3-1-10

Not much has changed since my last e-mail. a few good lessons here and there but not a lot of progress has been going on to be honest. I seem to always fall in love with the families in south hartford, which aren't my area! North Hartford just doesn't have many families cause it's more of a city than an urban area so it's hard.

Yesterday we went to this ladies' house, Guadalupe, she's a catholic and from what I picked up she was just kind of interested in what we teach. She is from Mexico and being in her house -- definitely shows it. We walked up to the front door and right away there was a Cross on her door with Christ hanging upon it. It was a little weird -- then we walked inside and she had a table set up with statues of the virgin Mary, pictures of Christ (you know, the eccentric hispanic ones), and other crosses and things. She pulled her bible out and we began to teach the lesson. This was the first time I had ever seen this but whenever we had her read a scripture she would stand up to read and then say "Las Palabras de Dios" before she sat back down. It was a little different but I was impressed with how much she cared about the words of God. She was very surprised when we showed her scriptures about the restoration and scriptures about us needing prophets and she seemed excited about families living together forever (who wouldn't be, right?). I didn't teach much this lesson because Sunday was a pretty rough day for me. We began church and a young woman in our branch was speaking on temples. Nicole is her name, she is 17; at the end of her talk she began to cry -- for the most part I could understand what was going on but I didn't understand a lot of the main points, it was a little frustrating, but I was ok. After that we had to teach our gospel principles class. One man came to church who had never been to an LDS church before and the subject was on Prayer. His question was "how can you pray to God when you feel unworthy?" Now, I didn't know this was his question until a long time after -- but as the conversation went on I saw 2-3 people in our class of 10 get pretty emotional. The spirit was strong and I began to cry. But I didn't really cry because of the spirit this time, well maybe I did, but it wasn't out of happiness. I was so frustrated, because I could see these people wanted answers to their questions so bad, and I have been through those same feelings, but I didn't know how to tell them of my experiences and I couldn't understand what they needed either. I wanted to help them so bad. I began to cry and I just kind of put my head down to hide it. It was really hard. Being there, seeing people yearning for answers, yet not being able to help. The whole day was rough. I was frustrated with the language. But I know it will come.