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
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