Shauna Graves' Mission: Painting the Savior - Week 6 = 6 Months - Goodbye Sister Lau!

Let me start out by saying, good for you if you make it through reading my emails. If you know me, you know my brain moves at 500 mph. So I apologize for my emails always being all over the place. Alright. So honestly not much happened this week. So this will probably be shorter than most weeks lol.

Alrighty everyone here we goooo! Week 6 in the field! I hit my 6 month mark on Thursday! Only one year left already? Woah!

On Wednesday the day started out nice :) we got to do our weekly service project again with the nonprofit food distribution! Lots of loading cars again! Honestly, it's the best part of the week. We love service opportunities!! However, my day got sad as we returned to the apartment to finish packing up sister lau's things. We took her to Oakland and said goodbye. It was so so sad. It was THE BEST to talk to her again today! When she left she hid a little bag made in Costa Rica full of colones (Costa Rican currency) and the sweetest letter hidden in my stuff. I love that I made a lifelong friend so quickly. Miss that girl. Wow.

Alright after that me and sister Finch have been speaking Spanish to each other a lot more lately! I dont know if I can say that I feel like my Spanish is improving very much BUT I'm getting more comfortable with what I do know. So that's been a blessing for sure! Participating in lessons is something I am getting more comfortable with because we are down to just two of us and not three. So I'm learning how to be more comfortable in lessons.

Other than that the only news I have to share is that (drum roll please)...JUAN IS ON DATE FOR BAPTISM!!! October 10!! We are so excited for him! He is such a great guy. We really love him. We still have a few things to teach him but this man is GOLD. He's going to be such a great addition to the ward.

Oh actually. I just remembered one more thing. We got a call from the assistants on Thursday and asked us if we would be admins over the San Mateo Facebook page! Kinda stressful. We are now in charge of making our facebook page successful. If any of you missionaries have ideas PLEASE let me know. Also, if you all want to go like the facebook page "Church of Jesus Christ in San Mateo". That's me :). Hit that subscribe button and turn on the post notifications

Now I know that this is the part you're all waiting for. What did I learn this week? Well, I learned about teaching with the spirit. I had the opportunity to have a lesson with a good friend from home. As I shared with him my experiences and my feelings and my testimony he felt inspired to share something with me. This is something that I need to remember every single day! I'm so glad he reminded me of this! He told me to remember that the spirit is the teacher. It was PERFECT timing that he said this because I was just then feeling like I really couldn't teach well, especially in Spanish. When he said that it clicked that with God ALL things are possible! And if I am being a good teacher...I would be letting the spirit teach! I'm thankful to Tanner for teaching me when I was trying to teach him!

Have a great week everyone!

Sister Graves

1- We had "the last supper" with Sister Lau at Panda Express.