Vivo en un sueño

Sept. 16, 2013   Buenos días! ¿Cómo están todos? ¡Espero que estén bien! Pues, I´ve had a really good week! And I´ve got lots to say! Time is crazy so I can´t remember the chronological order of any of this, so sorry if it seems random! First thing, I love eating with members! We´ve had citas (just another word I will never again say in English, so just remember that it means appointment) with a lot of members this week! I seriously am in the best ward in this mission, these people are so cool! I´ll start with one of my favorite families-Santiago is the ward mission leader and we had dinner (which is rare because most of our citas are for lunch, the biggest meal of the day here) with him and his wife and 2 children. The older daughter Noelia is 15 and just super sweet and the son is like 11 or something. They are rare in my mind because they are Spaniards who aren´t converts to the Church! So the kids have actually grown up with this their whole lives! Santiago´s mother is a convert. Both Santiago and his wife have served missions. Noelia I believe is definitely considering it. And having dinner with them was so fun because we had carbonada, which I love, and because it was the first time being with members where I felt my sense of humor and personality come out in Spanish. Like, in a language you´re not completely familiar with it can be hard to feel like you´re being yourself when you can´t say what you normally would say, but there were a couple moments that night when I felt really myself and it felt really good! We have also had citas with Santiago´s mother and mother-in-law who both live in the ward, one of whom is named Nuria and her daughter was there too and we had a really typical Spanish meal of fried fish. There were a bunch of little fishies just cooked and fried. The skin wasn´t taken off and the bones were definitely not taken out. However, I surprisingly really liked it! I didn´t think I would like a food that I had to remove the spine before eating! But all the food I´ve had with members has been really good. I liked Pealla, which is a typical Spanish dish as well. Hermana Roan loves to sing and she like has been really trained so her voice is AMAZING and I´m just lucky that I squeak by on my alto line haha but really, we sound super good together so we´ve been singing for members. Nuria and her daughter were the first members we performed for and it was really spiritual and they actually both cried! And then we had a really good spiritual thought so that was awesome. Then last Saturday we had lunch with Estella and Ernesto her son (her husband was at the temple that week with many others in the ward) and her son is like a year of his mission and he´s HILARIOUS and so we were just laughing a lot and they live in a richer area and actually have a piano so I played a bit while Hma Roan and Ernesto sang and it was super fun. Ernesto also plays guitar and he sang us an original song of his in Spanish and it was super cool! My other favorite family is Oliver and Patricia and their daughter who is like 16 and they have a younger son too. They are converts but I can´t remember how long and Oliver is Nigerian and speaks English but he´s learned Spanish really well but they are so willing to help out with missionary work. We are having a Noche de Hogar (FHE) with them and our investigator, Michael, tonight at their house! And Oliver brought 2 of his nonmember Nigerian friends to Church yesterday! I was so excited! So yesterday at Church there was Oliver and his 2 friends and our investigator (also Nigerian) and then me. So I was trying to think of another time I´d ever sat right in a row with 4 Africans before. Obvously, that´s never happened! All the nations represented here are crazy! Lots of Latin Americans too. So, that covers the members. But our investigators! Well, we mostly just have Michael. He is AWESOME, he is my favorite person ever. He is so calm and patient and just has this nice easy-going manner about him and he´s so willing to do what God wants. He came to Church even though he knew it would be in Spanish and he wouldn´t understand a lot. He just has so much faith. His baptismal date is the 28th and we are super pumped and I really want to play one of my piano solos for it since he said piano was his favorite instrument. I can´t wait to tell you about how the baptism turns out! He´s so cool that I wish I could´ve been there for all the lessons with him, but I´ve only been there since Word of Wisdom on, so he was like already converted by then, but I love him just as much as I would have anyway! But we always meet him in parks and the last time he called and said he had a new park he wanted to go to where we could feed fish and it was SO cool and I have pics that someday I´ll get around to sending and the park was beautiful and we fed fish and swans and then they had other animals too! Kangaroos and ostriches (sp?)!!! Those animals weren´t like in the wild or anything, it was like a mini zoo, but we had no idea it was there. But there´s also stuff like soccer courts and basketball courts and there are parks like these all over Spain. I wish the US had parks like the parks here. It´s hard to explain why they are so different or better, but they just are! And there´s so many of them even in the middle of the city. Or maybe it´s just because so many people go and just hang out there and take walks and it´s not so much that way back home. But this week Elder Gómez and Elder Quinn helped us out and did some tracting in our area and they knocked on the door of Teresa who had apparently met with missionaries like 4 years ago and is totally interested in relearning stuff! So we met with her and she seems on the quieter side but she´s completely willing to read the BoM. The only problem is that her husband is the opposite of interested (he was drinking and smoking and shirtless and watching sports in the other room the whole time) so she actually came out and asked if it was okay to have her lessons in the house of one of the members of our Church and we´re just like...."Um, yes!!!" So basically she´s asking for a member present lesson! So we´re setting that up this week. And then we got a call from the mission office who told us that someone had called in a reference and it was in our area! It was the cousin of an inactive member living in Málaga and he said that he and his active family were visiting her and she´s interested in coming back to Church and she´s married to a nonmember and has a 2 year old daughter. So we went to visit them and it was an interesting lesson because it was a nonmember, less active member, and a family of members all in one! But basically we got to know them all and give them info about Church. She´s from Ecuador and her name is Alexandra and she was baptized when she was 15 but I guess hasn´t been super active since then. We thought it would just be her coming to Church but she brought her daughter and her nonmember husband Paco yesterday! So it was super exciting and we have a cita with them this week so I can´t wait to see what they think about everything! Those are the best progressing people right now. So, I love this city. My comp and I say to each other all the time, "We live in a vacation!" or like my email title, "We live in a dream!" Like, everyone wants to live here. If you don´t want to live here, google some pics and you´ll want to live here. This is like a California of Spain. There´s beaches and mountains (small, but still mountains!) and it´s humid and pretty hot but there´s this INCREDIBLE ocean breeze like all the time and so even though I´ve never been to a beach here (we´re not allowed) sometimes I feel like I´m on the beach. And there are palm trees everywhere, but there are also other trees that look more mainland type, so it´s like two worlds out here. But Dad, you asked how we get around, and the answer is we take the bus. Everywhere. We have these bus passes that we fill up monthly to ride as much as we want for 40 euros. If we have to go somewhere farther away like Fuengirola we use a train. Anytime else we just walk. Not too many people here have cars. Also, no one has a house. Literally the only house I´ve been to in Spain is the mission home. EVERYBODY lives in pisos. I don´t think all of Spain is like that, but here in this giant city it is. The other thing is being in Málaga has made me want a dog more than I ever have in my life! I´m pretty sure that at least 50% of the people we pass are walking dogs. And they are normally these really tiny dogs because everyone lives in pisos and they are seriously the cutest dogs I´ve ever seen and I just want one!!!! The other thing is, dogs here must be smarter than American dogs or something, because quite a few times the dogs aren´t even on leashes. They just follow the owner and the owner usually doesn´t seem at all concerned or looking out for the dog because they just know that they´ll follow. how cool is that? Also, Spaniards only drink 3 things: bottled water, coke, and ORANGE FANTA. Orange fanta is the thing here. I´m pretty sure I´ve had it at every cita ever. It´s pretty much just orange soda, but it tastes different than American orange soda. Like, instead of just tasting like a sweet orange drink, it tastes more like legit orange juice that´s carbonated. It´s super good. The other cool thing here are chinos. There aren´t any Walmarts or anything here, there´s only a bunch of little stores. There´s grocery stores and then a bunch of bread stores and shoe stores but for all the random things you would ever need in your life, there are chinos. They are always run by Chinese people, they are always open, and you can get anything there. They are organized with no rhyme or reason, they have notebooks by tape by drinks by cleaning supplies by clothes, you name it, they probably have it. It´s kind of really cool because I can´t really think of a super good American equivalent to them. I´m sure there´s more culture stuff but I can´t remember right this minute. But today a bunch of new missionaries got to go to Fuengirola and do residency stuff. After that we had lunch with President Deere and Hermana Deere and I know I said before that I feel sad for anyone not going on a mission, but now I feel bad for anyone not called to President Deere´s mission, because he is the best mission president on the planet. I love him. Our lunch conversation ended up turning spiritual and so he started telling these super cool stories and motivating us and it was just so edifying and I just know that he was called here right now for the missionaries right now. It is SO cool. Also, their son gets off his mission on Thursday! So he is flying here and they are just so excited... Also, while at the mission office today, I had FOUR letters! Three from the family! that was really awesome. Also one from Elder Twogood! And if I didn´t mention it last week, awhile ago I had a letter from the Pedersons and one from the Walkers! I thank everyone for letters, I really appreciate the support! It is soooo good to hear from everyone! Well, life is good and I´ll tell more next week! Les quiero mucho!!! Hermana Andrew         Images and external objects in this message are being displayed. What's this? Click here to hide images in this message or edit your settings for all messages.         Move to InboxTrashBillsCasey MissionLegal docsOrdersold_Inboxold_Sent [Print]     Previous Next | Back to Messages

Mi Primer Area!!!

Sept. 9, 2013

¡¡Familia!!! ¡¡Y todos!!

 

Hola de Málaga! And it really is Málaga, I´m assigned right here in the center of town, not any suburb or anything nearby, but right here in the city! And I´ll tell you about everything in a second!

So, I think I´ve adjusted really well to being here! I kind of miss the MTC but really the only things I miss are the scheduled meals three times a day! But I also sometimes miss the really cool teachers and President Sitterud (he and his wife were like the sweetest people ever! And that´s one cool thing about the Spain MTC, is that the MTC president actually knows you by name! Provo didn´t have that with 3000 missionaries hahaha). And while the city of Madrid was cool, it doesn´t even compare to Málaga! But the Park we went to on Saturdays was super big and the best park I´ve ever been to in my life, so sometimes I miss that. I wish I lived in Madrid just so I could go hang out all day at that Park. But what I miss the most is the temple. The Spain MTC is the closest that anyone will ever live to a temple. Even people in Utah didn´t live as close as we did! I´ll have to show you some pictures sometime taken from the stairwell window just to give you an idea of how close we were and how we saw it ALL the time. Like I timed the walk once from the door of the MTC building to the temple door, and it was a 30 second walk. ¡Qué guay! 

Anyway, after I emailed last time, we went to the mission home and spent the night. And WOW I LOVE the mission home in Fuengirola! It´s a beautiful house and it has a great view. I wish I lived in Fuengirola but to be honest, it´s the rich part of town and so I don´t even want to know how much the Church pays for the President´s family to live there! But I don´t know if I mentioned this or anything but the President is super young and has one son at BYU,. one son who finishes his mission in a couple weeks, one daughter that´s 17 and one son that´s 14. The younger kids live here in Spain with them and we talked to them for awhile too. Weds morning was transfer meeting. And so we sat on one side and the trainers sat on the other and then we were all paired up! I´m serving with Hermana Roan in Málaga 2 ward. There are 4 wards in Málaga and the boundaries were literally all switched like 3 weeks ago so people are still getting used to everything being a little new. There are 2 sets of Elders also serving just in Málaga 2! I´ve never been in a ward where there was more than one set of missionaries! So we see other missionaries all the time, which is a lot more fun than the people out in the middle of nowhere who never see anyone, so I´m super blessed to be serving here! 

My new companion is AMAZING. I love her so much.  Her name is Hermana Roan and she will be 20 in a couple weeks and she is from Wyoming and went to a year of community college there before the mission. She is half Samoan so she is SO pretty. But we get along super well and I click with her really well. I can´t believe how blessed I´ve been with companions! I´m so worried that this streak won´t continue! But we have a lot of things in common, like food and TV and music preferences and we both feel like we´re on the same page with a lot of things. She is a really young missionary (like most of the missionaries here) and has only been out since May! So she just got down with the 12 week training program and now is training! But she does a great job and we´re both really excited for the things we´re going to see here! 

 

We moved into a new piso (apartment, but we always say piso, so I will never remember to say apartment, so just know that for the rest of the mission apartment is piso) and it is seriously one of the best pisos in the mission! No missionaries have ever lived there before but it´s big and only the two of us live there, but more missionaries could definitely fit. There are 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (I have never had my own bathroom before!!!) and a fantastic kitchen. There´s even a small enclosed balconey thing with table and chairs and overlooks the street. I feel so blessed! I have a fantastic compañera, strong ward, and new piso. Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve these blessings! Haha basically I just have to work extra hard!  So the next day, Thursday, I had my first meal at a member´s house! The member invited all the Málaga 2 missionaries for lunch (because lunch is the big meal here around 2pm) and so we went with Elders Gómez, Quinn, Whitworth and Oldroyd. All of them are super cool elders. But the member family was awesome, they are really strong. The parents are great members and the son actually spoke English since he served his mission in Scotland and they have a daughter serving in california (who is friends with my teacher, Hermano Tyndale! from the CCM! so that was exciting that they know him) and then a 6 year old son. Dinner was homemade pizza, so nothing too extreme like squid rings haha. but having had many dinners with missionaries back home, it was REALLY weird to be on the missionary side...But Elder Gómez and Quinn just amuse me to no end, mostly because Elder Gómez is SUPER short (like way shorter than me) and from spain, but he has a strong personality and walks fast, and Elder Quinn is tall and blonde and so it just cracked me up to see Gómez just taking off and the taller elder was the one struggling to keep up! Soooo funny.  Sunday was the first day in the new ward! It was really awesome but kind of overwhelming! We started out helping in Primary so we could play piano for them and seriously, I just can´t handle how adorable all the little Spanish children are!!! They are ridiculously cute!!!!! I am intimidated because they speak Spanish better than I do, but that´s okay because I can read better than they can! I had to help one of the read something. And then Sunday school was fun because the teacher spoke pretty clearly compared to everyone else here, so I could follow what was going on okay. But Sacrament Meeting...holy cow, I had NO idea what anyone was talking about. I couldn´t even guess what the themes of the talks were. So I´ve got a ways to go. But lots of members are having us over for citas (appointments) this week, so I´m super excited to get to know them. Hermana Roan said that when the wards split we got a LOT of really strong members, so basically we have the best ward ever and they really want to help us!    Also, I´ve taught my first lessons! And I felt like Elder Calhoun from The Best Two Years because I came all the way to Spain just to teach lessons in English...figures! There are lots of Nigerians here and they speak English and we´re teaching a couple of them. However, if I thought that speaking in English would make me understand the lesson, I was mistaken, because the accent is really thick, so I couldn´t believe the irony, that I had spent 6 weeks in the MTC praying for the ability to speak and understand Spanish, but I never dreamed that it was English that I would be praying to understand! But my ear tuned into them after awhile so it got easier, and the more we teach the more I´ll be trained to pick up their accent. We have an investigator named Michael. I seriously love this man. He´s a Nigerian and seriously the sweetest person ever! He has a baptismal date for the 28th! He is so accepting of the message! The other hermanas were already teaching him before I was here, so I´ve only taught him about the Word of Wisdom and the commandments, but I still love him just as if I´d been teaching him the whole time!  So, the computers and internet usage is more expensive here in Fuengirola than in Málaga (we´re in Fuengirola for a Pday BBQ and softball game with the Deere´s) so we´re going to get off and finish up later. But that´s really most of what I was going to say anyway and so I´ll email people individually later and then next week I can tell you more about the culture here! And the city! Take care! Send me emails! Especially mom and dad, you guys haven´t emailed me since last week??? I need to hear from you! Oh, and my address is: Avenida Manual Torres 6, 1B 29003 Málaga España   Send letters there instead of the mission home, because I only will get mail sent to the mission office when we see people from the mission office, which isn´t very often!  Les quiero mucho!!!!! Hermana Andrew

Buenos Dias

August 29, 2013

It´s weird to think that you´re all still asleep as I write this haha. But maybe you get to read it first thing in the morning! So that´s nice. ONE MONTH DOWN. I literally cannot believe it. It´s unreal. But yeah, last week in the CCM! We go to Málaga on Tuesday, and the schedule says email time on Monday, so keep an eye out for that!

So last Pday we got to go to a mall. And go shopping. And we get to go do things on Pdays here, but going to the mall for an entire afternoon was by far the most secular and it was WEIRD. It wasn´t too weird because I didn´t recognize any of the English or Spanish music but then all of a sudden one of my most favorite songs from America (Payphone) started to play and I got insanely excited and then really missed my iPod for the first time ever. And I hated missing it! Because I thought I didn´t! And I don´t as long as I´m safe in the spiritual prison that is the MTC haha (I say prison because there are bars on the windows). But yeah, it was super strange to be there in the very real world again...

So I decided that I must be one of the luckiest people ever because that night we got to watch Elder Bednar´s Character of Christ devotional that I already was blown away by in Provo! So I got to see it again! And it was just as good the second time and I got a lot out of it! And seriously, I LOVE Elder Bednar and he is actually now in my mind on the same level as Elder Holland. Like, I would be just as excited to hear Bednar speak at general conference as Elder Holland (which is saying a lot for me haha). Seriously, that talk has caused me to plan a long (like longer than my mission) study of the Character of Christ and I´ve also taken his challenge to, whenever we have a question, get a blue soft missionary copy of the Book of Mormon and read it cover to cover and mark anything that answers your question and write a summary at the back. He said if you do this over your life, you could have hundreds. Colin, my cousin, told us in one of his mission emails about that same advice that Elder Bednar gave them, so I figured that now that I kept hearing it over and over I would do it. And it has completely changed the way I read the scritpures. Read them with a purpose! When you read them with a question, everything seems different. I highly recommend it, you get so much more out of the Book of Mormon. And for all of you who may have never read it, READ IT because it changes lives and it WILL change yours.

So last Friday we got Dominos pizza for lunch. And seriously, I have never tasted anything so good in my entire life. It was literally Heaven on Earth. After all the interesting food here, having that blast from America was much needed! Next Monday, our last day here, we are getting KFC! Super pumped for that too! I can´t wait to get into the field and eat real Spanish food!

So last week in the Park was super fun! And I learned a lot! I was put with one of the new native sisters, so she spoke fluent Spanish, and I swear, if I was her permanent companion I would be fluent in a day. In just a couple hours I started speaking more in Spanish than I ever had since being here! It was incredible. Everything I´ve learned here is review so it´s really hard to see that my Spanish is improving at all, even though I know it is. Seriously, I was SOOO blessed to have an amazing high school Spanish teacher because I understand SO much. Hermana Lyons had a horrible Spanish teacher and struggles a lot. So I try and help the best I can. But anyway, the park was great. I learned 2 things. 1. Anyone can be a missionary. Literally anyone. Even a puppy. We were passing these people who seemed like they were talking and so we weren´t going to stop but then their little puppy came running up straight to us! And so we ended up talking to this girl and her mom! And they were actually Jewish, so I don´t think they´ll be converted anytime soon, but it was so funny to see this little missionary puppy (cutest puppy EVER, by the way) who wanted his owners to have the gospel :)  And the second thing I learned was that success in the park does not directly correlate to fluency in the language! I had more success (numbers wise) with girls that also struggled to speak to people than with a girl who understood 100% of what anyone was saying! It was a real lesson for me, because I worry about not being able to speak well affecting the work. Don´t worry, Heavenly Father would never let someone´s salvation depend on the Spanish ability of a bunch of American missionaries hahaha.

Also, Sunday afternoon we got to watch a really old devotional of Elder Holland titled Don´t You EVER Go Home. And boy, that was scary. he started going on about how much his mission meant to him. He kept saying "My mission meant EVERYTHING to me" and I started to panic because I´ve been here a month and kept thinking "ahhhh what have I been doing in this whole month I´ve already had?" Just kidding, I didn´t panic, but seriously, that talk was intense and it made me realized how much I need to value this time. It got me really enthusiastic though, I started thinking, "Who cares if band camp starts tomorrow in Provo? Who cares that my sister´s getting married? this is the most important thing I will ever do!" Those thoughts don´t always last really long though, but it was nice to realize that for a few minutes that I honestly didn´t care about anything else besides the mission work! But I honestly feel bad for anyone that´s never gone on a mission. The talks that we hear from the Apostles are not available to the public, they only show them in MTCs and you just see a side of the Apostles that you never see in General Conference! They are more in depth and more intense and emotional. It is SO awesome. If you have yet to serve a mission, DO IT. But seriously, Elder Holland is insane about missionary work. He started flipping out and said "I´m NOT neutral! I´m not well balanced! I am fit for psychological study!" It was so funny...gotta love Elder Holland.

Funny stuff! So Elder Ridd was complaining about the sun being in his eyes every time he looked at the teacher who was standing right in front of the window and said in Spanish, "Every morning I look at you and get pains in my eyes." And obviously he just meant because of the sun but I literally almost died of laughter...I had tears in my eyes it was SO funny because he didn´t mean it to sound that way at all! And then later Hermana Lyons was practicing subjunctive tense and said the Spanish equivalent of "We can´t be clean without being clean." and I laughed super hard at that too.

Fun fact about the Spain MTC: They play music over the intercom. It is the same everyday at the same times. The song that wakes us up is the hymn that goes "Glory glory hallelujah!!" over and over. I will never again hear that hymn in the same way because it will always mean that it´s time to wake up. Sad, because it´s not a bad hymn haha. Oh well...

So last thing: studying Spanish has made me realize how weird English is. It´s seriously the dumbest language ever. Though. What kind of word is that???? And food and good look like they should rhyme but they don´t. And they´re, their and there is just ridiculous. And we have a sound for F, why do we need PH??? These are things I will never understand...if I didn´t speak English from my birth I would never speak it, I don´t understand how anyone ever learns it!

I love you all SO much and thanks for all your prayers and letters! I got a ton this week! From Grandpa, mom, Aaron and Joseph! I love hearing from everybody, so let me know how you´re all doing!!! I will tell you a little more about my companion and my scripture study stuff next week, probably Monday.

Hermana Andrew

P.S. Someone had BETTER tell me all about band camp!!!!!