Week 68: Gaining understanding

Elder Hendrix in Los Cristianos.

Hey there!

This week was good! I really like this area here in Tenerife. The weather has been soooooo amazing! It's like 70 degrees every day. We wake up early to go run on the beach pretty frequently. The mission is the best haha.

I really like the members here. The ward has about 45 active members and they've all great! I love our bishop too. He's such a champ. He's from Argentina and has lived in Spain for a long time. He's one of the smartest guys I've met. He helps us with lessons a lot and he is so helpful. His name is Obispo Beccaceci. I love how supportive he is.

This week we had several incredible lessons! We have some great investigators, one of which is Jyoti. Jyoti is from India and has been meeting with the missionaries for several months now. She's the nicest woman! She has been keeping commitments and is progressing really well! I see so much potential in her and I'm excited to see her continue to strengthen her testimony. Our lessons with her are very spiritual. This week we went over the word of wisdom. She had several doubts about not being able to drink coffee, but we were able to explain it to the best of our ability, and with the help of the spirit she was able to understand. It may not seem like coffee is damaging, but I testify that God is all-knowing and has a knowledge much greater than ours. He has given us the commandment of the word of wisdom because He knows that it will benefit us. And these benefits are not only temporal, but also spiritual. I know that God wants to bless us and that he wants us to protect our bodies. And what better way to protect our bodies than following the instructions that our Heavenly Father has given us? Sometimes we may not understand why He gives us certain commandments, but we just have to trust Him. And as confidence in Him grows, our understanding will grow. Like Bruce R. McConkie has explained, understanding is gained by obedience. And that statement applies to every commandment that we have been given. If we don't understand it, then maybe that's an invitation to try it. Obedience really does result in understanding! 

We had a cool spirit gut punch this week. One morning, when we were originally planning on doing our weekly planning session, we had the impression of passing by an old investigator to see if she was home. Her name is Alexandra. We've been trying to pass by her house and trying to get a hold of her for months, but we've never had any luck. Elder Knaphus and I decided to change our planning session to the next morning so we could go see if she was home. So we took a long bus ride out to the pueblo where she lives, we knocked on her door, and sure enough! She was there! We had a nice conversation with her and were able to help her rekindle those desires to learn about the gospel. She's such a sweet lady. She's going out of town this week, but she promised to meet with us when she comes home. I'm so excited to teach her! We learned a lot about patience with this experience, as well as listening to the spirit. Don't give up on someone! Everybody deserves the opportunity to hear the gospel! 

Today we had an interesting start to P day today. We went to the store to buy our groceries and Elder Knaphus tried to pull a cool stunt, but it didn't work. He picked up a box of Oreos off the shelf and tried to throw it across the aisle into the cart, but right as he tossed it a woman walked in the way and he ended up throwing the box right at her face. It was a lot more intense than it sounds, but basically it was hilarious.

We had a zone training this week! Our zone is all of the islands in the Canaries. So they put all of the missionaries on two islands and then on a Skype call. Tenerife was one of the islands, so we got to stay here with half the zone. But yeah it was a good meeting! My district did a musical number and it went well! We sang Señor te necesito and my companion played the guitar. He's a pro on the guitar. He's been teaching me a lot of songs lately. He bought a ukulele last week, so we've been having some good jam sessions. Anyway, after the zone meeting, the senior couple in northern Tenerife made us Thanksgiving dinner! It was super good! Except we didn't have turkey or pumpkin pie cause those things don't exist here really, so we had a bunch of ham. It was good!

And that's about it for this week! Love you all! Have a good week!