Without God, we're just missionaries...

...but with God, we're Representatives of Jesus Christ!!

Hola hola amigos y familia! 

This week was my fastest and best one yet! I feel every week God is blessing me with eyes to see His blessings, see His children through His eyes and He is helping me more and more to focus on the work and less and less on myself. Needless to say, I am very thankful for a Heavenly Father who has a plan greater than my own. 

This week we celebrated Christmas! Missionaries from a few zones got together and we all had some amazing food, acted out the nativity, and did a little white elephant gift exchange! Sometimes I get a little sad remembering what time of year it is and not being with my family, but being with all those missionaries gave me the opportunity to be grateful, in a different way, for Christmas! I was looking around as we were singing 'Silent Night' and I realized that all these people are in the same situation as me, away from their families, but serving the Lord every day! Spreading the light that is Jesus Christ!! I just keep telling myself, "hey! I get to spend two Christmas' ́in Ecuador, serving full-time the Savior who we're celebrating! When do I get to do that again!? :) I hope everyone enjoys this time of year and remembers just who we're celebrating! Our church, The Church of Jesus Christ, came out with a video called The Christ Child. If you haven't had the chance to watch it yet, please do! I love feeling the significance of just WHO Jesus Christ is, and why we take this time to celebrate Him!

Something kind of funny that my companion and I realized this week is that we are quite literally at times living in a Telenovela (like a Latina Drama show haha). We find that many people REALLY trust the missionaries with their problems... thus they share... a lot! A family we are working with consists of a mom, her daughter, and her daughter's husband. We met them a few weeks ago and they were eager to listen to us! Recently, however, the young couple went through some rough patches, including a lot of dishonesty in their marriage. The mom, told us in detail, about everything that was going on with this couple, and while we wanted to help, we're really just here to share a message! Luckily, we've been able to help in some ways, and think maybe this rough patch is for this couple to find the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we were brainstorming one day on how to help them, I was reminded of an invitation some missionaries in one of my brother's missions offered to a young adult.  It was something along the lines of this: ¨If you listen to our message for just two weeks, and keep the commitments we ask of you, we promise you will have more understanding in your life, and be happier than ever before.̈ ̈  Exercising a lot of Faith, we made the same invitation to this young couple and they accepted. It's funny, because when we heard what happened to this couple, we were expecting to feel a little angry with the wife for some of her choices.  But during the next lesson we had with them, we actually walked away feeling just the opposite; SO MUCH LOVE for her because she was very open to Christ's teachings and wanting to change.  We were, however, frustrated with the husband who was very closed off and hard-hearted.  To me, it was like God was trying to teach us some of the ways he sees his children. God wants every child to come back to Him. When we are willing to change, no matter what sin we've committed, His arms are outstretched wide. When our hearts are hardened, especially against those who want to change, God pleads with us to be more forgiving so we can heal.

Truly, without the power of God on our side, we would just be 19 year old missionaries trying to figure out how to share a good message and help people. But, because we have the power of God, we can see through His eyes and truly know what people need. Wow!! The wife kept her commitment and came to church with us this week while the husband stayed behind. I think this week, I've truly started to understand the concept of "Salvation being an individual matter, and exaltation a family matter.¨ We must each choose who we want to be, and who we want to follow. We are so proud of the wife for her efforts so far, and we hope both she and her husband progress. 

Another powerful experience this week was with one of our amigos who has a baptismal date set for this month. BUT, we've truly been focusing on her conversion before her baptism. We've been feeling really uneasy about things, and we were very prayerful while preparing for one of our lessons with her. We honestly felt this lesson would help us decide if she was truly ready for baptism or not. We pleaded with God to lead us, to ask her, inspired questions and during the lesson, He truly helped us do so. To understand her testimony further, we asked questions based on a scripture that talks about how to know if people are ready for baptism through their desires. At the beginning of the lesson she was answering these questions perfectly, she sounded like she knew the reasons for baptism and had the right desires. But one question, a question we felt inspired to ask, truly changed everything. We asked her, ¨Why do you think it is important to be baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ?¨ She paused, then told us, "I don't really know.¨ After the lesson we prayed intently about this woman's readiness to be baptized. The clear answer we received was that she needed more time. She knows baptism is a good thing, but doesn't quite understand why baptism into Jesus Christ's church is significant. We will keep teaching and hope in the future she will be baptized, because she does have the desire! She simply is missing a key piece to her testimony that this church is the church of God. We truly strive to convert people and not just baptize people for numbers. This experience is why I say again, without God, we would just be missionaries. We NEED Him and His power to accomplish His work and His desires for His children.

I hope you all have had a great week and are enjoying finishing up finals and getting ready for a break from it all! Christmas time truly is the most wonderful time of the year and I truly believe the Spirit of God is more near as we all share His goodness! To be honest, Ecuador doesn't have a ton of festivities haha, but I feel the Spirit of Christmas when we share God's message about the birth of His son! I know Jesus Christ lives, I know He loves us, and I continue to discover that love more and more every day. Thanks always for all your emails, and I'll talk to you all again on Christmas Eve! Wahoo!!

Hermana Leonard 

Study: This week my thought comes from my sister-in-law, Lindsay´s favorite scripture: Doctrine and Covenants 6:36: ¨Look unto me in every thought, doubt not, fear not.¨ Something my mission president said this week really made me think about things. He said, "When we have fear, we lack faith." This made me think about how often I have fear of teaching a lesson, fear of how people will respond to our invitations, fear of the future! All this fear leaves me lacking in faith! When we have faith in Jesus Christ we don't need to have fear! Peter had the Faith to walk on water before he feared the reality of sinking! I invite you all to think of ways you can exercise more Faith in your lives and forget about fear. With God, we truly can do all things! (To study this concept further I love Alma 24, and the faith these people exercised in God, even when all odds were against them!)

Out singing to spread Christmas cheer!

Goodbye devotional--sending our friend Elder Quispe home!

My favorite Grafitti wall--this one is SO Cool!