Tip of the day: you can't add as much flour as you want to cookie dough 3-6-2017

7:47 AM

¡Hola Hola!

I hope y'all have had a very good week. I can't believe another week has come and gone, it's going by oh too fast. Shelbyville is doing great and I am loving every minute of it. This is seriously such an amazing area. This week has been fun and Hermana Heil and I have learned some things about ourselves this week... especially that cooking is not one of our talents, I'll explain in a bit.

We started our week last week with a dinner appointment with the Hebdon's. They're a cute family in our ward and they live right next to a golf course so of course I brought up golf and asked if they played. Well their cute 8 year old does and I got a brand new best friend. He brought me to their back yard immediately (their backyard is like 6 acres) and was hitting golf balls for me. Then we'd run and go get them. Let me tell you, he's a pretty good golfer. I honestly think he can hit it further than me. But it was fun I got to swing a golf club for the first time in a long time and it was such a tender mercy. And then he followed me around at church yesterday haha, seriously the cutest kid. I love that family.

We had a great lesson with a less active in the ward. She's so cute and we've been working with her for a while, we really want her to come to church and start making some changes in her life to align it with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we shared a lesson we had planned for her and the spirit was so strong. And before we could commit her to anything she said with tears, "Thank you. This is what I needed to hear and now I know I need to make some changes in my life. I need to go to church." It was incredible. Those are my favorite lessons, when you do absolutely nothing and the spirit teaches them exactly what they need to learn.

We did lots of service this week. Anything from helping with horses to painting cupboards. We did lots of tracting and just anything to find new people to teach. Hermana Heil and I had this brilliant idea one day to make a ton of cookies and then to visit absolutely everyone. Members, investigators, less Actives, former investigators, everyone. So we decided to make a batch of cookies and we tripled the batch. Well the cookie dough seemed sticky to us so me being the great baker I am had the idea to add more flour. So we started with a cup but it still seemed sticky so we just kept adding and adding until we pretty much dumped the whole bag in. But it looked good, it looked like the consistency of cookie dough and the cookie dough tasted good. So we baked our cookies and they looked awful but we had hope that they would taste good so we ate it and it tasted like a blob of flour. There was no taste except for the occasional chocolate chip. So we dumped a bag of brown sugar and granulated sugar and a few more eggs and a stick of butter with hopes it would fix the problem.... nope. So we gave up and we dumped the "cookie dough" in a grocery bag and left it on the Elders' car with a note that said, "Tip of the day: you can't add as much flour as you want to cookie dough. #shouldvetakenpersonalprogressmoreseriously." We still visited everyone we wanted to but we showed up with empty hands haha! Hermana Heil and I haven't stopped laughing about it since! Who just adds more flour? It made sense at the time...

Saturday was a great day. We had lesson after lesson. From 6:00-9:00 we were able to have four lessons, it was awesome. We had two with less actives and two with investigators and they went really well. The last one for the night was with Aisa though and it was a heart breaking lesson. Her and her husband were there together and we showed the Mormon Message "Waiting on our Road to Damascus" and asked them what they thought. Vincente really opened up he said it really put things into perspective for him and he knows it's true and that he needs to make more time for church and for the Book of Mormon. Then Aisa said, "I just don't know if it's true. It doesn't give me the feeling I feel like it should." She basically went on and on how it wasn't satisfying her needs and she's okay without it. It broke my heart because you could see how badly Vicente wants it and how much it means to him. And I know Aisa knows it's true. She's had way too many spiritual experiences not to know. It broke my heart, we've been praying for them and just wanting to know what we can do to help them feel the truthfulness. But I know they'll get there eventually.

Yohandri has gone missing, we haven't seen him since last Sunday. We've been calling and texting and messaging on Facebook and stopping by his house and nothing. So hopefully we can find him this week. A is doing good. We just found out she'll be moving to Guatemala soon since her boyfriend got deported, so that was sad news. But this week we're working hard and we're going to do all we can to find those who are prepared. We're going to get our bikes checked out today so hopefully we can use those a lot more and just do anything possible to find those of the House of Israel.

Our mission President pointed out something cool to us. He was talking about Picasso and Van Gough and how they have incredible art talents and he said, "Do you think they just developed these talents here on earth?" And he said, "No, they were talents they developed in the pre-earth life and they brought them here with them. How about Mozart and Beethoven? It's the same thing with them they developed those musical talents before this life." So at this point I'm feeling pretty crummy because I didn't bring any talents obviously I didn't bring any cooking talents with me. And then he said, "but there's a talent that all of you brought here with you. All of those who are of the House of Israel have the talent of being sensitive to the spirit and to spiritual truths. Why don't you think everyone is a member of the church? Or why isn't everyone begging to be baptized? Well it's because that wasn't a talent they worked on before this life. Those who have the talent of being spiritually sensitive are part of the House of Israel and those are the ones we need to find." In Preach My Gospel it says "The gospel will have a familiar 'ring' to them." How neat is that?

Hopefully that made sense. If not... sorry.

We had exchanges this week. Hermana Espinoza came to Shelbyville with me and she is incredible. She moved here from Guatemala and so she only speaks Spanish. So for 24 hours that is all I spoke, it was a lot of fun and we did lots of charades. (: but I learned so much from her and I have never met anyone with such a powerful testimony. I can't even explain it, the second she opens her mouth the spirit fills the room. It was incredible. We had a lesson with Maribel and Maribel told us that she was at work and someone started talking about Joseph Smith and was saying all of these horrible things and then that's when she found out about polygamy. And she asked us, "Is that really true? Did they really practice polygamy?" My heart sunk and I honestly had no idea what to say because I don't know all of the details or the why's. So I just said, "God commanded there to be polygamy at the beginning of the church. And I don't know why but what I do know is that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God." I bore my testimony of Joseph Smith and Hermana Espinoza did too. And the spirit that was there was incredible. And nobody could deny that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Maribel even bore her testimony of Joseph Smith and it was a special moment.

That was pretty much our week. I'm sorry this letter is all over the place, maybe one day they'll make sense, but don't count on it. I love you all so very much and I am so grateful for everything y'all do for me. I hope y'all have a good week and remember to be happy. Because life is too short to be anything else.

Con amor,

Hermana Swapp

PS: "Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee." -Alma 31:35