¡TORO! ¡TORO!

I feel like a TON has happened this week. I literally have no idea where to start. Maybe I´ll try to do this chronologically.

For transfers we had some crazy stuff happen in our district.  We now have 8 Hermanas and only 5 Elders.  GO SISTER MISSIONARIES.  Hermana Braithwaite is the new sister in our piso.  She´s really cool and fluent in Portuguese!  So she ends up speaking in Portuguese instead of Spanish sometimes.  It´s pretty funny.

This weekend is the Fiesta de Torrejón, which means that there is a GIANT fair-thing with roller coasters and a ferris wheel and all sorts of stuff and EVERYONE goes to it.  People from all over the place have been here this weekend to enjoy the fair and the festivals and free concerts and all sorts of stuff.  It´s pretty cool.  But more on that later. (Hint: look at the title of this email.)

We set a baptismal date for Luz! She wants to get baptized on July 21.  The only challenge with her is that she works almost every Sunday. so she can´t come to church.  The rule is that an investigator has to come to church 3 times before they can be baptized.  With her, we might be able to do it with 1 or 2 times because she was married to a member in Columbia and investigated the church with him, so we´re thinking there might be a different rule for former investigators.  Hopefully yes.  She has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and of Joseph Smith and she loves to read and talk to us about the importance of our faith.  Her 4 kids are still living in Columbia, and one of the main reasons she wants to get baptized is to set an example for them so that they might develop the same relationship with God in their lives.

Andrei is still progressing really well.  He said that he´s cut down dramatically on the amount he smokes but he still hasn´t been able to fully quit.  The cool thing is that we found a member in our ward who was smoking but had to quit in order to get baptized, and we´re going to have him talk to Andrei.   Andrei is awesome and is almost halfway through the Book of Mormon now.  We took him to the temple on Saturday and walked around and he absolutely loved the spirit of peace and calm that surrounds it.  He said that he really wants to go inside because he can imagine how much more peaceful it will be within the walls. His baptism is still set for September 15.  

We are totally stuck with Nora, though.  It´s sad.  We had a lesson with her and invited her to pray about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and she was like "I don´t feel like I need to pray about that because I don´t doubt that they´re true."  I tried my hardest to explain the difference between her thinking the Book or Mormon is a good thing and Joseph Smith is a good man and KNOWING they´re from God through the power of the Holy Ghost, but she´s Nigerian and stubborn.  Mom, you were asking about Nigerians?  They are going to be the death of me.  They are always very welcoming and will invite you into their home and listen to you, but they NEVER want to get baptized because every Nigerian I have ever met "was baptized like Jesus in a river and I don´t need to be baptized again because the person that baptized me was a priest in my church and so he had authority from God."  I love their faith but their stubbornness and unwillingness to pray and ask God if they should be baptized again or if the church is true KILLS me.  So I hope that one day Nora will have the desire to pray about the church, but for now, we can´t force her to do anything.

Also Mari and Mayelin don´t want us to come visit them again.  That was sad.

But we got a new investigator named Teresa who´s Domincan (I LOVE DOMINICANS.  They are super awesome and ALWAYS believe and practice their religion and they're just super cool, even if their accent can be really hard to understand.) She is AMAZING.  She´s 45, and she spends all her time taking care of her mother who is 72 and has had Alzheimers for 10 years.  She can´t talk or move and she has no facial recognition of anyone or anything and it was so sad to see her.  I almost cried.  But Teresa has an incredible faith in God and she´s seen His help in her life so many times when she was feeling depressed or discouraged with her mother´s consistently worsening condition.  We read Alma 7:11-13 with her.  It was wonderful to listen to her and to feel her Spirit of Christ-like sacrifice.  I´m excited to teach her more, especially the Plan of Salvation!

One cool little miracle is Jorge.  He just got here to Spain 2 weeks ago and he´s here just for vacation for 2 or 3 months. He came from Columbia and he was taking the missionary discussions there but he had to leave and he didn´t know how to get in contact with the missionaries.  He asked where the church was and said he wanted to come and he also agreed to meet with us tomorrow morning.  I think he can fit a baptism into his vacation schedule, no? :)  I love that we just "happened" to run into him.  Heavenly Father definitely knows what He´s doing in this work.  Talk about the details of our lives.

This week the weather was HEINOUS.  It was hot.  When I say hot, I mean 100+ degrees every day from 1-7 pm, not a cloud in the sky, the sun beating down on your back for 8 hours straight.  A few people told me Spain was hot, but they didn´t specify what "hot" meant.  It´s AWFUL.  And apparently it hasn´t even started to get really hot yet.  It´s apparently going to get to 113 in July and August.  CAN´T WAIT.  And the cherry on top is that I´m allergic to my new sunscreen also so I have nothing to protect my skin from the sun.  I´m pretty sure I am SUPER tan relative to how I was when I left.

One more thing I feel like someone should have told me is that dryers don´t exist in Europe.  All our clothes have to air dry on a drying rack in our piso.  Not that I can do anything about it, but I would have liked to know.

Bueno.  

So I know it´s only noon here, but we already had THE COOLEST P-DAY EVER.  As part of the festival of Torrejón, they have a running of the bulls and a mini, gore-free bullfight.  And what did my district do?  WE WENT TO IT!  I have a handful of pictures that I can send you.  It was SO cool.  The running part was a little anticlimactic, because there were only like 4 bulls so it wasn´t really dangerous at all, but the bullfight part was AWESOME.  It was in the Plaza de Toros, which is basically like a rodeo stadium, and the people who want to participate go down on the floor.  Then they release the bull, and it runs around charging whomever.  The people try to get it to charge them, and they have the red flags and stuff too.  There were a few guys that jumped over it (the bull).  It was SUPER AWESOME.  There was an ambulance there but nobody got hurt.  The people were pretty smart and if the bull was charging them, they jumped over the wall.  We felt so authentically Spanish.  It was awesome.

Well, I think that´s all.  

Keep Nora, Andrei, Luz, Teresa, Jorge, and all the others in your prayers.

Love,

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Iron Chef (sort of..)

Apparently, Lara got to be an Iron Chef, and the surprise ingredient was liquid cream instead of sour cream.  And salsa instead of green enchilada sauce.  It wasn't quite what she meant (or wanted) to use, but it all worked out.  One of many ingredient substitutions she will be using for the next year and a half.  

Many wonderful blessings.  We LOVE the family who is taking special care of her there!  

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I will definitely be praying for you even more than usual.  I absolutely know that Heavenly Father has an important plan for all of you and that´s what He´s working on here.

I learned this week that the more difficult the situations we are in, the more Heavenly Father is showing us that He trusts us.  He wouldn´t put us in a situation that we didn´t have the ability to overcome.  I love having that knowledge, and it blesses me immensely. 

Oh and nothing happened to me for transfers.  Still in the same area with the same companion.  We were freaking out a little bit on Saturday because we ran into EVERY investigator we had taught the whole transfer on the streets, and thought that maybe it was a sign that one of us was going to leave, but it wasn´t so.  And I´m glad.  I LOVE this area and I would be really sad to leave.

This week I had a really wonderful experience on Friday.  There´s a family in our ward who just got baptized in December.  The parents are Jhony and Alba, and they have two daughters, Karen (13) and Aitana (7).  I think I already told you a little about Aitana´s birthday party that we went to a couple weeks ago.  Anyway, Jhony has a tradition that every missionary who serves in the ward has to come over and make lunch (which is the huge meal here) for his family. We give them a list of what we need and they buy the ingredients. So, being new, it was my turn to cook.  I decided to make enchiladas, the same kind I always make, because I know how to make them without a recipe and they´re really easy.  Only they don´t have the same things here in Spain as they do in the U.S.  So I made enchiladas WITHOUT enchilada sauce, sour cream, or cream of anything soup.  And they tasted just fine.  In place of enchilada sauce, I used "mexican" salsa with some water to thin it out and some fresh tomatoes.  In place of sour cream or soup or whatever, I used CREAM.  Like half and half. How did this happen?  Remember, my companion doesn´t speak English.  I was on the phone trying to translate my grocery list and I was trying to explain what sour cream was and my companion was like "That´s nata para cocinar" and so I told her to get that.  Which is NOT sour cream at all.  Oh well.  It worked, and I was really proud of it.  The whole family told me it was really good, and I hope that wasn´t just to be nice.  They ate a TON of it, though, and so I think they really did like it. Jhony is super funny and he said "When you first started, I didn´t have any faith in you.  But you did a good job.  This is delicious." 

The elders were there too, and Elder Cardwell made this blackberry tart that was FANTASTIC. 

The cool experience, though, was after we finished eating and the elders shared a scripture.  Jhony started talking about how much the missionaries here had blessed his life.  He said that when the elder who baptized him left, it was really hard for him.  But now he almost looks forward to transfers because it´s amazing for him to see how different each of the missionaries is and how they have all given up this time in their lives to serve the Lord. Then his wife said how grateful she was for our sacrifice and how much her family owes to all the missionaries they know.  I got the best feeling listening to her, and she started crying and her husband started tearing up and I couldn´t help but smile because that´s why I´m here.  I´m here to serve the Lord and I´m here to bless people´s lives. I love Jhony and Alba.  They´re maybe my favorite family here.  They are so cool, and every time we talk with them, I get re-energized to be a better missionary.

Keep praying for Nora.  Her mom died this past week, and it´s hard for her, but we got to teach the plan of salvation and she was grinning the whole time.  I love that lesson. It is amazing, and I knew she could feel the power of it.

Also keep praying for Andrei.  Hopefully we´ll have a tour of the temple grounds with him this Saturday!  We found out that the date he set for his baptism is September 15, which seems really far away, but he still needs a little time to prepare and to quit smoking, so I think it will be right for him. 

Another new (to me) investigator that we taught this week is Luz.  My companion was teaching her before, but she works all the time and it´s really hard to get in to see her.  She is amazing though.  Her husband in Columbia was a member and she took the discussions years ago with him, but didn´t feel prepared yet to get baptized.  She understands the scriptures incredibly well and analyzes them like she´s already a member. Now if we can just get her work schedule to let us bring her to church...

We also met this week Mari and Mayelin. They´re from Columbia and Mari recently got really sick and almost died, and for that has just started coming back to church.  We´re excited to keep teaching them and to see how they progress.

Well I think that´s it.

Have a wonderful week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

I found some hypoallergenic sunscreen (at least I think it is) and I got a bottle, but it´s OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive.  So hopefully it works and I´m not going to burn and die.

Battle for the bouquet?

Man I don´t even know where to start.  We had a ridiculously slow week in which we were working our hardest to have lessons and make contacts and didn´t have or receive ANY.  We called every current and former investigator but either they were busy or they never answered the phone.  We didn´t find a single new investigator either.  It´s kind of discouraging to look at our numbers for the week but it´s good to know that we were working the hardest possible and that it isn´t our fault.  

The thing that´s been the biggest challenge for me is that I have a clear image in my head of who and what I want to be.  I can picture myself being this incredibly powerful missionary and then I go out and start to work and I´m just not that.  It´s been SO hard to recognize the  progress I am making when I´m still falling so short of my personal goal. But with Heavenly Father´s help I´m starting to recognize the things I´m getting better at even though I´m not where I want to be with the language or with contacting or in teaching lessons. It´s hard for me because I have a strong testimony of the power of silence and of waiting and letting the investigator think and feel the Spirit but my companion hates silence and always starts talking if it´s more than a few seconds. Because of that I hardly ever talk in lessons or in contacts, and I want to, but I would rather have the investigator feel the Spirit than listen to my words. We´ve been trying to get a balance down, and it´s improved, but we have a ways to go still.

Today for P-day we got to go to the mission home for a barbecue and party with all the missionaries in the Madrid area.  It was super fun--we played frisbee and ping pong and I got to catch up with some of the elders and sisters I knew in the MTC. I was so blessed to be a part of an amazing group in the MTC.  Seriously, we have some powerful missionaries.

Andrei is still progressing and doing well.  He found at least a part time job which is good for him because he has work but bad for us because he has less time to meet with us.  The thing we learned, though, is that he smokes, so we´re working on a plan to help him quit.  He´s still learning a ton and loves the gospel, and we also found out that he set his own baptismal date without us saying or doing anything about setting a date!  He won´t tell us what it is, though.  We´ll see.  He came to the baptism that the elders in our ward had yesterday and seemed to really enjoy it. Keep praying for him!  I know he´ll get baptized but it might be a while.

Funny story for the week: A couple got married this weekend and we had their wedding reception in the church on Friday night.  It was crazy because they got married really suddenly because the groom´s papers came through and they could finally get married in Spain.  So everything was pulled together in 2 or 3 days. Anyway the story is that we all got up for the bouquet toss and Hermana Vouemba was standing towards the front of the group of girls. So she throws the bouquet and suddenly I watch and this other sister from the ward and Hermana Vouemba are both on the floor.  The other lady got the bouquet and Hermana Vouemba just sat there, startled, for a few seconds. What happened was that Hermana Vouemba wasn´t even doing anything--the other lady just really wanted the bouquet and so she shoved her out of the way and onto the ground. Yesterday the WHOLE WARD was like "Hermana Vouemba, we heard what happened to you!  Guess you really want to get married!"  She was so embarrassed but it was HILARIOUS.

So anyway, pray for Torrejón!  We need to find some new investigators that will answer their phones and have time to meet with us.

Tomorrow I think we have exchanges and then we get to go to the temple Wednesday morning.  I´ll have to let you know how all that goes next week!  Transfers are on Monday so we find out on Saturday who stays and who goes. 

THANK YOU, family, Rachel, and President Barrow for your letters!  I loved coming out of district meeting with all of them and it made my day to read them and see pictures.  The pictures are all over my wall! 

Best of luck to you all!  I´m praying for you!

Con cariño,

Hermana Lara Schaumann