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