Sunday, June 08,
2014
Early morning love notes from the hermanas!
Up at 4 am to leave our apartment by 5 am to be to the Central and Plaza Chapel in the Trenta y Tres Stake. The drive was supposed to be about 4 hours. Because of the early hour, there was no traffic and we arrived earlier than expected. We enjoyed the beautiful sunrise.
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| Plenty of cattle everywhere. |
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| Can't see them too well, but there are sheep out there. |
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| On our way to Trenta y Tres. Melo is next week! |
Our presentation went well but we were also asked to talk in Sacrament Meeting. During the week, I had many thoughts about what I could do. I thought I could play the piano. That takes no language skills. I thought I could give a 30 second testimony in Spanish and let Mike have the rest of the time. But, I just couldn't ignore the inspiration I received the other night, even though it made no sense to me.
I always get my inspiration for things I am pondering just before I go into a deep sleep. Because this is always the case with me, I have learned that I shouldn't ignore the thought or prompting. I was prompted to share a pioneer story about Angeline Hodgkins. I spent Saturday (while in the chapel at the Carrasco Capilla Abierta) using Google translate to translate the talk into Spanish. I gave up reading it though because my skills are just not there and Google Translate always needs Mike to tweak it a bit.
So Saturday night, I decided not to give that talk and just play the piano. When I got home Saturday night I practiced a couple of songs.
In the morning, I was still unsure, so I printed my talk in English and Spanish and took my music. Once at church on Sunday, after our Sunday School lesson on the restoration of the priesthood, I knew that my pioneer story was what I needed to share. I asked Mike to translate for me. Wow, the spirit was so strong. Mike choked up, I choked up and the members were also visibly touched. I told the members that they were the pioneers of Uruguay and that they needed to write down their experiences for their posterity. I told them how special it was for me to find some of Angeline's brothers' and sisters' families and do the temple work for them.
Lesson reinforced: Follow the promptings!
The Stake President invited us over to his house for lunch. They were very gracious and we had a wonderful time with them. His wife spoke very good English and she enjoyed practicing with me. That was our first invitation into a member's home. They gave us a scrumptious bag of Brazilian peanuts. They are very crisp and quite addicting.
