Leaving us hanging....

Sorry I have NO TIME to write right now but we had a great week and I´ll talk to you all next week!  We have some great new investigators and we´ve definitely got some baptisms on the horizon!  


This is all we heard from Lara today.  We were beginning to worry, as we hadn't heard anything until after we were sure she would have gone to bed.  But at least we know she's safe and sound.  

¡¡OH ESTA...TODO BIEN!!

So this week I hit my 6-month mark. I actually find that a little bit terrifying.  If the first six months went that fast, I can´t even imagine how fast the rest of it´s going to go!  Aah!

I have SO much I want to tell you about.  This week was for sure the best week I´ve had so far on my mission, so I´m going to try to take it slow and tell you all what happened. 

First order of business: I have a big surprise.  Julio...is married!  And he has been married for 10 years. We finally got to have an actual lesson with him and I just looked him in the eye and said, "All right, Julio, we´re going to talk about the law of chastity."  He just looked at me and grinned and said, "I understand the law of chastity.  I am actually married."  He then went on to explain that he hadn´t felt ready to get baptized on that date and he didn´t want to back out like that again (he´s already backed out of a few baptismal dates), so he just decided to tell us he wasn´t married because he knew he couldn´t get baptized if he wasn´t married.  Hermana Floyd and I just stared at each other and then at him and couldn´t decide whether to laugh or slap him in the face. (We ended up doing the former.)  He said that after lying to us he felt horrible and had to ask God for forgiveness and had to tell us the truth. He said he´s going to get baptized with his wife when he moves to Chile.  (She left this week, and he leaves in November.) It was the biggest relief in the world to find out that they are actually married and we aren´t that horrible of missionaries that he misunderstood the law of chastity that badly.  We were kind of laughing but also a little mad at him for putting us through that torture for 2 weeks and we told him he owed us big time.  So he´s going to make us lunch on Friday.  :)  We told President Jackson when he came here for the conference and he laughed really hard.  He thought it was a great story. 

We had an AMAZING lesson completely led by the Spirit with Dora.  I don´t know if I´ve told you about her before, but we were thinking we might have to drop her because she wasn´t progressing, but then we had a really good lesson with her about the Atonement and we watched her heart soften right in front of us.  She´s going through a really difficult time in her life and I think she could feel in our lesson that this gospel can really, truly help her. So please pray for Dora this week!

This week for a lot of our lessons we have used our "princess story." In district meeting 2 weeks ago we listened to a part of "The Parable of the Princesses" about a princess who crossed the line her father had told her not to cross and found herself a prisoner in the enemy´s palace.  In spite of all her efforts, she couldn´t free herself. As a last resort, she called out for her father´s help.  He sent her older brother, who lifted her into his arms and freed her from her chains. The enemy attacked them, but he used his own body as a shield to protect her.  I translated the story into Spanish and we´ve been sharing it with a lot of members, less actives, and investigators to explain the Atonement, especially with little girls.  It´s a really powerful story and every time we use it, I can feel the Spirit so strongly. 

Stella and Willy decided that they´re going to get baptized together, and after she prayed about it, she felt like that was the right thing to do.  When she was telling us that, Hermana Floyd and I got the same impression. So we´re going to let her get baptized with him, whenever it may be that he comes back. 

We didn´t end up being able to see Sofia this week, but her dad is trying to work out a time when we can meet with him, Sofia, and his wife!  We´re really excited.  And yes, Sofia is a lot like Emma. We gave her dad the picture Book of Mormon to read with her.  He´s really excited to be able to share the gospel with her. We invited them to the conference but I don´t think they were able to come. (There were a TON of people there, we might have missed them.)  It´s really sad because her parents have the desire to come to church, but with work they just can´t come. 

On Saturday we invited our investigator, Mercy (her aunt, Marta, is an active member) to a YSA barbecue at the Buhler´s house with us, and when we went to go pick her up, not only was she there, but also Marta´s daughter Kenzi, who´s 21 and inactive.  We all had a GREAT time and both of them ended up coming to the conference!

So let´s explain about the conference.  Friday night we had a fireside with all the old mission presidents who had come or sent letters or emails and President and Hermana Jackson and Elder Reina from the Seventy.  It was really powerful and also really fun to get to know the old mission presidents and Elder Reina and to see the Jacksons.  Also Stella came!

And Scott, I got to meet Hermana Peña, who was one of the first members here on the island. She remembered exactly who you were and she had known that one of the Hermanas here was your niece.  She told me that she just saw the back of my head and was like "that has to be her!"  After the meeting she came right up to me and talked about how much she had loved having Elder Jensen over.  She talked about how they had Sacrament Meeting in their house and everything.  She said to tell you that her husband passed away 2 years ago, but that they both still remembered you!  I have a picture with her, but I forgot to bring my camera cord with me, so I´ll send it to you later. 

Then we had the adult session Saturday night with Elder Reina and Elder Teixeira (who´s from Portugal but has a FLAWLESS American accent.  He speaks English perfectly, and Spanish pretty well.) We had invited a ton of investigators but at the end no one said they were going to come except Stella.  So we sat down with Stella, not really expecting anyone else to come.  Then in walked Marta with Mercy!  We were really happy about that.  And then, even later, in walked SUSI. I don´t really remember what I´ve told you about Susi, so I´ll just sum it up here. She´s really strong and has a good testimony of the church and really wants to get baptized, but she works Sundays and can´t come to church, ever, so we´ve kind of half dropped her.  She´s a reference from our ward mission leader Willy Roka, and he invited her to the conference, so she came with her two girls!  We were shocked to see her come in but SO happy.  Afterwards we read the princess story with her and her daughters and Willy, and she kept taking about how much she had loved the conference and how good she felt listening to everything. She´s going to read a page of the Book of Mormon every night with her girls before they go to bed.  And yesterday it was her daughter Estefania´s 8th birthday so we went to take her some treats. Her daughters are 10 and 8, I think. 

Then the Sunday session.  We don´t have a stake center, so in order to accommodate all the people from the other islands who had come we rented out a conference center.  I want to say that it seated 800 and it was pretty much full. 

Our new stake president was President Jackson´s counselor in the mission presidency, President Deniz.  He is REALLY awesome and we all knew he was going to be the stake president. 

Miracle people who came to the conference: 

Boris and Carmen, who brought Boris´s mother and sister. His sister is less active as well, but we´re not sure whether or not his mom is a members.  I think yes.

Delia and Fausto. Fausto worked ALL DAY yesterday so that he would be able to come to the conference today!

Rafael, who used to be the branch president but hasn´t been to church in years because his family got really offended by something.  I don´t know the whole story, but he came!

Marta´s daughter Kenzi, who we´re going to get coming to YSA activities and church again!

Julio

Stella

Claudia and her family

Mercy

Lourdes, who´s going to Honduras in a week or two to get her youngest daughters and bring them back here. 

Also, all the missionaries from Tenerife and Lanzarote came and so we all ate lunch together at the Buhlers´ and then all talked about the miracles we´ve seen in our missions.  The Jacksons came too.  It was so cool and so fun.  And also I got to see my best friend Hermana Phillips, who hugged me at least 20 times throughout the day. We already decided we´re going to be companions next transfer. 

Okay now that I´ve written the longest email ever I think I´ve covered everything I wanted to cover. 

Pray for Dora, Mercy, Kenzi, and Susi especially this week!

I love you all, and I LOVE being a missionary on the Canary Islands right now!

-Hermana Lara Schaumann

¡¡Vamos a ser UNA ESTACA!!

So this week is stake conference!  The first EVER stake conference in the Canary Islands. We´re pretty excited around here. We´ve been inviting investigators and less actives like crazy to it.  The branch president gave us a huge stack of invitations and I think we have 3 left.  It´s going to be a huge deal, we´re helping set up a missionary booth in the chapel for the Saturday sessions and hopefully we´ll have one at the big conference center where we´re going on Sunday.

This week we invited Stella to get baptized on the 28th of September.  Her husband, Willy, wants to get baptized too, but he´s working right now in England and doesn´t know when he´ll be able to come back.  She basically told us that she told him she was going to get baptized, but then he told her that they should do it together and sort of talked her into waiting.  She agreed to pray about her fecha (baptism date), and I´m positive that if she gets a confirmation that it´s the right thing to do, she´ll just do it regardless of what her husband thinks is better.  She´s incredibly in tune with the Spirit and with knowing what´s good and what isn´t.  She´s basically a saint.  When we first invited her to get baptized she said she needed to prepare more and not be so prideful, and then to prove that she was prideful, told us a story about how her friend was really mean to her and then later she didn´t want to spend time with that friend.  That was her definition of pride.  We almost laughed because it was such a tiny trivial little thing and she´s just so righteous and good already. ("Sit down, Hermana Daniels!"--an inside family joke)

We also found Sofia this week.  Her parents are members but they´re less active because they work all day every day.  Her dad works in a little shop by the beach and we go by sometimes to teach him.  We dropped by on Wednesday and the shop was closed, and as we turned around to leave, he came up with Sofia, who´s 10, to re-open it after mediodía. We started talking to them and he said, "why don´t you teach her the First Vision?" and so we did, and she wants to get baptized.  We´re going to get someone from the branch who can bring her to church and primary activities, and we´re going to baptize her!  Pretty exciting.

Jhon (yes that is how he spells it) and Ilona continue to be really awesome. Jhon fits the definition of "broken heart and contrite spirit" to a tee.  He´s really starving for the góspel, and it´s really cool to see. If only he was married and didn´t smoke...

Julio continues the same, and his mujer (literally--"woman") is going to leave on Thursday.  Hopefully we can teach them both the law of chastity before they go. We still are a little bit in shock that they aren´t married.  Yesterday we had a farewell party for her, and it was really fun, like always.

For other news, we found that our favorite gelato place that we always traveled really far to go to has another shop close to our piso (apartment).  We´re not sure if that´s a good thing or if it´s a real danger...

I would like to solicit your prayers today especially for Stella, Julio, and Sofia.

Have a great week, all!

Hermana Schaumann

cansadisima (Tired!)

I never realized exactly how exhausting it is to be a missionary.  And I don´t mean physically.  I mean EMOTIONALLY.  You love too many people too much and every little thing either lifts you to the skies or pounds you into the ground.  And that´s what we suffered extra strongly this week. 

First off, Julio.  

Oh, Julio.  We had his baptismal interview and everything was fine until we found out HE´S NOT MARRIED.  The sisters had been teaching him for more than 3 months and we just now found out he´s not married to Ana.  AGH!  It honestly never even crossed our minds that he wasn´t married.  And when he was taught the law of chastity he was fine with it.  That was before I got here so I don´t really know what he was taught, but when we asked him, he said he had thought the part about having to be married was just for young people.  It´s REALLY sad, but I know that he and Ana will both get baptized in Chile after they get married. We felt really stupid after that and really sad.  It was like someone had just punched me in the stomach.  I felt sick afterwards, because we should have known.  But at least he still has the desire and still has his testimony. 

(And I just realized this makes no sense to those of you who don´t live in Spain.  The Spanish government was sick of having to arrange divorces and so to prevent divorces, they made it really hard to get married.  And especially for people from other countries.  We´re talking AT LEAST 1 year and AT LEAST 1,000 €, which pretty much no one has. Our investigator who just recently got married took 3 years to be able to actually do it. It´s BAD. )

And then literally 20 minutes after finding this out about Julio we went up to teach Lourdes.  Her 2 YSA-age kids, Gabi and Josué, got baptized a year ago, and are AMAZING.  The Buhlers were eating at their house and afterwards Hermana Buhler called us and told us we need to go visit Lourdes. She´s from Honduras, and when we went to go see her she made us enchiladas, which aren´t like Mexican enchiladas AT ALL but are absolutely delicious. And she explained to us that she´s never actually heard the missionary discussions but she wants to  (the only thing is that she might be living with her boyfriend...so we´ll see about that.  We´ve gotten mixed responses to that question...) BUT she doesn´t want to get them for another 3 weeks.  Why?  Well, that´s the best part.  It´s because she´s going to Honduras to get her 2 youngest daughters, who are 14 and 16, and she´s bringing them back here with her!  She already has a testimony that the gospel is true because of how it´s blessed and changed Gabi and Josué, and I´m sure that their example is going to convert their two little sisters too!  So those are 2 or 3 baptisms we have around the corner. 

Also this week we started teaching John and Ilona.  They´re from Venezuela, they´re both pretty beautiful people, and they have a 3 year-old daughter who is STUNNING. (Pretty sure they´re not married either.  It´s the worst.) But the thing with them is that they are SO interested.  He wants us to come by every single day.  He had been praying to find a way to seek God more in his life, and then we contacted them on the street! They ATE UP the Restoration, he LOVES what he´s read in the Book of Mormon, they came to the elders´ baptism yesterday, met the members and the branch president, and they are just hungry for the truth.  As part of the baptism the elders explained the Plan of Salvation, and afterwards he kept asking me if we could talk more about that.  I told him that was the next lesson we´re going to teach him, and he was so excited and invited us to come over tonight!  The best part was when we taught the Restoration to them and we recited the first vision.  It was quiet for a minute and then he just said, "wow, how beautiful."  And he hadn´t really understood what we had taught but he had certainly felt the Spirit.  I think they´ll be the sort of people who will start their marriage papers the same day we teach them the law of chastity.  :)

Today for p-day we did a Pilates dance class with the Buhlers and the other Hermanas on the island.  It was super fun and I hope we can do it again!  I´m not even sore yet!

LOVE YOU ALL!

un besito

Hermana Lara Schaumann

A Aumentar (Increasing)

 Lara & Hermana Floyd with Harrison on his baptism day.

               Lara at Aguimes on Gran Canaria on p-day (wearing her t-shirt with her AP Spanish teacher's picture on it.)   

The latest from Lara:

So today marks the first day of a new transfer.  And I am...still with Hermana Floyd in Las Palmas!!!  We are both really happy to stay here and to stay together, especially with the conference coming up in September and Julio´s baptism on Sunday.

Oh wait, what was that?  Whose baptism?

That´s right.  Julio´s getting baptized on Sunday!!!  And what else?  His wife also wants to get baptized.  As a matter of fact, she told us she knows she´s going to get baptized.  The only problem there is that she´s planning on moving to Chile on September 17th, and she doesn´t think she´ll be prepared to be baptized before then. (Which, we can´t really blame her, seeing as we´ve only taught her TWICE.)  She knows the church is true, though, and wants to be a part of it.  We are praying REALLY hard that either she changes her mind or her trip gets pushed back to mid-October, which is definitely an option.  When we told the branch president that she was moving in September, he said, "Well, we´ll just have to get her baptized before she leaves, won´t we?"  De acuerdo, Presidente Santana.

But the story gets better.  We invited her to be baptized on Saturday, she said, "yes, but not here," and then Julio looked at us and said, "Do you know why I´m getting baptized on Sunday?"  We just sort of looked at him and said, "Um...because you have a testimony?"  He said, "Yes, but beside that?"  We didn´t have a clue.  And then he told us, "I made a bargain with God.  I told him that if my wife opened up and started listening to and learning about the gospel, I would get baptized.  And now look what He´s done.  I can´t refuse my part when He´s done His so faithfully."  We were amazed.  There were tears in both of our eyes as we listened to him say that.  The gospel is true.  The God we worship is a God of miracles.  In not very long he and his wife are going to get sealed in the temple.  I know that without a doubt. 

Jaime and Harrison and Jonathan and Desiree are doing AWESOME.  Jaime has a calling now, Harrison and Jonathan just got the priesthood, and Desi was confirmed this weekend.  The elders are going to have us teach her the new member lessons, which makes me REALLY happy because I love her. 

Transfer changes: no one is leaving, but 4 NEW COMPANIONSHIPS OF ELDERS ARE COMING AND THEY´RE ALL GETTING CARS.  It´s going to be crazy.  And also Elder Saunders, who was my district leader in the MTC, is coming here to Vecindario, in the south of the island, and is going to be our district leader!

We´re really excited!  Elder Day and Elder Larsen will both be training here in Las Palmas and splitting up the area and their investigators.  It´s going to be crazy but it´s so cool.  This is our time to shine in the Canarias. We´re going to be a stake in 3 weeks!!!

Now let´s talk about some cultural things, which basically means food.  Here in the Canarias there are 3 food things that are popular.  One is mojo, which is this sort of spicy sauce that you eat with potatoes and tastes SUPER good.  You should look it up and try it.  Another is alioli, which is kind of like a seasoned mayonnaise sort of thing that you eat with bread or as a salad dressing. I also really like it.  The other is gofio, or toasted cornmeal, which people here eat ALL THE TIME.  Like, every single day for breakfast. Or they just put it in their soup.  Or in anything.  And I´m not a huge fan of it.  It kind of tastes like sand.  But we did buy today some gofio ice cream, which is pretty good, and if you mix it with cocoa, it tastes almost just like a frosty!  The other fun thing related to food that we did today is that we bought and cooked a rabbit!  It was actually really good.  We put it in an oven bag with potatoes and carrots and spices  It tastes exactly like turkey meat.  We might end up eating it again for thanksgiving, seeing how there aren´t turkeys here.  And in case you´re wondering, we just bought it in the grocery store.  They all have rabbits here, and some of them have horse meat also.  

Well, that was a really random update.  Hope it made some sort of sense!

Ciao!

Hermana Lara Schaumann