationship with Christ. A sister shared that after years of being Christian she finally understands who Christ is, exactly what He did, why He is important and how He can help her in her life. Sometimes we can fall into the routine of religion. But we shouldn't! We should constantly be asking, seeking for answers, attending meetings with an open heart, serving and striving to come closer to Christ. The only way to learn his gospel is to live it. If we don't live it, does it really do us any good to learn about it? Probably not.
• It's getting so cold over here with hurricane season. Everyone talks about hurricane Michael and we have no idea what is even going on.
• Here's more pictures from p-day adventures at national parks, I love Hermana Hasek, I learn so much from her everyday! 

I seriously love you all so much and am learning amazing things. Thank you for your kind letters and emails. You are all so important to me!

Les quiero mucho!

Hermana Tapia