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
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