El Espino Mission

Hola familia! well it looks like you all have been waiting to hear about cambios...entonces.... I am still here in good old El Espino! hahaha. this is my 5th cambio here in this area and its so weird to think how much time i have here. pretty sure my mission is El Espino...not Santa Ana El Salvador. Just kidding. But its good. Lots of work to do here still. BUT i have a new companion. Her name is Hermana Mayorga and she is from guatemala. She has 7 months in the mission so we will finish our missions at the same time. CAN YOU BELIEVE I HAVE 7 MONTHS? ya crazy. Anyways she is so super great. From what i have seen this week she want to work hard. She is a convert of 2 years. super super cool. She was catholic before. Her family is members too. But anyways i feel kind of bad because the truth is we have no investigators right now. She is coming from an area in santa ana where the members work really really hard and they had 6 fechas for bautismo. and then she came here and we have no one and the members dont give us references...so i feel bad and i know that at first she was a little frustrated. But hey i have been in this are for 6 months now and i have learned to love it. I think she will be humbled to be here in this area where there is a lot to improve. But that is the good thing, is she has a lot of good ideas to work with the member and so we are going to try and motivate them and have a change of culture in this area. Because the truth is knocking doors really doesnt work that well. We arent having any success finding people knocking doors. In these days we really need to work through the members.. So that is the first thing we need to improve is receiving references from the members. When we received references from the members we will actually have new investigators, and when we have investigators then we will actually be able to teach lessons throughout the week, and then we will be able to teach investigadores with the members, and then we will be able to bring people to church, and then we will be able to have baptisms!! yeah! haha. but really if we cant find people to teach we cant do anything. So thats kind of where we are at right now. Trying to find people. I had a few rough days this week just because with our leaders its super hard because we really cant have much work if we cant find people...but slowly we are going to find people. I told my companion that i want to act like we are opening up this area. I want to act like i wasnt here before and just start fresh. we are starting something this week that my comp used in her other area. There is a family missionary that we call each week during sacrament meeting and they have to have one person in the family leave with us each day during the week. That way we can contact references with them, find new people with them, have lessons with the investigators with them, and then they can help us bring those people to church. My comp used it in her other area and it worked really well. (the members in her other area worked super super hard) but i think this is going to help our member start to get motivated to work more. We are starting with the Bishop and his wife so that they can be the example in the ward...because if the bishop doesnt do it, the members arent going to do it. But yesterday we went and planned with the bishop and his wife when they are going to leave with us each day this week. I know its going to be a sacrifice for them with their time but i am so so so happy that they accepted to start this plan and are willing to work because i think we are going to have a lot of success this week working with them and starting this new program here in the ward. Then in sacrament meeting they will announce to the ward the work they did with us, (how many lessons, how many contacts, how many new investigators we found with them) and then we will call a new family to be the missionary family. Anyways so we´ll see how that goes. I hope we can start to see changes here in the area. I know i need to have more faith and we can find these people. The mission isnt easy in any way but it is rewarding to know that even if i dont have success, all day every day im just serving the Lord and trying to help these people and that is what matters. I have bad news...that basically broke my heart. On tuesday morning we received the call to say who has cambios and i found out i was staying here in the area....and i was so happy because i was just thinking in David Calderon and how i can be here for hopefully when he gets baptized...and then tuesday night we went so that hermana salguero could say goodbye to David and Alba....and guess what. Alba told us that David left to Honduras to work for a few weeks. and we dont know when he is going to come back. I was so devestated because mostly he was the reason i wanted to stay in the area so that i could see him baptized and now he is not here. and he was so close to accepting a fecha for baptism! i cant explain how upset i was...but we'll see when he returns. i hope its during the cambio. And yeah Marcos is still coming to church...and still reading the book of mormon. he is in like 3rd nefi. he says he hasnt received an answer still and he doesnt know why. And i told him he isnt going to receive an answer if he isnt willing to keep the commandments (get married and such)...but yeah he is still attending. But we are counting him for numbers and not counting him as progressing....basically an eternal investigators...we just visit him and Eloisa once a week now. Anyways thats bascially it. Sounds like everything is great at home. I cant believe colby and janelle are going to be moving to georgia! ah crazy. But yeah. And yes mom whoever that girl is can borrow one of my prom dresses. no problem. Anyways love you all tons. until next week! thank you so so much for your prayers. Hermana Groneman

Hola familia, This cambio went by super super super quickly. We only have this week and then the next wednesday is cambios again. I really have no idea at all what is going to happen. I dont feel like im going to leave, but at the same time i have quite a few cambios here so maybe...but i dont think so...but then again sometimes it is what you dont think is going to happen. I dont think i will know by next week if i will have cambios because usually we find out tuesday morning. So in two weeks you´ll know. Im going to be really sad if i leave the area because of all the people here. This week not much really exciting has happened that I can think of or remember. Its still been super super hot. Sometimes I dont know how i get through the day with the heat but I do. I´ll have to try your tip dad. If i had time to take a shower 5 times a day i would. Right now im loving the cold water showers haha. This week everything went fine with elections but they still dont know exactly with the count so the next two days we still have to be careful, but i havent experienced anything dangerous in my time here. The attendance of church was down because of elections, but that was expected. Sabina Pimentel didnt go to church so i was pretty disappointed with that, but she left for the weekend. But David Calderon went. He is so close to having a baptismal date. The last week he told us he loves how in the church people can get up and say that they know that this is true and he said he want to be able to feel that. he says he feels 75% sure. He believe in everything...but he wants to know. We are working with him little by little, but he has progressed a ton since when we first started teaching him. What was really great was both Alba and David were there. Alba has missed church recentely because of her mom with cancer and its been really hard on her to be missing church but she was able to go to sacrament meeting and it was great they were there together. Also Alba told me something interesting this week, that i guess when we were teaching her she was also receiving the Testigos de Jehovah! haha i was in shock because i didnt know that at all, and she always had these questions about what they believed and stuff. super funny to me. Alba is so great. The other day she was saying how it has been different for her that Hermana Estevez left and how she feels like hermana estevez is her family. I know that she knows i feel the same about her, but sometimes i wish i could express more to her and the family how much they mean to me. But they are great. Also one quick short experience i wanted to share. a few weeks back we found this woman knocking doors and we shared the plan of salvation for her. She really really liked it and was interested in it. She attends another church though. Anyways later we went back another day and her husband opened the door and he was very standoffish but he let us in to talk to his wife. we didnt have a lot of time so we shared a mormon message video about fathers and how God is our heavenly father. The video really must have touched his heart because after that he was much more open to talk. Then this week we had an appointment with them. I was super nervous because we planned to teach the Restoration leccion 1 and i figured that they were probably going to drop us or something because they already have their religion or whatever, but it was exactly the opposite. The dad was super super interested and has lots of questions about the book of mormon. The mom told us she had talked to her friends at her church and they were telling her that we say all of these weird things like worship joseph smith and all of the other things they usually say but she told them, no i really like all that they have been teaching me. anyways it was pretty neat. We´ll see where they go, but this week we are hoping to comprometerles a la iglesia. This week is stake conference so there are some good opportunities. Basically thats all i really have to say this week. It was kind of a tough week but we´re just working like we can. We´ll see how this week goes. I loved hearing about all of the missionary work at home in the ward. That literally makes me so so so happy. Keep me updated on that because i love it. Dad we only are assigned to one ward and we only work in the ward just so you know. Its a lot different than utah. If i could ask one thing of you guys it would be to make time to go to the temple this week or the next. a lot of times im not really homesick for home, but homesick for the temple haha. It definitely was a blessing that i was able to go so much before the mission, but at the same time I REALLY miss being able to go whenever i wanted. ALSO HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JANELLE THIS WEEK!!! I love you a ton and i hope all is well. Im sure that colby will make it a special day :) Love you all so much! Hermana Groneman

It's Hot

Well family its march...ITS MARCH?? I remember thinking in my first month ....wow when its february i´ll finally feel like i can communicate well and ill finally have the hang of things, but that seemed so so so far away, but now its already march! so crazy the time. Well these week was blazing hot. I know im going to regret saying this, but i cant wait for the rain in may. I dont know...maybe ill feel differently later, but i cant wait until its pouring rain. Right now i would rather be drenched in the rain then dying the hot sun every day. haha. but we´ll see. Well i have had enough time here that im pretty used to the culture. But i dont know this week i was reminded really how blessed we have it. Im pretty used to sitting on dirt floors or rocks or in houses made of tarpes or cardboad or tin sometimes (not always...but lots of times). But wow this week with a lot of our members, investigadores, and menos activos we have been talking with them and it is incredible how they still feel like they need to be more humble when they dont even have water in their houses and they have to walk a few blocks just to bring water to their houses. I was talking with Hermana Garbett, and it is almost disgusting how nice we have it at home. Im always reminded of this in my time here, but more this week. Anyways this week was a little better, still dont have many investigadores, but we are working, and we found quite a few new investigators this week, the problems is they hardly ever are there when we go back for a second visit. But hopefully this week. We had plans to contact a lot of references with the members this week, and every single plan fell through. PLEASE work with the missionaries. I know lives are busy at home and you have other things to do, but literally in these days we cant do it without the members, and when the people dont accept dont give up working with the missionaries, because one day someone will accept, and the most important is that you can plant seeds. Keep me updated on what happens more with Toby in the ward and how things are going with the missionaries at home. This week in church David Calderon came again :) he is progressing...just slowly. I dont know if i told you but i guess years and years ago him and Alba had baptismal dates with missionaries and the day before they decided not to be baptized and the missionaries were super sad (obviously) and i think David is scared for this to happen again, because he wants to be baptized but he is just scared to put a date. But this week it was great, we were verifying with him if he read and he pulled out his scriptures and was asking us questions and alba had her scriptures and their daughter magali had a book of mormon and all of us were searching in the scriptures. I just felt how their family is going to be a strong family in the church studying their scriptures together. I also gave magali one of the book of mormon picture books. I know that david is going to be baptized, i dont know if i will be here when it happens or not, but i know one day. And really that just makes me so happy, because i decided to serve a mission because of the happiness the gospel has brought to our family and i only want that other families can feel the same, and its amazing how i can imagine their family together. The only thing is like i have explained its really hard for their family right now because albas mom has cancer and they are super busy taking care of her. Alba has missed a few weeks of church because she has to take care of her mom. Its sad because i know she feels really sad and guilty..and yeah she needs to go to church but she has an acceptable reason, the most important thing is she wants to go and she would go if she could. Also Sabina Pimentel came for the first time! I dont remember if i have told you guys about her, but we have been teaching her for a few weeks. She has two little kids and her husband lives in the states. Every week she has had these excuses why she could go (the baby was sick, they werent at home...) so i was worried we were going to lose her, but she went and i hope she will progress. She really likes every thing we´ve taught, but she hasnt really received an answer if this is all true or not. This week we are going to focus on her testimony de el libro de mormon. I hope that will help her, because she says when she knows its true, she´ll be baptized. Really im so grateful to be here. Its so hard sometimes during the hot days when im so tired, but my testimony is strengthened every day and its incredible the small miracles that we can see every day. I know that God is answering my prayers in every moment. Anyways i hope that this week is good for you all. Its crazy to think whats going on in all of your lives. I cant believe how big Adelyn is!! i loved the pictures. And its crazy to think ryan is going to be graduating. And colby and janelle are going to be moving!! how weird! But i love you all so so so much! Thanks for your emails every week. Love you all so much! Hermana Groneman These are pics of our new house, its basically the same inside, but it atleast has some color and i feel a little more like im in a home haha also its super funny because a member (hermano freddy) lives in front and he is always checking up on us to make sure all is okay, hes like our grandpa haha