Good Week

Hola familia y amigos!

   Once again, lots to write. I want to start off by sharing something cool I learned in my personal study a few weeks back. I was studying the Atonement in Luke 22 and read something I had never noticed before. Verse 45 reads, "And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow." Now I'd learned and learned about Jesus's suffering's in the Garden of Gethsemane before and knew that Jesus found his disciples sleeping, but something I read in that verse completely changed my perspective- "sleeping FOR SORROW". In the other accounts of the Atonement it just says "for their eyes were heavy". I had always kind of thought badly of the disciples for falling asleep while Christ was suffering in the garden. I thought they fell asleep because they didn't care what was taking place in that moments. I saw it as a horrible thing that they could allow themselves to fall asleep during such an important event and couldn't even wait for Christ for an hour. But when I read the words "for sorrow" and reflected on the fact that Jesus was only a stone's throw away from where the disciples were waiting, I realized that disciples had been watching Christ's sufferings. They were witnessing it all. And they fell asleep because they were so overcome with grief that their human bodies couldn't support it. They couldn't bear to see their Savior in such excruciating agony. I know what it feels like to be overcome with with exhaustion after much time crying. I can't imagine how utterly exhausted the disciples must have been after witnessing such a heart-wrenching scene. Then I thought, the disciples couldn't even bear to WATCH the Atonement, much less experience it, as Jesus did. What Christ suffered that day in Gethsemane is so far beyond our mortal comprehension. It is unfathomable. He felt every pain, every illness, every load of guilt, every betrayal, every regret, every crushed dream, every longing, every weakness, every sorrow, every affliction. Only the Son of the living God could have made such an infinite sacrifice and even He needed an angel to strengthem him. We will never truly comprehend the weight of the Atonement. But now I understand a little better what the disciples had to suffer and why that moment changed their lives forever.

   Ah. aren't the scriptures just amazing! I'm always learning new things! Especially for something I like to call "The profoundness of Hermano Juan". Hermano Juan (the husband of the member who feeds us lunch) has such a profound knowledge of the scriptures and deep doctrine. Whenever we have a spiritual question, we ask him and he always seems to know the answer. He has shared a few things with us that blow my mind haha. I can't really wrap my brain around some of it. For example, he asked us if dinosaurs lived on the earth in the time of Adam and Eve and we said we didn't know. He proceeded to explain that they never existed here in the earth, but that their fossils were brought from other worlds to be used as material in creating the earth. Woah. Who knows if that's true or not. But it's interesting to think about, right? 

   I don't know if I mentioned that Mauricio blessed the sacrament last week! That was really special to hear. He also received a calling as ward missionary!! Love it!

   This week is POURED rain and we had an appointment so we ventured out into the river in the street that reached half-way up our calfs. I had on a rain jacket, but my comp was using an umbrella which really didn't help at all because she got soaking wet. I think the rain must have been coming at an angle. It was all fun and exciting until I remembered that we often pass dead rats or birds lyring on the street and it made me about want to puke wondering what was beneath the river of water we were trudging through. Ew.... Oh, I also found a scorpion in our house this week and killed it with a chair. I feel like I'm becoming immune to the things that would normally scare the bejeebers out of me haha. 

   We had a training meeting in Managua this week and me and three other sisters performed my missionary versioin of "The Cup Song" and President liked it so much that afterwards, he had us perform it again to he could record it. Then all the other missionaries pulled out their cameras to record us too. President posted it to the mission facebook page: Misiòn Nicargua Managua Norte: if you want to see it. 

 Welp, I'm out of time. More adventures to come next week! Love you all!! 

Hermana Hawkins