MIssions are preparing usfor eternity

First off, so glad I got to talk to and see you all yesterday. Even though it was a little hectic and loud hahah but Im glad that you were able to meet my cuban family the perez here, I know it made them super happy to be able to meet you! *Sidenote and highlight of the week, some guy from the Dominican Republic thought I was from Cuba when I met him (SUCCESS) because cubans are pretty light. Anyways, Glad you got a little taste of "trying to understand spanish coming from 80 yr old cubans" though :) Hopefully you got a little bit of it. Now that Ive finally got that down though, I'm actually trying to learn a little bit of portuguese! There is a family from brazil in our branch who has a lot of friends they are trying to share the gospel with, but they feel like they havent been able to because there haven't been any portuguese speaking missionareis. But this sunday we have a family home evening (noite familiar in portuguese) and they are inviting over 8 friends. We are going to go and teach them with an ex missionary that just got back from serving in Brazil so Im super excited to start cramming in some portuguese this next week haha. Portuguese is really weird...it is like really ugly spanish mixed with french and who knows what else. I've got this theory that if I can just learn to speak spanish with portuguese pronunciation then that will be enough to get me by. A ver.

-This week was pretty uneventful...lets see.. we taught Axel (16 yr old from Honduras) and William (his guatemalan neighbor) a few times. Axel is doing really well. He is pretty much a future missionary...he just needs to get baptized is all. He asks really good questions about what he learns in church or is reading in the book of mormon and his faith is growing a lot. He asked us a question this week about why girls don't have the priesthood, and we explained to him the different divine roles that men and women have, and how together, we are able to enjoy all the blessings God has for us. A few days later, we were having a lesson with william outside and Axel saw us and came out and joined (which usually ends up happening) and William asked us that same question about priesthood and women that axel had a few days before. Axel just looked at william and answered his question perfectly, and taught exactly what we had taught him days before. William had more questions about the apostasy and the book of mormon and axel (I actually handed my missionary tag over to him for a little bit of this) explained it all and the taught about how the bible and book of mormon work together and how god resotred the gospel through joseph smith in the year 1820 (he actually said the year). It was awesome. This kid's family situation is seriously killing me though, he just needs to get baptized already he is so ready!

- This week we also went to Tampa pretty much all of friday for a specialized training for sisters. We learned a lot about how much the mission is preparing us for the rest of our lives. It is really neat to see that we really are developing the skills and habits here  that we are going to rely on when we become parents, employees and leaders later on. Missions are preparing us for eternity! President also reminded us a lot about what success is. It isn't the amount of people we contacted, lessons we taught, referrals received... It is about whether we are being led by the spirit, being diligent, changing, progressing, serving the lord with our whole hearts, developing Christlike attributes, and striving to become the individuals god wants us to be through serving others. I've come to truly live by page 10 of preach my gospel, which teaches you what it means to be a successful servant of the Lord. There will never really be another time in my life when I can look at a list of points, written by the prophet, telling me exactly what I need to do and feel to feel successful.
- I realized that saturday was not just my 10 month mark, but it had been exactly a year since I went through the temple. I feel like I have learned and grown so much in just this short year, and that my relationship with my Heavenly Father, my recognition of my dependency on the Savior, and my desire to have and follow the Holy Ghost have multiplied so much. Los quiero mucho,
con amor

Hermana Baugh