Have you ever spent a week working so hard that when you get home at night you can barely make it into bed because you´re so tired? 

Yeah, that was our week this week. We started out every morning with our friend Jillian Michaels and didn´t even stop to catch our breath until we got home at night. We taught a total of 37 lessons, contacted 36 new people to teach, and got 9 new investigators. DEFINITELY the best numbers I´ve ever gotten in my mission. And in spite of being exhausted, we felt SO GOOD!  One thing that has always been on my mind as a missionary is a quote that I heard from Elder Holland, when he was talking about how to have success on your mission. He said, "Work as hard as you can until somebody tells you to go home." I for one, as a missionary, sometimes have the tendency to be like "AAAAAAAAH I only have 6 months left" but that´s not the best attitude to have.  And this week I really didn´t think about how much time I have in the mission or how much time I have left, I just thought about what I can do here and now for these people in Alcorcón.  And it worked incredibly well.  We saw the blessings of heaven literally POURED out on our heads.  We were really nervous to work in just 2 because we need sisters to help us with lessons (because 90% of our investigators are men...) but whenever we needed them, we found them. It was truly a miracle. We had 15 lessons with a member present, which is absolutely unheard of for us. And we had a lot of lessons fall through or people not come or whatever but we didn´t let that stop us. Whenever something fell through we just went to go teach someone else or drop by someone´s house or teach someone sitting on a park bench.  It was amazing because we were being completely and entirely guided by the Spirit to be able to find the people we needed to find in the places we needed to find them. 

We had the coolest experience on Thursday morning in our studies.  The elders are teaching a family who are working to get married right now, named M J and A, and their daughter, F, who´s 9, just got baptized in October. M J absolutely LOVES the hermanas so she asks us to come by and visit her once every couple weeks. We had an appointment with them on Thursday night, so the morning in our studies we were trying to figure out what to teach them.  I just looked at the conference Ensign, said a quick prayer in my head, and opened it up and started reading the talk. When I started to read it, I instantly thought of another talk, the one from Elder Bednar in the CES devotional last March. (http://www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/ces-devotionals/2013/01/that-we-might-not-shrink-d-c-19-18?lang=eng) I had printed it off in English, so I read through it and really felt like that was what M J needed to hear. That talk talks about D&C 19 and also the story of Jesus calming the waters.  When we finished our personal study, we went to start our companion study with a hymn, and Hna. F had picked "Master, the Tempest Is Raging"  I was shocked at the coincidence because I had just been studying about that very story. When we started to plan the lesson, we realized that as I was reading that talk, Hna. F

had been reading D&C 19!  We felt so strongly as we studied together that they needed to hear that message.  And when we taught it to them that night, the Spirit was so strong and it had really been exactly what they needed to hear. It was amazing to see how both of us had responded to the promptings of the Spirit that morning in our studies to be able to be prepared to teach them that message that they so desperately needed. 

Our other investigators are doing pretty well, nothing too exciting or dramatic with them.  R will be getting baptized this coming Sunday, so we´re happy about that. He is such a good little guy.

This week we have our mission tour with the Area President, and I have a leadership meeting, so we´re going to be on temple square ALL DAY on Wednesday. It will be crazy.

Also Hna. F and I taught Relief Society this week because our friend K, who´s an American and served a mission in Chile, couldn´t do it.  It was on President Packer´s talk from conference.  We used Preach My Gospel for like half of the lesson.  That book is really the best resource for teaching in the church.  It´s AWESOME.

Our little adventure this week: We may or may not have done a little bit of dumpster diving...In Spain, there´s no DI or Goodwill where you can donate your old clothes and things you don´t want, so people just set them outside the trash receptacles. We went to take out our trash and ended up spending a good while sorting through the stuff that was there. We got a blanket, a tablecloth, some bedsheets, about 15 sweaters, a shirt, a scarf, and 2 pairs of dress pants. We washed them all, don´t worry. The best part was when we were doing it, the stake Relief Society President walked by...we´re not sure if she realized what we were doing or not...hopefully not...

but I´ll attach some pictures of the dumpster dive, for your entertainment.

China, Cheetos and Hot Oil

Hello all,

So first off, today is the beginning of a new transfer!  I have 4 and a half left before I end my mission...YIKES...and I didn´t get transfered, but Hna. V did, to Azuqueca.  Hna. F and I will be staying here in Alcorcón.  And another surprise that I found out yesterday is that I´m going to be the Sister Training Leader for our zone!  Usually there are 2 for each zone, but because our zone doesn´t have a lot of hermanas, I´m the only one. What I´ve figured out so far that this means is that I get to do exchanges with the other 7 hermanas in the zone (in Móstoles and in Léganes) and I get to go to the big mission leader meeting in the mission home!  And this transfer it´s extra exciting because Elder Teixeira, our area president general authority, is coming to do a mission tour, so we´re going to have our leader meeting as a part of that, I think with him there!  I´m pretty excited about that, but I also have to figure out when and how I´m going to do 7 intercambios in the next 6 weeks...So that will be an adventure. :)

This week was...interesting...we had a few crazy things happen but we´re still going fine. J didn´t end up getting baptized for various reasons, but we´ll continue working with him to see what we can figure out and help him with there. And our other investigators continue along.  R and G came to church again, they´re awesome and I just LOVE them, especially R. They´re saving up money so they should be able to get their marriage papers by the end of this month!  After that it´s just an 8 month wait to get married in Alcorcón!  

So we did have one really cool lesson this week...IN CHINESE... There´s a little shop owned by a Chinese family across the street from our piso and we gave them some pamphlets in Chinese and a Book of Mormon.  We really wanted to talk to them, so we printed out some stuff from mormon.org and had questions for him to answer (the dad) and we basically taught him about the Book of Mormon even though he doesn´t speak Spanish and we definitely don´t speak Chinese. It was amazing though, the Spirit was so strong and even though we didn´t speak the same language we could understand what was being said. It was really amazing. Proof that the Spirit is a universal language!  

For Valentine´s day...we didn´t really do much exciting.  We just bought our Africans some Valentine´s cookies and saw them all at once in the locutorio.  We did the tea bag demo.  It was intense.  Pretty cool stuff.  So instead of going on dates we just set some stuff on fire. It worked.

Also, my companions discovered Angry Birds Cheetos, which are really big puffed Cheeto spirals, and bought 2 bags, which they had eaten within 30 minutes. It was really funny.

And the random event of this week is that we were making lunch of Wednesday and Hermana V had just heated up some oil to cook something and then I´m not even sure what happened but she was walking around me (I was also cooking on the stove) and somehow she spilled a ton of hot oil all over my skirt.  She screamed and then held my skirt up away from my body so it wouldn´t burn my leg, and then I screamed because she had screamed, but then we calmed down and I realized what had happened and we cleaned it up and changed out of my skirt. ALL GOOD.  Unfortunately it was my favorite red skirt...but she had an extra red skirt that she was going to get rid of so she just gave that to me. So all is well. It was just really funny because we were both just screaming and we didn´t realize what had happened. But no damage done, except to the skirt. Unfortunately I didn´t take a picture. Que pena.

Also a quick transfer tidbit: if any of your remember me talking about Elder K in the MTC--well, he´s coming to Alcorcón!  So we will be having an INTERESTING transfer here.  We´re super excited.

Have a great week, all!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

"You should read this book. It will make you happy!"

servicio y milagros

So today I got to go to Torrejón because Hna. V (my trainer) is going home next week and they had a farewell party there.  It was AWESOME to see everyone again and refreshing that they all remembered me, even though I was only there 2 transfers!  It was so weird being back there though. 

What even happened this week...? We were super busy, which was awesome.  We were swamped like all the time. J is still doing awesome, he accepts every commitment without question and he´s still on track to get baptized this weekend.  Unless something dramatic happens or we feel like he needs more time, that should be going through.  Pray for him, please!  He´s trying so hard and it´s really amazing to see the changes in him. 

Something we´ve had a lot of success with as a companionship is speaking in a soft voice. A lot of times it is easy to get frustrated or overexcited and talk loudly, but as we speak in a calm, soft voice, the Spirit is always more present and the investigators can hear its witness of the truth. It has helped all of our investigators so much. 

We also witnessed an incredible change in one of our investigators, C, through service. We helped him organize some things around his locutorio and clean up a little, and when we came back a couple days later his attitude toward us was entirely different. He was happy and excited and had been reading the Book of Mormon. And then one of his friends stopped by and C invited him to talk with us another day, and asked if we could give him a copy of the Book of Mormon. We gave him one, and C said, "Yeah, you should read this book, it will make you happy!" It was amazing to see the change that service had brought in his attitude toward us and toward the gospel.

Yeah I don´t know what else...not much...We couldn´t get a hold of A all week and finally we realized that we had saved his number wrong in our phone!  So we´re going to see him tomorrow and start all that again!  He still wants to meet with us, thank goodness!

Keep praying for all our investigators!  They´re awesome.  Ri and G came to church, and so did Ro.  Ri was awake this time (!) but I totally woke Ro up when I called him yesterday morning. Oh well, it was totally worth it!

Have a great week!  I love you!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Catching up.....

1/6/2014    So surprise surprise!  I got transferred out of Las Palmas. ;( I had to get up at 3:30 this morning to catch the plane...and I haven´t eaten anything...

But anyway, I´m pretty sad to be leaving.  I absolutely love Las Palmas--the members, the investigators, the weather, the ocean, everything. I´m pretty sure I got all my tears out this morning in the airport... but we´ll see. 

So where am I? I´m in Móstoles! Where is that?  Well, I´m not really sure.  I think it´s to the southwest of Madrid. My new companion is Hermana F, from Midway, Utah.  She was trained by Hermana K, my MTC companion, and she´s been up in the north in Gijón. So they just sent her down and me up to come here in Móstoles. I´m pretty sure we´re whitewashing... (for those of you who don´t know what that is, it´s where they take out both of the missionaries serving in an area and put in 2 brand new ones.)  And I´m pretty sure the ones who were here were elders... If you can´t tell I don´t really know what we´re doing right now... Two of the elders came to pick us up and take us to our piso, and we went straight from there to go email. So I hope we can find our way back to the piso and to the store, because our piso is brand new and there´s NO food in it.  

1/13/2014   So we had a little craziness this week and my companion and I were emergency transferred on Tuesday morning to Alcorcón, in a trio.  It was super crazy because we only spent one night in Móstoles and the next morning we were studying and we got a phone call from the APs that there had been some problems and we were going to be changed. It was really weird...but we´re adjusted now.

We had a sort of dead week just because there was all the craziness and on top of everything our new companion was sick...so we spent Tuesday in our piso because they had to come deliver us an extra bed and so we could unpack (we packed and unpacked our suitcases twice in 3 days...), we spent Thursday traveling to and from the doctor, which is like an hour away in bus and metro, and we spent Saturday in the piso because she was still feeling icky.  She´s a lot better now, and we know each other a lot better from all the time we´ve spent together in the piso just resting. We´re still trying to get our rhythm together as a trio, but all in good time.

Anyway, we´re probably going to have a baptism this week because we have a really awesome investigator who´s from Nigeria and we gave him a baptismal date, then on Friday he invited us over to eat and he made this spicy Nigerian turkey with spinach and some weird African pepper...it was really good though... but then after we finished eating we asked him if he had prayed about baptism and he said yes, and that he wants to get baptized!  His date was February 1st, but he said he wants to get baptized sooner than that.  So we think this Saturday would be good! :) He´s had all the lessons and is totally prepared.  He´s great.

Also, we have a really cool investigator who´s 20 and from Columbia and is trying to decide whether or not he believes in God. The hermanas made a 2-month plan for him to do, to read the scriptures and pray daily, to come to church every week, to keep the commandments, to see if God really exists, because if God does exist all those things will make a difference in his life. He´s awesome, and we´ve been teaching him the basic doctrines about the nature of God.  

Our other frontrunner right now is a Peruvian, who was literally guided to find the missionaries (he contacted them in the street) and he has a fecha also for February 1st.  He just hasn´t come to church yet...but he´s really awesome and sincere and he called us just to say hi the other day and to ask about an activity that we had. 

So yeah, that´s Alcorcón for you!  It´s a branch here, with about 70 active members, almost all of whom are South Americans.

I´ll attach a picture of my new companions (that we just took like 5 minutes ago in the locutorio) and yeah!  Have a great week!

1/22/2014   Pues, I have a return date!  (YIKES) It is Tuesday, August 26. That means I have a little over 7 months left. It has gone FLYING by for me and I can´t believe I´m a good deal more than halfway done. 

Alcorcón is going pretty well.  We´re still trying to get into our groove teaching as a trio, but it´s definitely gotten better. We all get along really well and we´re always talking and laughing about things, so that definitely helps our unity. 

Some cool things that happened this week:

Some time ago, Hna. V and her companion contacted this Nigerian guy named C on the train and got his number and found out that he works in a locutorio (which is a business where you can make international phone calls or use internet) but then they couldn´t really get anything set up with him.  And last week, Hna. V RAN after this lady who was running to get on the bus and wrote down her number.  So we were walking down the street, and we saw C´s locutorio and we saw that he was there so we stopped in to talk to him and taught him bits and pieces of the restoration, according to his questions.  We set up to come back and talk with him another day.  So we came back for the next appointment and in walked this lady who smiled at us like she recognized us.  We talked to her a little bit and realized that it was the lady from the bus.  I was sitting there thinking what a coincidence it was that she had just happened to pass by when both of them started talking to us and we realized that they´re dating!  How crazy is that?  So we contacted both of them in separate places, in different ways, and they´re together!  Talk about two people who both need the gospel!  We´re going by tonight to give them a Book of Mormon and talk more about that. We´re super excited! The only thing is that C gets kind of defensive or overexcited about things.  It was really funny because Hermana F after our first lesson was giving us all sorts of pointers of how to gain his trust and get him to listen to us. So Hermana V nicknamed her the African Whisperer.  It´s kind of stuck...

P agreed to be baptized!  He wants it on Thursday morning, which is a bit unconventional, but we´ll do whatever he wants.  We´re really excited and so is he.  He´s really awesome and the gospel has already begun to change his life so much!

Also R finally came to church!!! We taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was SO good. We used an object lesson with a tea bag that is really amazing.  You use the tea bag to represent us, and first you talk about faith and how that alone can´t get you to heaven.  We had him "have faith" and try and throw the tea bag up to heaven, but it just falls back down.  Then you talk about repentance and baptism, and how that´s like removing the "sins" (the actual tea) from the tea bag.  To represent baptism, we dumped it into a glass of water.  So after that the tea bag is lighter, but it still doesn´t reach heaven if you try and throw it up there.  So then comes the baptism by fire, or the gift of the Holy Ghost. What you do is stand the tea bag up, completely unfolded, like a long tube, on the person´s hand, and then you light the top of it on fire.  You tell them they have to have faith that they won´t be burned, and they have to hold their hand very still.  It keeps burning down, and right before the fire is about to reach their hand, the tea bag flies up "to heaven" and stays up.  It was INCREDIBLE how strong the Spirit was when we did that with R.  It hit him so hard, and that was the first time he´s ever come to church.  It was really immensely powerful.  I love things like that that you can see, hear, and feel all at the same time.

We also had one of the most amazing less-active lessons ever. D has been coming to church, reading, and praying, but you can tell he´s still lacking something. The thing is that we couldn´t figure out what.  But this week we read Helaman 5 and talked about having the influence of the Holy Ghost with us always.  He said he wasn´t sure he could be worthy to do that and so we started talking about the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  We asked him if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and his personal Savior.  He said "The Son of God, yes, but the my Savior, I´m still not sure."  It was so powerful because we were teaching him in the church and the way he was sitting facing us there was a picture of Christ behind him, but he couldn´t see it. Christ is his PERSONAL Savior.  The Atonement is something INFINITELY and PERFECTLY personal, but he doesn´t know that yet.  So we invited him to learn more about Christ, to come to know Him, and to pray and ask if Christ is HIS Savior. Next week we´re planning to watch some of the new bible videos with him. Those are so powerful and you can feel the love of Christ as you watch them. The thing is that the Atonement changes us, completely and entirely, and it makes EVERYTHING better.  I am so very different from when I left on my mission, and every one of those changes has come through earnest prayer and an unfailing trust in the Atonement of the perfect Son of God. D is somewhat happy, sometimes, when things go okay, but with the Atonement, that happiness doesn´t fade. It doesn´t leave us or forsake us, not EVER, because Christ NEVER left us alone. 

Have a wonderful week everyone and remember that Jesus Christ is our living Savior and Redeemer. He loves us!

1/27/2014    So I´ll just skip the drama and get to the good stuff.

P GOT BAPTIZED ON THURSDAY!  It was WONDERFUL. Even though it was on Thursday at 1:00 and there were only like 4 members there and all the 7 missionaries and P´s cousin.  It was the tiniest little service, but it was perfect for him because he´s kind of shy and doesn´t like a lot of attention.  After he was baptized, he had asked me to get up and share my testimony and I was looking at him and his eyes were just big and watery and he was just grinning from ear to ear.  He looked so happy!  And then he got up to bear his testimony and it was amazing to see the enthusiasm that he had for the gospel.  He kept repeating how he was ready to do anything in the church.  He said, "you can call me for anything, to set up chairs, to clean, whatever it may be.  I want to give everything to this gospel."  It was so inspiring and I have rarely seen anyone happier. Later that night he called us just to say thank you. Really, it was awesome.

What else happened this week? We had another really awesome lesson with D and we figured out what happened to him to make him go inactive for so long, but he´s progressing now little by little and we´re working at building up his faith in the gospel and in Jesus Christ. We read the story of the blind man in John 9, which is my favorite story ever...And we wanted to watch the Bible video of it, but we couldn´t find it in Spanish. 

R is still doing well, he accepts everything we teach him, but he didn´t come to church this week...so he can´t get baptized just yet.  So we´re going to continue working with him and see what happens. If we can just get him to understand and keep those three key commandments, what we call OLA in Spanish ( orar, leer, y asistir la capilla, or pray, read, and go to church) he will be able to progress and will be prepared soon to get baptized.  We taught him tithing and fasting this week and he already knew EVERYTHING.  It was so weird, that was the first time I´ve ever seen that on my mission. But it was really cool!

Well, another cool thing this week was that we got like 17 references in one day.  Our sister training leader came and did splits with Hermana F, and they got like 15 references, almost all of them in a locutorio (an internet/phone business) where C works.  Every time we go there, he just introduces us to all his friends.  And when Hna. F and Hna. C went on Friday, someone would come in and he would say "Do you want to listen to the word of God? Come sit down and listen to my people!" He´s super cool and we got so many people there.  It´s Hna. F´s African whispering that´s the magic touch here. All the Africans stop talking and listen to her every time she opens her mouth. Everyone tells her she has an angel face.  It´s really funny. 

I don´t remember if I mentioned R and G, a couple that we´re teaching who´s working on getting married.  R´s been struggling with drinking and he always sleeps in on Sunday mornings instead of coming to church.  So this week we called G, told her to put the phone right next to his ear, and we woke him up and told him to get up and ready for church.  And it worked!  He came!  It was awesome! He is really a wonderful person and I absolutely love him even though I´ve only known him for 2 weeks.  Every time I talk to him on the phone it just puts a smile on my face because he knows how much we care about him and his family and how much we want them to be happy. He thanked me so many times the other day for our visits and everything we do.  He really is a fantastic guy, and so we´re really hoping they can get married soon (it takes forever to get married here, the fastest possible would be in 4 months...) and then get baptized!!

Yeah, that´s about our week!  We´re still having a good time in Alcorcón and eating too many brownies, which we made successfully for P's baptism and ate a bunch of them before we even left...

Pues, ¡que esten bien y contentos y que se acuerdan del amor que tiene Dios para ustedes!

Segovia, 10 nuevos, y bautismos africanos

February 3, 2014--I, Lara's mom, am handling this blog while she is gone, and managed to put this later post after the ones above.  So it's a little out of order.  Sorry!

**************

So we´re a little short on time today, so I´m going to keep it brief.

First, we found two golden boys!  One is named A, he´s from Ecuador, 20 years old, and has a legit afro.  It´s SOFT.  It´s so cool.  Hna. F found him on the street and he came to meet with us and he´s awesome.  He has a ton of questions about everything and he´s really interested in everything we say. Hopefully we´re going to see him this afternoon!

The other one is named J. He´s from Mozambique and he is truly GOLDEN.  We found him at the locutorio.  Which, talk about a hopping place!  We agreed to meet with C and another one of his friends that we had met there on Tuesday night, and so we went and the place was full of Africans.  There were like 5 of them.  So we just taught them all the restoracion with the cups and they all ate it up and we got all of the numbers and set up new appointments with all of them. And then we came back on Thursday and it happened again!  On Thursday J was there.  Most of the Africans there are from Nigeria.  But J was just quiet and listened to everything we said and then at the end I gave him the Book of Mormon and testified that the Spirit would bring peace to his heart and soul and confirm that it is true.  He smiled and said, "Yeah, I already feel that just by holding it in my hand." And when we got up to leave, he said, "Thank you, this has been one of the most beautiful moments of my life." We met with him the next day and gave him a baptismal date for 2 weeks from now, on February 15th!  He has been through some ROUGH things in his life, he just got robbed a couple weeks ago, and he was perfectly humbled to be able to receive the gospel.  For any of you who remember me talking about D in Las Palmas, we basically found ourselves a D. He is FANTASTIC. He even came with us to our area-wide Stake Conference broadcast at Temple Square, more than AN HOUR away. (Which was really awesome.  A few of the Seventies gave their talks in Spanish, without a translator or anything!  And Elder Ballard spoke, a lot about the second coming.  It was really cool.) 

And we finally figured out we´re going to the temple on March 26th, unless I get transferred out of the zone.  That will make it more than 8 months since I last went to the temple...

So the reason we´re so short on time today is because we went to Segovia! I´ll send a few pictures.  It was freezing cold and snowing (we basically went through a blizzard) and so my hair is flying EVERYWHERE in the pictures.  It´s BEAUTIFUL though.  It looks like Austria or Switzerland or somewhere like that. I absolutely loved it!

Have a great week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann