¡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!