This week i have really been studying la Expiación...the Atonement and every time i study it i am so grateful for Jesus Christ and his willingness to follow God's will and perform the Atonement for me. For one of our investigators we want to teach him about the atonement and while Hermana Heacock and i were talking about it we both thought that he needs to know that Jesus Christ did this for HIM. he performed the Atonement for each one of us individually and he knows each one of us personally. I think it is so amazing.that someone loves me that much that they would go through all that pain and sorrow so that i could one day return to my Heavenly Father. in one of my classes we read Mosiah 15:5-9 and in verse 9 it says that Christ has compassion for us, and our teacher asked us why he needed to have compassion, why was that so important? and so i have been thinking about it, and if Christ didn't have compassion for us we would't have anyone that would understand completely what we are going through, but he does have compassion and he does understand exactly what each one of us is going through, and he is there to help us when we ask him! this week we have had two investigators and for one of them Hermana Heacock and i talked about how we would teach him about the restoration and how Joseph smith was a prophet, but after we had our personal study and came back together we both realized that we had studied and felt like we needed to talk about the atonement and how we are God's children and he is our father.we were both kind of amazed how we both felt like we needed to talk about the atonement and not the restoration. it was a really cool experience for me to see in a way how personal revelation works.
This week was a hard week for me. On Monday i was not feeling it. Every little thing that someone did bothered me, and we had a lesson with an investigator and all the Spanish i knew left my brain i couldn't say anything at all. and all i wanted was to be able to have 5 minutes by myself. haha but as the day went on it started to get a little better.and later that night we had a little devotional with our zone because one of our districts was leaving the next morning and i felt their spirit and their love for all of us and that helped me a lot. luckily though the next day was a lot better and yesterday was a really good day. Hermana Heacock and i have memorized Moroni 10.5 and 80 new words in Spanish in the past two days, and i have started to work on the first vision! so we have been a lot more productive and it really is awesome how much i am learning . Keep praying for me and that i may receive the gift of tongues!!! yesterday we did this thing called TRC. its pretty much just tracking. we were in one o the buildings and each classroom had an investigator and we would knock on their door and tell them we were missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and we would ask them if they had a few minutes that we could share our message with them.we did it three times! the first one was ok i think because it was the first time it was a little ruff and we didn't know exactly what we were going to say, but it went pretty well. the second one though was my favorite. I felt like i knew a lot of Spanish and i was able to say the things that i needed to say and i understood her more than i usually do. so i was really happy with that one, and than the third time was with this 15 year old boy. and we go in there and introduce ourselves and ask him if he has ever heard of our church and he says yes, and so we ask him if he believes ion God and he says yes and that he is catholic. so were thinking to ourselves ok cool this is good he believes that there is a God. so i start to talk about how our church has been restored on the earth through a man named Joseph smith and i ask him if he has ever heard of Joseph smith and he says yes again.so we asked him about the book of Mormon and if he has read it before and again he says yes. so we ask him if he has prayed to know its true and he says yes again, and Hermana Heacock and i look at each other and we're like what do we do? haha we have never had someone that easy who just already believes in everything. Hermana Heacock looks at me and whispers baptism. So i invite him to be baptized, and that is something i am proud of i have memorized the baptism invitation in Spanish so that was a relief, and he says yes, and i was like alrighty sweet! and the first day that popped into my head was Sábado. so i asked him if he would prepare himself to be baptized this Saturday. and he was like ya i will do that. Hermana Heacock and i left that appointment feeling pretty good. we were both so taken back because we had never had anyone that was that easy before. i must have set a record in shortest time for someone to prepare to get baptized!!! but it was pretty fun i like doing that a lot.
Sundays are probably one of my favorite days. i love going to relief society and at night we watch church movies and have devotionals.One thing though that really stressed me out this past Sunday is for our sacrament we have it with our zone so that's about 30 people. and you are given a topic and you have to prepare a talk IN SPANISH and you don{t know if you are going to have to give it or not. they announce who will talk when we are there so you need to be prepared. luckily i didn't have to give mine this Sunday though. it was pretty rough. my topic was fine but translating it into Spanish is hard. that's one thing i still struggle with a lot is conjugating all the words correctly and they say things backwards in Spanish so its all confusing. one elder that got called read his whole talk straight from preach my gospel. that's where we get our topics from it was kind of funny. the movies that we watched on Sunday though were pretty good. the first one was about a man named John Tanner. he was from another church and one day he saw a sign on a wall that said come listen to LDS missionaries. and so he was going to go there and tell them how wrong they were. one thing that you need to know about John is that he had a diseased leg that needed to be amputated or else he would die. and he told the doctor he came into the world with his leg and he would leave the world with his leg. He knew he didn't have a lot of time left so he decided that he was going to set his affairs in order and do as much good as he could for the rest of his life. he was also a very wealthy man. anyway he went to listen to the missionaries speak but once he got there and heard there message about Joseph smith and the book of Mormon, he decided to test it out. so he started to read the Book of Mormon and him and his family started to meet with the missionaries. during one visit the missionaries asked John if he would be baptized, but because of john's leg he wasn't able to it would be to hard and painful for him to do that. one of the missionaries sat there for a minute and than said, "John do you have faith that Jesus can heal you? John pondered for a moment and than said confidently yes! the missionary than commanded John to be healed and walk, and John was healed and he made the missionaries baptize him that very night! it was pretty amazing. The faith that both of them had in Jesus Christ was truly incredible to me. but his story doesn't end there. John provided around 13 wagons for families that were going to Nauvoo and than one night he had a dream that he needed to take his family and move to Nauvoo as well. this was right around the time that the temple was going to be taken away from the saints because they didn't have enough money to pay the mortgage on it. in his life he ended up giving the church around $50,000 to the church. at one point his family had to beg for food because they didn't have any money left. he consecrated everything he had to the Lord and he did it humbly and never asked for anything in return. it was a pretty inspiring story. the second movie we watched was about Christ's life on earth and his crucifixion and resurrection. again it testified to me again that Jesus Christ is my Savior and Redeemer. I am so grateful for his willingness to do that for me and i love him so much. i am so grateful for this opportunity to be at the CCM and learn more about his Gospel every day it is amazing and has blessed my life so much! i'm so grateful to have been raised by goodly parents who taught me about the gospel and raised me the right away! i love you guys so much and miss you but there is no other place i would rather be than right here on my mission!!!
Estoy muy agradecida por esta oportunidad de estar en el CCM y aprender sobre el evangelio. Sé que Jesucristo es mi Salvador y Redentor, y que realizó el Expiación para mí para que yo pueda vivir con él otra vez! Amo chicos tanto y estoy agradecido por los maravillosos ejemplos estás a mi!
Love Hermana Bateman
p.s on mothers day i will be able to skype you guys around 2:30!!! and thank you dad for sending me Rachael's letter keep forwarding those to me! and happy anniversary Devin and Carli and Mike and Breeann!!!! I love you guys!!!!
the first one is of my district in front of the CCM sign, the second one is with Hermana Telea and hermana Finau. Hermana Telea is the one in the middle and we have gotten pretty close! and the last one is with Elder Fernandez and Elder Oyola. i met them one night and they started speaking to me and i would try to speak spanish and they would try to speak english. they are so nice!!!
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