Thanksgiving Week

Wow! Ok, this week just blew right on by. We had an amazing Thanksgiving Feast as a zone here in málaga. There were about 50 of us there, we´re a really big zone! Everyone brought something, there were lots of chocolate chip cookies (its quite the treat out here, they´re hard to make without good brown sugar), of COURSE mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, cranberry sauce (so good!) and even stuffing. My sweet potato casserole turned out good. I was pleased, and it relieved the stress I´d felt. For those taht don´t know, there are two thinks at thanksgiving dinner that are the most important to me. Sweet potatoe casserole and pumpkin pie. So my casserole had to be perfect. And it wasn´t as good as moms, but it worked :) Two elders made rolls that were fantastic. They´d been practicing for two weeks and they turned out fantastic. So the whole thing was yummy. I ate plenty. But, I didnt stuff like normally. I had to go out and work afterwards, didn´t want to be too sleepy. So I¨m already excited for next year :)

That day and the next three it just POURED rain on us. We were soaked through. Litterally my feet made that squishy cartoon water sound when we walked. A drain whole over flooded too so one street we wer trying to cross was basically a river. So we scooted along the side on the part of the sidewalk that wasn´t a river until we passed it and could cross to the other side. Quite the adventures. It only means lots of laundry, unfortunately. 

Today is warm and sunny though, so life is good. I´m so blessed to serve in such a sunny place, because its so important to me to have the sun. Makes all the difference some days. 

 I don´t have time to write much more, but I wanted to tell you about my studies. I´ll just say that I´m really coming to understand so much better that the gospel really is the only path to true happiness. Everything else leads to short term splurges and sadness. I see so many people who are making ok choices and are just miserable. I would just love to help them see what they need to change. We try, but you can´t make anyone act, they have to grow their own testimonies of what we teach. I think it must be how our Heavenly Father feels about us sometimes. We just don´ñt do it when we know better. And He does all He can to help us, but He can´t ever do it for us. Makes me so incredibly grateful for the knowledge I have and the steps I´m trying to take towards conversion. 

I love this work. Its hard and frustraiting sometimes, but I love it. This just is the true church of God.

Love you all!!!

Hna Woolley

we´re doing lots of looking this week. we´ve dropped almost all our investigators, no one is progressing, not even our less actives. makes it hard to go out sometimes, but we´re really helping each other stay animated to go and work. also never had an area where EVERYONE has such big problems. normally there was at least one or two ppl that were just fun to visit, even if they  had problems. here everyone just dumps all their sadness on us. helps me understand the saying that Christ was a ´´man of sorrows´´ more. its very heavy sometimes. but we have fun together as a companionship, so that makes is doable. 

love you lots!!!!! have a good week. :)

Duct tape

So this week we had an AMAZING, once in a mission experience. We had Elder Kearon, from the first quorm of the 70 and in the european area presidency, came and talked to us. The mission was split into two different meetings, so i was able to see lots of missionaries. 

But even better than seeing friends were those messages. They were so uplifting. Hermana Deere (pres. wife) gave a talk where she just acknowledged that lots of us are feeling very weary. But then she read us a scripture ¨´be not weary in well doing´´ and reminded us why we are here. It was so perfect to have her acknowledge our weariness. Because its definately there, but that dosen´t mean we stop. 

But then we talked about attacking the day, and starting the day on the right foot. About being an energetic and excited missionary. And how we are doing very well, but we can always do better.

Elder Kearon and his wife both gave wonderful talks about the atonement and finding and teaching and baptizing. Honestly, so much wonderful stuff and inspiration. I´d love to share it with you all, but it was from 11- almost 5 pm so that would probably take up all my email time. :) But just know that the Spirit was so strong and I was lifted and I´m working my hardest. It was at perfect timing too, it really has helped me want to keep on it. Attack the day! :)

We have a new goal for this week of bringing 250 investigators to church this sunday. its a big goal. But we´re going to do it!!! (normally we bring around 120 max as a mission) Because no one gets baptized until they get to church. 

Also, all of you boy scouts would be proud of me. My bag has been slowly dying aka, one of my bag handles is so stretched out its twice as long as the other. But I duct taped the crazies out of it and now its all fixed! I figure, it only has to last 2 more months. And I´m determined to come home with the same bag I left with. its my miracle bag, it should have died like 5 months ago, but its just been holding out. Symbol of my mission haha. Duct taped all up. 

Love you guys a bunch!! Attack the day!!

Loves,

Hna Woolley 

2nd week in malaga

ok, I´m writing this family letter first after the disaster of last week. As we were finishing up we got a call from the other hermanas saying that our bus to go bowling was going to be there soon and that we needed to get to the stop. So i lost those five minutes I was going to write you guys. I hope at least part of the letter was legible. 

Málaga is awesome. Our piso is a little interesting... I´ve duct taped a shower curtain up in my shower because there is no rod or curtain, and im too poor to buy a rod. And we need to get some new lightbulbs. But its pretty and its big, so thats nice. i´m in the downtown area again, just like Granada. 

This weekend we actually even went to Granada for stake conference, which was a huge tender mercy for me. i was able to see all those old members and talk to them and take a few pictures. it was so great to see all of them again, now here in the end of my mission. And i was actually able to talk to them which I couldn´t do very well at the beginning of my mission. 

Yesterday we saw an awesome miracle. We couldn´t fast on fast sunday so we were fasting together this sunday, specifically to help our area grow because its kind of at a lower point right now. So we ended our fast after getting back from Granada and went out to visit this lady from Colombia named Guillermina (Gee-er-min-eeah). We had this really powerfull lesson where we talked about why we´re obedient to Gods commandments and how thats the only path to happiness. We hadn´t planned on it, but I felt impressed to really bring that to baptism and how thats the first step to getting our lives into order and in line with Gods plan for us. She´d been talking to us about the problems in her life beforehand and just saying how she´d made so many mistakes and her life was a mess. She was really responsive, but didnt´want to commit to baptism at all. But we told her to pray and think about it and she´d get an answer that its what she´s looking for. 

After her we were going to a baptism in our ward from the other hermanas. We´d invited her before the lesson but she´d told us she had to study and didnt have time. Afterwards as we were leaving we invited her one last time, and she was on teh verge of saying yes when her ex husband came up and they had to talk about a few things. So we went to the bus stop, kind of bummed she wasn´t going to come. 

The bus is late. One is out of service or something and we see on the sign that its not coming for 10 more minutes. We quickly called Guillermina and she rushed out the door and met us at the stop, just as the bus pulled up. Later, she told us that her husband had just stepped into the elevator as her phone rang. And she LOVED the baptism. It was a huge leap in spirituality for her, it was amazing.

So thats the big miralce of the week. My faith in fasting has grown so much on the miracle, becasue it truly seems that every time I fast a miracle happens. The Lord is trying to answer our prayers in every way He can.

Side note. Bowling was awesome. I won :)

Love you all! Don´t forget to talk to your Heavenly Father every day, He´s waiting to hear from you :)

Loves,

Hna Woolley

3rd week in Malaga

Wow, ok time is just slipping past. Because I´m positive i just wrote this letter.  I´m just going around, doing my job with my awesome comp Hna Plummer! 

We have had some very strong spiritual citas this week. I´ve reached the point where I don´t beat around the bush or try to make what i´m saying pretty so the person we´re teaching dosen´t feel bad. I just listen to the Spirit and say whatever comes to mind, whether its hard or not. 

We had one of those experiences with an investigator this week. She´s known missionaries for YEARS and has been taught for a long time, but never really progressed. But she loves the church, she is just very devoted to her catholic traditions. 

So we invited the spirit by watching the Joseph Smith movie. We´d been prepping for this video, talking about obedience and sacrifice in our previous citas. So after the video we start talking about how there is really only one church and one path. She kept saying (as she has said before) that she likes our beliefs and believes them, but she can´t abandon the Catholic church (the catholic churches are much emptier than they were when she was young). 

She´s heard about authority 100s of times, so when we started talking about the need for the priestood I could see her nodding in that ´´yea, yeah, i´ve heard this before´´ way. So i said a little prayer and just talked strongly about how there really is only one way. One baptism. That she has to be baptized the right way or it dosen´t count towards salvation. Earlier in my mission, telling someone that their catholic baptism dosen´t count terrified me. But I´ve come to understand the need more and truly believe that the correct baptism is the only way to open the door to eternal happiness.

And, you know, I don´t know if she understood completely. But I did see a change in her eyes and it seemed to hit her differently. Not because of anythign I did, but the Spirit. I´ve just finally started to learn how to step out of the way and let the Spirit testify. Its been happening more and more lately. It really is true, that as soon as you start to figure things out, you´re on your way home. Its sad, but i think thats how life is. You get one challange under control and then its on to the next one. :)

Love you all so much! Have a good week.

Hna Woolley

p.s. we get along great, which is so, so nice. i always got along with my comps, but sometimes it takes more effort, so its nice to have it just fall easily into friendship. especially since i want to put my efforts into other things. its true what the miss pres wife said, it does make a difference, i feel like thats when we really start to be bold.

Transfer to Malaga

So I´ve developed this probably terrible habit of writing this letter last. Not the best idea I think, but I just get excited a bout all  my other emails!

Its been my most interesting transfer yet I think. Normally we travel on wednesdays for tranfers, but becasue my companion was training, she had to go early to pick up her new comp, which meant I had to go early. So we traveled to Málaga together and then she was going to keep going to the pueblo wehre the mission home is. 

We got there and.... no one knew i was comming. So after calling lots of missionaries we finally got me hooked up with some hermanas in this area, but not my comp. so i worked with them for a day nd then met my comp. and we have to leave for emergbency thing, not a big deal, so ill have to finisdh this next weeek. love ou all!

haha your list of questions makes me laugh. for the address, Hna Plummer cant remmeber the building number so remind me next week and ill give it to you. or send a letter before then or something. 

so glad eveyone had a fun halloween. we had an interesting day, we did lots of walking around but we had 2 citas to end the night which was perfect, because spaniards have taken all the creepy of halloween and none of hte little kid cute. even the littlest kids are dressed up as vampires with blood, etc. really sad. we found cream puffs in this bakery and bought those for our treat, so that was really yummy. 

i like our area so far. its a rough area, but i havne´t ever had an area that isn´t. we have some area thats right on the beach basically (we can´t go near the beach obviously) and then the downtown. so like the best parts of málaga. theres 2 other companionships in the ward, one of elders and one of herms. so 2 comps of herms! first time ever. 

i haven´t met much of the ward yet, but theyre all nice. big mix of countries. the lady who plays the piano is british and theres nigerians here again! haven´t seen any nigerians in a while. they´re very nice, humble, happy people. i don´t play the piano in sacrament meeting but they pulled me out to play for priamary singing time, thats a first. i played terribly becaues they had a terrible set up fo the piano (No piano bgench, just a chair. thats my LEAST favorite thing. so hard to play well. ) and another herm played in relief society. so i think ill still be playing but not as often. im okay with that, i was sad thik ill still be playing but not as often. im okay with that, i was sad thinking i wasn´t going to play. 

i think im good on potassium. i eat lots of bannanas. its a cheap fruit and i fry it with rice and beans like a regular south american. its really good. :) im feeling good energy wise, ive got one more round of iron before i come home. stinks shes so sick still. before i took the iron i started taking a general viatamins and minerals pill and it acutally helped a little. maybe jenna should take something like that, she gets sick so often she probably is missing some key vitamins. glad annicas doing okay, the 3 weeks is impressive of no sugar. 

teaching wise.... not a lot of people. we have this investigator that is kind of not progressing but were trying to get some refrences from her from colombia. she gave us this colombian sugar that i love yesterday, im very excited about it. makes the best lemonade! not really lemonade season, but im determined to teach hna plummer some south american tricks. we´ve got lots of less actives, but no one is progressing. we found a few new investigators this week, those were miracles, but you can´t really tell how its going to go until the next cita. so we´ll see. we´ve done lots of walkimng and looking. hna plummer only has 1 transfer here, 6 weeks, so shes still pretty new in the area and is trying to rember where everyone lives, etc. 

love you lots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I have lots of good news. This week if you remember we had a goal of finding 888 new investigators. We worked hard and prayed lots and pushed ourselves, and in the end, as a mission we found..... (drumroll....) 897. The amazing thing was saturday night we needed 100 more news to meet our goal. So in one day did we not only meet our goal, but go over by almost 10. The Lord moves His work forward. And often, we impede Him. So, as  I realized this week once again, its time to step out of the way and just work, work, work. And thats when the miracles will really start to come.

Im going to my last area tomorrow. Málaga! Its a coastal city with 4 wards and LOTS of missionaries. Its right next to the town where the mission home is. I know my new comp, we´ve stayed in her apartment a couple times when we´ve gone down for tri-zone conferences. Which is now my apartment! Wierd stuff. That kind of thing seems to have happened to me more than once in the mission. I often heard about my companion or met my companion before becoming comps with her. The Lord works in mysterious ways. :)

Since its my last area, I´ve been setting some pretty high goals for myself. I´m going to go out with a BANG! No growing lazy in the last strech for this missionary.

Love you all lots. Have a good Halloween! I´d love photos of everyones costumes! :)

Parts of the family letter too: 

I heard that the church did a movie, meet the mormons? our branch president mentioned it. have you seen it? im very curious.

i haven´t gotten the pkgs yet, i should get them next week. i´m changing areas to málaga!!! its a big, big change. 4 strong wards there and like 20-something missionaries. there are 2 companionships of hnas in my ward. so BIG change, but itll be good. im excited.

with teh goal of 888.... we found 897!!!!!!!!!!! the Lord really bleseses us when we do all that we can. 

 i would like to drop the gypsy family, but I´m leaving now and hna ancalle is taking over. ive been trying to lead her to take over the area because up till now i knew where everyone lived and all the names for planning, etc and she just kind of followed. so i´ve been going silent some so she´s forced to do it. lots of missionaries have a really hard time dropping people. its one thing i don´t have a hard time with, but ive had to learn to be understanding and sometiems do so slower than i would like to for the sake of my comp. even though its the Lords work, we´re all imperfect and sometimes we have to compromise for a little bit.

general conference-- this time honestly since listening to it was such a broken, every once in a while thing, just feeling filled by the spirit and having my testimony strenghtened by the leaders. and lots of focus on FHE. i think htats a mix of general conference and staek conference though, but we´ve been really working on it here.it really does make a huge difference in the unity of a family, i can see it. its interesting the things you see as a missionary, because you´re kind of outside of the normal life looking in. so its easeir to see things sometimes. 

love you lots!!!

Goal of 888

So I was a really bad girl and left this email for last this week. I just loved looking at all the pictures! Spain is awesome,but utah and idaho have better falls.

This week that we´re going into is a special week here in the mision España Málaga. We are having another week of finding and we have the goal of 888 news in one week. Thats 9 news for every companionship. And boy have we been preparing! Our companionship studies all week have been focused on this, we´ve been talking to lots of people and praying our hearts out. I know that there are people in our area just waiting for the gospel and I´m dying to find them! As a mission we fasted this weekend, and we have already seen miracles. The elders here in Valdepeñas had an investigator come to church, and she brought her friend with her. This friend happens to be an old investigator in my area that we lost contact with when I first got here. Her mom doesn´t have much interest so we couldn´t get a hold of this teenager. But she came to church and we ended up teaching YW´s so there was our first new, right off the bat! And she´ll be a wonderful investigator I´m positive. And we really need more youth here in Valdepeñas.

The branch has been waking up and getting back to work and its wonderful. A member had us over to her house to eat and then came to a cita with us to visit Gloria, where we invited Gloria to be baptized again and she accepted the invitation. And now that she has the support of this member things will go so much better. The member even invited her over to her house to see the Resturation video this week, without us saying anything. I love proactive members. And now this same member wants to do a FHE every week in her house. yes!!!

Our leaders here have recently really been stressing the importance of FHE every week. I know from my own experience growing up how important it is. It made such a big difference in my high school years! It made sure I was home and with my family at least once a week, learning and growing together. And as our leaders have been techign us, if you can invite a friend or another family to come, even better. Share the spirit of your home and help others see the potential there homes have!

Its been a nice, warm, beautiful fall week. This next week will be my last full week in Valdepeñas and I plan on going out with a bang. And starting my last area on FIRE!!!! We´re going to strengthen the members of Spain and change the world, one person at a time. Just like the Savior did.

Love you all. Never forget how loved you are by the Savior. He´s done so much for us! I´m realizing this more and more every day. Hope you all have a good week.

Loves,

Hna Woolley