Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Ok, I can't believe this, as of tomorrow, I will have been on my mission 1 transfers worth of time! It may not seem like a lot to some of you, but for me that is crazy!

This last week has been one that was full of the Spirit, and Spiritual Experiences. I would like to share a couple of them with you. The first is cool in general, and the second is more personal.

On Sunday, we had a fireside with a woman named Jenny Oaks Baker. She is the daughter of Dallin H. Oaks, and a nationally renowned violinist. She did a presentation where she would talk to us about her life, and share stories of Faith and other Gospel principles, and then play a song that corresponded with that experience. This was awesome for two reasons. One, she had amazing insights to her stories, and brought the Spirit with just her speaking, and Two, when she would play songs on the Violin, it would so strongly reinforce the Spirit that I could hardly contain myself. Every time she ended I wanted to stand up and cheer because I was so happy and feeling so great! Not only was her music beautiful, she is the best violinist I have ever seen perform. I haven't seen many, and don't know too much, but I could tell she was amazing. And she sounded amazing. She did this thing where she played two strings at a time, and was managing different notes and both strings. It was quite impressive, and I didn't even know you could do that with a violin. All in all, it was a great experience. Dallin H. Oaks was there as well to watch his daughter.

The second experience happened yesterday in the T.R.C. If any of you don't know, that is where we go to practice teaching "Mock Investigators" All are members of the Church and most are converts, so they know the other side of things. We have been teaching in Spanish the last two weeks, which has been a lot of fun. Yesterday we were teaching a Sister named Sister Carrasco. It didn't start out too well when one of the first things she did was "rag" on Utah. She is from California and doesn't really like it here. So at first, I was kind of upset, because I love Utah. We have a task to do every time before we teach the lesson that helps our Spanish vocabulary, like shopping in a department store, eating at a restaurant, riding a bus, that kind of thing. Well we got talking to her, and she was giving us pointers in both the Teaching and the Language, and we never really ended up doing our task. In addition, we are supposed to take a break between the Task and the Lesson, but we just talked right through that. Why? Because this Sister was amazing and had so many good stories, and had the Spirit so strong with her. These volunteers take this very seriously because they know how important our work is. So after awhile, we decided to just start the Lesson. This week is the 1st one in Spanish. So we started, and immediately, we could all feel the Spirit so strong. As we continued, my companions and I struggled with the language. All three of us were forgetting vocab, how to conjugate, and even what we wanted to say in English. But the Spirit was still there. For this lesson, it was my opportunity to quote the 1st Vision. I love when I get to do this in Spanish. As I was quoting it, I was hit with a ridiculously strong impression that what I was saying was without a doubt 100% Truth. And I was saying it in Spanish! It is so cool to me, that I would be assured of truths through a different language. The thought in my head wasn't "this is true", but rather "esta es verdadera" And I could tell that this Sister could feel the Spirit with us. This is the principle I want to emphasize. We were speaking only in Spanish. She was speaking so fast sometimes we couldn't understand. But we could still feel the Spirit. It doesn't matter what we are saying with our lips, but what we are feeling with our hearts. It was a huge testimony builder to me that even though I won't have the Language down when I get to Argentina, and even though I may not be the best teacher yet, as long as I have the Spirit with me, I can help the people of Argentina come unto Christ.

I am out of time for today, but I wanted to share those experiences with you.

I love all of you, and pray for our family and friends every day.

Thank you all for the support and love you give me. It means more than you know.

--

Elder Scot Daniel Stobbe Jr

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

1 comment:

  1. Thank you, Scoty, for sharing those stories. We could even feel the testimony thru the violin as well as the words you wrote. And as for the sister who ragged on Utah, let that be a lesson. Everyone is entitled to their own ideas and opinions. Just because we don't agree with someone doesn't mean we can't learn from them and learn to respect them.
    Love, ggfolks

    ReplyDelete