Our new Convert Baptism!

kelsey in the square

Hello there!! 

This week was transfer week and thankfully, I¨m staying!!!! Hna Roan and I will be together for at least one more transfer :) We´re both very excited about it, we´ve got a lot of work to do together still.

This weekend we had a baptism! She´s a really nice girl a few years older than me named Nora. Her mom and brother were originally going to get baptized too, but they decided not too. I was really proud of her for continuing on the path she kenw was right. I´m sure it wasn´t easy, but she did it. Hna Roan and I and a girl from the ward did a musical number together and we chose the songs for the baptism really carefully. Both her brother and mom were there and then a couple investigators too, so we really wanted to bring the Spirit. I really felt it, it was one of the best baptisms I´ve experienced here. A lot of the ward was there too because there´d been a meeting just before so everyone stayed for the baptism. Sucess!

This week was tough. We struggled to stay focused, but even though we were struggling we still experienced miracles. I was feeling really frustrated earlier this week that we still didn´t have any investigators after a whole transfer. And the girl that we thought was going to be golden flo

pped earlier that week, so I was feeling pretty down.

 I prayed one day all day that I would be able to talk to just one person. Just one person who would be a good investigator, and that´d I´d recognize and know who to talk to. Because it´s still really hard for me to randomly talk to peopel on the street, I feel super awkward doign it. But I prayed for help and watched every face that walked past all day and tried to really feel for the Spirit and keep a prayer in my heart. That day as we were walking we passed someone and I said hi, just like we always do, not really even thinking about it.

 We walked past a few steps and he turned and said hi like he knew who i was so we stopped. He started talking to us and it took me a little bit to recognize him. He was an old investigator that Hna Brown and I had dropped because he hadn´t answered the door or his phone for a while. He said he has a job (which is a miracle here in Spain, he´d been looking forever) and he asked why we hadn´t stopped by lately. So we promised to call him soon and stop by!! 

I was on such a spiritual high. It was a direct answer to my prayer in a way I totally hadn´t expected. I was singing inside after we left, I was just so happy. It was such a testimony builder to me that specific, direct prayers with an intent to act lead to answers.

We actually had another really similar moment that same week. María, our recent convert, needed to move to a different piso really bad. The one´s she´s in is too expensive and the piso owner is a little scary. She was just feeling super overwhelmed and actually cried some (María NEVER cries). She´s just had a lot of really tough things going on in her life right now, and it was just one thing too many. SHe had to be out of her piso by the end of the month or they were goign to be on the street. 

So being the missionary´s we are, we said a prayer with her. There was no other way we coudl really help her. I was lucky enough to be the one to say it. I was praying really hard. Really hard. And then this overwhelming Spirit came over me and I felt the Gift of Tongues go to work. The Spirit guided me and I asked that she would be able to find a piso that week. This was Tuesday, And I just KNEW she´d find one. There was no doubt in my mind

. After that we got right to work and called her visiting teacher and when we left María called the bishop. María is wanting to move closer to the church so she can go easier, which is on the other side of town. But Hna Roan and I were over there during the week for visiting teaching and we wrote down the numbers for all the relators and piso´s for rent signs we saw. We wandered for like 45 minutes trying to help her find a piso.We called her during the week and she didn´t have one yet and sounded really discouraged.

That Sunday I sat down next to her and told her we had some numbers to help her. With a big smile she told me that she´d found one in her price range. It was such a miracle. I´m still amazed by it. 

I love you all a lot. I love this gospel so much. This week I´ve really learned that God does answer prayers. He is listening, and he wants to help us. We just have to have the faith and ask direct questions. Have a wonderful week! I´m giving you all internet hugs. 

Loves,

Hna Woolley

No pictures for this post :(

Hello everyone! I always feel a little wierd starting this letter. I´m bad at introductions. And spelling. Sorry bout that. 

This week has been good. We really focused this week on less actives and members to give ourselves a little break from knocking so many doors. Through it we meet some really interesting people.

There´s this one man named Luís. I forgot his name and so didn´t realize that Hna Brown and i had visited him once before and he doesn´t have any potential for coming back to church right now. I didn´t remember until we were at his apartment, but we already had an apointment set up with him so we went in. He was nice, but strange. He kept giving us the most bizzare complements. Hna Roan carries a pocket dictionary around with her and htat was the only way we were able to know what his complements were. He was calling us wise and ingenous. So random. He told us that he could read people´s personalities on their faces. When we finally managed to get out of his house we just stared at each other in the elevator for a few seconds, both of us were a little dumbfounded. It was one of hte strangest citas I´ve been in.

It was kind of sad too. Because at one point the Spirit was super strong. Hna Roan was testifying in a way I´ve never seen her testify before. We both bore our testimony´s several times, and we could see that Luís felt the Spirit in his face. But then he abruptly changed the subject and shut it down. I could almost physically see him push the Spirit away. Even if Luís didn´t grow much from the cita, he listened to more of a lesson than he did when Hna Brown and I visited him. So maybe one day he´ll decided to come back, you never can tell.

This week in one of our eating cita´s we got there and then foudn out a companionship of Elders was invited too. We asked who but they couldn´t remember their names, and so 10 minutes later when the Elders still weren´t there we started calling all the Elders, trying to find out who it was. I was feeling super awkward because the food was ready and everyone was waiting to eat. The family is from South America too (Dominican Republic) and food is REALLY important to people in those countries. 

So we finally get ahold of the right set of Elders. It´s the companionship that has the District Leader, Elder Johnson in it. But Elder Johnson is on exchanges with another set of Elders from a pueblo. So the Elders coming are Elder Johnsons newer companion and the companion from the other set.  They say their on their way and they´ll be there in a few minutes but to start without them. So we do. 

Twenty minutes later they still aren´t there so we call them again. They are SO lost. Neither of them know our area at all, one doesn´t even know Granada because he works in a pueblo (town outside of Granada). We give them directions and tell them which bus to get on. They accidently get on going the wrong direction so they have to get off and back on another bus and then take the time to ride the bus. By this time we´ve finished eating and are wondering if we should leave and just go pick them up, Because the Elder that works in the pueblo needs to catch a bus to go back to his town in about an hour, and it takes about 45 minutes to get to the bus station from where we are. 

The Elder ends up missing his bus because they come in to eat. I was feeling so awkward and not really sure what to do this whole time. Thankfully, the elder from the pueblo is Spanish and really knew how to smooth out the situation. He had everyone laughing and cooled down any hurt feelings. So glad he was there. After the cita we helped the Elders get on the right bus, crossed our fingers and went to our next cita. So glad they made it to the bus station okay, and they were able to trade his ticket in for another one. But it was definately an adventure.

By the way, Happy Thanksgiving. Kind of forgot that´s this week. Wierd.

Love you all!!!
Hna Woolley

Fellow missionaries

A Hard Week

This week was probably one of the hardest I´ve experienced on my mission. It was the 4th week of the transfer and we still don´t have an investigator. Thankfully this last week we taught a lot more lessons than before (the week before we only taught 5), but they were all member or less active lessons. Which are good, because that means we´re stregthening the ward. But we aren´t teaching anyone new, and that´s kind of discouraging and frustrating. Hermana Roan and I keep reminding ourselves that we´re working on developing patience and dilligence. Whatever we´re supposed to learn from this we´re still learning, and that´s okay.

Even though it was hard, there were lots of good things too. I´ve been really understanding the people of the Book of Mormon a lot better and learning all sorts of things. Like in Alma 25 it´s naming all the Lamanitish cities that  were converted. Then it mentions that any city that had Amukites (can´t remembber how to spell that) no one converted. It was a good reminder to me to keep bad influences out of my life, because those things drag me down.

A little later, Aaron is teaching King Lamoni´s father. Seeing this whole section through missionary eyes totally changes it. But mainly what I saw was that Aaron and his bretheren had just gone through horrible awful trials. And because they had endured them well and stayed strong in the gospel, they were SO blessed. They were able to help so many people and feel the joy of doing that. It was nice to hear and remember this as we´ve been going through a tough week. The Lord was telling me to stay strong and hold on. 

María is doing a lot better, she stayed for the full 3 hours of church for the first time ever! I was so proud of her! It´s really hard for her to do since she has a little boy that´s autistic that she leaves home with her oldest son (he has no interest in the church at all), but she did it! And she wasn´t gtrudging at all. It was a good way to end the week.

This week we visited a family we´ve never visited before in a pueblo. Naomi and Paco don´t have any kids but they have 3 dogs and one of them just had puppies! they were ADORABLE! I´m not a huge fan of yorkies, but yorkie puppies are so cute. They didn´t have their eyes open yet or anything. They breed yorkies for a living and Naomi is obsessed with her dogs. They´re pretty much her babies. It was making me laugh to see her baby her dogs. I feel like everyone I´ve met in Spain is such a character.  They all belong in a movie or a book.

This week our zone got together for a special pday and played softball. The Castillos ( a senior couple in the mission) came and brought lunch and a bat and a gloves, etc. We had a zone training meeting before then all walked over to the field together. It just made my day to play softball. I haven´t played in a long time so I wasn´t very good, but that was just fine because neither was anyone else. The Spainiards were very confused by the idea and never knew when to run. There´s an elder from Germany and he picked up how to play super fast. He´s really athletic. He hit a home run and caught a crazy catch out in outfield. I think all the american´s jaws dropped. It was like he´d been playing his whole life. It was super nice of the Castillos to do that, they´ve done it with a few other zones and it´s so, SO much fun.

We made it up to the natives by playing soccer with them after people started getting tired of softball. I didn´t feel like getting creamed at soccer so me and an elder with a hurt knee (did I ever tell you about that? He had a torn ACL miracle. Everyone thought his ACL was torn but the results showed that it was some thing about cartilage. HUGE MIRACLE. All he needs to do is physical therapy and he can stay on his mission. Even the doctors called it a miracle since it was so clearly an ACL tear) and Hna Roan threw  softball around instead. 

Last thing. Food. Hna Roan and I got ourselves fresh mini dognuts with chocolate on top. SO good. She actually had a waffle with chocolate on it. All those foods we consider breakfast food in America they eat as desserts here. I think this says something about American breakfasts... 

And at María Guzmans house (we eat with her every week and help her take care of her sick/old mom) we had yams and pears that had been cooked together. It was kind of wierd. 

Love you all so much! Stay strong! Have a good week!!

Hna Woolley

New Comp for one day

wall of love

Working Hard!

Hi everyone!

 It´s been another week in the mission, working away and playing hard. We work really hard here in Spain, but we know how to have a lot of fun too.

We are still struggling to find people to teach. No one seems interested and we´re still learning how to look effectively. Our whole mission is really young, almost all the missionary´s have been out less than 6 months. We had specialized training with President Deere this week and that was one of the things he talked about. With all the new missionary´s doubling the number of missionarys in our area this year, we are finding a lot of new investigators and future investigators, but not very many of them are getting baptized. He talked about how this is because we´re still learning how to teach well. So hopefully our numbers will jump dramatically in about a year when we all have a lot more experience. I´m really excited for it :)

Earlier this week Hna Roan and I were struggling because we felt like we weren´t making any progress. So we set a goal to talk to as many people as we possibly could in one day. We prayed really hard that night as we were planning and then that morning. We prepared and practiced and did our best. And just like he always does, the Lord blessed us. That day we were only 5 short of our really high goal and got in the door with 2 people. One of them was an old investigator who just really needed some love that day. The other was also an old investigator. He said it was such a coincidence we stopped by because he´d just been thinking about the missionary´s. He´d been traveling a lot when the missionary´s met with him last and didn´t really have time to talk to them, but now he isn´t traveling as much. We set up another cita with him on the spot and he seemed really excited. Unfortunately, he wasn´t there when we stopped by, but we´re thinking its because he´s so busy (he said he was super busy) and we´re working on getting another one with him. But even if things don´t work out perfectly with him, that day was exactly what we needed to keep going. It really meant a lot to both of us, we went home so happy. It felt great to know we´d done absolutely everything we could do that day. We´ve been feeling that way a lot lately, which makes our lack of ´´success´´ easier to push through.

This Halloween was so wierd. It kind of doesn´t exist here unless you´re 6 or 23. The young adults all go and have a giant party and the little kids sometimes trick or treat. THe missionary´s and ward missionary´s pulled together a ward Halloween party that turned out really great. We put together a haunted house in the garage under the church and in the church had a dance/food hang out party thing. THe missionary´s were in the haunted house but after wards we went up and we were able to get some references from the members and meet some less actives. It was really a fun activity. After the party the missinoary´s all went to to get kebap together. It was so sweet, some little kids were trick or treating and one elder went into a store we were standing by and bought them chu ches (gummy candys). Sadly they moved on by the time he came back out, but it was still nice of him!

This week we ate dinner with the bishop and his family. They live in a pueblo a few minutes outside of Granada. It was SO beautiful. The pueblos are what people imagine when they think of Spain with the narrow streets and all the buildings white with red roofs. It was a lot of fun, they´re a really great family. Theres a girl our age who is fun to talk to and her younger sister just fell in love with Hna Roan. Hna Roan sang a song in Samoan for them and they LOVED that. Apparently the bishops wife has always wanted to go visit that part of the world. I loved seeing all the fall trees too. This area kind of looks like Utah in some parts, it was nice.

We had Stake Conference this weekend too. It´s here in Granada so we didn´t have to travel. But the other city´s all take big busses here. And the Saturday night session was broadcast from Malága. We couldn´t get the big screen to work that night so the few of us that were there huddled around a computer. The 8 missionarys made up half the people there that night. But it was awesome to see so many members in one place on Sunday! It turns out there are 52 missionary´s in this stake. So many!

María, our recent convert, and her son Fransisco came. It was going to be a really good thing for her, but then she got mad when the bishop couldn´t leave right away and take her home (he gives her a ride every week to church). I talked to the ZL¨s about giving her a ride but they had an apointment to go to and couldn´t. So she got pretty mad and stormed off to take the bus. It was a frustrating situation. I was very much so in the middle of two groups where I understood both sides and didn´t really know how to find a happy solution. Hna Roan and I are going to talk to María about this week and try to help her understand better. She was worried about her autistic son she left at home with her 21 yr old son and didn´t really understand why the bishop couldn´t leave right away. It was an unfortunate situation that Hna Roan are working on clearing up.

It was a good week! I´m really learning how to be dilligent and patient. I´ve really been blessed to serve in such a beautiful area and meet so many interesting people. I know this gospel is true. I feel so blessed to be able to learn so much. The learning curve is so sharp out here! It´s really kind of exciting. I love this gospel so much. If theres one thing my mission is doing, its strengthening my testimony. I know I wouldn´t be able to do this without Christ. He his my rock and he is my salvation.

2 Nephi 2:22

Love you all!!!

Hna Woolley