Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! So fun fact about Spainards. The last 12 seconds of the year they eat a grape every second. And if you eat all the grapes in time you get your wish. Cool, right? 

I had a lot of fun this week. The work was rough with everyone gone for the holidays, but it was okay we just spend lots of time with members and less actives this week. Christmas Eve all the missionary´s went to the house of a member and partied with her family after  caroling at a home for disabled people with some other members. The dinner was a little awkward at first but once we got used to each other it was great. We left as best friends. 

Christmas day we opened lots of presents and had a REAL American breakfast of pancakes and eggs with MAPLE SYRUP.Such a treat. Hermana Roan´s mom sent it to us.  We ate lunch with a less active family and one other companionship of Elders. And of course I was able to skype home! The highlight of everything!!! We could have talked for so much longer, but it was okay. We´ll talk again in a few months :)

After all the holidays we really tried to get down to work. Not many people wanted us over for obvious reasons, but we spent time with some lady´s who are older and alone and that was so  much fun. I love visiting the older ladies, its one of my favorite things. They just radiate love.

So, Manuel (our investigator with a baptism date). This week had ups and downs. We weren´t able to see him except on Monday and Saturday and Sunday because of the holidays, which we didn´t like. With such a fragile and new testimony we really want to see investigators as much as possible. We were teaching him the Plan of Salvation this week and he had LOTS of questions. Totally understandable, it´s something really new and totally different if you grew up Catholic like he did. But he accepted things really well, which we were so grateful for. 

Unfortunately he didn´t feel like he could go to church because his legs were hurting him too much. He has a lot of pain in his legs that he´s going to doctors for right now, and church last week really hurt him. We tried to work out a way he could come, but he didn´t want to this week. We offered to have the Elders give him a blessing of health to help with his legs (after explaining what a blessing was), and he agreed. The district leader and his companion came and they helped us out SO much. They were able to explain things in a different way that helped Manuel understand faith better and the blessing was really powerful. The DL´s companion is really young in the mission, he´s still being trained. But he´s such an awesome missionary, it´s been so cool to see him grow so much in just two transferrs. He gave the blessing and mentioned things he didn´t know about that were hard in Manuel´s life. I´m so grateful they came with us, it was a pretty big sacrifice for those Elders, but it made a big difference in Manuel´s progression. We recommited him to be baptized and we´re going to try and see him everyday and make sure he comes to church this next week. I´m a little bummed we had to move his date though because its a lot more likely I won´t be here when he gets baptized with transfers.

I´m finding out about transferrs this Saturday, so we´ll see where I´m going or if I stay. It´s wierd because I´m ready to see somewhere new, but I also love Granada so, so much. I love the people here. Our bishop who is trying so hard to learn how to be a good bishop, the members who do so much, those who are struggling and need the gospel. Everyone. I feel so much love for this part of Granada. So I´m torn I never want to leave but I can tell I´m drawing to the end of my time in Granada, whether I leave this transfer or the next.

I love you all! Have a great New Years, stay safe!

Loves,

Hermana Woolley

Kelsey in Spain in December

My awesome companion

A church we pass all the time

Christmas Week-845

AAH!! It´s Christmas! It totally snuck up on me this year. It´s never happened before. I´m the type of person who has bought my  Christmas presents by Thanksgiving and starts listening to Christmas music before thanksgiving. So it´s weird. But good, because it means no homesickness :) I´m just working too hard to notice.

Last week I mentioned that we were going to have a week of finding new investigators with a goal of finding 800. Everyone worked really, really hard and prayed really hard and we found....

845!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you believe it? I can! I´m part of the most amazing mission ever! Everyone worked really hard and had lots of faith. Unfortunately, we didn´t find the 8 we were hoping to find, only 5. But we know we´d done our best and we still have lots of people we can try to contact this next week. Even though we didn´t find our 8, we still saw miracles.

Manuel, the man who has a date to get baptized came to church yesterday! This is HUGE! It´s really hard to get people to church from our area because the church is really far away and there aren´t many members with cars on our side of town. But he was so eager to come and we worked something out at he came! And he loved it! He has so many questions, but good questions. Sometimes people with questions are looking to find holes or problems, but Manuel is earnestly trying to learn and understand. He asked in Sacrament Meeting if he was worthy to take the Sacrament (we´d just explained a little of what it was the night before, how it was a ´´´mini baptism´´). I assured him that he was. My heart was just singing, the thought ´´he understands! he understands!´´ kept running through my head. We´re seeing him again tonight and I´m really excited to see him.

Besides Manuel we have this other lady we´re working with from Nigeria named Violet. It was so weird teaching her about the Book of Mormon in english. She is going through some really hard times right now, trying to raise her son alone while her husband is in Germany. She doesn´t have any money to go join him and they´ve been seperated for 3 years. I can´t imagine! It must be so hard. But we left the lesson feeling like we´d given her some comfort and helped bring the Spirit into her home. I don´t know where things will go with her, but I have faith. 

Another miracle. We ate mediodia with a family we know. They´re son is baptized (he´s like 30) but they aren´t yet. They aren´t super interested but they are very Christian and love that we are trying to help people and friends with their son (he helps us out with investigators a lot). As we were leaving she gave us a big bag of oranges and this other fruit. We call it alien fruit, but I have no idea what it´s actually called. We didn´t need the fruit, but we´d been looking for a way to help serve people this week. So we´re going to go hand out the oranges and alien fruit tomorrow to the people who beg in our area. Its such a little miracle, but it really means a lot to me to be able to afford to do that. 

I´ve really been learning this week how the Lord changes our hearts. He´s been helping me so much. First he changed my heart so I would be okay with coming out on a mission. And now that I´m out here he´s been changing my heart to love Spain and Spanish and serving a mission. I finally noticed it this week, but I´m really falling in love with being a missionary. I was so dissapointed that we didn´t find our 8 people, not because of the number but because I want to help those people find the gospel. I get so excited for Manuel and love seeing how much he´s changed in just a few visits. I´m really coming to love the people here and want to serve them. Even if they don´t want the gospel, I want to help them be happier. It´s such a miracle, the Lord is really changing how I view things. Of course I still have a really far ways to go. But I love the glimpse I was given this week of how I´ve grown. 

Last thing. I saw this quote on another missionary´s planner earlier this week. I´d heard it before but it´s made such an impact on me this week. 

¨Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of hte day taht says, I´ll try again tomorrow.¨ --Thomas S. Monson.

That really hit me. It´s so true, especially out here. It made me feel better about my efforts and really helped me be more at peace with not reaching our goal. Sometimes it takes all I have to even keep walking and knock on that next door. To wear a smile even when all I want to do is sit down and cry. 

 And the Lord knows that. Lately I´ve been asked to really, truly give my all. I´ve given everything I have to this work. And I´m going to keep doing so, because I love the Lord and I love his gospel. I know this gospel is the truth. There´s nothing more beautiful than this gospel, not even Spain. ;) I´m going to keep trying, and the Lord knows that. He understands that we tried our best, and thats all he asks for. 

Love you all a lot! Have a very Merry Christmas!

Loves,

Hna Woolley

Our Christmas piso

Christmas miracle

We really have seen a miracle this week. Its the thing we´ve been working to find all this time. We have someone with a baptismal date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! His name is Manuel Jose. We´re really excited, he´s a pretty solid baptism. We´ve even got a member who will go with us to all his lessons and they´re already friends. Manuel couldn´t come to church this sunday for personal reasons, but he really wants to come. He WANTS to learn from us!! This is amazing, people. No one ever wants to learn from us. 

It´s in perfect timing that we found him actually. Because this week our mission set a really high goal for finding new investigators this week. 800! That means every companionship needs to find 8 investigators this week. We´ve been prepping all week by working with the members and trying to find references, fasting and praying and studying specifically for this. I know we can do it. I´m really excited for this week of miracles. It´ll be really hard and we´ll have to pray a lot, but I know that the Lord will lead us to those 8 people that are ready in our area, because this is His goal more than it is ours. 

Preparing for this week has really shown me how VITAL the members are to missionary work. We can knock and knock and talk to everyone on the street, but one member referral is gold. Gold. We treat our member references so well and try to really do our best to contact them. 

This weekend we got to do something really fun for Christmas. Every year the Granada ward puts together a big concert with the Granada city band. This year us missionary´s sang in a chior with the band. We had missionary´s from several cities (2 zones) come together and spend the afternoon practicing. It was so fun to see the everyone. It was a bit stressful because we never practiced all together. We had hymnns we sang just as a choir and they played songs and then we ended with 2 songs together. It was... interesting. The choir had a hard time knowing when to come in since we never saw music and the director just practiced with us. In spanish. So it was okay. But the thing was a hit and everyone said it was wonderful.

 Hna Roan sang a solo that was FANTASTIC! She really brought the spirit, it was so awesome. We weren´t allowed to proselyte at all since the city was involved too, but hopefully we´ll see some results. Manuel came to the concert and while we practiced a few Elders from Granada showed him around the church, including the baptismal font and from what the Elders said he was really excited about it. We´re so excited for him!!! 

This week Hna Roan got a couple packages from her mom that were full of christmas decorations and hot chocolate!!!! SO excited about the hot chocolate. The stuff they have here just isn´t the same. So we decorated our little tree we bought a few weeks ago today. Our apartment finally feels like it´s Christmas!!

This last week really has been such a huge blessing. We have someone to teach and he is so ready for the gospel. 

Spanish holiday

Helloooo family!!

 Hope everythings well with everyone this week. This week was a week of learning and growth. 

We had a cita with a less active, Nancy, this week that we´ve been trying to get ahold of for months. She´s super busy and instead of calling her like we normally do, we went and knocked her door. So glad she was there because she lives out on the edge of the city so it took us a while to walk there. We´re her visiting teachers too so it was really awesome to finally meet her. 

It´s been a hard week, but we´re pushing foward. With God all things are possible. And only with Him, because on our own we´re too weak to do the things we need to do. I¨m actually grateful for how hard its been, because its really teaching me how to rely on the Lord. I´ve learned so much here in Granada and drawn so much closer to the Lord. I had to or I couldn´t have made it this far.

This weekend is a holiday here in Spain so grocery shopping today was interesting. This morning in correlacion (meeting with the ward mission leader. Normally not on Mondays but this weekend was messed up with the holiday) we found out that all the grocery stores are closed. So instead of going two streets over like usual we went to the edge of town where Nancy lives. There´s a Carrefour out there and that sells American food and isn´t a Spanish store so we were hoping that it might be open. 

Unfortunately, it wasn´t. So we treaded all the way back to where we live and bought fruit at a little fruit store and a few other things at a corner store. We´ll survive, but it´ll be interesting this week. But we found ramen! Real ramen, not the american stuff. I´m really excited to try it. As all my roommates from last year know, I LOVE ramen. I add onion and sometimes soy sauce and spinach and sometimes an egg. It´s sooooooo goooooooood. So I´m pretty excited about that. It was definately a tender mercy this week. 

Also, another miracle this week. There´s this Nigerian lady that begs outside our piso every day that we´ve made friends with. We ran into her in another part of town on the way to another cita and got her address and number. It was perfect! So we´re really excited to start working with her, hopefully everythign will pan out. I´ll keep you updated.

This week we also had specialized training and interviews with President. It was reallly nice to see him. Every mission president handles thier missionary´s a little different, and ours treats us like we´re his kids. I love it. We´re starting a new program for the next month to try and help all the missionary´s find and baptize a lot more people and he was training us in that.

I love you all a lot. Hope it´s a good week for you all, thanks for all the prayers. :) I know Christ lives and loves us. Now more than ever. He knows we aren´t perfect but still wants us. He will never leave us to struggle on our own if we ask for his help. This is key as I´m coming to learn.

Loves. :)

Hna Woolley

Her companion

Ward Members Christmas Tree we helped decorate

Romanian Family

Hi there!  

Hope It´s been a good week for everyone. This week had a huge range of emotions. We were given a reference of this family from Romania from a set of Elders in Granada. They´d moved into our area and he said they were golden. We met them for the first time on Monday and just kind of got to know them and introduce ourselves. The dad wasn´t there but there were 6 kids and a mom. We commited them to baptism (without a date) and they all said yes. We were super, super excited for our first breakthrough in weeks!!

We stopped by to visit them again that week and the whole family wasn´t there, but the mom and the younger kids were so we read part of the story of Nephi getting the plates and asked them to finish the story, just to get them into the Book of Mormon without giving them anything too deep. We wanted to try and keep the whole family on the same page. 

When we stopped by again only the oldest kids were there. We talked with them a bit and asked them when we could come by with the whole family there. When they called their mom they told us that we could come over any more.

What? It totally caught us by surprize. The whole family was so strong and so excited. When we´d brought Books of Mormon for them the second visit one of the kids had opened it up and started reading the introduction right away. They were so ready for the gospel. 

The kids explained to us that their dad didn´t want anything to do with the church. In Romanian the word ´´mormon´´ means ´´tomb´´. They said that in Romania missionary´s had come by before and tried to explain but that he didn´t understand and didn´t want us coming by any more. They said that they´d tried to get baptized back then and he´d said no. It was heartbreaking. We could tell they wanted it. The whole family did. But they needed to follow what dad said, which I totally respect. It was just so hard to see just good kids who want such good things not be able to. So they asked us to not come by any more. We´d given them 4 books of Mormon, 2 in Spanish and 2 in Romanian. They gave us back two, one from each language and said they were hiding the others so they could read them when he wasn´t home. As we left I told them to read 3 Nephi 11. It´s all we could do, and I wanted to make sure that they at least got to read about Christ since they weren´t going to be able to read much or often.

So that was pretty tough. I have faith in those kids though. If they don´t have the opportuntiy to accept the gospel now, they will in the next life. It really made me super grateful for the family I have.

We saw a miracle this week too. An old investigator that Hna Brown and I had been visiting and dropped (pretty sure I mentioned him last week) met with us at the beginning of the week. He opened up like he never has before and told us he really wanted to try this time to do the things we asked him. He didn´t want us to think he was flakey and didn´t want to learn, he´d just been going through a rough time. We were only able to meet him once this week because he was in the process of moving, but we should be meeting with him this next week. So that´s really exciting. We have a bunch of other people that we´re trying to visit this next week. It feels like we finally have people to work with, even if they´re not solid people. It´s a lot better than the nothing we started out with!

On a lighter note, the funniest thing happened this week. We were in an eating cita with Elder Erickson and Elder Gonzalez (we didn´t realize we were double booked until we got there.. Sometimes the members here try to do that since theres so many of us in one ward. We just kind of have to let it go). Elder Erickson was really excited for their jalepeños and had a ton of them in his salad. So the mom gave him some other peppers to take home, these little round red ones I don´t know the name of. He pulls one out of the bag and is sniffing it. The family all tells him to not eat it because it´s really spicy, much more so than the jalepeños. So being the person he is, he pops it in his mouth. 

I wish I could have taken a video. It was one of the funniest things I´ve ever seen. He tried to play it cool for a while but his face started turning red. He coughed a bit and then started drinking a lot of water. He just held the water in his mouth. Meanwhile the whole family is laughing and shaking their head at him. In the closing prayer everyone had a hard time being reverent because he was panting. When we left he said his tongue was numb. I wish I could explain better his reaction, it was the funniest thing.

This week for Thanksgiving Hna Roan and I got together with a member of the ward (maría Jose) who loves cooking and speaks really good english. She wanted to try doing a cclassic thanksgiving dinner. It was fun, but a nightmare at the same time. There was a little bit of confusion about who was bringing what ingredients so we were short some things and the poor elders had to run to the store for us. More than once. I won´t say how many times because it´s super embaressing. 

They don´t have whole turkeys here until Christmas so we did two big chickens. It was my first time having a chicken like that, we had to pull some feathers off and the lungs and a few other parts out of the chicken. The chicken was super fresh and they just don´t clean them as well here and they do in the USA. The food was super delicious and it all turned out great. We had the chicken, mashed potatoes, jello, rolls (we did pinwheels and braids and stuff too), stuffing, green beans, a salad, gravy (both María Jose and her daughter hated the gravy), I made up a peach crisp on the spot and an apple pie. It was a lot of fun and everyoen got to take some leftovers home. We stuffed ourselves to the brim, it was so nice for all of us to eat classic American food.

Today I had to buy new boots. The ones I brought out here had a rubber heel which didn´t stand up on the cobble stones here in Spain. The heel collapsed on itself like you can see in the photo. So sad, loved those boots. But they were killing my feet at the end of this last week. So we went to a chino and bought new boots for pretty cheap. The great thing about Spain is that even the cheap stuff is really high quality. I love it. 

I love you all a lot!!!! Have a really great week!!! I know Christ lives and loves us. He´s watching over us and wants to help us.  2 Nephi 2:22. 

Loves!

Hna Woolley