I can't believe I'm starting my last week of the mission 9-12-2017

11:38 AM

¡Hola Hola!

Wow! Primero, soy una tía!! No puedo creerlo pero estoy bien entusiasmada!! Congratulations Maddie and Jeff and thank you for making me an aunt! I am so so happy, she is so cute and I can't wait to hold her and love her! I promise to be the best aunt there ever was!

Pday got changed to today because we are having a mission tour this week with Elder Clayton and Elder Taylor from the seventy. Our zone had our conference yesterday and it was incredible, the spirit was so strong and it got me so fired up! 🔥🔥we talked a lot about repentance and the spirit there was so sweet. Repentance really is such a joyful thing and a wonderful gift from our Heavenly Father. I walked a way from that meeting with a lot of things to change and I am excited to work on them!

So I'm not going to lie I thought this ET was going to make me trunky and ready to come home because I don't know anybody but I'm telling you the people here are so easy to love. My heart aches knowing that I'll have to leave them after only two weeks with them! They're all so incredible and I've had such a good week.

Heavenly Father helped us a lot finding new people to teach. It was incredible each day we prayed for help finding a new investigator and we found a new investigator every day and we even found two on Sunday.

Yesterday we had 15 minutes to find a new investigator and we knocked on all these doors and right when we were about to leave we saw someone standing outside. We started talking to him and he spoke Spanish!! He ended up opening up to us and his story is incredible. He's from Cuba and in Cuba there's not a lot of religion so he never was taught about God growing up. He came here to the United States and a little while ago he got in a really bad car accident. He almost died and was in a coma for a little while. He had a dream while he was in his coma and he was in a church talking to God. He ended up healing up okay (except his vision is a little off) and now he knows he needs to get to church. We showed him the Book of Mormon and he was incredible and super excited to meet with us again! It's incredible how involved Heavenly Father is in every single life.

The Hermanas have been teaching a guy named Uriel and he is awesome! He is getting baptized on September 24 and he is so solid. It has been so much fun teaching him this week, the lessons are so spiritual and it's been amazing to see him grow. I am really excited for him and I know Heavenly Father is even more excited.

There's a less active in this area the Hermanas have been teaching and she is amazing. I honestly think she's the reason I got sent here for my last two weeks. It was so easy to love her right away. That's one of my favorite things about being a missionary. It's so easy to feel Heavenly Father's love for His children. I'm pretty sure the whole world already knows so I'll just share it with everyone. But I've really struggled with anxiety on my mission. And I was so confused why I was dealing with it on my mission when I never had before. It was the worst/scariest thing ever but it brought be so much closer to Heavenly Father and now I know why I went through it. It was to help this less active. I opened up to her right away about it and shared how I got through it (honestly I wasn't sure why I felt like I needed to share it with her) but after I did she opened up and told me she is struggling with the exact same thing and that I answered a prayer she's been asking for a while.

My heart was so full of gratitude at that moment and I felt like all the anxiety and trials I went through on my mission, I partly went through to help this less active. I was grateful that I went through that trial and I would do it all over again if it meant I could help someone else. I know God is a loving Father and it was a testimony builder to me that He allows us to go through hard things because it will be a blessing to us. This less active is making huge progress and has a goal to go the temple.

We go to the Spanish branch in this area and on Saturday the branch president called me and asked me to give a talk the next day, I was so excited! I hadn't given a talk in Spanish on my mission so I was super grateful for the opportunity. I talked about prayer, faith, and family and how they help us have eternal life. It was so fun giving a talk in Spanish and I think it went well, people said they could understand me, so shout out to the spirit for the help!

I can't believe I'm starting my last week of the mission. I don't think it's really hit me yet, I'm still trying to make guesses on where my next area will be and who my next companion will be. I love my mission so much and I am so grateful for my Savior. He has carried me every step of my mission and I know He will continue to do so.

I hope you all have an amazing week. Have lots of fun with Ivy and give her lots of hugs and kisses from me. I love you all so much and be happy. Because life is too short to be anything else.

Con amor,

Hermana Swapp

PS: "Now if this is boasting, even so will I boast; for this is my life and my light, my joy and my salvation, and my redemption from everlasting wo. Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people, who are a branch of the tree of Israel, and has been lost from its body in a strange land; yea, I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land." -Alma 26:36