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

It´s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Navidad

December 2, 2013

Queridos padres, hermanos, y amigos,

Guess what! The hardest day of my mission is OVER! My sister´s wedding, the only thing that I´m REALLY missing, is over! There will always be more good times with marching band, family parties, Christmases, BYU things, but this wedding was literally the only thing that I was missing that I could never get back. So now missing anything else will seem easy by comparison! But yeah, it was super hard on Tuesday thinking about the time difference and knowing at 7pm that she was getting married and I was walking around trying to find a cita to replace the one that had canceled. That´s what was hardest, I think, because in the back of my mind for a couple months now I had wondered if Nov 26 might be a particularly miraculous day or we´d find some golden investigator because I was giving up my sister´s wedding to be here on the mission, but it was pretty normal. In fact, we didn´t really have any success that day at all. So...I guess that´s just how it is. But it´s okay.

But last week I completely forgot to tell you all about miracle Sunday! (We´re not talking about yesterday, but LAST Sunday) where Michael came to Church for the first time since Hna Roan left and a less active member that we´re working with came to Church with his kids and someone who we believe will be a new investigator (florina´s sister) came as well! It was great! But yesterday wasn´t so miraculous. Michael wouldn´t come because he had to ¨search for a new job¨ and we even called him and ran into him on the bus that morning but he just wouldn´t change his mind. The less active didn´t come (but at least he let us know in advance that something else was going on). Florina´s sister came but we didn´t get to set a cita with her, but we´ll call this week.

Thanksgiving was this week! It was weird to remember that it was Thanksgiving because I was so focused for months on my sister´s wedding instead so I almost forgot. But since we are lucky enough to be serving in Málaga, the Deere´s organized a missionary Thanksgiving dinner at the chapel here. They did turkey and the office missionary couple did pies and everyone else chipped in and brought lots of food. It was amazing! And so American! We had all the missionaries there that were serving in Málaga wards and the Fuengirola ward. Super fun!!!!! President Deere had a great quote: ¨We have this tradition in America on Thanksgiving, where after eating ALL that we possibly can, we eat more.¨ ¡De verdad! But yeah, it didn´t feel like Thanksgiving at all because no one celebrates it here, so it´s not like everyone was on vacation or anything. Just a normal day!

We had a super funny contacting moment when we were going to the Church for district meeting Tuesday morning. We first ran into a bunch of missionaries in the train station (we walk through the train station to get to teh chapel). The new missionaries had just arrived from the MTC! the Deere´s were there, the office elders were there. They were also going to the Chapel to do the orientation stuff, but they stopped to talk first and we had to get there more quickly so we left the train station before them. But on the way to the chapel some guy stopped us on the street because he asked where we were from. So we stopped to talk to him and were talking for a couple minutes and while we were talking, ALL the brand new missionaries, the office elders, and the Deere´s walked by. So we looked like super cool missionaries, even though we probably wouldn´t have stopped to talk to him unless he hadn´t talked to us first...and then we got to the meeting and the other elders in our district had walked by too and they were joking that we were ¨climbing¨ (missionary term for sucking up) and were like, ¨Hey, our mission president is about to walk by, can you pretend to be really interested and talk to us for a second?¨ haha it was pretty great...

Speaking of missionary vocab, another term used is ¨dying.¨ For those who don´t know, when a missionary ¨dies¨, it means they have ended their mission and are going home. So I will die in January 2015. I´m so used to hearing the phrase that we don´t even think about it anymore, so Hna Thompson accientally said it at a member´s house when they asked about a missionary they used to know in the ward and she said something like, ¨I think he already died.¨ And the looks on their faces...priceless! Actually, the look on Hna Thompson´s face when she realized what she had said was priceless. I laughed really hard while she explained what she had meant to say!

This week was paella week, apparently. Because we were fed paella at member´s houses 3 different times in one week! I like paella a LOT so it´s okay, but it was super funny that everyone was making it this week. It is definitely on my list of things to learn how to make when I ¨die¨.

Oh, and Mom and Dad, just so you know we might switch our Pday next week or the week after in order to go to a museum that´s not open on Monday. I´m just telling you so that if we do switch it and you don´t get an email on Monday, you know why!

Sorry this is so short, I used all my email time to read about Kelly´s wedding :D Hopefully next week will be more interesting!

Love you all! Thanks for the support!

Hna Andrew

4 Down, 14 To Go

November 25, 2013


Hey Family!

Do you know what the title means? I hit my 4 month mark yesterday! Yesterday was also significant because it was the LAST day of the 12 week training program! So I´m like a real missionary now! Just kidding, I was already a real missionary, but now we are on the normal schedule with more proselyting time instead of more studying time, so it´s different. But yeah, my second transfer is over! We didn´t get a call this time (we didn´t expect one) so we´re both staying here. Out of the 8 missionaries in our district (6 in the Málaga 2 ward, 2 in Nerja branch) only one is leaving, which is kind of surprising since Elder Quinn and Elder Oldroyd are both staying and they both already have 3 transfers here. But they are my favorite elders in the district anyway, so I would have been super sad if they left. And I´ll leave next transfer (most likely) and so will they, so we´ll all leave together anyway!

Lets see...the only thing truly worth mentioning this week is la fiesta de naciones! It was a combined ward party on Friday and since so many people are from different countries, they all brought food and flags and set up tables. I´ll send a pic of the American table the missionaries made. It was pretty lame since we´re missionaries but we had chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and hot dogs. The hot dogs were the elders´ idea but they took bits of hotdogs and stuck them to bits of buns with toothpicks and put little bits of ketchup on each one. I thought it was absolutely hilarious since obviously that´s not how people actually eat hot dogs, but whatever. I honestly don´t understand the things the elders do and probably never will! But the ward party was super fun and I´ve never felt so proud of my country! It was really exciting to have the Bishop announce them all and give a big cheer for the grand USA. Plus as a cultural addition, all the missionaries sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame. We sang it horribly, but no one could understand it anyway haha. Some women from Spain did some flamenca dancing and it was all super fun! The only problem is that Spain hasn´t quite figured out how to pull off ward socials yet. You have to do the food BEFORE the long and sometimes really boring program of people talking forever about their countries. So we had to sit through the long program while the food literally just sat there getting cold. But oh well. After that it was a crazy free-for-all and I just tried to get whatever food I could grab! I played a game in my head called "Which country´s food can make me wish I had my mission call there instead". And the winner? Argentina, hands down. Super good. Ever had an empanada made by a legit Argentinian? Well, believe me, you´re missing out. Someday I will have to visit Argentina for sure! Super cool ward party, I wish something like that was more possible in the States, but most people are born and raised in the USA, and it´s definitely not as cool unless people are actually from that country.

We had our interviews with President Deere this week. Once again, he secured his place as my favorite person in the whole world. I realized also one of the reasons I love President Deere so much: he reminds me of Brother Griffin! For those of you who do not know who Brother Griffin is, he is my amazing BoM and NT teacher at BYU. Seriously, the more I think about it, the more alike they are. And it´s not a look thing and not quite a personality thing, but it´s more like the way I feel around Brother Grifin is very similar to the way I feel when I´m around President Deere. You feel completely like you can be yourself and won´t be judged at all. I feel like I can tell either one of them absolutely anything that´s bothering me or anything I wish I did better and neither of them would ever be angry or harsh in any way, but only lovingly try to help in any way they can. Like, I don´t always feel that confident or feel like I´m the kind of missionary I wish I was, but President Deere has so much confidence in me that it makes me want to be better on my own! Seriously, that is how everyone needs to run wards, families, schools, everything! You don´t need to be mean and enforce the rules the get people to be better. Being super strict only makes people want to rebel. But if you treat people the way you want them to be, they will automatically have a desire to be like that!

In other news, last Monday night we tried Fufu! I don´t know if I spelled it right, but it´s a Nigerian food that Michael and Oliver (Nigerian ward member) made for us. I didn´t particularly love it, but it was cool simply because it was African food! I´ll try and send a pic of that too. I always bring my camera, but it´s so hard to remember to leave time to send pics! Today we played futbol with some elders (actually Hna Thompson doesn´t like soccer so only I played) and then walked around central Málaga for awhile. Hombre, saying the word ¨soccer¨ is actually weird. I´m going to come home and be really confused until I can get that word back in my head...Also, in the centro there is an American food store called the Taste of America. It´s pretty expensive (10 euros for one box of fruitloops!) but I enjoyed seeing American things and bought a can of Rootbeer. Rootbeer!!!!! I didn´t even realize how much I missed it! it was like drinking Heaven. Everybody please take time to appreciate the fact that you can drink rootbeer at your leisure!

MY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW. It´s not fair :( But on the bright side, I like to put random quotes and scriptures in my agenda everyday just for inspiration and without meaning to, I had the scripture Nehemiah 6:3 for tomorrow, my sister´s wedding day. And I don´t have the exact words right now with me, but it´s something like the guy is working on building a wall and he´s up high working on it and some people are trying to get him to come down and he says something like ¨Why should I come down now? Who is going to build this if I come down?¨ And I really like it for tomorrow because the wedding is calling me and I really wish I could, but like Nehemiah I can say ¨Why should I leave now? I´m building the church in Spain, who is going to do my work if I leave?¨ So as much as my heart is being ripped in pieces by not being able to go, I can use this opportunity to say that I KNOW why I´m here and I KNOW that this is where I´m needed. Jesus never had it easy, He always had sacrifices to make. This is simply a sacrifice the Lord is asking me to make. And if the mission was too easy, then it wouldn´t be worth it, would it?

Have a great week and go share the Gospel!

Hermana Andrew

Where did this transfer go???

November 18, 2013

 

Hola todos,

¡Madre mía! ¿Qué pasó con el tiempo??? The second transfer flew by without me even noticing. We´re on the last week! Next Saturday I could potentially get a call from President Deere! I mean, I´m not expecting it pero nunca se sabe...I can´t say more about it haha, I don´t want to jynx my luck!

But this week was really good! We taught more lessons than the past weeks and have a baptismal date! But all this requires a little background info. But this week I really wanted to focus on 2 people.

The first person is Florina. She is the mother of my favorite Romanian family, the family with the 4 kids who are super strong and love to read the scriptures and play games with us. First thing of interest, I can now say I´ve tried Romanian food! I think I told you about the first time a couple weeks ago, but this week she made us some Romanian soup. I liked it just fine, but would have to get more used to the taste to really say I loved it, but it was fun just to try it. Also, may I just say really quick that the Romanians know how to make bread! ¡Vaya! She made like the best bread I´ve ever had in my life. We should honestly start paying her to make it for us because they´ve definitely mastered breadmaking. Fantastic. You all should be upset that you didn´t get to try it. It´s because they have a special Romanian oven for it. I´ve never seen anything like it before! Anyway, I just want to tell you all a little more about Florina, because I have such a deep respect for her. Basically, she came to Spain with a husband who wasn´t always so nice and she could only speak Romanian. When their family met the missionaries in 2012 she spoke so little Spanish that her children had to translate for her. She couldn´t read, even in her native language. She and Romeo weren´t married and didn´t have paperwork to get married in Spain or the money to go back to Romania to get married there. They are very poor. So, doesn´t look like much of a teaching situation, does it? If I met a family like that as a missionary, I would think it unlikely that anything would come of it. Too many challenges. Too many setbacks. BUT, she is literally a miracle. She wanted to understand church so she learned more Spanish and now by the time I met her, she doesn´t need her children to translate. Her Spanish isn´t perfect at all, but she can communicate just fine. She started learning how to read (in both Romanian and Spanish) just so she could read the Book of Mormon. She reads very slowly but is faithfully making her way through the book. She learns so much from it and can apply the stories to her life. She and Romeo were unable to get baptized because they weren´t married (it is VERY hard to get married here) so they made a goal to save up for it. But they made that goal over a year ago. OVER a YEAR ago. But they still haven´t lost the drive, they still come to church EVERY Sunday and live just like they were already members of the Church. Other people would give up, say it´s too difficult to join the Church. Florina told us that the Church has changed her entire family, especially the change in Romeo. My admiration for her just doesn´t stop. The sad thing is, though, the world would overlook her in a heartbeat, just say that she´s another poor woman who doesn´t work and can´t speak the language of the country she lives in. But she is SO much more than that. NEVER should you judge anyone before knowing about their life, okay? By the way, Florina made my entire week when we were there because Lorena saw the picture of my family that was in my scriptures and so I pulled it out and showed it to them and Florina looked at it for awhile and said ¨You have light in your faces. I notice when I see a family of God. I can see it in your faces.¨ I literally wanted to cry, it made me so happy. Wow.

The second person is Lina. There was a moment in our lesson with Lina that was probably the best moment of my mission so far, but this also requires background info. So a few weeks ago hna Roan and I had just left the piso and were walking down the street when a women shouted out for help and we immediately went to the side of the road where she was leaning with her walker, struggling to walk. We slowly helped her across the street to the farmacy she was heading towards. While she was waiting there we talked to her and found out that she´s from Ukraine and has lived in Spain for 11 years and has a Spanish husband and 2 kids. (She´s not very old, her problem with walking is from some illness she has that I don´t quite understand because she explained it all in fast Spanish.) We then helped her go to a different store across the street where she was seeing a friend that worked there. She was grateful for our help and shared some pastries with us and we got her number and said we´d love to come over and see her again and help her in some way. So a few weeks passed by and we tried calling and she was busy or sick and then Hna Roan was transferred and then Hna Thompson and I called and she was sick but then she agreed to meet us! We sat with her at a café and explained the Book of Mormon and promised to get one in Russian for her (we always give them one in their native language no matter how well they speak spanish). We started meeting her at her house and learned that she wants to quit smoking and we had a couple lessons and even got the member in our ward who is from Ukraine to come with us. So a few days ago we were talking about baptism and how it washes away our sins and we can feel clean. Lina then shook her head and said ¨impossible.¨ And that was the best moment so far of my mission: the fact that I could testify to someone who didn´t think it was possible to be cleansed that through Jesus Christ it IS possible. It really just made me learn a lot more about why I am here. It was amazing. Lina has a baptismal date...for January...she wouldn´t let us make it sooner than that. but we´ll work with her. We´ll make it closer. And if not, everyone learns in their own time at their own speed.

So in other news, it got COLD this week. The temperature just dropped on Friday and stayed low the whole weekend. I´m not sure what the Farenheit temp is but Celsius it´s 12 and 15. With the humidity and stupid wind, it feels pretty cold. And the thing is, at home the cold wouldn´t bother me because I wouldn´t spend time outside, but as missionaries we can´t just hang out in the piso. If we don´t have a cita, we go around finding people. The other problem is, though, that the piso is freezing. Either there is no heat or we don´t know how to work it, because it is so cold. My feet have literally been cold for days, even when I have tights and socks and blankets all at the same time. Hands are the same way. But because Hna Thompson was still recovering from her cold and members were aware that she was sick, I´ve had more hot soup in the past 2 weeks than in my entire life. It´s probably been good for me though, because I´ve stayed perfectly healthy this whole time (knock on wood...).

Kelly gets married in a week. Kind of flipping out. And when I say kind of, I mean like really flipping out. Fortunately though, I´m on the other side of the world, so even though I know in my head that I´m missing a wedding, it´s hard to make it feel real when I feel so disconnected from everything. Like...it´s a weird feeling. that no one can really understand until they´re on a mission.

Also, i´ve started Alma this week. And wow, being on a mission changes EVERYthing about scripture study. Because Alma teaches us very directly how to work with members, get referrals and futures and news, how to teach to their needs, how to teach simply, and how to teach to their understanding. But the thing I wanted to share with you all is that we always think of Alma and Amulek as missionary companions. And after awhile I think they do become that. But if you read Alma 10, you notice that Amulek isn´t his comp, he´s a member! Alma is having a member present lesson with Amulek! And that´s really crucial because in verse 12 it says that the people were astonished and more than one witness. But I don´t think that´s all that astonished them. I think they were affected so deeply because one of those witnesses was actually one of their own! Someone who they knew and lived with and worked with. Someone in their society. and THAT is why member present lessons are so important! Missionaries are great, but we have nametags and are from a different country. We are young and inexperienced with life. In other words, we are weird. They need someone ¨normal¨ to testify. It´s SO much more powerful that way. Do you think Lina is going to feel more interest in the gospel if 2 Americans tell her in Spanish or a fellow Ukranian woman shares her testimony in Russian? Just think about it. Go out with missionaries. You will change the lessons and these people´s lives. ¡De verdad!

Well, that´s aout it for this week. I love you all! Don´t forget to help the missionaries! They need food and rides (sometimes) and referrals!

Hermana Andrew

P.S. Sandra, a member from Colombia, gave us this Colombian hot drink called Panela, I think made from brown sugar cane. It was amazing. If that is what my cousin Colin is drinking in Colombia all the time, then he is one lucky guy.

Choose Faith

 November 11, 2013

Hello Family! And Everyone!

Hombre, it feels like I just wrote you guys...what do I even say! It´s been an interesting week I suppose. We still couldn´t really get our investigators to be at citas or be at Church so I feel like nothing is going quite right, but it´s okay. We´re learning!

Anyway, it´s finally gotten kind of cold! Hna Thompson and I are going shopping for jackets today, so this is pretty significant. The worst part is that during the day I´m actually just fine with a cardigan, but it gets quite chilly at night. The worst part is knowing that the temperature would be perfect if it wasn´t for the fact that this city is so breezy! Everything I loved about the weather has turned on me. In the summer I loved walking in the shade and the breeze saved us on more than one occasion. But now we walk on the sunny side of the street and die inside a tiny bit everytime the wind blows. And there have been a couple days where the wind was just ridiculous!! Like, we had to really hold onto our skirts at some points! Also, I used to feel bad for the elders because they had to wear long pants in the hot summer but now I envy them that they can wear pants. That´s the worst! I can handle the cold but in a skirt it´s awful. But sometimes i think about how the weather is in the States and realize that it´s still not cold here at all :)

This week was interesting in terms of planning. Planning is the weirdest thing. There are days when we´ve planned really well and have plenty of citas and every single thing falls through. But then there are days when we have no set citas and then we get new investigators and people miraculously let us in. It´s really crazy honestly, and I figure that it´s the Lord showing us that He´s in charge, no matter what. I´ve also learned a lot about the Gift of Tongues since being on the mission. When you´re young (and even when you´re older, I guess) you think that the Gift of Tongues is this really cool thing that magically can make you speak the language perfectly and you might not even know what you´re saying! Now, in rare situations that might actually be the case. However, I have found that the majority of the time, the Gift of Tongues is the power to be understood even when you don´t understand the language and don´t speak with perfect grammar. It´s not the power to speak completely fluently, but it´s the power to remember the one word you need to complete the sentence. It really was a powerful realization to me.

So I believe that last week I told you all about Marcelo, our Jehovah´s Witness investigator. And like I said before, I really respect all religions, but I just want to point out some things he said that didn´t make any sense at all. First of all, if you really want to know Marcelo, go read 2 Nephi 29 because he is the living version of that chapter. He claims the Bible is the word of God and it is his guide in life. That is really great! However, if you love the word of God as much as you say you do, why would you get angry at God giving us more of His word! (once again, I can´t make the question mark work on this computer haha). Why put a limit on God´s word!!! It doesn´t make any sense! If God is loving and loves all His children equally, it just doesn´t make sense that He would limit His words to one book in all the time of the world. And even if you don´t believe it, why not at least try and read it! If someone said they had the word of God, I would read it before making the decision. He says he´s open minded but honestly, he´s not at all. Also, you can´t pick and choose what verses in the Bible to believe, which he does as well. We brought up the verse in the Bible about the Spirit World and baptism for the dead and after failing to really argue about it, he just said that some verses in the Bible can´t be taken literally. Seriously, that cannot be the answer to everything! Interestingly, though, we were teaching about the Plan of Salvation and he has some sort of illness but he kept getting all worked up and breathing really hard and I honestly thought he was going to die right there while we were talking about the Spirit World. Now obviously, I don´t want him to die, but let´s be honest, that would have been crazy timing! Anyway, we don´t think we´re going back to visit him again anytime soon. Also, he said we couldn´t pray because we are women. Boy did that make us angry! Apparently the Bible says something about it and the only thing I could find was in Corinthians it said that women should be silent in the Church but the JST version says they can´t RULE in the Church, which we know already because women don´t have the Priesthood, so the verse really isn´t a big deal.

So Hna Thompson has been sick this week. It started out as just a cough but now she´s been really congested and we haven´t been stuck in the piso all day yet, but we´ve come home early a couple nights because walking around in the cold and dark isn´t going to help and she needs extra sleep, so I´ve had lots of extra study time and my reading of the Book of Mormon has just skyrocketed, I´ve never read it so quickly before! Haha but in all honesty, it´s not fun at all when your comp is sick because they feel unmotivated and so she´s not talking to anyone on the streets and I have a hard time when I´m the only one trying, so it´s been a very unproductive week in my opinion. But 1 Corinthians 15:58 has been my saving grace this week. (I should tell that to Marcelo. We DO read and get revelation and comfort from the Bible!!!)

I have a missionary work tip for you all again. And it is to make time to accompany the missionaries to a lesson. Believe me, we would never have survived with Marcelo if we hadn´t had a member Maribel with us. She was super helpful. So please, I know it´s not convenient, but just try to find room every couple weeks to offer some of your time to the missionaries! You will be blessed more than you know!!!

Well, have a great week, stay warm, and go spread the Gospel!

Hermana Andrew

Pretend There Is a More Interesting Title

November 04, 2013

Dear Everyone,

So...my handy dandy little daily planner that has the list of everything I wanted to tell you guys is conveniently sitting on our study table in the piso. Entonces, I get to go by memory today! Which is harder than it seems. Because you think it´s not that hard to remember but as soon as you´re staring at that white screen, you all of a sudden feel like you´ve done absolutely nothing this week! But I´ll look at it when I get back home and can always add stuff to next week.

But first thing´s first. After a super awesome week last week...this week was a total dud in terms of numbers. All those wonderful new investigators decided to never be home for their lessons. Not a single one actually was home when they said we could come back and they wouldn´t answer their phones either. Figures. One of them actually did answer and he rescheduled and then was home for the rescheduled cita, so he gets to be the person mentioned this week! His name is Marcelo. He is an older man from Equitorial Guinea and has lived in Spain for like 50 years and....is a Testigo. Testigo=Jehovah´s Witness. Now...I don´t want to bash any religions, because we respect them all. However, Testigos are just HARD to talk to! They think they already know what we believe and they only let us talk about the Bible, if they let us talk at all, and they just are quite ridiculous. But Marcelo isn´t too bad...not the worst I´ve met anyway. Like, after he talks and talks he does let us actually talk. He still won´t let us give him a Book of Mormon but at least he enjoyed a couple verses that we did read from the BoM. So...we´ll see about him. You might be wondering why we would bother teaching them. The thing is, we didn´t know he was Testigo when we first met him and by the time we had the first lesson, it´s not like we could just say right then that we didn´t want to teach him. I think he´s a lot better than the Testigos that accost us on the street. I am more hopeful about him than Hna Thompson is anyway. I guess we´ll see how it goes. I just want to teach him because he actually is home when he says he will be! He felt bad about forgetting about the first lesson so he´s proven to be reliable anyway.

What else...Halloween was this week! It was pretty awesome for not being in the States. I don´t know if people do trick or treating or anything, I think some do, but we saw a few people in costumes, even though they were very uncreative, and the hermanas in Ward 1 put together a Halloween party that all the missionaries went to and we invited everyone from Wards 1 and 2. Unfortunately these hermanas didn´t plan this very far in advance so not too many people came, but it was better than I thought it would be. We just had some typical Halloween games. And we didn´t wear costumes but the hermanas got some crowns and the elders nerd glasses or clown noses. I should have time to send a pic of it later. My idea was to switch nametags and go as each other, but it was more a funny idea than something we would actually do, `plus a couple of the elders did it first anyway.

Yesterday was stake conference in Granada! We got to take a bus full of missionaries and ward members without cars and rode to the stake center in Granada. It was awesome, it was the nicest Church building I´ve seen in Spain! It was probably nicer than the stake center back home in the States! But it was ridiculously fun because we got to see a TON of missionaries and i got to see Hna Roan and Hna Lyons!! My two old comps!!! It was great! I miss those girls! Plus Elder Whitworth is there too and he was in my district last transfer. Ahhhhh it was really fun. Like a big missionary reunion. And I got to see Hermano Tyndale, my old MTC teacher!!! I saw him because his family lives in Fuengirola, in the stake and he doesn´t teach at the MTC anymore because he´s going to BYU in January. (Aaron and Kelly, he will be in the school of music and plays violin, so if you ever meet a British Spanish speaker named Jack Tyndale, talk to him! haha. But stake conference was great, President Deere gave one of the talks! He´s literally the coolest man alive. He needs to be an Apostle someday so he can talk in General Conference and the entire world can realize how amazing he is.

We had exchanges this week too. Our Sister Training Leaders are the hermanas in Ward 1 so I switched and spent the night over there and worked with Hna Ramsay in their area and Hna Poulton worked with Hna Thompson in our area. It was a nice change of pace! It´s cool to see how other missionaries do things and learn different tips. Hna Ramsay is crazy with street contacting, she´s SO brave and she made me contact a lot which is the thing i´m bad at, so that was good. And it´s always interesting to get to know other missionaries. Hna Ramsay is really great, but she is super strict with rules. Like, I´m not saying that I think we should disobey rules, I´m just saying that if we go to bed at 11:02 instead of 11 that it´s not the end of the world. But overall it was a fun exchange.

Dang, I´m not sure what else I was going to mention...well, one thing I wanted to mention was people getting offended. I can´t remember if I already said anything about this, but we´ve had a couple lessons with less active members who tell us why they go inactive, and honestly, the reasons are just ridiculous. One family we know right now has just stopped coming to church a couple weeks ago because they´re mad at someone too. And here is the question (but this keyboard is weird and not letting me make question marks, so just pretend it´s a question): Are you really going to let someone else determine your salvation. This is the true Church and God speaks to us today and we have the chance to live with him again as long as we keep enduring to the end!!! How incredible is that!  And yet, some people will just throw all that away because someone looked at them weird or something. It´s absolutely ridiculous. I don´t care what someone did to you, Church isn´t about other people! It´s about you worshipping God! I´m begging you guys, do NOT stop going to Church because someone else isn´t perfect. nobody´s perfect, that´s why we have the gospel and chruch in the first place! Instead of me ranting about this more, just go listen to Pres Uchtdorf´s talk from Saturday morning a couple weeks ago and that should help solve the problem too. Please, there is NEVER a good enough reason to leave the Church. It´s just not worth it!

Well, the only other really exciting news is that I ate a Reese´s cup this week!!! It was literally a miracle, I was so excited. Reese´s cups are something you can´t buy here and I was going to put it on my Cmas list (and still am) but we were at a member´s house and they just got a package from some misssionary who baptized them like 10 years ago full of Reese´s cups and beef jerky. It was amazing. The taste of America. I wanted to cry. hahaha be grateful for American candy!!!

I don´t believe I had anything else but since I don´t have my list I´m not sure. Sorry this is short, but keep being awesome and sending me mail and emailing me! I love you all! Be good and read scriptures and go on missions!

Hna Andrew

Semana de Milagros

October 28, 2013

Dear Familia, Amigos, y Anyone reading this!

Well, it´s Pday again! It´s been quite the week. My title is Week of Miracles because we´ve had lots of mini miracles! Mostly those miracles are people that Hna Roan tried to visit before that were never home or always busy all of a sudden let us in and became new investigators! And then on a return appointments they had roommates or family members that appeared out of nowhere to listen to the message too and became new investigators. It´s pretty crazy! As soon as we sort through them and find the ones that really will progress I´ll share more names (right now I´m not too sure on any of them about how interested they really are, but as long as they agree to meet with us again they count as a new) and this week we had 11 news. That is CRAZY in this mission. It broke Hna Thompson´s record and most definitely broke mine! The most I had had before was 4 and the most hna Thompson had had was 8. The mission standard is supposed to be 3 but normally people don´t even make that. The weird thing is that it´s not like we worked extra hard, it´s just that more people let us in their house this week. That´s the weirdest part about missions, because sometimes you see results that you never expect and sometimes you expect miracles that never end up happening! The best new investigators that I´ll mention, however, is Andrea and her family. they are Romanian and friends with the Romanian family in our ward who I love so much. Hna Roan and Moreno had taught Andrea and her husband one lesson before I got here and Hna Roan and I tried for a few weeks to make another lesson happen but they were so flaky that it stopped being worth the effort so we put them in the old investigators file and Hna Thompson and I put in on our backup plans and she was home and let us in! So we had a short lesson and said we would come back on Sunday. The problem is that she didn´t speak a lot of Spanish so on Sunday we brought the Romanian family with us to translate but we didn´t realize so many people lived in Andrea´s piso and so all of a sudden tons of family members came out. Most of the time it was complete chaos and people went in and out, but 5 were definitely listening the whole time, so those 5 we could count as news. It was incredible. If all the family had stayed we could have had like 4 or 5 more. SO crazy. But yeah, I´m really hoping that they will progress! And update on Paco, they were really flaky this week and Alexandra kept saying she would call and she didn´t and they haven´t come to Church for 2 weeks now so I´m really worried about them :(

Fun fact: would any of you reading this think I am a blonde? (Referring to hair color, NOT a mental state hahaha). Because I´ve never been described as having blonde hair before, it´s brown or light brown. But here everyone calls me Rubia, blonde! I find it funny. it´s just because most people here have such dark hair that hair like mine is blonde to them. Another fun fact, have I ever told you guys about mediodia? Spain has this thing from 2-4/5pm where everyone goes home and takes naps and eats lunch (which is their biggest meal of the day). The shops close down, everything shuts down except buses and trains and the main grocery stores. We don´t contact during that time (there isn´t anything productive to do anyway) but sometimes we get meals with members or extra study time. I love it and think the United States should implement it. Time to relax in the middle of the day is fantastic.

So I wanted to include this next paragraph a couple weeks ago when I learned about it but haven´t really had the chance to fit it in. It´s about obedience. We talked about it in district meeting and Elder Whitworth shared some things that he had learned and I think it´s fascinating. Elder Whitworth said that an investigator who he was really close with and trusted really needed 20 euros to pay some bill for his business he was trying to open. The white handbook says that missionaries should not ever lend money (not that we have much to lend anyway!) but Elder Whitworth honestly felt like he should. It wasn´t a huge amount and he knew the guy well enough to know that he would be paid back. However, the handbook said not to, so against his better judgment, he did not lend him the money. The man wasn´t very happy and felt that they were obeying rules of man (men who would write the handbook) over being good Christians. Then Elder W really wished he had lent him the money and felt bad about obeying the rules, but then he also realized something else: the rules are from God. If he felt like he should do something that was against the rules, that meant he thought that his personal judgment was better than God´s. Do any of us really believe that we know better than God? When we make exceptions to the commandments because we think that just this one time we need to do something different, that is showing God that we think we know better than Him. I just want to testify that I KNOW that commandments are from God and He would never give us a commandment that wasn´t necessary. Even if we don´t understand them, you should never be willing to make an exception unless you are willing to tell God that your judgment/opinion is better than His. Kind of an intense thing, but it´s true! Just be obedient. I promise that you´ll be happier!!!

Something I realized this week is that we could convert more people if we made them go on a mission, because it wouldn´t take very long for people to realize that no one would go on a mission if this wasn´t the true Church. The fact that I have a testimony that this is Jesus Christ´s Church restored to the Earth today is the ONLY thing keeping me here, because missions are HARD. It´s hard to be so responsible for other people. It´s hard to worry ALL the time about other people and if they are keeping commitments or if they´re going to come to Church when it´s so much easier to only worry about yourself. It´s hard to try and organize your schedule all the time to be accommodating to everyone and be constantly worrying about being late or missing the bus or not getting someone to come with you to a lesson. It´s hard to teach lessons in a language that isn´t your own. It´s hard to teach lessons in general! It´s hard to sit there and have people argue and not give you a chance to explain your point. It´s hard to work in unity with someone you´ve only known for a week. It´s hard to get up in the morning and realize you have to do it all again another day. But I can tell you one thing: vale la pena. It´s worth it. I don´t know how, but somehow you get through it. And then you realize that you have passed your 3 month mark. I am a sixth done! How crazy is that??? The time goes fast but I can testify that nothing in the whole world will make you grow as much as a mission will. I can feel it. I can literally feel myself changing and growing and it´s really really hard but if nothing else, I make myself remember that Jesus Christ went through all of this. And more. When I feel like my teaching isn´t making a difference to these people, I imagine how He felt being crucified by the people He taught. When I feel like I can´t do this one more day, I think of Jesus asking God to take the cup away from Him and knowing that He would have to do it anyway. I PROMISE that the Savior knows EXACTLY how you feel. Anytime you think He doesn´t, read Alma 7:11-13 and Isaiah 53:3-5. He is here for you and He knows you and He loves you.

So I really hope you all are doing well. Write me letters! I miss you guys! Write me emails too! Keep reading your scriptures everyday and even if you think you don´t have time, make time, because there is always time for God´s word in your life. Be strong, and remember to pray as if everything depended on God and then work as if everything depended on you. Tenga una buena semana!

Hasta luego,

Hermana Andrew

"Why Not?"

October 21, 2013

Dear Familia y todos,

Heyyy! ¿Qué tal? I miss you guys! I am always hoping that all of you are doing well. Anyway, I have a few things to say about this week!

First of all, my new companion! Like I said, her name is Hermana Thompson and she has been on the mission for 7 months. She has only served in Benidorm this whole time and was very excited to come to Málaga. She is a first for me in many ways. Like, she´s the first comp I´ve had who also goes to BYU! She went for 3 years before the mission and is studying art education. So she´s also the first comp I´ve had who is older than me (she turned 21 in June). She is the first comp I´ve had who speaks better Spanish than me. She has the typical Spain accent down, people ask if she´s from Spain and/or tell her she speaks like native. It´s amazing. However, the accent still sounds weird to my ears because it´s not the Málaga accent. I hear a billion different accents everyday so I don´t think I am actually picking up any certain one. Most of the time I´m just trying to make what I say sound grammatically correct, nevermind the accent! But she knows plenty of grammar too, which is great. I do miss Hermana Roan a lot, just because we became so close, but I can tell that this will be better for me because she´s much more experienced and just knows what she´s doing and we are much more obedient about following the schedule (not that we weren´t obedient before, but we might sleep in a few minutes or talk instead of study and we should have done a lot more with the maps and area book that we didn´t do) so I feel more productive and just like a better missionary. At first I was worried because the first day or two seemed awkward, but then I realized that Hna Roan´s personality makes ANYone look like a quiet because she´s literally the friendliest, most outgoing person in the world, so after I just had to stop comparing and be more patient and realize that she is still very friendly, just not to Hermana Roan´s level. In fact, I think she´s a lot like me in certain ways, but ways that are hard to explain. it´s interesting. But Hna Thompson also went to both MTCs, like me and also likes Provo better. Although, I ended up liking the Spain MTC and she still hates it, but at least it´s something we have in common when most people only have gone to one or the other. But all in all, we work well together and get along and now that the first week is over we´ll definitely end up good friends because we´re now more comfortable with each other. I don´t know how I keep getting lucky with my comps though. Because I´ve had four and i am friends with all of them! I keep crossing my fingers that my luck doesn´t end!!!

Anyway, another thing i wanted to share was the activity Maria Angeles did in sharing time yesterday. she was talking about missionary work and she had a bag of gummies that represented the gospel (so of course the kids got ridiculously excited) and let them all look and smell it but for a couple minutes wouldn´t share it with them (and she was hilarious, you all need to see her teach, she was literally born to be a Primary President, she´s the best one I´ve ever seen) and after awhile the kids all practically attacked her for the gummies (I wish missionary work was really like that when we walk out the door every morning) and so I just thought it was a really good analogy. If you had a really awesome candy (or whatever you love) that was your absolute favorite and you ate it every single day and just reveled in how amazing it was, wouldn´t you want to share it?? Wouldn´t you tell your friends, ¨Hey, check out this awesome candy, it´s my favorite!¨ Would you not tell them because YOU thought they might not like it, even though you can´t ever know what candy someone might like? Would you be too scared to tell your friend that you have a new favorite candy? Of course not! So why can´t it be the same with the gospel? You never know who will like it! You never know if the Gospel might become someone´s new favorite candy! You have something SOOO incredibly great: the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ!!! It´s better than any candy! We should all be excited to share it with anyone who doesn´t know! So I know I also have a long way to go because I am still scared of stopping people on the street, but I hope that this can encourage both me and you to be more enthusiastic about missionary work. Another thing that helps me is thinking about after I die and wondering ¨After I die am I going to wish I had talked to less people? Am I going to worry about whether the people looked busy or looked unfriendly?¨ NO. I am going to wish I stopped every single person in Málaga. So I personally need to just get rid of my self-consciousness and do it. It´s easier said than done, but we´ll see how it goes. the Lord is hastening His work! And I don´t want to get left behind so I want to do my part!

I also wanted to explain my title. Every time we teach Michael, we want to commit him to something, right? And no matter what we ask, whether it´s paying tithing or coming to Church or reading the scriptures, he always says the same thing: ¨Why not?¨ (In a cool Nigerian accent too, of course). At first it bugged me, because it didn´t sound like a serious commitment! To me it sounded like the equivilent of ¨Sounds like a good idea, I´ll try it if I have time¨ kind of nonchalant and noncommital answer. However, I have grown to love it. Think about it. Take scripture study for example. Why not read your scriptures? Why would you not want to gain more spiritual insights and get more blessings? What do you have to gain by NOT doing it? Nothing! There is no truly good reason for not reading scriptures or obeying any of the commandments. So to you all, I say Why not? Whatever is holding you back right now, however big or small it may be, just ask yourself what you gain from not doing it. When you really really think about it, the commandments make sense. Don´t miss out on those blessings!

So a cool thing happened to me yesterday. I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting like normal but I started feeling homesick. And I´ve never really been homesick in my life and it wasn´t a big deal and I´m totally fine, but I just started thinking about how much time I still had left on my mission and it felt like forever. And I just missed my old life where I could understand Sacrament Meeting, where I could go to Church and not stress over whether investigators would come or not, where I could go to Church without worrying about talking to everybody I needed to talk to, where I could come home and just read a book or take a nap, and I missed Sunday dinner with my family where I can understand perfectly what everybody says and feel truly comfortable. But most of all, I was just tired of being a missionary because that nametag is quite the burden sometimes, because it means that every single thing I do represents the Church and it can be a serious responsibility! But then after Church the prayer I hadn´t even said was answered when a woman named Nuria last minute invited us to dinner at her house in Churriana. And I knew the family but had never eaten there before even though i had always wanted to and the reason it was an answer to my prayer was that they reminded me of my family! They are strong in the Church, the mom in RS President and the dad in the Bishopric and they even have 3 kids! A daughter who is recently married (like Kelly soon will be), a daughter my age who is away studying at school somewhere (and I´m away in Spain) and a son about Karina´s age who is also the last kid left at home and has 2 years left of high school. The married daughter and husband live nearby and they came over too and so the way the family interacted and just the way they made us feel really comfortable just made me feel almost like I was with my family again. It felt a lot like when my family had the missionaries over, except this time I was the missionary! But seriously, Heavenly Father knows us really well and He knows what we need at certain times. There was a reason we hadn´t eaten with them until that day. So that just helped me feel much more motivated for the week and really relieved my temporary homesickness. It was a mini miracle!

It´s finally gotten cooler. We can wear cardigans sometimes! Especially at night! Other than nights and early mornings, still no signs of fall! So crazy! Got letters from Dad last week and today and a letter from Joseph today too (I´m working on a letter for you! Sorry it´s taking forever! haha). And I kept forgetting to mention this, but shoutout to my awesome roommate EA who had a birthday this month! I thought about you on the 8th and wished you well! I would love to hear from you! I miss you so much and have things to share with you that only you will truly understand! Don´t worry if it´s short!

Well, that´s about it. Everyone keep being awesome! Hasta luego,

Hermana Andrew

Michael's baptism

Only sign of Fall!