I´ll See You All In LESS Than One Year!!!!

January 27, 2014

 

Dear Everybody who takes time out of their busy schedules to read this:

Wow, Pday again! This week was ridiculously fast and I feel like I just wrote you all the other day. If all the weeks go like this, I´ll see you all before I know it! But yes, we reached the 6 month mark this week!!!!!!!!!!!! One third done???!!! Wow. It´s super weird to think I have less than a year left. Also, before I forget again, last week´s title came from a super cool quote: ¨Eventually we must do more than tell the stories of the Book of Mormon, we must live them.¨ I LOVE that because as missioanries we spend so much time studying the scriptures and then out on the streets I´ve had actual experiences that remind me so much of those stories. Pretty awesome. So, this week in a nutshell:

Happy Moment of the Week: I got a package from one of my BESTEST friends Alison!!!!!!!!! I was SO excited! I am so lucky to have a friend like her :)

Personal Miracle of the Week: So last week my memory card on my camera became full, so I grabbed the new memory card before we went on our Pday adventure to the castle. Once there, I changed the memory card and put the full one in my camera case for safe-keeping and then we took some pics at the Castle! We were high up, but the ledge was super thick and I set my bag and camera case (because i was about to put my camera away) on the ledge for like one second while I snapped one last pic. However, it was quite a breezy day and the wind sent my camera case falling down to the grass below. We were going down again anyway so I didn´t worry about it and one of the Elders grabbed it for me and then I looked inside...and the memory card was gone. Time to panic! We´re talking a whole 6 months of my mission on that card! But I just grabbed a couple missionaries to help me look in the place where it fell, thinking it would be right there...but there was long grass and since we didn´t know if it fell while it was still falling or if it had bounced out, we weren´t sure how easy it would be to find. We said a prayer and looked for about 20 mins with no luck and eventually were joined by the rest of the group of missionaries. After a couple more mins I was about to say forget it because it was proving to be kind of impossible and I didn´t want to waste everyone´s Pday looking for a tiny memory card in the grass. I was just about to voice this when one of the elders shouted that he found it. He FOUND IT! In the area with the tallest grass! It seriously should have been impossible, but let me tell you guys, the Lord answers prayers!!! And now that memory card is safe and sound in my bedroom and it´s not leaving again!

Most Interesting Lesson of the Week: We had a first lesson with a woman named Jolaine, an old investigator in the area book that was finally home when we passed by. She had a million questions! I´ve never had someone ask so many questions! So even though it was just supposed to be an introduction lesson, we taught Lesson 1 too. And I´ve never had anybody been so interested in the fact that we have living Apostles and a Prophet! Like, she got me excited about it because she thought it was so cool, and so I realized that wow, it IS cool! We have Apostles on the Earth today! I love teachign lessons to people that actually ask questions and listen.

Biggest Regret of the Week: I wish that before my mission I had looked up more information about the Catholic church. It´s not a big deal but these people will sometimes talk forever about the millions of virgins and saints and stuff and I wish I knew more about what they mean. Besides, even though no one in Spain is really practicing Catholics, it´s still part of their culture and I honestly don´t know a lot about the church. So we had this super talkative investigator who kept talking about and comparing what we said to the Catholic church and it was hard to follow her rants becuase I didn´t know much about it.

Saddest Moment of the Week: We get a lot of rejection, but most of the time people don´t outrightly reject the message. They just say they don´t have time or that they are practicing another religion or they just aren´t super interested. But one lady right before closing the door said these exact words (but in Spanish obviously so I guess it´s not super exact): ¨I don´t want to hear anything about Jesus Christ.¨ Wow. ¡Qué fuerte! Not many people phrase it quite like that and it honestly felt like a punch in the stomach to hear it. I felt awful and wanted to just knock on her door one more time and start yelling that Jesus has given her EVERYthing and yet she wants nothing to do with Him. That´s not what we did though. We laughed it off and went to the next door, but her words kind of haunted me for a few mins. No one had ever quite rejected us in that way before, using His actual name. It was a strange feeling.

Second Saddest Moment of the Week: We were waiting for the bus and this couple started talking to us and asking us things. Her husband went on this rant about how awful the world is and how we cn believe in a loving God. The wife was more willing to actually listen to us, but she actually asked how old we were and then she told us that someday when we had more life experience and life had hardened us that we would lose our faith. Someone actually told me that I was going to lose my faith! I wish we had been able to get their information so I could write her a letter in like 30 years and tell her all about my strong faith :)

Most Random Lesson of the Week: Bashir! After English class we went with him to McDonald´s because he wanted to do something nice for us and so just picture the strangeness of the mission for a second. Two girls from the US, eating at McDonald´s in Spain with a guy from Libya who is Muslim and doesn´t speak English or Spanish and he´s showing us parts of the Koran translated into English so we could read a little bit. Sometimes the mission is the weirdest...but he is seriously the sweetest guy ever! We made him cookies to thank him. I feel bad because he misses his family, so I think the missionaries are some of the only friends he has here in Spain so I´m so glad we made friends with him!

Near Death Experiences of the Week: This category is debatable becuaes I don´t think we were close to dying, but you never know! So Saturday morning I was taking my after-exercise rest on the couch (because for once I did enough exercise to qualify for a rest haha) and so I was half asleep when our carbon monoxide alarm went off. and so Hna Hoffman comes in and we just look at each other and tried to decide what to do, because in zone conference we had had a lot of warnings about what to do about that. So we grabbed the phone and went down to the lobby and called our DL, then the AP, then the Castillos (the office senior couple). Hna Castillo asked us some questions and then wanted to hear what the beeping sounded like. So we went back in our apartment and she thought it just was dysfunctional and needed to be replaced. So we started studying (at this point late to study because we wasted our getting ready time on the phone with everyone) and then read the instructions on the box and realized that the beeping for needing new batteries was a different beep, and so we were pretty sure that the beeping was actually the carbon monoxide beep. But by that point it wasn´t beeping anymore and it was still on, so...I guess we´re good! But it was a weird experience, and since you can´t smell and know if carbon monoxide is there, who knows if we had any or not! But we didn´t have any of the symptoms so I´m sure it´s all fine. Then later that day we bought a Kebab (look it up, they don´t have them in America because apparently they´re not FDA approved) becuase we really were craving Kebabs, but we bought it from a pretty sketchy looking Kebab place so we were joking about how we were testing our luck today because we had already survived carbon monoxide alarm.

Spiritual Stuff of the Week: The Zone Leaders gave us all copies of this AMAZING talk by Tad R Callister about being a consecrated missionary. I don´t know if you can find it online, but he gave it a few years ago in the Brazil MTC. I wish I could talk about everything I learned, but I only have time to focus on one concept: sacrifice. So I spent a lot of time thinking about sacrifice. Here´s the thing, everyone knows a mission is a sacrfice. I sacrificed going to my sister´s wedding. I´m sacrificing times with my family and friends and I´m putting my education on hold to be here. However, the real sacrifices of a mission are not things you usually think about in that sense. The sacrificial alter of a misison requires that we sacrifice other things, such as fear, pride, weaknesses, basically our will. A weaknesses isn´t normally something you think of sacrificing, but when you´re in a lesson and the Spirit wants you to say something but you know you´re Spanish isn´t good enough to say it, you have to sacrifice that weakness and just figure it out. Fear is something you normally think of sacrificing but when a mean Spanish person is wanting you to go away, you have to forget about the fear and just bear your testimony anyway. So yes, it´s a sacrifice to leave home and family and school, but it´s a bigger and more personal and difficult sacrifice to put all those untangible things on the table and give everything to Jesus. ¨When you came to the mission field you burned the bridges behind you, you burned the ships in the harbor. There is no retreat to your former life.¨ Pretty intense! Honestly, the talk about consecrated missionaries was rather discouraging, because I realized I have SO many things to get better at to even be close to being a consecrated missionary, but at the end of the talk is this quote: ¨I do not think the Lord expects immediate perfection of us, but I do believe he expects immediate progress.¨ and ¨I do not believe there is one missionary whose weaknesses are greater than the potential strengths within him.¨ I believe that can apply to all of you as well.

So that was my week! Tell me about your weeks!
Keep it real and go share the gospel!

Hna Andrew

My Second Christmas

January 13, 2014

 

 

¿Qué tal?

Guys! My Christmas finally came! My package! It was actually kind of fun to get it after Cmas and everything was over, because I was able to be excited all over again! And I have GOLDFISH and REESE´S and NEW CLOTHES!!!! I´ve pretty much never been so excited! The lucky thing is, it came the day AFTER transfers, so had I been leaving Málaga, I would have just barely missed it!

Which leads me to...transfers! So normally all the changes happen on Weds and we got Hna T´s travel plans for Weds morning so I figured my comp would be coming on Weds, but the zone leaders never told me anything differently until the Hna Israelsen told me Tuesday morning that my comp was coming Tuesday afternoon. Surprise! So we got her that night and hung out as a trio for a few hours until Hna T left the next morning. Honestly though it makes things awkward so I wish that their travel didn´t overlap. But no matter! Hna Hoffman is fantastic, I love this girl! She is most recently from Reno, Nevada and is 19 and the oldest of 5 kids and like I said, has been on the mission for the exact same time as me. However, she was in Provo MTC the entire time and then visa waited for 2 weeks in the SLC East mission. Ever since coming to Spain she´s served in Puerto de Santa Maria which is near Cadiz and Jerez. She LOVED it there and it sounds like a really cool place since they work with the Spanish branch (which just became a ward this Sunday!) and the American military branch, so they have American investigators too! She´s been at college for a year, with one semester at BYU Hawaii and one at BYU Provo. Interesting note, her mother is from Brazil! So she speaks Portuguese fairly well and has spent every summer in Brazil for the first 14 years of her life. So she loves their food and is reading the BoM in Portuguese right now and connected well with Rosemeire, a lady in our ward from Brazil. It was good to know that I couldn´t understand her very well not because she has a difficult accent, but because she literally speaks in half Spanish, half Portuguese. No wonder I can´t understand a word she says! haha.

Unfortunately I had a mini-cold this week. I felt totally fine, though, the only thing that was affected was my voice, which I started to lose after a couple days of sore throat. So when I met my new comp I had this harsh voice that sounded nothing like my real voice and I joked about letting her think I really talked that way, but she apparently was just getting over the same thing, so we spent our first couple days coughing together. Nothing brings comps together like being sick together! I never get sick, so I think this has just been from the crazy weather. It will be really warm for a couple days, then get colder again, then rain, then lots of sun. Sometimes i think I won´t need my coat and then I regret the decision and sometimes I wear my coat and end up just carrying it around. I truly do hope that we´ve seen the coldest it gets!

So, we had a lesson with Lina. It was a really goodd lesson in a way, but also really hard on me. First of all, I was nervous out of my mind because even though I´m not senior comp, I pretty much am senior comp until she knows the area and the people just as well as me. So directing the lesson was entirely on me at first, which was scary, but it went well! So that boosted my confidence in terms of my Spanish teaching ability. However, it was a hard lesson because she believes the BoM is true, she believes our Church is true, but won´t get baptized. She won´t get baptized because she feels comfortable in her traditional Church (which she doesn´t go to unless she´s visiting Ukraine, I think it´s just the traditional beliefs she won´t leave behind) and she´s scared to change. So at the beginning of the lesson she was saying ¨no¨ all together. Then we powerfully promised her that if she would be courageous and take this step of faith and be the example that her family would eventually follow her in this path. Then she said she would at least think about it again. So...I guess that´s some progress. She was going to come to Church on Sunday but didn´t in the end. I think if she would just come to Church once that would help everything but...she always has an excuse. At leeast she read in the BoM before our lesson, so hopefully she´ll read the chapter we left her before our lesson tomorrow! But it´s hard on me because Lina is one of those people that I´ve literally been with since the beginning when Hna Roan and I found her and I feel strongly that she is someone I was supposed to meet here in Málaga but it´s come to the point where if she doesn´t start progressing we will need to stop visiting her. :( We´ll see how everything goes tomorrow!

This will be a short email, but I only have one more point to make--which is to restate that miracles DO happen! So on Saturday night we literally had no plans. So from the proselyting hours of 4-9:45 we literally just had a lot of names of less actives and futures and former investigators written down. For 5 hours, 4-9, we literally couldn´t get anybody. We kept walking and even knocked a few doors here and there, but we were getting nothing. So we were getting kind of down on ourselves and were just silently walking to the next plans. A couple people were actually mean to us too, which didn´t help. since we only had 45 mins left I was sick of trying to find people and in my head was thinking about how much I wouldn´t mind just wondering around until it was time to go home, but we had just a couple more names left and so we knocked on the door of a former investigator family who hadn´t had missionaries visit them for about 8 months and they were there and let us in and we had a lesson and they were really nice. BAM. 3 new investigators. So even when you think nothing you do is working out and you´re just walking the streets for nothing and you don´t have the energy or desire to try again, just try one more time. Don´t give up. The Lord blesses you when you keep going! Miracles are the sweetest when they come at the end :)

I love you ALL! Thank you so much for your support and prayers! They are greatly needed here!

Hna Andrew

Another Surprise

January 6, 2014


Dear Family and Everyone,

Last transfer call was a surprise because I wasn´t expecting Hna Roan to leave. This transfer call was a surprise because I´m STAYING in Málaga even though Hna Thompson is the one of us who is newer to the area! I wasn´t REALLY surprised though because I think I already mentioned that Elder Chumbipuma said that he thought Hna T was leaving. Obviously he´s not the one who decides, but ever since he said that I couldn´t get it out of my head and so I just kind of had this feeling that I might be staying. President Deere said that he just really felt that she needed to leave. So I will have 4 transfers in Málaga--6 months! At least I´m pretty sure it will only be 4 transfers here because nobody ever stays more than 6 months in one area. But what´s even weirder is that from the 8 people that were in my district when I first entered the mission field, I am now the ONLY one left from that district. I´m not the oldest missionary in the district, but I´m the oldest one in the area. That makes me feel old! And I still feel like I just got here! And in the entire Málaga zone (about 25 missionaries), there are 2 of us who were in the zone that was here when I got here. Wow. That´s WEIRD. But yeah, Elders Quinn and Oldroyd are leaving, and that´s what I´m saddest about actually because we were the only 3 that had been together my whole time here and they are like my brothers and they are both leaving because they have 4 transfers here. Not seeing them every week will actually be weirdest. But my new comp is coming! Her name is Hermana Hoffman. What´s scary is that she is in my same group, so we both only have 3 transfers in the mission, so we´re both super young! I guess President really trusts us!!! But although we were in the same group, I´ve actually never met her because she had visa issues and came to Spain later than everyone else. I´ve only talked with 2 other hermanas who have met her briefly and they both said good things, so I´m really excited! And in case anyone´s curious, Hna Thompson is going to Murcia.

But I was a tiny bit disappointed to be the one staying because I kind of wanted a change of pace, but then something happened that made me super glad to be staying. We had a lesson with Alexandra!!!! Maybe you don´t remember because it´s been awhile, but Alexandra is a menos activo from Ecuador and wanted to be active in the church again and we were teaching her nonmember husband Paco. But then shortly after Hna T´s arrival they practically dropped dead because no matter what we did we could not get in contact with them. i was super bummed about it because I love that family but had to move on. So the last time we saw them was October. Then on New Year´s Day, so almost 3 months later, we saw Alexandra on the street!!! It was literally a miracle. Mostly because at the time I still thought I might be the one to leave but Hna T only taught them once so she said she wouldn´t have recognized Alexandra on the street, but I did! Anyway, we got everything explained and it turns out she had a new phone number and she´d been in Huelva for like 2 months and her work has been crazy and Paco kind of wanted to go to Church activities but doesn´t feel comfortable going by himself. Then she actually asked us when we were coming over to visit them. I pretty much was flipping out all day. I just couldn´t believe it! So we taught just Alexandra on Saturday (Paco had to work so I still have yet to see him again actually) and she came to Church on Sunday! And we have another lesson tomorrow! So if I had to stay in Málaga just to help them and teach them somemore then I´m okay with that. I love that family!

All right, what else do I have to tell you guys? well, Tuesday was New Years Eve and it was great because it was ZONE CONFERENCE! And not just a regular zone meeting, but a zone CONFERENCE which means President Deere comes and there´s like 3 zones that all get to come so we see more people and they feed us! So I got to see Hna Roan and Hna Lyons again!!! My old comps! I love them SO much...seriously. but this time we had a talent show and Hna Roan and I performed things that we had practiced while we were comps and she´s the best singer ever so it was fantastic and other people did some stuff. It was just really good times all around. Also, ever since Hna Poulton left (she actually majored in piano performance so she´s much better than me) I´ve pretty much become the zone pianist. Which is totally fine except for the misison song where everyone´s in a circle and singing it. I´d rather be singing! Maybe I´ll make someone else play it next time :p I´ll tell you some spiritual stuff from zone conference at the end.

So for New Years Eve we went to Emilio and Maribel´s house with Elders Chumbipuma and Quinn. We´re not actually allowed to have more than one set of missioanries at a member´s house at one time but we didn´t have anywhere to go so the zone leaders gave us permission! Mostly because we weren´t allowed to proselyte so if we weren´t there we would have just been at the piso anyway...but it was really great! Maribel cooked this AMAZING dinner. There was this roasted lamb with this incredible garlic-ish sauce on it and MASHED POTATOES. I literally thought I was going to die of happiness. When was the last time that I had MASHED POTATOES??? Actually, I had some at Thanksgiving, but those were made by Americans for an American holiday, so it´s not like a member from Spain has ever fed us mashed potatoes. Either way, it was just incredible. Then for midnight, Spain (I don´t know if other countries do this, but at least spain does) has this New Year tradition with grapes. Instead of counting down to midnight and then screaming like in America, they wait until midnight (and I don´t remember counting down at all) and then on the TV (which showed what was going on in Madrid) they had the campanas (bells) strike 12 times (because it´s 12 o´clock) and every time the clock strikes you have to eat a grape. so basically you try to eat 12 grapes (to represent 12 months) in 12 seconds. It´s so stressful! Oh my word! And if you don´t eat all the grapes, however many you have left is the number of months of bad luck you have. Hna T is having 5 months of bad luck. I´m not really sure how to count mine, because they were all in my mouth, but it definitely took a couple minutes to get them all down, especially since most people don´t actually buy seedless grapes here (so they´re really annoying to eat) and you´re laughing the whole time too. It was fantastic though and a tradition that I might make my family try sometime!

Also, I know that most of you are back to regular life, but the holiday mood is still here in Spain. However, that ends today because today is the last holiday: 3 Kings Day! Today is traditionally the day they give presents, but most people now just do it on Cmas. But today is still a holiday where there are lots of parades and the 3 kings (3 wise men) throw candy to everyone. We were at a member´s house in a pueblo Churriana yesterday when the parade went by and so we went out and watched for awhile and it was super cool! And we got enough hard candy thrown at us to last until I come home from my mission haha. Also, I may or may not have been hugged by a man, even though I´m a missionary. I´m not sure though because he/she was dressed in a Minnie Mouse suit. So you would think it would be a girl, but Hna T thinks that only a guy would randomly come hug two girls. But who knows!

The weather here has gone crazy. For a couple days it got REALLY warm, and it was great because how many times in my life will I walk around in the middle of January and be too hot for my coat? so it was like 75 degrees (by my estimation) for a couple days but then just overnight it DROPPED and yesterday was super cold and today has been pretty chilly as well. I´m personally hoping that it gets warm again!

All right, really quick I´ll tell you some cool stuff President Deere said. His talk was about the Atonement. If any of you are wondering if there´s anything better than listening to the coolest mission president ever tell you a bunch of his insights of the Atonement, I´ll tell you, there´s not! But anyway, his first point was about D&C 45:3-5. Everybody needs to go read it. It´s amazing. But Pres Deere is a lawyer so he asked, what do you do when you are defending someone? You talk about their good qualities. You mention all the good things they´ve done. You talk about their intentions and their heart and how they tried but just messed up a little. But Jesus is a different lawyer. He defends us, but not by doing those things. If you read that scripture in D&C, you find that He defends us by stepping in front of us and saying, ¨It doesn´t matter what they´ve done. Look at what I´ve done. I´ve paid for them. Hermana Andrew is clean because I suffered for her.¨ And I wish I could elaborate more the way Pres Deere did but it´s truly incredible the way Jesus paid for our sins. Incredible. But more than just paying for our sins, it takes us higher than that and makes us holy and perfect in Christ. Pres Deere said that Moroni 10:32 doesn´t say perfect LIKE Christ, but perfect IN Christ. We don´t have to be perfect right now, we just have to keep trying and accept Jesus´s sacrifice for us. I wish I could share more but I´m out of time!

Got all the letters from the Primary! LOVED them!!! And I got Cmas cards from the Dones, Winslows and Drakes. Thanks so much!!! Take care and make 2014 the best year ever!

Hna Andrew

¨Journey Stories¨

December 30, 2013


Dear Everyone,

Well, it´s been an interesting week! I wish there was more to tell but to be honest, there hasn´t been a lot to do this week. President Deere said that on Christmas Eve and Day that we shouldn´t go see anyone who wasn´t expecting us, so basically if we didn´t have citas then there wasn´t much we could do. And not many people actually like to have lessons during Christmas vacation so there hasn´t been much to do even after Christmas either...so there has been lots of walking around. LOTS of walking around. Oh well!

Also, Christmas Eve and New Years Eve we are allowed to be with members until midnight and then go straight home. So Christmas Eve was fun because early in the evening a bunch of missioanries in the Málaga Zone got together in the centro and sang Christmas carols while a couple missionaries handed out cards and talked to people. The lights in downtown Málaga were sweet and the Spirit of the night was really cool. Then we were with a member family and ate good food and then played board games until midnight. Then Christmas Day we actually didn´t go anywhere because no one had invited us. Cmas Eve seems to be more of a big deal here than Cmas Day, because plenty of people asked what we were doing for Cmas Eve but no one asked about Cmas Day. So Cmas Day we just met a bunch of missionaries in the Chapel and played card games and ate Chinese food. Then we went and SKYPED OUR FAMILIES. And I really needed that conversation. I am not an emotional person ever. Anyone who has watched a sad movie with me knows I don´t cry. I had been excited all day so I didn´t actually think I´d end up crying but the second I heard their voices I just got really choked up and almost couldn´t speak, but then had to get over it quickly because we only had an hour haha. But after hanging up the tears came back. Anyone who has served a mission understands that it´s on your mission that you truly realize how amazing families are. And ANY other time of your life if you´re having a hard time your family is just a phone call away. But on the mission...only an hour and a half of email every week doesn´t always help in the moment that you actually feel like you need the support and love. So just hearing a chorus of voices telling me that they loved me and that they were proud of me...well, I think it´d make anyone cry. But I didn´t cry for very long because I think Sandra (the member) was worried or thought that I was super sad, which I wasn´t sad necessarily, just overwhelmed. Plus she made me food so I ate and talked to her and didn´t cry anymore haha.

Although I don´t think all missions have rules that let you stay up later. So for anyone who thinks we shouldn´t be allowed to stay up that late ever, I´ll tell you, it is NOT as fun as it sounds. Why? Because missionaries go to bed and wake up at the exact same time every single night and day, without exceptions. So I´ve come to find that any change in that pattern completely messes with me and I just end up more tired. As of now we don´t have any plans for New Years Eve and honestly at this point, I´m almost hoping we just go to bed like normal :p But yeah, this is the last time you will all hear from me in 2013! Also, I thought of this, since I left for my mission in 2013 and will come home in 2015, 2014 will be the only year of my entire life without seeing my family. Just kind of weird to think about...

Want to know something funny about English? I´ve never realized this before, but to say ¨you are not¨ you can either say ¨you´re not¨ or ¨you aren´t.¨ There are 2 different contractions for the exact same thing and you can use them interchangably. There aren´t actually any rules about which one to use at what times. I´ve never noticed that before and found it kind of interesting.

Time for some spiritual things! I don´t know if I told you all this, but the mission together started reading the BoM after General Conference and are finishing it by the end of the year, or tomorrow. I was behind but I managed to catch up and am on track to finish tomorrow! So now i can say that this is the first time I´ve read the BoM all the way through twice in one year, and I´ve now read the BoM twice in Spanish! Maybe next year I´ll make it a goal to read the BoM 3 times in one year! haha there´s lots of super crazy awesome scriptures in DyC and the Bible though, so we´ll see! But anyway, as a mission we were reading to focus on all the references of Christ and his direct words. So I kept a list of every single name that Christ has in the BoM, and I haven´t counted them yet, but there are quite a few! But it´s been really cool for me to read through all these names and realize all the roles that Christ has in the Church, in the world and in our lives. it´s incredible. There are some names that inspire awe and wonder, like Supreme Creator or Lord Omnipotent or Lord God Almighty. But I think my favorite names are the ones that show what light and peace and salvation He brings to my life personally, like Redeemer, Rock of my Salvation, Counselor, Prince of Peace, Good Shepherd (especially after reading pres Monson´s talk about True Shepherds), and a God of Miracles. And even though there are so many names that I love, if I have to pick a favorite name that Christ has and the one that has the most significance for me, it would have to be Savior. After all is said and done, He came to Earth to save us from our sins, mistakes, sorrows, weaknesses and trials. I know without a doubt that He lives and loves us and He has laid out a path for our salvation, and we can find that path in the scriptures. We just have to choose to start walking on it. I hope that this Christmas all of you were able to think about what Christ´s life means to you and what you can do this next year to show Him that you´re willing to follow Him and do His will.

And to explain my title, I picked my quote of the year for 2014. It´s from one of Pres Uchtdorf´s talks from I think the April General Conference. ¨I believe that every life is a collection of individual journey stories.¨ I loved that quote a lot, and obviously it´s not talking about only physical journeys, but this year I´m going to have more physical journeys than I´ve ever had before and there are places in Spain that I´m going to live in and fall in love with, so I picked this quote to represent the many physical and spiritual journeys i´m going to experience this year. I´m so excited :)

Well, that´s it for this week. Transfers are next week and Hna T and I have 2 transfers together so we´re for sure getting ¨the call¨ this week! Exciting! Logically, I would be the one leaving because i´ve been here longest, but apparently our District Leader thinks she´s the one leaving but he won´t tell us why he thinks that...so who knows what could happen. Stay tuned for next week I guess. And have a Happy New Year and be safe and make really awesome resolutions because there are always things we can do to be better!

Love you all!
Hna Andrew

¡Feliz Navidad!

December 23, 2013

¡Hola familia y amigos!

I hope you are all excited for Christmas!!! I am pretty dang excited myself because I get to talk to the best family in the world :)

All right, time to tell you all about the hardest week of my mission so far. And I´m not exaggerating either, this one was literally the hardest. Had I written this email on Saturday night, you all would have worried about me. I was even scared by my own feelings because I had never felt so depressed in my entire life. But gratefully I´m writing today and can explain how everything turned out!

So, finding week. Mission goal was to find 800 new investigators this week. That means 8 for every companionship. Tough goal, but definitely doable. Hna Thompson and I had had a couple weeks of not a lot of lessons or any new investigators, so we were definitely needing some miracles. At the beginning of the week it wasn´t so bad. We got a few good contacts from knocking doors and in the street. We had citas set up and we were actually confident that we would be able to help the mission goal. We were contacting more than we ever had before, so naturally we thought that by working harder and talking to more people, we would be blessed with more people to teach. But...we were wrong. Every single cita we set up fell through. Every single one. Even other citas that normally don´t fail (with recent converts and members) were falling through. Most of the people just weren´t home at the time of the cita, but a couple people actually lied about their address so we tried to find a place that didn´t exist. We literally spent hours walking the streets. Our shoulders hurt, our feet hurt, and we were just plain discouraged. And it wouldn´t have been so bad, except for it´s finding week! So every night we had to report to our leaders that we had 0 news that day. And everyone else was seeing tons of people and finding plenty of investigators so they kept asking what we were doing wrong and how they could help and we had to tell them that people literally just kept failing us and there wasn´t anything we could do about it. And the later it got it the week, the worse everything seemed. The APs even asked our District Leader to work in our area on Saturday afternoon. Then on Saturday evening was the ward Christmas dinner and none of the people we invited came and the dinner started so late (an hour late) that we couldn´t even stay the whole time even though I was supposed to play piano for some musical program stuff. Hna Thompson and I spent most of Saturday night and Sunday morning trying not to cry.

The good news is that the story doesn´t end there. But I wanted to tell you all a little about discouragement and hope. Everybody knows missions are hard and everybody knows that missionaries get rejected a lot. But before the mission it is really hard to truly understand how it feels. I always thought that even if nobody listened to you it would still be easy to stay happy all the time because missionaries know they are doing the work of the Lord and that numbers don´t matter. But that´s NOT true. We do the same thing day after day without any breaks (besides Pday kind of). There are always people checking your numbers and asking what you can do better. It is so hard to stay motivated when people lie to you or literally shut a door in your face and you just cannot do anything to force yourself to talk to the next person because it´s easier to just keep walking. You feel like you´re wasting your time. You feel like you´re wasting the Lord´s time. You never, ever feel adequate enough. It always seems like the other missionaries are doing better or getting better investigators or have the cool stories. Everyone says not to compare yourself to others but during finding week everyone keeps asking everyone else how many new investigators they have and we kept having to say 0. But I now understand better than ever what Elder Holland was talking about in his talk about depression from last General Conference. It is real and it is scary. Sometimes people too often think that people who are depressed just need to shake it off and think positively, but it´s so much harder than that. I´m lucky enough to not be someone who has problems with depression, and I know that a lot of people are in much more horrible situations than I was last week, but it was very mind-opening to have a taste of the worst discouragement of my life because I know I´m going to have a lot more compassion for those people now.

But when we have hope, God gives us miracles :) The APs were worried about us so they had our Sister Training Leader Hna Ramsay come work with us Sunday night, the very last night of finding week. We had 2 citas with ¨futures¨ set up. They both ended up falling through. But Hna Ramsay was just what we needed in terms of energy and cheerfulness and motivation because her boldness ended up getting us in someone´s door on the very first time we met them and we talked for a long time to this woman named Maria and she became a new investigator. So sometimes on Saturday night you don´t feel like God is even hearing your prayers, but the answer to your prayers can come by way of someone else. Believe me, the answers ALWAYS come. Even if it´s in the last couple hours before finding week is over. I learned a lot this week. But the most important thing is to have hope. My favorite quote from Elder Holland´s talk was ¨If the bitter cup does not pass, drink it and be strong.¨ (What´s weird is that I write quotes for every day in my agenda and that quote was written for Saturday night, the night we were the most discouraged, and I had written that quote for that day weeks ago. The quotes I write in for everyday sometimes literally seem to predict the future, it´s happened before. Now I´m nervous to write really comforting quotes in for the weeks to come! haha)

So, especially because it´s Christmas, remember where the source of our hope comes from: Jesus Christ. Remember His birth and what it means to you. Remember that this Great God who works incredible miracles and created the universes knows your name. Isaiah 9:6.

Merry Christmas!!!!! I love you all!

Hna Andrew

P.S. Guess what tomorrow is! My 5 month mark!!!

Dreaming of a White Christmas

¡Hola todos!

So why am I dreaming of a white Christmas exactly? Because this is the first year of my life where I´ve gone so long with no snow! And not only is there no snow, but it´s actually quite warm. This week has been particularly nice and I wear my light coat and life is good! Today I´m not even wearing a coat, just a light jacket. Life is good :)

But on to more important things! I have 2 main stories to tell today.

First of all, last Saturday was the funnest day of my entire mission so far. I feel bad saying that since we did no direct missionary work, but seriously, let me tell you how much fun it was. Our whole Málaga zone went to Granada to sing in a Cmas concert! So we took the bus in the morning, got there around mediodía, practiced with everyone, ate pizza, practiced some other songs with the band director, and then had our concert! It was in the stake center which is the biggest Church building I´ve ever seen in Spain. So I´ve now been to Granada twice and still only seen the stake center....so that´s a bummer because Granada´s SO beautiful (or so I´ve heard) but who knows, I´ve still got plenty of mission left to be transferred there :) But the part that was so fun was being with all the missionaries! I got to see Hna Lyons and Hna Roan again and it was SO good to be able to talk with them. Just what I needed! I also met some other missionaries that I´d never talked to before. Having Elders Oldroyd, Quinn and Whitworth together again with Hna Roan and I was like our old district was back! SO much fun to share the new stories and laugh about the old ones. Also, I met the Wiscombe´s (don´t know if I spelled that right), the senior couple that has a daughter that lives in my home ward! So that was cool to meet them. But the concert was great, I got to play one of the hymns for the choir and played a jazzy version of Winter Wonderland for the musical number that a few misisonaries sang. Hna Roan sang an amazing solo. Then we got to listen to the BAND! A real live band! For those who don´t know, I happen to be one of the biggest band geeks :D And so it was soooooo fun to listen to them, and they were actually really good! They played a couple of SWEET pieces. Then we sang with them on a couple songs! Apparently it´s on youtube. I have no idea how you would find it, but I´m sure someone can! So go look it up! Then we took a bus back and didn´t get back to Málaga until like 11pm and the entire busride there was about half of us singing every Cmas song we could possibly think of (there are a LOT) and so if you can just imagine a long bus ride through the mountains of Spain with a bunch of missionaries badly singing a million Cmas songs, you can imagine how much fun I had!

Yesterday was a really good day for me personally. Part of the Week of Finding that we´re having this week was to have a missionary in Sacrament Meeting take just a couple minutes to talk about what we´re doing and how the members can help and bear testimony and promise blessings. Easy enough, right? So long story short, I ended up being the one assigned to do it. I was prepared with what I wanted to say and then we got to Church and I was told that one speaker wasn´t going to make it and I could have 10 mins if I wanted. Ummmmm let´s just say that I didn´t want to speak in Spanish in front of the whole ward for 10 mins when I hadn´t prepared ahead of time. But it was fine and Elder Chumbipuma and I split the time and I am very grateful to be in a ward where Sacrament Meeting is last! So I had Sunday School to mentally prepare haha. It went really well though! I decided on a couple scriptures but then wanted to give them real life examples of members sharing the gospel. So I told them about my sister Karina! For those who don´t know, a couple weeks ago I got a letter from Karina that told a lot about all the missionary moments that she´s had! And it was so awesome that I decided to share with my Málaga 2 ward all the cool things she´s been able to do, like share testimony of the Atonement with a friend who was having a hard time, answering questions she receives about our church, and being a good example by wearing a modest dress to a dance and getting great comments on it. I was able to use those things that she told me to tell the members that there are small and simple things they can do all the time to share the gospel, they just have to be aware and living the standards :) Thanks Karina for being SO INCREDIBLY AWESOME! Oh, and the other thing I wanted to share about the talk was more about how the Gift of Tongues is real, but it´s in small ways. For example, I´ve gotten a lot better about reading in Spanish, but expecially in scriptures it can be hard to not stumble over a few words. But reading the scriptures in front of the entire ward for my talk, nothing has ever flowed so naturally from my mouth! It was like reading in English! It was really crazy actually.

So those were the 2 main things I wanted to share. Other than that, it was an uneventful week. We went bowling last Pday which was really fun actually, and I had a really good score! 129! I came in third out of the entire group of misisonaries which is really unusual for me, so that was exciting. We went to Lucas Patar (one of the kids in the Romanian family)´s birthday party and had really good meatball like things. Also, I realized in English class how weird the word ¨get¨ is. What does it mean???? We get up. We get the mail. We get baptized. We get to go to a party. What an interesting word! Unfortunately we use it for everything but it´s impossible to explain how we use it since there is no Spanish equivalent. That´s why I think I could actually teach Spanish much better than I could ever teach English. I speak English but I don´t know why I say what I do! I don´t speak as much Spanish as I wish I did, but at least I know why I say stuff and how the grammar works! Funny stuff.

Dad, I hope you have the best birthday ever!!!!!!!! I´ll be thinking about you on Wednesday!!!

I don´t have too much time to eleborate but I really wanted to mention that I read some AWESOME stuff in personal study today and i want you all to read it too! I know 3 Nephi 11 is the big chapter that everyone reads, but today I read chapters 8, 9 and 10. A lot of it is about destruction, but the part where Jesus starts speaking to them is beautiful. It really exemplifies His endless mercy and love and patience. None of us are perfect. It´s hard to be as good as we want to be (especially on the mission). But Jesus just wants us to keep trying. He wants to us come to Him with our broken hearts and ask for His help to fix it. I specifically loved 3 Nephi 9:13-22. LOVED it. Especially when you think about the group of people He´s talking to. They were more righteous, but honestly they weren´t very good people either. But I also remembered what my amazing BoM teacher said about chapter 10:4-6. In verses 4, 5 and 6 He uses the same phrase about gathering them like a hen gathers her chickens, but in all three are different verb tenses. The first is in the past, all the things Christ already did for them. The second is condicional, all the things Christ wanted to do for them but couldn´t because of their wickedness. The third is the future. All the things that Christ WILL do for them in the future if they choose to let Him. It´s a beautiful comparison. I would encourage all of you to take time this Christmas and develop a closer relationship with your Savior. Remember His arms are ALWAYS open. Remember what Elder Holland and President Monson said in General Conference about God (and Jesus´s) love: it´s not condicional on anything, it is simply always there.

Anyway, next week I´ll let you know about how our finding week went. 800 news in one week! 8 for companionship. Believe in miracles and pray for us! We´re going to work really hard!

Thanks for your prayers and support! Take time this Christmas to write a missionary! I got a letter from Joseph and a few weeks ago from Grandpa and Aaron!
I love you all so much! Tell me about your Christmases!
Hna Andrew

The missionaries walked and walked and walked...

December 9, 2013

Hola mis queridos familiares y amigos!

First of all, before I forget, go check out the mission blog! I´m in a few pics because of the Thanksgiving feast! In fact, I even have a personal pic with President Deere himself because Hna Deere happened to take a picture while I was talking to him! So go look at thespainmalagamission.blogspot.com to see how much fun we had!

Also, the title that I always forget to explain is my little parody of the Primary song about walking pioneers, because this week was uneventful and we walked a lot to go find different people! So I tried really hard to think of some things to tell you all but it´s going to be random and probably short and not super exciting. Lo siento!

Well, we had intercambios this week! Well, exchanges is how I would say it in English, but everyone just says intercambios. So I got to go work with Hna Israelsen in Málaga 1 while Hna Ramsay worked in our area with Hna Thompson. Also, the Málaga 1 sisters are training Hna Birnbaumer so I was with her too. We were a trio! And it was SO fun and they are such awesome missionaries that I learned a lot and we had really good role play lessons during comp study because we had a real person to be the investigator. Hna Israelsen has been out about 8 months and she speaks really well, but what i really love is her genuine kindness and enthusiasm for people. I´ve never seen anybody be more animated when teaching a lesson, and she´s just very sincere and warm when asking people how she can help them. It´s my new goal to be like her, for reals. Also, I´m seriously hoping to be her comp someday because I know it would be fantastic, so we´ll see if that ever happens...but when we were trying to find an address we ran across this Christmas carnival! It was exciting, lots of people, music playing, a merry-go-round (we really wanted to proselyte on it but figured we´d better not...), ice skating (another great contacting idea!) and sledding. You might be wondering, how do people sled in Málaga. Well, the build giant slides and people go down on inner tubes, so it´s the closest thing to sledding that they can get! I´ll send a pic of it later because it´s so funny!

Also, I meant to mention this months ago but I don´t think I ever did, but the bus drivers are very interesting. I´m convinced that they all play this game called Let´s-get-as-close-to-the-other-vehicles-as-we-can. Literally inches. I think we´re going to hit something everytime they stop! My dad would be a good bus driver here I think, because Mom is always telling him to leave more space between the cars hahaha.

I´ve seen interesting yet sad things here in public. Once on the street we saw a woman and man arguing. There was a child in a stroller with them too. It almost got physical and I was scared for her, but mostly it was just yelling. Then on the bus once everyone started yelling about something and the bus driver stopped and wouldn´t move until t stopped. Honestly, neither of us could figure out what the problem was because they were all yelling at once. But this week was the saddest thing yet. We were just walking down a sidewalk and far up ahead this woman carrying a baby in her arms tripped down some stairs (I didn´t see her fall but Hna T did) and her baby must have hit the ground kind of hard because the mom started panicking and people ran across the street and took the baby from her to make sure it was okay and they asked her if she needed water because she was crying and it was that really scared panicked crying that´s like almost hyperventilating, because this was a really small baby, like I´d guess it was only a couple months old, so dropping it or almost dropping it could be really damaging! But her crying like pierced my soul because she kept saying ¨mi niño! mi niño!¨ because she was terrified that she had accidentally caused something super bad to happen to it. Honestly, it was kind of traumatizing and we´re just lucky that we never found out if anything really bad actually happened. The baby looked okay to me but I guess that doesn´t mean there couldn´t be any internal damage. But I literally just felt so awful for her and it was a really scary feeling.

So if you need something to pray for this week, I´ve got an option for you! The mission is having a Finding Week from Dec 16-22. Now, you may be wondering, shouldn´t they always be finding new people to teach. yes, of course. But we for a specific week have plans, specific things to study, specific prayers and fasts, and a specific mission-wide goal to find 800 new investigators in one week. A new investigator is classified as anyone you teach once who accepts a return visit. They are hard to get. 800 for the whole mission means 8 per companionship. We will need lots of prayers!!! Check out these scriptures: DyC 29:7, Alma 13:24, DyC 84:45-47, 88. The elect are out there! We´re going to find them! Bautismos por miles habrá!

You are all the best. If you want to serve someone this Christmas, write to a missionary! They need support! And they LOVE letters! My dad is so cool, he sends me copies of his old mission letters from years ago in Japan and it´s fascinating to compare the experiences!

Hermana Andrew