Hola Familia,
This is what happens in Mérida after it rains! If you are not wet from the rains, you are wet from sweat!
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| Escaping a tidal wave caused by a bus (Lia in blue, Hna Lugo in pink). |
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| This water is probably a foot deep and happens 2-3 times a week! |
We have, little by little, been trying to get the members to
catch on to the new member-missionary way of being a member. Some people get it! We show them what its says in Preach My Gospel about what they ought
to be doing and they say “Chispales.”
The best literal translation of that I’ve come up with for that is “Spark them.”
It’s like “Dang!” or “Geepers!” Then they start coming up with names of people
they want to start working on and praying about. But some people... do
not get it so easily. :)
I was part of a beautiful and heart-breaking experience last week, a real gospel-in-action moment. I was in Kukulcan Ward on Sunday in intercambios (missionary exchanges), and we had just started the Ward Council meeting in the chapel. They put on that video of the family who does missionary work (the little boy who writes the card and the mom who gives the lady a bag for her fruit in the market) and I was watching the part where the teenage girl is washing dishes at her job and one of her co-workers is talking on the phone and starts crying. And for some reason, I started crying at that part.
And two seconds later, the bishop walks into the room and
says, “We’re going to have to cancel the junta (meeting). He explained, “Hermana Monica (the ward member who was
going to feed the missionaries that day) just had her baby in the hospital.
There were complications and she is about to die.” He quickly asked for
volunteers to go to the hospital and left immediately with the elders.
Of those of us who stayed, somebody suggested we pray so we
all knelt down in between the pews in the chapel and a sister prayed. We were
all crying. And then the thing that impressed me most of all… the counselor who
stood up after the prayer and said, “As members of the church, what we do
in times like these is fast. I invite all of you to start fasting right now.”
And we did!
The efficacy and composure and beauty and spiritual
maturity of the whole situation was...just not Yucatecan. It is something so
incredible how the true doctrine of Jesus Christ makes us so human, so
sensitive to the emotions of others. People who have been made sons and daughters
of God truly do mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in
need of comfort. I was so grateful and even a little surprised that my heart
was soft enough, that the suffering of someone I didn’t know could pull my
heart-strings so much. Evidence that the Atonement works. :)
I love you all, for reals.
Sincerely,
Hna Ludlam
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