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!