Cambios!!!!

I´m going to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria and it´s going to be amazing.  My companion is Hermana Floyd, who was in the MTC with me.  We were FB friends before the mission and everything. I feel so loved and known by my Heavenly Father and this change is in answer to months of earnest and faithful prayers. My companion is still staying in Torrejon with one of the sisters who lived in our piso my first transfer.  

I am just so happy I could die.  Scott, I want to know exactly where you were in the Canarias.  I´m super excited.

If you sent me a personal email this week, I can´t answer it right now, but I´ll get back to you either when I get to the islands or next week.  

WOOHOO I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!

muchisimo amor,

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Later that day.......;)

So as it turns out we´re here at the airport 2 and a half hours early, and so we´re going to email again now.

Our week was pretty good.  We were a little stressed about transfers, but it still went well. 

Nothing really exciting or important happened to the weekend.  On Friday we had a lesson with a new investigator named Paola who is from Columbia.  She has a friend who lives in the US in Iowa who speaks Spanish, and she was asking if I knew him.  She met him because she is a professional cake decorator and she was trying to order a cricut machine from the US, and he was the employee who could speak Spanish and talk to her.  She was explaining this story and told us that he knew Spanish because he had served a mission in Argentina. Of course, we asked if he was LDS, and she said she didn´t know.  She got online and sent him a message to ask him, and he is!  She has had wonderful experiences with him and even without talking about the church specifically he has been a great missionary in her life.  Hopefully she will continue to progress well!

Saturday was a fundraiser barbecue for the youth to raise money for EFY, and before it even started we had 2 lessons with other new investigators.  Rafael is Spanish (which is a big deal because we NEVER teach Spaniards) and he told us he feels like his life is missing something.  He´s ready to change and learn and do what he needs to find the emotional, spiritual, and temporal stability he´s lacking right now. I felt a wonderful spirit in our lesson with him.  The other new one is Javier, and he´s from Ecuador and is super curious to learn about everything.  I hope he will be willing to put in the effort to actually gain his testimony, because he was a little wishy-washy on that. The barbecue was SUPER fun, and our investigator Andres (the 17 year-old) was there helping out the entire time.  He is a great kid and hopefully he´s going to get baptized in August when he turns 18!

After the barbecue we had a baby shower for a recent convert and after that we went to Jhony and Alba´s house, where I made rice krispie treats that turned out blue-green because plain white marshmallows are not sold at Carrefour. But it still tasted the same, so I consider this a job well done. We were there late at night, and we were waiting to find out about transfers.  We were all super nervous and pacing and we kept waiting and waiting and the email didn´t come. Finally the food was ready so we all sat down at the table and were ready to eat (keep in mind this is at 10:30 at night and that is a normal mealtime here) and the phone rang.  We said the prayer and then Elder Baker told us about transfers.  I was really nervous because I had been praying really, REALLY hard for one specific thing this transfer, and I was scared that I wasn´t going to get it.  He started out and he was joking about himself and his companion, like "Elder W is going to...Coslada, San Fernando, and Torrejon!"  So when he said "Hermana Schaumann is going to...las..." I was expecting some joke because I´ve only been in Torrejon for 2 transfers and I wasn´t going to leave.  But then he said "Las...Palmas" and I just about fell out of my chair.  Hna. Vouemba was in Las Palmas before she came to Torrejon and so I knew where it was. Then he didn´t know who my companion was and I had to call the zone leaders to ask them.  It took like 20 minutes to get in contact with them.  It was crazy.  But then I found out that I´ll be with Hermana Floyd and it´s going to be awesome. We´re going to have a crazy time. I AM SO EXCITED.  Jhony and Alba were super excited for me.  They are so great.

On Sunday the whole ward was shocked that I was the one going and not my companion, but they were all sad to see me go.  Mom, if you have a bunch of friend requests in my Facebook from people in Spain, please accept them for me. :)

Sunday we had a lesson with Teresa.  I had already planned what I wanted to talk about, and so we read scriptures about the love of God and I bore my testimony to her that she is important to God and that He loves her and we love her and even just in thinking about her we know she´s important to God.  I had never felt the Spirit so strongly in a lesson, and I don´t think she had either.  She´s usually pretty quiet and relaxed, but as I was asking her questions and sharing my testimony, she just started to bawl.  She just sat there crying and crying and I knew she could feel what I was saying and she knew it was true.  We set a baptismal date with her for August 18th, so hopefully that will go through.  It was awesome and exactly what I needed to feel satisfied leaving Torrejon. 

Also on Sunday I really wanted to see Gaby before I left but it was getting late and I had to go pack, so we were going home, and I ran into her and her parents in the Plaza! and so I got the chance to say goodbye to them.  It was awesome. Definitely an answer to prayers!

Anyway, I´m pretty much out of time, but here you get an actual update, and I will write you again with Hermana Floyd in Las Palmas!

WOOHOO!

la misionera mas contenta y animada en el mundo,

Hermana Lara Schaumann