Sister Madrid....Hermana Nydegger....Called To Serve: Holy Calor

Monday...June 9th, 2014

Buenas tardes a todos! (Good afternoon to all)

Time is absolutely just slipping right from underneath of me.

And I don´t know what to do about it. I complete my year mark on Thursday.. weird huh! I remember when Hermana Phillips hit her year mark and thinking that she was so old and that I would never reach that point.. yet here I am now! I can´t remember not being a missionary and can´t remember so many things from my life before! Even like the lyrics to some of my favorites songs. The missionary vail is real..

So this morning as I was making this awesome huge list of good missionary plaque scritpures for katie.. (if any wants it they are free to have it) I was just reflecting on how much I love the scriptures and how little I read them before the mission. Holy cow, I LOVE the scriptures. It is just so CLEAR to me that they came from God. There are SO many good ones too. So many just heaven sent scriptures that we very indeed written for our benifit. But we can´t benifit from them if we don´t study them!

I was just thinking about all of the time I wasted and the things that were important to me. Like how FAST I would be to open up a friend´s snapchat or scroll through insta haha but how slow I would be flip my scriptures open.

Moroni 10:32

I was also thinking about one of the greatest blessings of actually being a full time missionary. And the thought came to my mind that it was without a doubt my testimony. It literally just POUNDS within me. And it makes me happy and its all I need. I didn´t have it like that before! Missions are amazing. We are called if we have the desires. And with those desires we leave blindly into the field leaving practially everything behind other than our truest friend Jesus Christ. And really that is ALL we need. I was thinking and in the long run we really don´t leave anything behind! Missions are the best. They are oh so worth it.

My mission has changed me and helped me to change others. It is the greatest experience that God has given me than I could ever give myself. It has been my biggest miracle.

We has a SWEET missionary activity on Saturday. It was weird because I felt like i was in the MTC again! It was just fun being around tons of excited people with name tags getting ready to go get some WORK done. It was fun. We listened to these great talks before from rms which i loved and then we did a fun practice to teach them how to approach people without being awkward haha.. we are funny. I will just say that. But then we got our companions and I ws so happy to be with my good friend the bishops daughter G! We worked sooo hard and I just loved being able to give her a little taste of the missionary life. We then came back.. sang the efy medly (which by the way is very tricky to play on the piano with tons of latinos and their great musical talent hahaha) and then we had really one of the coolest testimonies meetings.

PURE and simple testimony. It is the most powerful thing to hear. And the most powerful thing to feel. I love the spirit. That is also a huge blessing of the mission. The spirit.. you learn SO much about it and how it works and how much we need it. I want to do all I can for the rest of my life to have this same spirit with me.. even the tiniest things. My cute companion Gabby and many other members gave incredible testimonies. I hope every single one of these youth choice to serve a mission. It will bring them more joy than anything. I felt so happy sitting there listening to them

We worked way hard talking to everyone possible on the streets for 3 hours straight and not going to lie.. it was hard! But the feeling you get after is so so so worth it! I mean think about how you feel after doing sometime really hard compared to how you feel after you sleep in really late or after hours of of playing games. Which is more worth it? The first is.

With hard things comes GREAT reward

So this week has been awesome!

Hermana Carroll and I have been working so hard and having so much fun. We are happy here just trying to enjoy these last few weeeks of the transfer.

The Madrid summer has officially come. And apparently its not even here in full blast yet.. great because I am dying already! Ha it is like the WORST at night trying to sleep and not getting anywhere with it. Luckily we found this ancient 100 years old fan thing in our apartement that we drag around with us everywhere during the morning and night.

We met and now are officially teaching a Spaniard BUDDHIST named M. who is from Bilbao. Ask me how many times I have met a spanish buddhist??

ZERO. I am taking advantage of it! and I am in love with her accent. She is so cute.

J.M. is finally getting baptized on Saturday! He is so incredible. He is the truest example of someone who has discovered the gospel of Christ. I am happy that he can finally get baptized and that he now is stronger than ever before. I love this cool guy! What a journey with him. Definitely a defining moment of my mission.

Well.. time is up! I love you all a lot. Keep of the good work and keep up smiling. We have a lot to be happy about.

Hermana Nydegger