Εβδομάδα 33: next stop... ATHENS!

ATHENS HERE I COME! 

My time is Cyprus is gonna have to take a lil detour since I'm only allowed to stay 90 days as an American. So my heart is being torn out a bit right now leaving all these strangers that have truly become my best friends... my family. I can't even express the love I have for this city and every person in it, they have my whole heart ♡ If it were up to me I'd happily finish my mission here! But the Lord has other plans ;) but I will forever be grateful for the time I have had to serve here in Larnaca and my fingers are extra extra crossed that I'll be transferred back soon!

In a few hours I'll be flying over to Greece and my new area will be Άγιος Δημήτριος (Ayios Dimitrios), in Athens! I'm super excited and I'll actually get to speak Greek again! Which, is a actually a little scary since I've been outta it for 3 months haha... so wish me luck because I'm gonna need it! 

onto this week...

The Lord is blessing this land! 

HELEN AND LLHYNE WERE BAPTIZED!! Came in with a bang and I'm going out with a bang ;) There's no more perfect way to end the transfer than seeing 2 more precious souls you've come to love make their 1st step in following the Savior. Their lives will never be the same. Both Helen and Llhyne have both been such a joy to teach and my heart is so happy for them! I'm so grateful Heavenly Father allowed us to play a role in their conversion. 

LLHYNE

Originally, we assumed that Llhyne was already an active member because ever since we arrived she had been attending church! Even the members thought she was a member. Come to find out she had been invited by her group of Filipino friends to "come and see!" And now she has come to STAY! Llhyne's heart has been open to the gospel since day 1. She recognizes that the greatest reason she has left her home and little baby boy in the Philippines was to come to find her full potential as a daughter of God and to learn of His plan for her. Her life personally has been blessed by the knowledge of the restored gospel, as well as her families' lives in the Philippines who are now taking lessons from the missionaries! Llhyne's joy radiates and is absolutely contagious as she loves to share the good news with those surrounding her. She was even privileged to be baptized in her native tongue of Tagalog! Her conversion to the gospel has been incredible to witness and we are excited to see her testimony continue to flourish and grow. 

HELEN 

10 years ago Helen and her husband, Ken, made the decision to have their names removed from the church records. Nearly 2 years ago, Ken made the decision that he wanted to be re-baptized and was, however, Helen remained uninterested. When the new senior couple arrived, the Grovers, an invitation was extended to her to read the scriptures and to pray. Which, she has not been in a habit of for a decade. As she accepted the challenge, she recognized the Spirit and knew what she was missing in her life. She began regularly attending church and deeply began to miss partaking of the sacrament and the precious gift of the Holy Ghost. After nearly 6 months of attending church, she came to the conclusion that she must be baptized. However, she also wanted to make that sacred promise having her husband baptize her. But that included waiting until her husbands Priesthood blessings were restored. As she faithfully waited for that time to come, prayers were answered and just last week that miracle happened! Helen has recommitted herself to serve the Lord. And that when she was ready to be "all in" again, she would be ALL IN! We have seen that change in her as she has gladly attended all branch activities and been the extra light to the members that the Larnaca branch couldn't live without. 

We were out doing some finding and talked to these 2 cute ladies from the Philippines and mid talking to them one of them pulls out her camera and tells us to "SMILE!" as she takes lots of selfies with us hahaha. They LOVE their pictures it's so funny. And then later that night, all those pictures show up on their Facebook captioned, "new friends!" At least we left a good impression on them ;)

Somehow Sister Baird and I have completely run out of money, like 100% dry with nothin, so we lived off of what we had left in the cupboards. Rice with frozen peas and corn for every meal this week! Oh the joys of adulting and budgeting... or not budgeting haha

Little side note... so I guess according to Italians, Italy has the best tasting food and so supposedly because of that, Elder Nicolis, can determine whether or not something taste good or not. Such as chocolate chip cookies! Now, Elder Free loves these cookies and says they taste amazing! In which Elder Nicolis tells him, "no you can't say those taste good!" But Elder Free then disagrees so eventually Elder Nicolis came to another conclusion and said, "ok, I don't own the taste of chocolate chip cookies, BUT I own the taste of pasta Elder... I OWN THE TASTE OF PASTA!" I guess that can be fair to say because he is Italian! And they probably do have the best pasta and pizza in the history of pasta and pizza haha. We all had a good laugh about all that ;)

BIG TRANSLATION SLIP UP!

So we got the new official Greek translation on the Book of Mormon last week right?? Well all us missionaries were over the moon excited about it until we started reading it and realized it's FULL of translation errors! As in not just little things but actually changing the story Haha. It is nearly as bad as the first translation! Here's just one example: Νεφί Α' 8:14..."αυτό είδα τη μητέρα μου" ... directly translating to ,"I saw my mother" ... LEHI'S MOTHER IS IN THE TREE OF LIFE! Another example: Νεφί Α' 9: 6 ... " και έτσι είναι. Αμήν. Και έτσι είναι. Αμήν." Guess we need a double emphasis on that line! Accents are in the wrong places, completely changing the meaning of words and it's quite hilarious. And yet we were so excited for this new translation! All these mistakes in the new translation has made me realize what a serious miracle it is that Joseph Smith translated this book from an ancient language in 3 short months with only minor grammatical and punctuation errors! Big testimony builder. What a crazy task to translate an entire book of scripture without any mistakes. Amazing what work, combined with the Holy Spirit can accomplish.

SOME GREEK 101 FOR YA mixed with a spiritual message ;)

So even tho Greek is a killer to learn, it's also SUPER COOL. Let me just explain with one example ;) 

While I was studying I had some personal revelation type thing... ok, so the word in greek for conversion is μεταστροφή... which being translated directly means "after the turn"... if it is after the turn, that means we don't turn back. If we turn back in our conversion, it becomes more like "during the turn" and the word for during it κατά... so putting together "during the turn", you get καταγραφή, meaning catastrophe or destruction... that's the cool part haha. Basically in simplest terms, we need to truly become CONVERTED to the gospel or it just doesn't work and it will be a catastrophe! We will NOT spiritually survive without receiving a personal testimony and a personal conversion. If we take a step back and look at the world today, there is so much controversy on what's "good" and what's "bad". The world is changing and we shouldn't be changing with it. TRUTH IS TRUTH. Gods ways never change. I testify that we have a living prophet today, President Russell Nelson. As we heed his council, and find our own testimonies, we will never be led astray.  The prophet won't always say what we want to hear, but he will ALWAYS tell us what we need to know if we want to survive this life. 

All your support and prayers mean the world to me! love you guys!

Signin out from Cyprus with lots of love!

ΑΔΕΛΦΗ ΓΚΕΪΛ :)

PICS! 

1-3 LLHYN'S baptism!

4-6 the beach crew 

7-8 HELEN'S baptism!

9-10 fav Cameroonians David and Francis! Our recent converts! 

11 our Filipino family ♡

12 Kamal! The elders RC

13-14 I LOVE SISTER BAIRD!