April 13

Yesterday marks the beginning of Holy Week, which, as my companion says, is "spring break with a Catholic twist!" Basically every day there are processions (down our street, of course) with HUGE floats with a million candlesticks and some odd statues of Mary and Jesus. A bunch of ladies dress up with big black veils, others with giant robes and hoods like the KKK (except purple!) and 4-foot long candles, etc. It´s quite interesting. So we´ll have to see what else happens, as yesterday was the first day. :) Don´t worry, I´ll keep you all posted. 

This week we had some adventures.  We´ve changed our focus a little bit to working more with the members and doing service, and we´re just getting started, but we´re excited to see how it goes!  We´re going to start a support group to quit smoking, which will be a cool new way to contact people and will help our investigators, a few of which are in this process right now. And we´re also starting a Bible study class (well, a scripture study class, because we will definitely be using the Book of Mormon) because we have a lot of investigators that would love to come to something like that, and it will be a really cool way to show the similarities between the Bible and the Book of Mormon to them. We really think this will be a lot more effective than teaching people who aren´t progressing or trying to contact people in the streets, which is what most of our time is occupied doing. 

Speaking of service opportunities, we spent a little while this week helping clean M J´s house. They´re redoing their living room, like COMPLETELY, as in they tore down walls and put up new ones, so we had to scrape and scrub drywall off the floor for a couple hours. We walked back home covered in white dust. It was really fun though! :)

We had another lesson with our Muslim friend H and her Spanish friend M.  They are both REALLY awesome and in our lessons we are so bold in teaching our doctrine exactly how it is, and they listen and I´m sure they can feel the Spirit. We always end up staying there for a really long time because we´re answering both of their questions about our doctrine and we always end up teaching so many different gospel principles. I feel SO GOOD in that house. She also fed us again and it was DELICIOUS. 

Today we went out to eat again with the B's.  They´re going home in 2 weeks!!! But we´re planning an islands reunion at Lake Powell with them in September, so we´ll all be good. :) T, a YA from the islands, is getting sealed in the temple tomorrow!  I can´t go because we live too far away, but Hna. F and Hna. H (who are companions!) will be there, and I sent her all my love. :)

Keep your prayers coming here.  I love you all and have a great week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Semana Santa Week Float

March 24-April 7 "Tender Mercies," "My Comp Got Kissed by Jesus," "From Trashy to Classy"

March 24--Tender Mercies
Well, things have chilled out significantly. Thank goodness.

M´s mom got back out of the hospital, and SHE CAME TO CHURCH!!! We were calling her Sunday morning, and she didn´t answer, so we were worried that she wasn´t coming, but then we went to her house and she was at the door with her skirt on about to walk out!  It was awesome!

Everyone else is still doing pretty well.  We´re feeling really good about the people we have right now and are learning a lot about how to help individuals.

Some tender mercies this week: we were walking past a bar (don´t freak out, bars in Spain are totally harmless) and this guy started to speak with us in English about God.  He was young, probably about 25. He told us that he wanted to talk to us another day and that he owned the bar and he would love for us to come by. So the next day we came by with a less-active member, and they told us that they wanted to give a discount for us to come and teach lessons there!  It was awesome!  We already took one investigator there, and we´re going to take the elders, and we´re going to start teaching this guy and his friend!  

Another one: we were walking down the street and a car pulls up and stops right next to us. The door opens and out climbs our investigator Oscar, who we hadn´t seen for a while. We said hi to him, asked him if he had a few minutes, and taught him a lesson!  It was so cool!  

Keep your prayers coming, we need them!  We´re doing well here and we´re both really happy with everything. Transfers are this next week but I HIGHLY doubt any of us will change.

Have a great week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

March 31--My Comp Got Kissed by Jesus

At the entryway into Toledo, the former capital of Spain

An old church in Toledo

a castle near Toledo

Toledo

Looking out over Toledo

Queen of the world!

So today we went to Toledo...and as a result, I have very little time to write...and we had a really interesting week...so I´ll do what I can! AND I´ll try to send pictures. :)

So first off, things are going decently well...people are more or less starting to progress...so we´ll see. 

our highlights of this week were getting to go to an easter play of one of our investigators.  It was really good, mostly sticking to the Bible, until after Christ was resurrected and the first person he appeared to was his mother Mary??? (la Virgen María) and then it ended with Jesus appearing to the disciples, like it is in the Bible, but then when he left, they all started to pray to Mary. 

Afterwards our investigator invited us to the cast party, which we basically crashed, because we were the only non-cast people there, and the actor for Jesus came up to Hna. F and gave her besos before she could react.  (I don´t know if I´ve explained this before, but in Spain, everyone greets each other with besos, or a kiss on each cheek. As missionaries, we´re allowed to do it with women, but not with men.) usually we can avoid it, but he just came too quick.  So now we´ve been telling everyone that she got kissed by Jesus. :)

We´ve also been visiting a lot of Muslim women, and we can´t exactly teach them straight out, but we can share a lot of principles of the gospel and it´s really awesome.  Yesterday we went to visit one women named Hassnae, and when we got there she had invited her neighbor M

(a SPANIARD!!) to come and had made us A TON of DELICIOUS Moroccan food. Their desserts in that country are probably the best desserts I have ever eaten in my life. We talked about so many principles of the gospel and ate a ton and at the end, they DID NOT want us to leave, and we didn´t want to leave either but we had to get home on time. We almost had a kick ourselves out of their house because they kept following us and talking to us. It was awesome. 

So yeah, that´s the fun stuff for the week. I´ll get some pics of Toledo out for you. :)

Hna. Lara Schaumann

April 7--From Trashy to Classy

In a rather dramatic change from the trash strikes and daily riots every morning in the city center, the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) has now begun to play classical music in the mornings. We´re supposing that they´re trying to convey an atmosphere of peace and cleanliness, although the true motives are sure to be revealed in the near future. 

This week was pretty good, kind of slow-ísh...basically I´m still on a conference high and I don´t remember anything that happened before conference...

We did have another of our Muslim friends/investigators come to Conference with us yesterday, which is a huge deal because it´s about an hour away in train and metro to get to the stake center, which is where they were showing the broadcast. And he said he liked it!  So maybe we can get him to come to church this week. :)

Since I literally remember nothing that happened before Saturday, I´m just going to talk about conference. 

We were lucky to get to watch it in English, and we got to see almost all of the sessions.  We got there late to the Women´s session, so we´ll have to watch it with our investigators later, but we saw both Saturday sessions and the Sunday Morning session.  (And we´re totally watching the Sunday Evening session in district meeting on Wednesday!)  I don´t know what themes you all saw in the talks, but I felt like almost every single speaker talked about covenants. I especially loved Elder Bednar´s talk because I felt like he explained perfectly the connection between covenants and the Atonement. As missionaries, we are trying so hard to help people feel the blessings of the Atonement and to apply it in their lives. And, as Elder Bednar explained, the only way to do that is to make covenants with our Heavenly Father and "yoke" ourselves to Jesus Christ. My favorite thing about Elder Bednar´s talk was not anything he said, but his love and desire, almost desperation, to have us understand the importance of the Atonement in our lives. As a missionary, I have relied many times on that grace, that enabling power of the Atonement. It truly is not something just for sinners or failures. It´s for the best of us just as much as it is for the worst of us. It truly helps us to overcome every weakness or failing we could possibly face. And the way to apply it is through covenants.  It´s through raising our expectations of what we´re capable of doing, and creating a need to depend on our Savior´s atoning grace. I´m so grateful for the covenants I have made and the chance that I have to renew them every week. 

I didn´t have time to talk about this last week, but we finally got to go to the temple, and it was WONDERFUL.  I learned so much from being there, and especially from being there as a missionary. I was able to receive answers for my investigators and to understand better the necessity of repentance and of feeling the consequences of our sins. It was wonderful to understand and feel more of the love our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have for us, and the reality of their great plan of salvation. 

Then last Sunday we had a bunch of problems and we were running here and there to pick up our investigators and bring them to church, and we ended up running late. We went running up the street to try and make sure we got to take the sacrament, but when we got there, the door was closed and we could see that they were passing around the bread.  Now, Spain is not like the U.S. where you can wait in the foyer and some cute litttle deacon will come out and bring the sacrament to you.  If you get there even during the prayer, that door is shut and they won´t let you in until they´ve finished the sacrament. So we had to wait outside, helpless, until they let us in. We sat down and I felt AWFUL. We had been late for a good cause (trying to help our investigators!) but Iwe had missed the most important ordinance there is. I almost started to cry when I realized that the next week was General Conference and I wouldn´t be able to take the sacrament then either. I sat through the rest of Sacrament Meeting feeling horrible and then, at the end, the branch president came and found us and invited us to come up and take the sacrament. It felt SO GOOD. It was such an incredible experience to realize how important that ordinance is to us and the power it has to truly renew our strength and our convenants to the Lord. 

Also, another thing I learned this week: Satan DOES NOT want us to go to conference. On Saturday morning before the session started we stopped by to visit an investigator and her crazy Catholic friend was there. She started talking and talking and talking about how Mary is our Heavenly Mother and how if we don´t pray to her, she´s going to get offended, and we´re ungrateful for not recognizing her power to save us. (I can listen to doctrines that aren´t true normally and be just fine, but this one made me feel physically SICK.  I felt AWFUL the whole time she was talking about Mary like that.) But anyway, as she was talking, unbeknownst to me, my watch battery was dying, and I totally thought we had more time than we did, so we stayed after she left to eat with our investigator and her family. While we´re sitting there, the phone went off and I looked at the time on the phone and we were already late to meet the members we were going to travel with to go to conference. So we had to go RUNNING out of her house and to the chapel, and then to the metro where we needed to buy our monthly passes for April. As we go to buy them, my companion gets hers out of the machine just fine, but then mine gives me the receipt but not the actual pass. So we had to call the security guy over, he had to open up the machine and inspect it, then he had to make me fill out an official complaint form with my ID and everything. (At this point we´re running about an hour late.) Then we go running up the escalator to catch the train and my companion falls and drops all her stuff and gets all scratched up.  But, we made it to conference and we were spiritually strengthened. Haha. Take that, Satan!

Nothing much else of great interest. We´re doing well and the weather has been fabulous the last few days!

Happy Conference weekend to all!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

1. Here´s a cool picture I took of the temple in between sessions of conference. :)

March 10-17 Highs and Lows

March 10--

So this week I had 2 of the biggest miracles that have ever happened in my mission.  Seriously, it´s AMAZING to see how the Lord has his hands in the details of our lives. 

First, while we were emailing last week we got a call from a recent convert who asked if we could go to the chapel right then.  He told us that some sister was looking for us.  I told him we were busy, but then we asked him to pass the phone to the lady, María Mercedes.  She told us that she really wanted to meet with us and study the scriptures, that she was looking for a church to go to.  She used to be Jehovah´s Witness, then Catholic, but she´s looking for something that "fills" her. We were super excited, promised her that we could help her find everything she was looking for and know the truth for herself, and set up a cita with her for the next day at 11:00. She came and we taught the Restoration, with a recent convert who´s Español, and she understood it better than anyone I´ve ever taught it to!  She´s Española (which is a MIRACLE in and of itself--the Spaniards walk over to the other side of the street to avoid us and only speak to us if we´re asking directions) and she is AMAZING.  The only thing is that she smokes, but she already knows it´s bad and wants to quit. In the first lesson we gave her a baptismal date for March 29th, and she said yes!  So we´re SO excited.  She´s been trying so hard to study the Book of Mormon with the Bible references, but she had some weird Bible (like the NIV in English) and so we got her a Reina-Valera (King James) Bible and she was SO grateful.  It was so cute, she went all over Alcorcón to all the bookstores and thrift stores looking for a Reina-Valera Bible and she was so sad when she couldn´t find one. But now she´s studying and doing SO well.  The only thing is that she didn´t come to church yesterday because she was sick- when we stopped by last night to give her her Bible she was coughing and super hoarse.  But she is seriously AMAZING and is so prepared for the gospel.  She LOVES the Book of Mormon and even made a little cover for it because she didn´t want it to get damaged. :)  We absolutely love her and we haven´t even known her for a week.

Second, THE BIGGEST MIRACLE EVER OF ALL TIME. 

But seriously, things like this DON´T HAPPEN unless the Lord plans them out exactly. This begins last P-day.  When we were on our way to Madrid, we sat by this cute African girl on the train.  She´s from Equatorial Guinea, and was here on vacation for a week.  We talked to her and ended up teaching her the Restoration because she, like Joseph Smith, is always church-hopping, looking for the truth. We got her number and set up an appointment with her for Friday (she was leaving on Saturday to go back to her country).  So on Friday, Hna. F went to Leganés and Hna. C came here with me to Alcorcón on exchanges. We met with M and her niece, who was also there on vacation with her.  We taught them both the Restoration again, in more detail (and not on the train) and it was AWESOME.  The Spirit was so strong, and they both accepted to be baptized when they´ve received a testimony of the Church.  We got her number to send to the missionaries in her country and we said goodbye and have a good trip to them. Hna. C and I were talking about how good the lesson was and getting all our stuff together when I pulled out the phone and looked at it.  (They had not left more than 5 minutes before this.) I see that we have 2 missed calls from a number I didn´t know, so I call it back, and the lady says, "Hi, I´m M´s sister,V, and I live here in Alcorcón. M just told me about her meeting with you, and I want you to come over and teach me."  I was standing there with my mouth open, but somehow I had the presence of mind to set up an appointment for THAT EVENING at 7:30. So Hna. C and I were super excited.  We went over to her house at 7:30 and find V, two of her sons, M and her niece, their friend V.  As we start to talk to her, we find out that she (V) has 5 children, ages 22, 20, 18, and 9 year-old twins, and that her husband died 6 months ago. We taught them the Restoration and before she even told us about her husband dying we were focusing so much on eternal families. The lesson went really well, they were excited to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and they also accepted to be baptized on March 29th!!  They are a beautiful family and SO PREPARED for the gospel!  Their friend is going to be a little more difficult but we´re going to teach him too and I´m sure he´ll get baptized eventually. :)

Anyway Hna. C and I were SO EXCITED about this beautiful Guinean family and I can´t wait to see how they progress.

In other news, J should be good to get baptized next week, if all goes well in his interview, and R is still super sick, so we´ll see when he gets better to be able to be baptized.  He´s going into the hospital again for a blood analysis because he´s been really sick for 2 weeks straight.

Speaking of being sick, my poor sweet little companion was a little sick this week, but she´s doing a lot better now. Honestly 60% of Alcorcón has an awful cough/cold/sinus infection. 

The weather this week was absolutely LOVELY, I shed my tights for the first time since coming back to Madrid. (which meant I had to shave...darn it...) It´s 70s right now, sunny, all the trees are budding...it´s like heaven!  Sorry to make you jealous, those of you who are frozen solid right now. :)

An interesting thing that we learned this week is that just like we have an unpardonable sin (denying the Holy Ghost) the Muslims have one.  And it is believing that anyone is equal to or related to God. So basically, by believing that Christ is the literal Son of God and that we are literally his spirit children, we are doomed to the lowest level of Muslim hell. Our sweet little Muslim investigator was explaining about their beliefs of hell and what their unpardonable sin is, and Hna. F and I were just staring at each other across the table in shock/amusement.  She finally asked him that according to his beliefs, since we believe that we are God´s children, and the Christ is his literal offspring, where would we go? He is so nice that he was just like "I can´t judge that!  I´m not God!" but we read in the Koran (I probably didn´t spell that right) that people who believe that Christ is the Son of God will be doomed to a blazing fire.  So basically, we´re going to Muslim hell. Fun stuff.

Yeah, so I think that´s about it for today. We had another crazy week, like always, and today a sister in the ward is going to give us facials!!! We´re SUPER excited.

March 17--

If you haven´t already figured this out by now, missionary life basically makes you a little bit bipolar. We´re currently having a bit of a rough time with everyone and everything...but we still have a lot going for us, which is good!

M is still doing awesome, only her mom got super sick this week and is now checked into the hospital, on oxygen, doing pretty bad, so she´s basically been living in the hospital the past few days and we haven´t been able to have a lesson with her. We have been in contact every day and she still loves us and wants to keep learning, so that´s good. 

We decided we´re probably going to give R to the elders because he just keeps not reading or coming to church or doing anything and he always has some excuse... so hopefully the elders will be better for him. 

J still needs some more time, but he has the desire to be baptized, so we´ll keep working with him until he understands everything better and is really prepared to take that step. 

V and her family were moving this week, so they didn´t have time to meet with us, but hopefully we´ll get that ball rolling again.

Yeah...basically everyone is having a bunch of weird problems/circumstances and we´ve had to do a lot of sorting and prioritizing with our investigators...so we´re going to focus on the ones who are actually going somewhere and keep them going somewhere, because we just don´t have time to be in 500 places at once...

Something unusual that happened this week is that Hna. E, the member who gave us facials last week, just happened to drop by our piso on Tuesday morning to bring us something, which morning I was randomly sick (with I don´t even know what, I was just crying for no reason and completely exhausted) and came in, saw how dead I was, and went crazy deep-cleaning our piso. She organized everything, bought us new cleaning supplies...everything. It wasn´t really that bad, but it was super awesome to have it THOROUGHLY cleaned. She also made us a soup for lunch (with pumpkin, zucchini, potato, pepper, and onion) which was absolutely DELICIOUS. I have some pictures of us with her that I´ll send later. 

And then the next day after district meeting we invited the other hermanas from our district over and we made empanadas.  Since 2 of them are Latinas we were sure they would know how to make empanadas and would be able to help us. But as it turns out, neither of them had any idea so Hna. F and I just ended up making them, and they turned out REALLY good. They kind of tasted like pizza!  We were really proud of that, since we didn´t have a recipe or anything.

Yeah I don´t even really know what else happened this week, it was a kind of exhausting week, but I was really grateful for the members and the elders who helped us a TON. Heavenly Father never leaves us alone.

One cool miracle that happened was that one night EVERYTHING fell through and even our service opportunity backup plans fell through and so we had NOTHING to do so we went to go see P and his brother-in-law I, who were closing up the place where they work. We asked I if he and his family were busy that night, and he said no, so we ended up going to their house and teaching the whole family, I, his wife S, and their two daughters.  It was so cool and we really had no idea what we were going to talk about ahead of time but the lesson ended up being AMAZING. We were somehow perfectly coordinated even though we hadn´t decided even a general topic to teach about. 

So please keep praying for us and everyone here, especially the families that we keep finding that will need a lot of work and a lot of patience but they will really be a huge blessing in our branch and the gospel will bless them immensely.

Have a great week! 

Hermana Lara Schaumann!

Have you ever spent a week working so hard that when you get home at night you can barely make it into bed because you´re so tired? 

Yeah, that was our week this week. We started out every morning with our friend Jillian Michaels and didn´t even stop to catch our breath until we got home at night. We taught a total of 37 lessons, contacted 36 new people to teach, and got 9 new investigators. DEFINITELY the best numbers I´ve ever gotten in my mission. And in spite of being exhausted, we felt SO GOOD!  One thing that has always been on my mind as a missionary is a quote that I heard from Elder Holland, when he was talking about how to have success on your mission. He said, "Work as hard as you can until somebody tells you to go home." I for one, as a missionary, sometimes have the tendency to be like "AAAAAAAAH I only have 6 months left" but that´s not the best attitude to have.  And this week I really didn´t think about how much time I have in the mission or how much time I have left, I just thought about what I can do here and now for these people in Alcorcón.  And it worked incredibly well.  We saw the blessings of heaven literally POURED out on our heads.  We were really nervous to work in just 2 because we need sisters to help us with lessons (because 90% of our investigators are men...) but whenever we needed them, we found them. It was truly a miracle. We had 15 lessons with a member present, which is absolutely unheard of for us. And we had a lot of lessons fall through or people not come or whatever but we didn´t let that stop us. Whenever something fell through we just went to go teach someone else or drop by someone´s house or teach someone sitting on a park bench.  It was amazing because we were being completely and entirely guided by the Spirit to be able to find the people we needed to find in the places we needed to find them. 

We had the coolest experience on Thursday morning in our studies.  The elders are teaching a family who are working to get married right now, named M J and A, and their daughter, F, who´s 9, just got baptized in October. M J absolutely LOVES the hermanas so she asks us to come by and visit her once every couple weeks. We had an appointment with them on Thursday night, so the morning in our studies we were trying to figure out what to teach them.  I just looked at the conference Ensign, said a quick prayer in my head, and opened it up and started reading the talk. When I started to read it, I instantly thought of another talk, the one from Elder Bednar in the CES devotional last March. (http://www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/ces-devotionals/2013/01/that-we-might-not-shrink-d-c-19-18?lang=eng) I had printed it off in English, so I read through it and really felt like that was what M J needed to hear. That talk talks about D&C 19 and also the story of Jesus calming the waters.  When we finished our personal study, we went to start our companion study with a hymn, and Hna. F had picked "Master, the Tempest Is Raging"  I was shocked at the coincidence because I had just been studying about that very story. When we started to plan the lesson, we realized that as I was reading that talk, Hna. F

had been reading D&C 19!  We felt so strongly as we studied together that they needed to hear that message.  And when we taught it to them that night, the Spirit was so strong and it had really been exactly what they needed to hear. It was amazing to see how both of us had responded to the promptings of the Spirit that morning in our studies to be able to be prepared to teach them that message that they so desperately needed. 

Our other investigators are doing pretty well, nothing too exciting or dramatic with them.  R will be getting baptized this coming Sunday, so we´re happy about that. He is such a good little guy.

This week we have our mission tour with the Area President, and I have a leadership meeting, so we´re going to be on temple square ALL DAY on Wednesday. It will be crazy.

Also Hna. F and I taught Relief Society this week because our friend K, who´s an American and served a mission in Chile, couldn´t do it.  It was on President Packer´s talk from conference.  We used Preach My Gospel for like half of the lesson.  That book is really the best resource for teaching in the church.  It´s AWESOME.

Our little adventure this week: We may or may not have done a little bit of dumpster diving...In Spain, there´s no DI or Goodwill where you can donate your old clothes and things you don´t want, so people just set them outside the trash receptacles. We went to take out our trash and ended up spending a good while sorting through the stuff that was there. We got a blanket, a tablecloth, some bedsheets, about 15 sweaters, a shirt, a scarf, and 2 pairs of dress pants. We washed them all, don´t worry. The best part was when we were doing it, the stake Relief Society President walked by...we´re not sure if she realized what we were doing or not...hopefully not...

but I´ll attach some pictures of the dumpster dive, for your entertainment.

China, Cheetos and Hot Oil

Hello all,

So first off, today is the beginning of a new transfer!  I have 4 and a half left before I end my mission...YIKES...and I didn´t get transfered, but Hna. V did, to Azuqueca.  Hna. F and I will be staying here in Alcorcón.  And another surprise that I found out yesterday is that I´m going to be the Sister Training Leader for our zone!  Usually there are 2 for each zone, but because our zone doesn´t have a lot of hermanas, I´m the only one. What I´ve figured out so far that this means is that I get to do exchanges with the other 7 hermanas in the zone (in Móstoles and in Léganes) and I get to go to the big mission leader meeting in the mission home!  And this transfer it´s extra exciting because Elder Teixeira, our area president general authority, is coming to do a mission tour, so we´re going to have our leader meeting as a part of that, I think with him there!  I´m pretty excited about that, but I also have to figure out when and how I´m going to do 7 intercambios in the next 6 weeks...So that will be an adventure. :)

This week was...interesting...we had a few crazy things happen but we´re still going fine. J didn´t end up getting baptized for various reasons, but we´ll continue working with him to see what we can figure out and help him with there. And our other investigators continue along.  R and G came to church again, they´re awesome and I just LOVE them, especially R. They´re saving up money so they should be able to get their marriage papers by the end of this month!  After that it´s just an 8 month wait to get married in Alcorcón!  

So we did have one really cool lesson this week...IN CHINESE... There´s a little shop owned by a Chinese family across the street from our piso and we gave them some pamphlets in Chinese and a Book of Mormon.  We really wanted to talk to them, so we printed out some stuff from mormon.org and had questions for him to answer (the dad) and we basically taught him about the Book of Mormon even though he doesn´t speak Spanish and we definitely don´t speak Chinese. It was amazing though, the Spirit was so strong and even though we didn´t speak the same language we could understand what was being said. It was really amazing. Proof that the Spirit is a universal language!  

For Valentine´s day...we didn´t really do much exciting.  We just bought our Africans some Valentine´s cookies and saw them all at once in the locutorio.  We did the tea bag demo.  It was intense.  Pretty cool stuff.  So instead of going on dates we just set some stuff on fire. It worked.

Also, my companions discovered Angry Birds Cheetos, which are really big puffed Cheeto spirals, and bought 2 bags, which they had eaten within 30 minutes. It was really funny.

And the random event of this week is that we were making lunch of Wednesday and Hermana V had just heated up some oil to cook something and then I´m not even sure what happened but she was walking around me (I was also cooking on the stove) and somehow she spilled a ton of hot oil all over my skirt.  She screamed and then held my skirt up away from my body so it wouldn´t burn my leg, and then I screamed because she had screamed, but then we calmed down and I realized what had happened and we cleaned it up and changed out of my skirt. ALL GOOD.  Unfortunately it was my favorite red skirt...but she had an extra red skirt that she was going to get rid of so she just gave that to me. So all is well. It was just really funny because we were both just screaming and we didn´t realize what had happened. But no damage done, except to the skirt. Unfortunately I didn´t take a picture. Que pena.

Also a quick transfer tidbit: if any of your remember me talking about Elder K in the MTC--well, he´s coming to Alcorcón!  So we will be having an INTERESTING transfer here.  We´re super excited.

Have a great week, all!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

"You should read this book. It will make you happy!"

servicio y milagros

So today I got to go to Torrejón because Hna. V (my trainer) is going home next week and they had a farewell party there.  It was AWESOME to see everyone again and refreshing that they all remembered me, even though I was only there 2 transfers!  It was so weird being back there though. 

What even happened this week...? We were super busy, which was awesome.  We were swamped like all the time. J is still doing awesome, he accepts every commitment without question and he´s still on track to get baptized this weekend.  Unless something dramatic happens or we feel like he needs more time, that should be going through.  Pray for him, please!  He´s trying so hard and it´s really amazing to see the changes in him. 

Something we´ve had a lot of success with as a companionship is speaking in a soft voice. A lot of times it is easy to get frustrated or overexcited and talk loudly, but as we speak in a calm, soft voice, the Spirit is always more present and the investigators can hear its witness of the truth. It has helped all of our investigators so much. 

We also witnessed an incredible change in one of our investigators, C, through service. We helped him organize some things around his locutorio and clean up a little, and when we came back a couple days later his attitude toward us was entirely different. He was happy and excited and had been reading the Book of Mormon. And then one of his friends stopped by and C invited him to talk with us another day, and asked if we could give him a copy of the Book of Mormon. We gave him one, and C said, "Yeah, you should read this book, it will make you happy!" It was amazing to see the change that service had brought in his attitude toward us and toward the gospel.

Yeah I don´t know what else...not much...We couldn´t get a hold of A all week and finally we realized that we had saved his number wrong in our phone!  So we´re going to see him tomorrow and start all that again!  He still wants to meet with us, thank goodness!

Keep praying for all our investigators!  They´re awesome.  Ri and G came to church, and so did Ro.  Ri was awake this time (!) but I totally woke Ro up when I called him yesterday morning. Oh well, it was totally worth it!

Have a great week!  I love you!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Catching up.....

1/6/2014    So surprise surprise!  I got transferred out of Las Palmas. ;( I had to get up at 3:30 this morning to catch the plane...and I haven´t eaten anything...

But anyway, I´m pretty sad to be leaving.  I absolutely love Las Palmas--the members, the investigators, the weather, the ocean, everything. I´m pretty sure I got all my tears out this morning in the airport... but we´ll see. 

So where am I? I´m in Móstoles! Where is that?  Well, I´m not really sure.  I think it´s to the southwest of Madrid. My new companion is Hermana F, from Midway, Utah.  She was trained by Hermana K, my MTC companion, and she´s been up in the north in Gijón. So they just sent her down and me up to come here in Móstoles. I´m pretty sure we´re whitewashing... (for those of you who don´t know what that is, it´s where they take out both of the missionaries serving in an area and put in 2 brand new ones.)  And I´m pretty sure the ones who were here were elders... If you can´t tell I don´t really know what we´re doing right now... Two of the elders came to pick us up and take us to our piso, and we went straight from there to go email. So I hope we can find our way back to the piso and to the store, because our piso is brand new and there´s NO food in it.  

1/13/2014   So we had a little craziness this week and my companion and I were emergency transferred on Tuesday morning to Alcorcón, in a trio.  It was super crazy because we only spent one night in Móstoles and the next morning we were studying and we got a phone call from the APs that there had been some problems and we were going to be changed. It was really weird...but we´re adjusted now.

We had a sort of dead week just because there was all the craziness and on top of everything our new companion was sick...so we spent Tuesday in our piso because they had to come deliver us an extra bed and so we could unpack (we packed and unpacked our suitcases twice in 3 days...), we spent Thursday traveling to and from the doctor, which is like an hour away in bus and metro, and we spent Saturday in the piso because she was still feeling icky.  She´s a lot better now, and we know each other a lot better from all the time we´ve spent together in the piso just resting. We´re still trying to get our rhythm together as a trio, but all in good time.

Anyway, we´re probably going to have a baptism this week because we have a really awesome investigator who´s from Nigeria and we gave him a baptismal date, then on Friday he invited us over to eat and he made this spicy Nigerian turkey with spinach and some weird African pepper...it was really good though... but then after we finished eating we asked him if he had prayed about baptism and he said yes, and that he wants to get baptized!  His date was February 1st, but he said he wants to get baptized sooner than that.  So we think this Saturday would be good! :) He´s had all the lessons and is totally prepared.  He´s great.

Also, we have a really cool investigator who´s 20 and from Columbia and is trying to decide whether or not he believes in God. The hermanas made a 2-month plan for him to do, to read the scriptures and pray daily, to come to church every week, to keep the commandments, to see if God really exists, because if God does exist all those things will make a difference in his life. He´s awesome, and we´ve been teaching him the basic doctrines about the nature of God.  

Our other frontrunner right now is a Peruvian, who was literally guided to find the missionaries (he contacted them in the street) and he has a fecha also for February 1st.  He just hasn´t come to church yet...but he´s really awesome and sincere and he called us just to say hi the other day and to ask about an activity that we had. 

So yeah, that´s Alcorcón for you!  It´s a branch here, with about 70 active members, almost all of whom are South Americans.

I´ll attach a picture of my new companions (that we just took like 5 minutes ago in the locutorio) and yeah!  Have a great week!

1/22/2014   Pues, I have a return date!  (YIKES) It is Tuesday, August 26. That means I have a little over 7 months left. It has gone FLYING by for me and I can´t believe I´m a good deal more than halfway done. 

Alcorcón is going pretty well.  We´re still trying to get into our groove teaching as a trio, but it´s definitely gotten better. We all get along really well and we´re always talking and laughing about things, so that definitely helps our unity. 

Some cool things that happened this week:

Some time ago, Hna. V and her companion contacted this Nigerian guy named C on the train and got his number and found out that he works in a locutorio (which is a business where you can make international phone calls or use internet) but then they couldn´t really get anything set up with him.  And last week, Hna. V RAN after this lady who was running to get on the bus and wrote down her number.  So we were walking down the street, and we saw C´s locutorio and we saw that he was there so we stopped in to talk to him and taught him bits and pieces of the restoration, according to his questions.  We set up to come back and talk with him another day.  So we came back for the next appointment and in walked this lady who smiled at us like she recognized us.  We talked to her a little bit and realized that it was the lady from the bus.  I was sitting there thinking what a coincidence it was that she had just happened to pass by when both of them started talking to us and we realized that they´re dating!  How crazy is that?  So we contacted both of them in separate places, in different ways, and they´re together!  Talk about two people who both need the gospel!  We´re going by tonight to give them a Book of Mormon and talk more about that. We´re super excited! The only thing is that C gets kind of defensive or overexcited about things.  It was really funny because Hermana F after our first lesson was giving us all sorts of pointers of how to gain his trust and get him to listen to us. So Hermana V nicknamed her the African Whisperer.  It´s kind of stuck...

P agreed to be baptized!  He wants it on Thursday morning, which is a bit unconventional, but we´ll do whatever he wants.  We´re really excited and so is he.  He´s really awesome and the gospel has already begun to change his life so much!

Also R finally came to church!!! We taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was SO good. We used an object lesson with a tea bag that is really amazing.  You use the tea bag to represent us, and first you talk about faith and how that alone can´t get you to heaven.  We had him "have faith" and try and throw the tea bag up to heaven, but it just falls back down.  Then you talk about repentance and baptism, and how that´s like removing the "sins" (the actual tea) from the tea bag.  To represent baptism, we dumped it into a glass of water.  So after that the tea bag is lighter, but it still doesn´t reach heaven if you try and throw it up there.  So then comes the baptism by fire, or the gift of the Holy Ghost. What you do is stand the tea bag up, completely unfolded, like a long tube, on the person´s hand, and then you light the top of it on fire.  You tell them they have to have faith that they won´t be burned, and they have to hold their hand very still.  It keeps burning down, and right before the fire is about to reach their hand, the tea bag flies up "to heaven" and stays up.  It was INCREDIBLE how strong the Spirit was when we did that with R.  It hit him so hard, and that was the first time he´s ever come to church.  It was really immensely powerful.  I love things like that that you can see, hear, and feel all at the same time.

We also had one of the most amazing less-active lessons ever. D has been coming to church, reading, and praying, but you can tell he´s still lacking something. The thing is that we couldn´t figure out what.  But this week we read Helaman 5 and talked about having the influence of the Holy Ghost with us always.  He said he wasn´t sure he could be worthy to do that and so we started talking about the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  We asked him if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and his personal Savior.  He said "The Son of God, yes, but the my Savior, I´m still not sure."  It was so powerful because we were teaching him in the church and the way he was sitting facing us there was a picture of Christ behind him, but he couldn´t see it. Christ is his PERSONAL Savior.  The Atonement is something INFINITELY and PERFECTLY personal, but he doesn´t know that yet.  So we invited him to learn more about Christ, to come to know Him, and to pray and ask if Christ is HIS Savior. Next week we´re planning to watch some of the new bible videos with him. Those are so powerful and you can feel the love of Christ as you watch them. The thing is that the Atonement changes us, completely and entirely, and it makes EVERYTHING better.  I am so very different from when I left on my mission, and every one of those changes has come through earnest prayer and an unfailing trust in the Atonement of the perfect Son of God. D is somewhat happy, sometimes, when things go okay, but with the Atonement, that happiness doesn´t fade. It doesn´t leave us or forsake us, not EVER, because Christ NEVER left us alone. 

Have a wonderful week everyone and remember that Jesus Christ is our living Savior and Redeemer. He loves us!

1/27/2014    So I´ll just skip the drama and get to the good stuff.

P GOT BAPTIZED ON THURSDAY!  It was WONDERFUL. Even though it was on Thursday at 1:00 and there were only like 4 members there and all the 7 missionaries and P´s cousin.  It was the tiniest little service, but it was perfect for him because he´s kind of shy and doesn´t like a lot of attention.  After he was baptized, he had asked me to get up and share my testimony and I was looking at him and his eyes were just big and watery and he was just grinning from ear to ear.  He looked so happy!  And then he got up to bear his testimony and it was amazing to see the enthusiasm that he had for the gospel.  He kept repeating how he was ready to do anything in the church.  He said, "you can call me for anything, to set up chairs, to clean, whatever it may be.  I want to give everything to this gospel."  It was so inspiring and I have rarely seen anyone happier. Later that night he called us just to say thank you. Really, it was awesome.

What else happened this week? We had another really awesome lesson with D and we figured out what happened to him to make him go inactive for so long, but he´s progressing now little by little and we´re working at building up his faith in the gospel and in Jesus Christ. We read the story of the blind man in John 9, which is my favorite story ever...And we wanted to watch the Bible video of it, but we couldn´t find it in Spanish. 

R is still doing well, he accepts everything we teach him, but he didn´t come to church this week...so he can´t get baptized just yet.  So we´re going to continue working with him and see what happens. If we can just get him to understand and keep those three key commandments, what we call OLA in Spanish ( orar, leer, y asistir la capilla, or pray, read, and go to church) he will be able to progress and will be prepared soon to get baptized.  We taught him tithing and fasting this week and he already knew EVERYTHING.  It was so weird, that was the first time I´ve ever seen that on my mission. But it was really cool!

Well, another cool thing this week was that we got like 17 references in one day.  Our sister training leader came and did splits with Hermana F, and they got like 15 references, almost all of them in a locutorio (an internet/phone business) where C works.  Every time we go there, he just introduces us to all his friends.  And when Hna. F and Hna. C went on Friday, someone would come in and he would say "Do you want to listen to the word of God? Come sit down and listen to my people!" He´s super cool and we got so many people there.  It´s Hna. F´s African whispering that´s the magic touch here. All the Africans stop talking and listen to her every time she opens her mouth. Everyone tells her she has an angel face.  It´s really funny. 

I don´t remember if I mentioned R and G, a couple that we´re teaching who´s working on getting married.  R´s been struggling with drinking and he always sleeps in on Sunday mornings instead of coming to church.  So this week we called G, told her to put the phone right next to his ear, and we woke him up and told him to get up and ready for church.  And it worked!  He came!  It was awesome! He is really a wonderful person and I absolutely love him even though I´ve only known him for 2 weeks.  Every time I talk to him on the phone it just puts a smile on my face because he knows how much we care about him and his family and how much we want them to be happy. He thanked me so many times the other day for our visits and everything we do.  He really is a fantastic guy, and so we´re really hoping they can get married soon (it takes forever to get married here, the fastest possible would be in 4 months...) and then get baptized!!

Yeah, that´s about our week!  We´re still having a good time in Alcorcón and eating too many brownies, which we made successfully for P's baptism and ate a bunch of them before we even left...

Pues, ¡que esten bien y contentos y que se acuerdan del amor que tiene Dios para ustedes!