Who knew meatloaf had hard-boiled eggs, peas, spam, and green olives in it?

Hola familia!

Thanks for the updates on everything. I am definitely keeping the Anderson family in my prayers and hope that little Bryson is ok. If there is anything I have been learning in my transfer-long study on faith, it is that God does hear and answer prayers every time if we have the faith that He will. I don't know why faith has been so fascinating to me lately, but it has. I think it was just always one of those principles beforehand that I took for granted but it is the base for everything else! I've been working on reading the Book of Mormon all the way through in Spanish and am just finishing up Alma right now. I was ecstatic when I got to my favorite Book of Mormon story about the 2000 stripling warriors, but this time, the story was SO different to me. It is all about faith! Think about it...one of the most famous scriptures from that story is Alma 56:47 "Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them." Doubt and faith are like a see-saw; the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. The 2000 stripling warriors did not have an ounce doubt so they must have had a perfect faith (Alma 57:26-27). And then something else that stood out to me in Alma 57:25, notwithstanding their faith, many of the soldiers fainted with loss of blood and every one of them was wounded, but none of them were killed. This is the miraculous thing of it all. We can have all the faith in the world but it doesn't mean that we won't get beat-up sometimes, it just means that we know that Heavenly Father will always win.

Well, that was a long tangent but I just thought I'd share that with you all as something I learned this week. :)

So this week was so cool. I want to tell you about this new investigator we got, Saqueo. Saqueo is a 19-yr old kid from Honduras that we contacted into. He used to go to church when he was little but said he doesn't really believe in anything anymore. In our first lesson, we taught him all about prophets and he was just loving it, finding out that God still does love us and talk to us today. Then we saw him 3 times last week! He is so cool. When we taught him about Joseph Smith, we asked him how he felt and he said, "I feel really calm. I've never really felt this before, but it's all so new to me." So then we asked him if he has even just a desire to know it's true. He said yes and we talked a little about faith and told him to pray and look for those same feelings. He wasn't able to come to church yesterday but he is so coming this Sunday! I love it! I lovve seeing people change because of this gospel!

We had mission-wide sisters exchanges again on Tuesday-Wednesday. I still haven't ever left my area for an exchange but that's ok. I got to be with Hna Binning, my first MTC comp! It was fun as we tackled Morristown together and I learned so much from her! Hmmm...Don't think I took any pictures...oh well. Oh, and last p-day, our zone got together and tie-dyed t-shirts. Random, huh? But it was fun. I think we will all have them at next zone meeting and I will take a picture to send home.

Another miracle: Lady's husband actually might be getting out in February instead of October...so yeah, in a couple of weeks. So we reset her for a baptismal date so that she has one when he gets out. The reason I say "might be" is because I really have no idea what she is saying to me when she talks to me of all the legal terms of what is happening, I just smile and get excited when she does :)

Ok, I think that's about all for now. I hope you all actually like reading these and if you don't, well just don't tell me. :) Haha, that is what one of the members tells us every time she feeds us, but she's a good cook. And advice of the week: If it doesn't look like meat or taste like meat or smell like meat, it's probably NOT meat, even if the Spanish people say it is. :)

I miss you tons but I love you more!

Love,

Hermana Jackson