Navidad y mucho exito! (and wrestling with an elevator)

Dec. 25th--I'm just gonna send out a quick one this week because I already talked to some of you yesterday and we don't have a ton of time. So highlights:

H's friend F is getting baptized in January! On the 12. He's super awesome. 

We had the best lesson I've ever had in my whole life with an old investigator L and her friend A. The spirit was so strong and I just felt this immense love for me the whole time.

I saw the most beautiful dance I've ever seen in my life because our ward mission leader had some dance fundraiser and our investigator was begging us to come so we did.  and his best ballerina did a solo.  It was so beautiful I almost cried.  I have never even come close to crying watching dance before. But she just did a fantastic job. 

We had a great Christmas with the B's and their son. Who, by the way, served his mission in Copenhagen and knows Michael.  Elder Buhler? Ring any bells? 

I hope you all have a fantastic week and I love you all!!!

Dec.29th--So F is still doing awesome!  Still on track for the 20th.  He smokes like 2 cigarettes a day but he wants to quit and he´s willing to try and to trust in God. So he can leave that behind and keep progressing.  He came to church yesterday with his 3 year-old son Daniel.  He´s SUPER cute.

A:  We got to see him again this week and it was incredible.  The first thing he said as soon as we had started the lesson was that ever since he met with us last week, he´s a different person.  He said that the lesson we had changed his manner of thinking and his perspective on life.  He said that before, he always had an attitude of "anything goes" but that after, he realized that some things really are more important than others, and you have to do what you can to work towards what´s most important. It was really amazing, because that´s what the gospel is. It changes you. I asked how he felt about those changes and he said he felt really good, like he knew it was better. We taught the plan of salvation and it went really well again.  He understood pretty much everything and believes it!

Also, we´re teaching a FAMILY.  A CANARIAN FAMILY.  That´s a HUGE deal, for those of you that aren´t in the Canary Islands.  We found the mom at a baptism of a member´s 8 year-old daughter.  Her name is Y (the mom), and her daughter A is the same age as the girl who got baptized, and they know each other from school.  So she came to the baptism because she was invited by her daughter's friend´s mom, and when she got there she recognized our ward mission leader, because her daughter used to take dance classes from him. So she started talking with him and asking him all sorts of questions about the church, and so he called us over to talk with her, and we got her number and set up an appointment!  We went over on Friday morning with the mission leader´s wife, and taught her the first lesson.  She had a lot of doubts but she´s looking for the truth and she´s going to recognize it. And the best part is that she has 3 kids ages 15, 12, and 8 and she wants all of them to be involved in the church. The mission leader's wife  explained a lot about the organization of the church to teach each person at their own level and all the activities with the primary, YM/YW, and Relief Society, and she loved it.  She came to church yesterday with her youngest daughter and it was great because the mission leader's wife just sat next to her the whole time and answered her questions as they arose.  That´s how missionary work should be! Go members go!

Yesterday the elders had a baptism but it was kind of stressful for us because one of our investigators who is slightly insane came (but really he is insane, he takes medication) and another lady was standing outside the church so we started talking to her and invited her to the baptism and then as she kept talking to us we realized that she was also insane so we spent the entire baptism babysitting 2 crazy people, making sure they didn´t run away, stopping them from going up onto the stand to talk to the bishop, bothering Hermana B who was playing the piano, etc. That is NOT how missionary work should be...

So we still had a ton of lessons even though it was Christmas. YAY!  Our investigators like us!

Funny stories for the week:

Christmas Day my voice just utterly vanished. Like I could feel my voice going away throughout the day and by the end of it I was just rasping, basically. I wasn´t even sick or anything so I have NO IDEA why that happened.  The next day it was totally fine again. 

Also, we were going to visit a menos activa and we got into her building and someone had just gotten out of the elevator, so the door was still open, so I went to go in and the door just shut on me and smashed me over to the side until it finally realized that there was someone there and it wasn´t going to be able to close, and it opened again.  My companion was DYING of laughter afterwards.  I´m sure it must have been hilarious to watch, too bad I was on the receiving end of it. 

I love you all!  Have a great week

Christmas dinner

Stockings!

Christmas morning!

Gingerbread Houses!

Intercambios, Red Alert, 3 Fechas, and a Christmas Tree

First fun news: we had a red alert this week for severe storms and got stuck in our pisos for like 2 hours...while the sun was shining outside.  Literally nothing happened. Apparently some parts of Tenerife were a little harder hit, but it barely even rained here.  The even funner part of it was that I was on intercambios with Hermana S in Telde!  So I got to read my scriptures on Hermana C´s full-size bed while we waited for the all clear to go back out and proselyte. We also made pancakes with nutella and peanut butter. We had a pretty good time. The only hint of danger we experienced was afterward when we went back out and went up to Jinamar, which is basically on top of a mountain.  We were there with a little old member who was probably 60 or so and just tiny, and the wind was blowing really hard and we were afraid that she was going to get blown right off the mountain... but it all turned out totally fine.

Our intercambio was really fun-- we were visiting a menos activa and asked her if there was anything we could do to help her and she just ran out of the room and then dragged a chair past the doorway and then told us we could come in.  So we went in and got to teach her sister, who´s a nonmember and in a wheelchair.  She told us that she didn´t have very much faith, but she invited us to explain to her why our church is different.  We started talking about prophets and we were both bearing our testimonies and I said something and she just stopped and looked at me and said, effectively, "There´s always room for doubt.  No one´s ever sure about anything in this world.  But you´re CONVINCED. You know that what you´re saying is true."  And I almost started to cry.  We work so hard to get people to understand that.  Ours is different.  Our church, our beliefs, they aren´t like anything these people have seen before.  And we really do KNOW that they´re true. It was an amazing experience.

We also invited three people to get baptized on a specific date in the first lesson we had with them.  It was different, but it worked really well.  And all three of them said yes!  So now we have some cool new investigators who are going to get baptized in January! R is still reading and praying, but she told us the other day that maybe she wants to push her date back. We´ll see on that one...we know she´s prepared, we just have to help her recognize that. 

On Saturday, Hermano R, our ward mission leader, who is also a dance teacher, had his Christmas dance spectacular and we got to go!  We were ushers and stuck pass-along cards into all the programs. (mwahahahaha!)  4 of our investigators were dancing in the program and several members of the ward.  I have some pictures I´ll send out in a minute... It was awesome, although we got a little too excited about some of the worldly Christmas songs (or just worldly songs) they were dancing to...

Yesterday we had 2 baptisms of O and D and I got to sing Grande Eres Tu (How Great Thou Art) and it was super fun.  It was the first time I´d ever sung with an accompanist who literally just makes everything up the moment he plays it, and it turned out FANTASTIC.  He loves playing for me because he says I have a wonderful ear for knowing when to come in and what pace to take, and so everything we sing/play together always turns out beautifully. I got so many compliments afterwards.  It was so much fun!  I haven´t really SUNG for months now.

Okay now I´m going to send 6,000 emails with pictures from our island tour and everything this week!  LOVE YOU ALL and I´ll talk to you again on Christmas!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

We found this Christmas tree while we were working out in our piso one morning.  Hermana F was standing on a chair trying to put up one of the snowflakes that had fallen off the ceiling (those big ones fall almost every day) and she looked over and saw a bag hidden behind the couch.  We pulled it out, and lo and behold, it was full of Christmas ornaments!  A little further searching revealed a tree! So we assembled and decorated it ASAP.  Isn´t it SO PRETTY??

On the Coast!

I learned last week that The Princess Bride was filmed on Tenerife!!! How cool is that??  You can see the island of Tenerife in the background of some of these pictures.

Rapido, Rapido

Sorry I have only a couple seconds here because we´re going on a tour of the island today with the B's!!

But we had a really strange week...we almost got attacked by some crazy lady in the street, we got a member reference that is quite interesting...I don´t know how much I can say in this email so I´ll err on the side of caution and not say anything...just that this person is quite unique.

R is still progressing really well.  I don´t know if I mentioned that her grandpa is a member and he´s been inactive a long time but he came to church with her yesterday!  I´m pretty sure he had a stroke or some other health problem and so he´s sort of just like a little kid.  I invited him to church and told him that everyone would recognize him if he came back and it was true!  EVERYONE came up to him and was so excited to see him and everything.  It was AWESOME!  He was also there while we were teaching her and she told us that she believes the Book of Mormon is scripture and the Joseph Smith was a prophet!

I don´t know if I´ve talked about P...can´t really remember...but anyway, she´s awesome and we help her with English every week/teach her the lessons.  She absolutely LOVES us and she remembers everything we say and does it.  She´s come to church a couple times, she reads the Book of Mormon every night, even keeps it on her bedside table. Last week for my companion´s birthday she gave her a scarf,  and this week she bought me a thing of nail polish because a couple weeks ago I commented that I liked her nail polish, so she went out and bought me one.  We have such a good relationship with her and she keeps her commitments because she knows we care about her when we´re inviting her to do things and that we know those things can bless her. 

Anyway, aside from all the bizarre things that happened to us, we had pretty good week!  Next week O, the elders´80 year-old investigator, and probably D, the other elders´investigator are getting baptized, and Elder R kindly volun-told me for a musical number.  So I´m going to sing How Great Thou Art and D, the one who just got baptized, who´s amazing on the piano, is going to accompany me!  I´m pretty excited!

Also, we got approved to sleep at the B´s on Christmas Eve.  We´re SUPER excited!

Well, hasta luego!  I´ve got to go tour Gran Canaria!

les quiero todos!


p.s.  haha it still hasn´t gotten that cold here.  We´re still in the 60s.

Christmas for US is pretty Christ-centered, but apart from that it´s kind of a mix.  Christmas really isn´t a huge deal here anyway, they celebrate 3 kings day a lot more.  

But yeah, definitely what I miss the most is the "Messiah."  I think I talk about it every single day to my poor companion.

Thanksgiving

So this week we somehow managed to get a decent number of lessons...I don´t know how because I feel like every appointment we made fell through on at least 2 of the days this week...  We´re going through a bit of a rough patch because a lot of our investigators just have AWFUL lives and no money and there´s not really any work available...like at all...and so it´s not that they don´t have interest, it´s just that they can´t give the attention to our message that they know it deserves.

But anyway, they´ll get baptized one day.  Now is just not the moment.

We have a date with J for January and we got one with R for December 22. I don´t really remember what I´ve told you about R but she´s 20 and studying to be a translator.  She´s super cute and nice and just eats up everything.  We were teaching her the plan of salvation this week and usually we just gloss over the Fall of Adam and Eve because it´s usually way too complicated for our investigators to understand but I felt like I should explain it more thoroughly so I explained about how they were in a state of innocence and couldn´t really know or understand anything until they partook of the fruit and left the garden.  And she understood it!  She kept saying "Oh, that makes so much sense!  I´ve never understood why they fell but now I get it!" It made me really happy!

Also we had a really interesting week with Y. We had a really intense DTR with her on Thursday (if you don´t know what a DTR is just ask a BYU student) and she told us that she didn´t really have the desire to come to church and that she didn´t really want to read the Book of Mormon because the Bible is the Bible and the Book of Mormon is just a book.  So we explained that for us it´s equal to the Bible and we invited her to pray about it.  Then we didn´t see her again until last night, and we were super nervous to ask her if she had prayed or not.  As it turns out she had, but didn´t feel that she had really received an answer.  We had planned to teach something...don´t remember what...but after she said that I got the firm impression that we needed to show her how the Bible and the Book of Mormon support each other. So we read John 10:16 and talked about the 12 tribes of Israel, and how God looked over the Nephites, who were part of those tribes, and sent them his gospel just as he had with the Jews.  She was asking a ton of questions and was really interested.  We ended up leaving her with scriptures to study on the same topic from the Book of Mormon and the Bible, so she could see how they expound on each other. It was so cool and I could feel the Spirit, especially at the end when my companion and I tied everything back to Jesus Christ. There is a power in the testimony of the Savior that you can´t find in anything else.

For Thanksgiving we all went up to the B´s and ate a real American dinner with the stake president and his family!!  We got to go up early and help cook everything, as you´ll see in the pictures I´m going to send of when we were making rolls and my hands are covered in sticky dough...  It was really fun but it was a little weird that we were talking in Spanish the whole time because we were sitting at the table with the D´s...  But basically Hermana B is the best in the whole world!

Also for Hna. F´s birthday we ate like 5 cakes.  The first one was at G´s and it was super fun because they had trick candles that were sparking all over the place and she was laughing so hard she couldn´t even try to blow them out.  Then we had one out of the back of the B´s car pretty much in the middle of the street.  Everyone was looking at us like we were crazy but it was great fun!

Have a great week and keep your prayers coming!  We and our investigators need them!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Thanksgiving Rolls!

Hermanas Agradecidos! 

Conferencia de Zona y Día de Acción de Gracias!

We had a wonderful zone conference on Monday and Tuesday!

We all watched 17 Miracles together on Monday night at the B's and then we had the actual conference Tuesday morning.  We talked a lot about our desires and how if we really love the Lord, we will do everything in our power to be completely obedient.  There is an awesome conference talk about how a lot of times the sacrifices the Lord asks of us are small, not big.  He doesn´t usually ask that we sacrifice our lives, but rather that we read our scriptures daily, and pray sincerely, and other small things like that.

We watched an amazing video clip about a 16 year-old boy named Hector who was a convert to the church and who shares the gospel with EVERYONE.  The ward had a missionary activity and when they went to Hector´s apartment complex, every single person had already been invited to come to church, a church activity, or to meet with the missionaries, and all of them BY HECTOR.  In the video clip, he says a couple really profound things.  First, he was talking about his conversion, and he said that he read the Book of Mormon, prayed, and got an answer. And then he said "If I know it, I have to do it."  That was so amazing to me!  A testimony isn´t really worth anything if we don´t do anything about it.  And if we have that solid testimony, there won´t be any other real option but to do that which we know we ought to do.  The other thing he said was talking about why it´s so easy for him to share the gospel with everyone, even with people he doesn´t know.  He said, "If our Lord said it, you should do it!"  That hit me so hard.  If we really know that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world, well, we should do what He says.  Whatever it is, however difficult of uncomfortable it may be. 

I just finished this morning reading Jesus the Christ.  I absolutely loved every minute and it was wonderful for me to be able to see the perfect example that He was. I love Him.

We´re currently struggling a little bit getting our investigators to keep commitments.  We were talking about it and we´re confused because we can feel the Spirit strongly in our lessons with them and we´re pretty sure they can feel it too, but then they don´t do anything that we invite them to do!  So either they aren´t feeling the Spirit, they don´t recognize that they´re feeling it, or they don´t realize that the committments we leave with them will help them feel the Spirit.  Our goal this week will be to figure out which of those is the problem...

Also, D got baptized on Saturday!! And Dad, you don´t have to worry about me not getting to sing with you guys because every Wednesday at FHE D plays Christmas songs on the piano and has me come over and sing them with him.  I´m probably going to sing O Holy Night at the ward talent show on December 20th and he´s going to accompany me. But his baptism was such an amazing experience and the testimony he shared at the end was incredible.  Too bad NONE of our investigators came...

Transfers are today but we aren´t changing here.  In our district only Elder D left for Madrid, so we´re pretty much the same still.  Hermana F and I decorated our piso super pretty today with snowlakes and a paper chain for Christmas!  It´s so pretty!  I took pictures...but I forgot my camera cord at home so I will send them to you next week.

Today our P-day is cut in half because we´re going to do the rest of it on Thursday!  We´re going up to the B's on Thursday afternoon with all the missionaries and the stake president and his family, and we´ll be there until about 6:00 at night!  We are really excited!

Also, Hermana F wants me to tell you all that it´s her birthday on Friday.  Just so you know. :)  I don´t know what I can do as a surprise seeing as how we have to be within sight and sound of each other 24/7...but I´ll see what I can cook up!

I love you all a ton and hope you have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

^It's snowing in the Canary Islands!

Picturas! Y Zona Conferencia de Todas las Islas!

Okay, so Lara didn't include a title with her email this week.  So I gave it a shot.  Don't laugh too hard!  


*****************************
Hola todos!!

Knocking on Christopher Columbus' door.  No answer. :)

Making a wish!

Holy Spirit Street

Hna F and Hna S

w/ Nestor Alamo--Spanish writer, lawyer, composer

FHE!

w/ G ready for Halloween!  

I'm writing this quickly from the B's dining room because today is Day One of ISLAND ZONE CONFERENCE, which is a 2-day affair and it's really exciting!  President J and his wife and all the missionaries from Tenerife are getting here right now, so things are starting up.  We've been mass cooking all day in Hermana B's kitchen.

Quick update--I'm not sick anymore. I spent Monday night at the B's and Tuesday in our piso sleeping and listening to Conference talks, but now I am totally fine and we had a great week!

Y didn't come to church again and we're not sure what to do to help her progress...we'll keep working and see how everything goes.  She did get us a reference when she was at the doctor-- she called us up and told us that she had started talking to a lady in the doctor's office and she wanted us to come by and visit her daughter, which we did last night! Her name (and her daughter's name) is R, and they're from Peru.  They're super great.  The daughter is 20 and is so nice.  We have all the same interests and we really hit it off last night.

Also, J is leaving today for Chile!  I can't believe he's going.  We had a farewell party with him yesterday at M's and it was so fun but so sad.  I also made my first really successful joke in Spanish--I had J and M cracking up.  I was pretty proud of myself. :)

So yeah, there's a line of missionaries waiting for the laptop so just know that I'm doing great and I'm super excited for Zone Conference today and tomorrow!!!

Les quiero un monton!!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Muchas lecciones y nadie en la capilla...

I believe this could be loosely translated as "Many lessons and nobody in the chapel"


Nov. 11

SO, before anybody freaks out, I'm a little under the weather with a nasty sore throat.  The B's took me to the doctor today and I got on some antibiotics and so I'll be as good as new in no time! 

Apart from that, we had a good week!  Y's phone was still broken so we went by almost every night.  It was so good to see her on a daily basis and really see her progress step by step.  We even made chocolate chip cookies with her and her mom, even though they turned out really sketchy because there are no chocolate chips, the brown sugar is different, and their oven was a six-inch square... but hey!  They were still cookies!

We got a fecha with guy from the Philippines named J for December 14th.  He is so sweet and everything we taught him he would just say, "Wow."  (We teach him in English, which makes it a good deal easier...)

Also, the elders found a homeless guy named D who is AMAZING!  He speaks 6 languages, is an electrical engineer, and plays the piano like nothing I've ever heard in my life.  We happened to run into him on the way home and so we walked all the way home with him in the rain and he told us his life story.  It was so sad but he has got to be one of the strongest, most amazing people I've ever met.  He's getting baptized on November 23rd!

We had a baptism yesterday from the elders and my companion and I had to teach the plan of salvation so I was trying to speak loud even though I'm losing my voice, but then at the end one of the ward members came up to me and told me that my Spanish has improved at least 75% since I got here to the islands.  It made me so happy!

Funny things this week:

C's daughter D was looking at the Liahone we had brought to teach our lesson and there was a picture of Lorenzo Snow and she said "Look, Santa Claus!"  It was so funny we had to bite our lips to keep from laughing.

We showed up like 20 minutes late to a meal appointment with the institute teacher and when we walked in he said "Hermanas, no dessert for you!"  We thought he was serious for a few seconds...

So keep your prayers coming!  We need them!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Halloween!!

From Nov. 4:


We learned this week that they don´t really celebrate Halloween in Spain.  We saw probably 5 people total dressed up.  It was really sad.  But we made sugar cookies during our mediodia so it was okay. :D

I really have no idea what happened this week...so this letter might be even more random than usual.  We had the HARDEST time having lessons with people.  We called every investigator and contact and less active person we know, but no one had time to meet with us, which was kind of sad.  The cool thing was that we ran into some people who had been looking for us or got blessed in some other way for our diligence. That was really cool. 

Neither Yerlandy nor Luis are going to get baptized this week.  We´re thinking maybe in 2 weeks more.  When we set that date with them, it fely good, but since then both of their schedules have been super complicated and we haven´t had a real solid lesson with them.  We all but dragged them to the YSA Halloween dance (because of transportation issues, not because they didn´t want to come), and they had a really good time, I think.  We´re going to see them tonight, which will be good.  Please keep praying for them!  We had a little bit of a panic because Yerlandy wasn´t answering her phone on Saturday and then she didn´t come to church on Sunday and all of yesterday she still didn´t answer her phone.  So finally we went to her house and basially rang the doorbell until she answered.  We went in and just talked to her for a while about her life and her concerns and everything and we found out that her mom just lost her job and that her phone broke, so that was why she hadn´t been answering.  We were worried that something had happened and she didn´t want to talk to us but she still likes us!  YAY!  And when we asked her about getting baptized she said that she feels comfortable and good in the church but she´s still not sure that it´s the true church or that she´s ready to commit to being baptized.  So we´re going to keep working with her until she feels convinced!  And also Luis´s brother just moved here from Cuba, so we should be able to start teaching him soon as well! 

Also, Orlando seems to have lost a little bit of his enthusiasm this week to learn from us...but he sounded eager to meet with us yesterday when we talked to him so hopefully he will be reading and progressing again!

Some funny things this week:

(Man Hermana Fowers and I have SO many funny things happen to us)

On Wednesday the Buhlers were in Madrid but Hermana Buhler gave us money to go buy croissants for our chicken salad sandwiches that we had after district meeting.  So we left half an hour early to go buy them.  We went to one bakery and bought everything she had, and she called ahead to another bakery just down the street to ask them to get croissants ready for us, So we went RUNNING down the street to the other bakery to pick up the croissants to go to district meeting...but when we got there the lady had JUST put them into the oven and we had to stand there waiting for 20 minutes to get the croissants.  She FINALLY gave them to us and we went running down the street with 6 bags of croissants as fast as we could to the church and so man people were laughing at us.  We finally got to district meeting 25 minutes late...but there were croissants!

We were waiting for a bus and an African man walked by and I said "Hola" to him and he said "buenas tardes" in response but he was African and had a really weird accent so it took me a minute to figure out what he had said. After another few seconds Hermana Fowers turned to me and said, "Did he just say ´plan of salvation´???"  She was totally convinced that he had, it was hilarious.

Also yesterday on the way to Yerlandy´s we got completely drenched in the rain.  It´s funny because it hardly ever rains in Las Palmas, but all this past week it´s rained at least a little.  It was pouring though yesterday for over a hour, and when we got to her house she just started laughing because we were thoroughly soaked. :)

New scripture and quote I found this week:

D&C 123: 12-17

And quote by Elder Maxwell:

“One’s life … cannot be both faith-filled and stress-free. …

“Therefore, how can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, ‘Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!’ …

“Real faith … is required to endure this necessary but painful developmental process.”

Also I finally listened to Priesthood Session!  President Uchtdorf´s talk goes up there on one of the best talks I´ve ever heard for me.  I absolutely loved it!

Thank you for all your prayers and support! LOVE YOU

Hermana Lara Schaumann

El obispado, galletas, mi mitad-cumpleaños, y la mejor llamada de mi vida

From Oct. 28th:

(Or translated, the bishopric, cookies, my half-birthday, and the best call of my life) 

We are officially the WARD of Las Palmas!!!  We got a bishopric yesterday and it´s so exciting! I don´t really know our new bishop at all, but one of his counselors is a really awesome young and recently married RM from El Salvador who we have come to lessons with us a lot.  He´s great, and I know that the new bishopric will do a wonderful job!

This week we had an AWESOME district meeting in which the Buhlers taught about good teaching skills.  It was so powerful, especially since just the day before Hermana Fowers and I had been trying to figure out what we needed to do to have better lessons.  We ended up having a really good, really basic lesson with Orlando about the Book of Mormon and the importance of the message of THIS gospel, and the next time we met with him, we could just see that the spirit in him had changed.  He had read the chapter we had left for him to read, he was praying, and he just had a new enthusiasm that hadn´t been there before to learn about the gospel.

We also had a wonderful lesson with the Buhlers and Yerlandy and Isora about the commandments to pray, read the scriptures, and keep the Sabbath Day holy. Hermana Buhler said in district meeting that one of the things we really lacked in lessons was enthusiasm, and Elder Buhler said that when we extend commitments, we need to help the investigators see why that specific commitment will help them come closer to Christ.  Then we had that lesson with them, and I was focusing really hard on doing those things.  And the lesson was AMAZING.  We talked about the commandments, about why we have them, and about what they help us do.  We talked about Christ´s love for us, and about how those three things especially draw us nearer to His love.  I felt the Spirit so strongly and as I bore my testimony, I almost started crying (which DOES NOT happen to me in lessons.)

Also, I received the best phone call of my life in which Yerlandy CALLED ME.  Those of you who don´t live in Spain, you don´t understand how big of a deal that is. There´s something here called "saldo" which is minutes on your phone, and NO ONE has saldo. Our investigators never EVER call us because no one has enough money to put minutes on their phone or respond to text messages. So the fact that Yerlandy called me was in and of itself a miracle because that means she used her priceless saldo to call us.  But even better than that was the context of the call.  I answered and she said, "Hey, I just got back from working with my mom and I´m going to read the Book of Mormon.  I really want to study about baptism.  Is there a specific chapter I should read that talks about baptism?  I almost fell over right there on the spot, but I somehow managed to fumble around in my bag and tell her the page number of Mosiah 18.  That was so awesome to me!  She´s not entirely sure that the church is true, or that she feels completely ready to get baptized, but I know she will feel that by her fecha on the 9th because she´s doing her part!  She is putting in the effort to read and to pray and that is how she will get an answer.  It was amazing for me to get that call because that is exactly the recipe for how to receive a testimony. I´m SO excited to see how she continues to progress.

Luis was super busy this week because his brother came from Cuba to visit, but he´s been reading and praying still and Yerlandy said yesterday that he´s more prepared than she is to get baptized.

Other things this week...our chapel got robbed!  We´re pretty sure someone came in while we were doing our FHE in the chapel and hid in a storage closet until we left and locked up, then they went through and broke a few things and stole a computer and got out the back where they had to climb over a wall.  It was crazy and that day we couldn´t go into the church because the police had to come do an inspection, but nothing´s too badly damaged and a lot of the technology stuff like the video conference cameras and the projecter were untouched. (That day was also coincidentally my half-birthday and Hermana Fowers sang me happy half-birthday in Spanish on the bus.)

Also on Friday we were really bored waiting for the bus and so we ran over to the store and bought a sleeve of cookies which we shared with all our investigators and menos activos the rest of the day.  It was really funny because Hermana Fowers had them in her bag and at the end of the lesson she would just pull them out and everyone´s faces were so confused because they had been expecting her to pull out scriptures or something and it was cookies instead. 

And last night we went to the coolest FHE with Raquel and Franklyn, who are a married couple in their 40s or 50s and don´t have any kids.  So once a week they have an FHE with all the YSAs who are the only members in their families.  There were at least 5 YSAs there, and they have them rotate in teaching the lesson.  I loved seeing them do that, because it´s so important that those recent converts have FHE every week and even if they can´t do it with their own family, they can do it with this part of their ward family!  Most of the ones there got baptized within the last 2 years, and the lesson was very profound and spiritual and incredibly powerful.  That house was filled with love for the Lord and for one another.  I absolutely loved being able to go there yesterday.

I really love being here right now.  I LOVE my companion and Las Palmas and I love the Lord.  We´ve been listening to priesthood session for our companionship study and I just listened this morning to President Uchtdorf´s talk.  I felt like it was written just for me (minus the references to the priesthood!)  We probably won´t get our new conference Liahona for a really long time, so for the moment I´ll have to content myself with listening from my comp´s iPod. :)

Please keep up your prayers.  We can see the miracles they work every day!

¡Los quiero mucho!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Siete Meses, Gelato, Y Fechas

I somehow didn't post the last four weeks, so I am trying to catch up.  What a slacker mom!  

From Oct. 21st

First off, yesterday was my 7 MONTH MARK in the mission. I cannot believe I have already been out so long.  It´s really amazing to me how fast it´s going.  I´m very nearly halfway done.  YIKES!

So my new companion, Hermana Fowers, is awesome!  She´s also 20 and was studying Elementary Education at USU before she came here. She didn´t know ANY Spanish before she came here, so she´s struggling with that a little bit, but she is an awesome missionary and has a lot of love and good ideas for the people here. I´ve also learned since she got here that I´ve pretty much forgotten how to speak English.  (Not that Hermana Floyd and I were as good as we should have been about speaking Spanish during the day.)  We were reading in the missionary handbook and I just started to say the words in a Spanish accent without thinking about it.  After it came out of my mouth, my brain was throwing up a little red flag, like "something wasn´t right about that" and Hermana Fowers was just staring at me trying not to laugh.  It was so funny. 

This week was good but also kind of rough.  I feel like our investigators are just vanishing by the dozens... mostly because they´re finding new jobs and they have to work every second of every day. The work schedules people have here are definitely illegal in the US. So many people work "interna" which means they live with an old person and take care of him or her 24/7, and they get maybe 2 afternoons off every month.  I don´t understand how they´re still alive, honestly, working that much all the time. 

The highlight of this week was teaching Luis and Yerlandy. We set a baptismal fecha (DATE, I mean DATE) with them for November 9th, and I´m very confident that they´ll both get baptized that day. They have such strong desires to really know for themselves and we can´t argue with that.  They keep asking questions about the requirements to get baptized and Luis told us that his concern in getting baptized would be that his work schedule might not permit him to go to all the activities and be as active and involved as he would want to be.  We promised him that he will be able to do all that the Lord expects of him because the Lord wants him to get baptized and to be a member of this church.  He came to church yesterday and said that he felt really good there and that he really liked it!

Also we had the coolest experience in which what I thought was just me having a sweet tooth turned out to be a spiritual prompting!  I have mentioned previously a wonderful gelato place by our piso that we go to sometimes.  Well, this week we were coming back for mediodia and the bus dropped us off only a couple blocks from there.  So I turned to my companion and asked if she wanted to start our mediodia with going to get gelato.  So we walked in, we looked at all the flavors, and I started to order mine when I realized that the server girl was staring intently at my left shoulder and not hearing a word I said.  Suddenly she looked up and said "Oh, sorry, I wasn´t listening--I was reading."  I smiled and asked if she had been reading my chapa.  She said yes, and then I explained that we were missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  She started to ask us more about our church and when we had established that we were Christian, she asked what made our church different from the others.  I explained to her that we have a living prophet today just like in the Bible and that he speaks to us the words of God. She started asking all sorts of questions about how we know that he´s a prophet of God and everything.  She asked if we were in a hurry and we said no, and so she invited us to sit down at the counter and keep talking to her about our church.  We left her with a Restoration pamphlet and the Book of Mormon, and we´re probably going to see her on Thursday!  That experience really strengthened my testimony that when we are working hard and we have the desire to do as the Lord wants us to do, He truly guides our steps and places people in our path!  So now, we might make gelato stops a little more often. ;) 

Keep praying for Luis and Yerlandy, especially, to receive a sure confirmation that what they are doing is right. 

¡Que disfruten su semana y que tengan mucho exito en todo que hagan!

Despedidas y Bienvenidas

So, Mom, you were asking if I was going to be affected by transfers.  And the answer to that is yes!  Hermana Floyd has maxed out her time in the Islands, so she's headed to Madrid and I'm going to stay here with Hermana Fowers.  (I'm senior companion and area training!)  All I know about her is that she's from Utah and she just finished her 12-week training. Her flight gets here in about an hour, so I'll probably meet her in about 2 hours. I was really sad to say goodbye to Hermana Floyd but I know I'm going to love Hermana Fowers!  Something funny about this transfer is that Hermana Floyd's trainer was Hermana Zitting, and I came here right when Hermana Zitting left.  Well, Hermana Zitting went to Madrid, where she trained Hermana Fowers.  And now Hermana Fowers is coming here with me!  So apparently I have to "greenie bust" all the people that Hermana Zitting trains. :) 

(Hna. Zitting is from TN too, but from Cookeville.) 

So that's what's going on with transfers.  Hna. Hansen also went back to Madrid, and Hna. Cassinat is going to be with Hna. Smith, who was in my group in the MTC. 

Hna. Floyd and Hna. Hansen left early this morning, so we had a sleepover at the Buhlers' house and we ate pumpkin pancakes for breakfast!  YUM. The Buhlers take such good care of us.  I don't know what I'm going to do without them when I have to leave here...

All right, now for the investigators: 

Updated list:

Julio

Claudia 

Stella

Yerlandy

Isora

Luis

Orlando

Mercy

Lourdes

Yerlandy and Isora are still doing pretty well, but they didn't come to church yesterday and I'm not quite sure why... Hopefully they'll still get baptized the 26th of October.  Or at least Yerlandy will.  Isora I think is going to progress at a slower pace.

But we also met Yerlandy's friend Luis this week.  We had FHE with a young SEALED couple who are both RMs who are absolutely awesome, and we invited Yerlandy and Isora.  It turned out that Isora couldn't come, so Yerlandy invited her friend Luis. We had never met him before and we went straight to the FHE 5 minutes after we met him.  We sat down and started talking about our church and the Book of Mormon and we were talking about the restored gospel and he turned to us and said, "you keep saying your church is restored.  But restored from what?  The Catholic church? The Protestants?" I beamed at him when he asked that.  And then we taught the Restoration.  He's incredible.  Absolutely prepared.  He's a really good, polite, kind, just wonderful person.  And he's 23, so he's a YSA. I really think that he and Yerlandy are going to help each other gain their testimonies and they're both going to get baptized really soon.  Like, in 2 weeks or so. And they come to our ward FHE and the YSA activities and everything.  Our plan is to get them both baptized and then get them married and sealed...but we'll see about that one. :)

This week we talked in district meeting about asking inspired questions as we teach, and we did an activity using 3 different types of questions.  We each picked a scripture and did a basic "what" question, something that you can answer straight from the text, a deeper "why" comprehension question, and a "how" application question.  And Hna. Floyd and I have been doing that in our lessons and they've gone so well.

We had another lesson with Orlando this week and we realized by asking questions that he really doesn't understand very much of what we say.  So we just explained, in the simplest terms possible, why it's important for him to read the Book of Mormon and gain a testimony of it. And he got it this time.  He told us he was going to read every day.  

We also had a really cute goodbye lesson with Claudia, her pareja Gianni, and their kids, Giovanni and Danna.  It was so cute to get to listen to them talk as a family about the gospel.  Gianni is always at work, so that was the first time I had ever had a lesson with him there. She told us that she has all her marriage papers together in Paraguay, and now she just has to get everything legalized and sent over here. That is one family I cannot wait to see sealed in the temple.

Please keep your prayers coming.  I can definitely feel the power they have in our area here.

Catch-up to Conference

So I didn´t have time to email last week because we went to the Buhlers´ all day and we were going to email there but then their internet stopped working and I didn´t get back in time to do anything.  Not to mention I was on intercambios with Hermana Hansen and everything was just crazy.

A bunch has been going on lately over here. We invited Mercy to get baptized, but now she´s started working weekends and she can´t come to church...  She comes to everything during the week that she can and she is just awesome.  We were talking about reading the scriptures and she said, "Well, you have to do what it says!  It won´t do you any good to read the Book of Mormon if you don´t put it into practice!" She is so prepared it´s crazy.  But she can´t get baptized for the time being, so we´ll keep praying really hard that she finds another job and doesn´t have to work weekends. She can´t come to institute or any other YSA things either.

And speaking of YSA activities, last Friday we were walking through the park when we stopped to talk to a cute girl sitting on the bench.  She´s 20, and she just moved here 4 months ago from Cuba.  She told us that she didn´t really have any friends here yet, and so we invited her to come to institute with us that night.  And she came!  Then she came again to the YSA FHE the next night.  And she and her mom came to church together on Sunday!  Her name is Yerlandy, and her mom is Isora.  NO ONE can pronounce her name (Yerlandy´s), it´s really funny. 

Also last Saturday we went to eat with the Buhlers at Jaime´s Italian restaurant, and before we went to go find some less actives in the área. We knocked on one door and the husband of the less active lady answered it.  He told us that she´s working in England right now but that he would be interested to learn about our church.  So we´re teaching him right now.  His name is Orlando.  We´re not exactly sure how much interest he has in the church, but we´ll keep working with him.

But Orlando, Yerlandy, and Isora all came to church last Sunday.  And a miracle happened. Our Gospel Principles teacher is Fatima, and she´s amazing.  She teaches by the Spirit and with a lot of energy and involves her class really well. But last Sunday topped it ALL. Last week Fatima´s father passed away, and the topic of the lesson just happened to be eternal families. When we came in, she was playing music quietly from her phone and she had put pictures all over the Wall of families and temples.  The Spirit was overwhelming the whole lesson.  Isora was crying almost from the moment it started and by the end, at least half the class was teary, myself and my companion included.  Fatima didn´t talk about her father until the very end, when she too started crying and bore her testimony that she KNEW her family would be together again because they had been sealed in the temple. It was by far the best Sunday School class I have ever atended in any language.

So then the next day, Hermana Hansen came with me on intercambios and we went to visit Isora and Yerlandy, and there was a surprise in their house by the name of Eladio, a friend who lives with them. He´s a Baptist (the first Baptist I´ve met on my misison) and he was so involved and interested in our message. Later his wife came and she already believes all the same doctrine that we do.  It was incredible.  We invited them to be baptized and we set a date with Yerlandy and Isora for the 26 of October.  They were a little hesitant at first but I promised them that by that date, they would feel prepared and have the desire to be baptized, and so they said they´d prepare to get baptized then!

My awesome companion also set another baptismal date over the phone with Harrison´s cousin Charlie. She called him and asked if he knew a lot about our church.  He said, "Yeah, Harrison´s talked to me about it.  I want to be a member."  So she asked if he wanted to get baptized, and he said yes.  Then she asked if he would get baptized on October 26th, and he said that he would. Crazy, no?  We still haven´t taught him, but I hope he will be able to get baptized on that date!

Nothing else too far out of the ordinary happened this week, besides conference!  We had the immense blessing of being able to watch almost every session in English!  We watched all except the Sunday morning session in English.  And because we´re in the islands, we got to watch all the sessions live!  They went from 5-7 and from 9-11 at night.  We just watched them together, all the missionaries and the Buhlers.  It was wonderful.  I´m a little bummed that we had to watch the Sunday morning session in Spanish though, because I definitely didn´t understand as much, and apparently it was really awesome.  We just didn´t want to abandon our investigators who had come.  And it wasn´t hard to understand because I don´t know Spanish, but because my brain had to concéntrate harder on figuring out what they were saying and it was a lot harder for me to understand what the Spirit was saying to me. Maybe one day I´ll watch it in English...

I don´t even know which talks I liked best.  Elder Bednar´s was WONDERFUL.  I was looking back over my notes from that talk and I realized that I didn´t even write the word tithing once. For me his words applied to every blessing we receive for every commandment we are given.  I realized that a lot of times I´m looking for a specific blessing and I miss the other blessings I´m receiving.  I loved his counsel on having your eyes and ears spiritually open to recognize the blessings that are poured upon you.

And I loved Elder Dyches, who was followed by Elder Holland.  Both of their messages were exactly what I needed to hear and touched me so powerfully.

As a missionary, of course I liked Elder Nielsen, Elder Ballard, and Elder McConkie.  Elder McConkie was basically just speaking directly to missionaries, although he applied the points to all teachers of the góspel.  Everything he said is something I can and should apply on a daily basis.

I also loved President Uchtdorf, as always.  I didn´t get the full value out of President Monson´s or President Eyring´s talks so I´ll have to go back through and read those again.

In between sessions of conference the wonderful Hermana Buhler fed us and so we got to spend time together with all the missionaries and it was great.  I cannot believe I´ll only be on my missión for one more conference!

Please pray for Mercy, Orlando, Isora, Yerlandy, Charlie, Claudia, Stella, and Julio!

Hasta luegito!

Hermana Lara Schaumann