June 30

Well this week was abnormal. Good but really abnormal. 

Hna. N and I are way too good of friends...we talk ALL the time, WAY too much. We've both served in the islands and in Torrejón, so we know almost all the same members and missionaries, and we talk about them ALL THE TIME. 

This week was a lot of trying to get organized, trying to figure out who the members are, trying to find the busses, trying to find where the chapel is, going through our FOUR area books, etc. Miraculously, we didn't really get lost! We always end up finding Domino's pizza when we don't know where we are. 

On Tuesday we had a really cool experience/miracle where we were trying to get on a bus to go to some pueblo outside of Vigo and while we were waiting, we get a text from a member telling us that she needed us to meet with her friend that afternoon and teach her the plan of salvation. So we came back from the pueblo, found her house, went in, met her friend, and started to teach. Her name is M, and she's a single mother of 3 whose husband died a few years ago. As we taught her, she asked really good questions and really understood it well. We started to explain about the spirit world and she started to ask about her husband. The member who has given us the reference is the family history consultant, and she immediately started to tell her about temple and family history work. M started to cry and said she knew she had to be baptized so that she could give her husband the chance to also be baptized. We were about to give her a baptismal date, but she had to catch the boat to get back to where she lives. (In Vigo sometimes we travel by BOAT to get to parts of our area.) It was amazing and the Spirit was there so strongly!! She should be getting baptized soon. 

Funny story is that one day we were coming into our building at night and since our piso is on the 2nd floor, we usually take the stairs. We started to walk up the stairs and there was some guy laying down on the landing talking a nap! We were talking but then when we saw him we were so surprised that we just went silent, turned around, and took the elevator up. Later we realized it was a construction worker that was talking a nap in his break. Funny stuff.

Also, the branch president's wife calls me "Brave" because I have red curly hair like Merida. And another sister walked into the chapel when we were waiting for a lesson. When I stood up to say hi to her, she looked at me in shock and said "¡Que grandote! ¡Que horror!" which basically means "You're so tall! What a nightmare!" That made me laugh quite a bit.

Port in Vigo

District in Vigo

view of Vigo

We are really excited and we have a lot of good ideas and goals to put into practice here. I will continue sharing experiences and stories as we go meeting more people. The hermanas that we're whitewashing out didn't have a whole lot of investigators, so hopefully our combined new energy can change that!

June 23

So remember how I always try to predict transfers and I never get anywhere close to what's actually going to happen?

Well, it happened again. 

And you will never, ever, ever, ever guess where I am right now.

In this mission, hermanas either go to the Islands or to the North. There are some who never leave Madrid their whole missions. And those who go to both...well, they're few and far between.

So yeah. I'm in VIGO.

With Hna. N, who I've known forever, who was in the Islands the same time as me. She was MTC comps with Hna. F.

I'm in Vigo.

(for those of you who don't know where Vigo is, itś in the north of Spain, right above Portugal. It's built around an ocean inlet and it's ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL. Prettier than Canarias, by far. And it smells like the ocean again, and it's not hot. I'm in love.) 

I'm still in shock...and I've known for a few days now.

We're whitewashing, so we have no idea where anything is, again. It's fine though, because we have a senior couple here that can help us figure that out. :)

I'm also SUPER tired because we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to finish packing and get to Chamartin to catch our 7-hour train to Vigo. It was super fun, we rode up with Elder H, who also served in the Islands, and Hna. S, who'll be serving here close by in Pontevedra. We talked literally the whole 7 hours and also sat their open-mouthed gaping out the window because it's so beautiful here.

So yeah, Hna. Orrego is now comps with Hna. F. It was SO hard to leave Alcorcón, I was crying pretty much all day yesterday and so was everybody else. Everyone's doing great there, I'm excited to see how it keeps progressing.

It was really sad though because I didn't get to say goodbye to M, she's in Murcia for the week, but I talked to her on the phone. :) Probably better that way because I would have BAWLED.  N is still doing awesome, always comes to church, and he's understanding Spanish so much better now. And we found a cool new Cuban family, the mom came to church and it seems like she really enjoyed it. 

So yeah I don't really know if we have investigators or anything, I'm sure we'll figure it out quickly. MY comp is awesome and we've been laughing pretty much all day long. We've also been playing spot-the Africans-and-Latinos-from-our-window. It's a pretty cool game. 

Love you all! Have a great week!

June 16

This week I had another intercambio with Hna. O.  It was a lot better than the other intercambio we had back in March.  And again, we stayed up ALL NIGHT LONG talking about the mission. It was a blast.

This week we had a huge miracle which was that M CAME TO CHURCH!!!!!!! We have been fighting and working to get her to come and she never does because something always comes up or she´s sick or she has to take care of her mom or she has to go count votes for the government and if she doesn´t go she´ll be sent to prison for 3 months to a year... (true story, she showed us the letter and everything) but this week we prayed really hard and had a good solid lesson on the importance of keeping the sabbath day holy and especially we talked about the sacrament. It was so cool to see that as we just read the scriptures (3 Nephi 18) she really could feel the influence of the Spirit.  The thing she´s always saying is that she understands everything (which she does, I´m pretty sure she understands the doctrine better than I do...) but she doesn´t feel it.  And as we were reading, she just started to smile and said "Oh!  I have to be at church, especially for the sacrament, to be able to have the Spirit with me!" and we also talked about planning ahead of time, like doing necessary cleaning/work on Saturday, going to bed early, setting out and preparing clothes to wear, etc. And it worked!  She came! FINALLY!!

With Hna. O we had another lesson with her where we started out talking about the priesthood but then we ended up talking about how to feel the Spirit, because she was still saying that she didn´t feel the truth in her heart. I told her that I know she has felt the Spirit because in the 3+ months I´ve been teaching her, I´ve seen her change a lot, and I´ve seen her bear her burdens with more ánimo and grace. I reminded her of all the times we´ve come to see her and she´s been really happy and full of energy even though her life if difficult and she has a lot of challenges. I told her that THAT is the Spirit, that gives us energy and life and strength even when we are surrounded by problems. And it was amazing again! When we got there, she was a little tired and discouraged, but when we left, she had an extra skip in her step and she was beaming. I love teaching her because I can see the calming and fortifying influence of the Spirit so clearly as I serve her and help her understand the gospel.

I love being a missionary and I love the Spirit, who really is the teacher.

Fun fact for all you prospective missionaries: 

Before you go on a mission, you see the missionaries and you think they know everything. You think they just glide through the streets finding people who are going to get baptized 2 days later. You think they must not ever get tired or nervous.  You think they know exactly what they´re doing all the time.

hahaha LIES.

The more I´m out here, the more I realize that none of us really have any idea what we´re doing. The majority of the people we find don´t even give us their real number, much less agree to meet with us and MUCH less get baptized. We don´t know anywhere close to everything about the gospel, we don´t speak the language, we get lost, we get tired, we get nervous, and we make a ton of mistakes. Basically we just fake our confidence, and the Spirit makes up for the rest. 

The thing I´ve learned is that being a missionary has nothing to do with ME. I only try to strengthen my testimony, love the people, and live worthy to have the Spirit with me. And it´s amazing that it works. And it works really well. Somehow people still love us and listen to us and get baptized, because they can feel that Spirit.  No one can convince me that the success I´ve had on my mission has ANYTHING to do with me. This is the Lord´s work, and he permits us to do it with Him. And the biggest miracle is that our fake confidence becomes real, because we are worthy to represent the most incredible and perfect being who ever lived, even Jesus Christ. I love Him, I serve Him, and I do as He would do. I am so grateful for this privilege I have to represent Him. 

Hermana Lara Schaumann

June 2

Don´t have a lot to say this week. 

Our investigators are doing pretty well, normal bumps and problems, but all okay. M is still awesome and sometimes I really think I´m here in Alcorcón for her. 

I´m really happy, love my companion, love the investigators, and I love the work of God. 

I seriously don´t really have much else to say besides that this is the church of Jesus Christ and it is the true church. I know that without a doubt. 

Have a wonderful week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

May 19--I Would Walk 500 Miles

A ver.

So first off, my companion is from Chile/Argentina (she was born in Argentina, moved to Spain, and then moved to Chile. Her mom is Argentinian and her dad is Chilean.) her name is Hna. O. She´s super cool and a really good missionary. And she doesn´t speak any English, so I´m teaching her English during language study. :)  It´s a little hard with our Nigerian investigators, but they speak enough Spanish that we can teach more or less in Spanish and then if they don´t understand something I just say it again in English.

We have an AWESOME investigator named N from Pakistan who´s come to church twice and loves everything we teach him. He doesn´t speak Spanish really well, he speaks a little more English but he´s asked us to teach him in Spanish. He´s been reading the Book of Mormon online in his language (Urdu) and he loves it. He is super nice and super cute. So we have a cita with him tonight we should be giving him a baptismal fecha! 

M is also doing pretty well, she still has her two obstacles of not coming to church and smoking. But she LOVES the Book of Mormon and loves the things we teach her. Hopefully we will see her tonight and also get her back on fecha!

R and G--lately R hasn´t been coming to church nor have we seen him this week. So hopefully we can get things going with them. We really want to challenge them to read the Book of Mormon every day as a couple--I really feel like that could save their relationship.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to teach them because I´ve learned a ton about what I do and don´t want to do when I´m married. Both of them are always so focused on the problems of the other one that they can´t or won´t take the time to do the right things themselves. It´s really sad but I know that the gospel is the only thing that could help them. 

This week I´m not really sure what happened, but we ended up walking a TON every day. Usually we don´t walk around all that much but this week things kept failing us at the last minute and we ended up walking to the very ends of Alcorcón and back. My poor companion is exhausted. 

So things are looking good in Alcorcón, we just have to keep finding more people who are going to do their part and get the ones we have moving!

I love you all, have a great week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

May 12--Pics Catch-Up

NOTE:  Lara had been holding out on us, saving up all her pictures with her "pelirroja" from the last two months so she would surprise us with her hair-color change on her Mother's Day phone call.  So we got a bunch of them all at once!

From Lara:

So to be really quick my comp got transferred to central Madrid and tomorrow I go to pick up my new comp, who´s going to be a greenie!  So I´ll keep you posted about her next week when I find out. I´ll be staying here in Alcorcón with the elders. We have the best district in the whole world.  

And I know you were all demanding pics yesterday, so here:

All the Island Girls/STL with Elder B at the mission home

All the Island Girls! (at the Palace Hotel)

At the Temple for Conference

Me with all my F comps

All the leaders who served in the islands

Almost all of our Gran Canaria District.  We're all mission leaders now.

My favorite picture of my whole mission!

The Temple

w/ Hna F in Toledo in March

In Toledo in March

Another Toledo in March

Another in Toledo in March

In Toledo in March

New Hair! (from March)

With Hna F, at the Temple

May 5--1000 Intercambios

This week Hermana F and I have developed a serious problem where we plan at night and then we start some gospel conversation and keep talking until suddenly we realize in shock that we only have 15 minutes to put on pajamas, brush our teeth, write in our journals, and pray... We just love each other.

I ended up doing 2 exchanges, one on Tuesday, when we had our mission leadership meeting at President´s house, ate lunch there, and said goodbye to the B's, who are in Africa for a 2-week safari before heading home. I will miss them a TON. They are really just like my parents. I almost cried again saying goodbye to them. I also gave Elder B a hug 3 times right in front of President and the APs... ;)

The meeting was awesome, and I really learned a lot about our motives for obedience and working hard. We talked so much about love, both for our fellow missionaries and investigators and for the Savior, and I realized that without that love we don´t really learn or accomplish anything in the mission. When we are obedient because we love, that´s when miracles happen. So many missionaries are obedient because they want recognition or want to impress someone.  But when we obey because we want to serve the Savior the best way possible, we really do live the highest "law" or "rule", even the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that He would rather have us obey that with love for Him than do anything else. 

The other exchange was on Friday with Hna. C. She´s super awesome, from Bolivia, and she knows Hna. M!

Speaking of Hna. M, I GOT TO SEE HER THIS WEEK! She came up to go to the temple and we went out to go get ice cream together on Thursday. She told me, to my great delight, that G, the woman we were teaching in Maplewood, GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!! Gives me hope for all our Muslims. :)

My companion and I have turned into the Primary Presidency this week. We came to the realization that none of our investigators understand anything we are teaching them, so we really need to simplify our teaching style. We made all sorts of visual aids and things to help them see and better understand our doctrines. We´ve been talking a lot this week, with everyone, about who is God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. So many people are confused about that, and until they understand that, they can´t understand the Restoration! 

Have a great week and Happy Mother´s Day to come!  Here Mother´s Day was yesterday. :)

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Soccer is a fanatic obsession of everyone in Spain. Latinos, Spaniards, Africans, all of them. Whenever there´s a game we rarely can find someone to meet with us, and then if we´re in the streets there´s no one, not even any sound until someone scores a goal, at which point everyone starts blowing foghorns, applauding, shouting, cheering, etc. We always know what the score is even without trying to know it. :)

Service is just usually random stuff when the opportunity comes up, such as helping people clean or move. Probably once a week or once every 2 weeks we have a service project to do. 

April 28

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes! For my birthday I went to 2 bars, since I´m now of legal drinking age. :)

This week was better than last week, even though we had almost no lessons. We´ve developed a slight obsession with the Easter video published by the church (easter.mormon.org) and we showed it to literally every single one of our investigators. 

We haven´t seen M this week, as she´s been busy with a bunch of random things...we´ll see if she gets moving again or if we have to drop her for a little while. R and G have been doing better as well, we had a really good lesson with them yesterday and R is finally starting to recognize that he needs new friends that aren´t such a bad influence on him. He always says "oh yeah I want to do things right" and then never does anything, but yesterday there was a different spirit about him and he even started to cry. So I hope he will make the big changes he has to make to be able to have an eternal family. 

We stopped by J L this week, who´s Dominican and therefore a little flojo, to have a "make it or break it" lesson. We told him quite boldly what we were going to expect him to do and that if he didn´t do his part we wouldn´t visit him. As we were talking, his 9 year-old daughter came in.  To end the lesson, we showed the Jesus video to him and his daughter. That video has such power that after you watch it you just stay silent for a few minutes. We asked them how they felt after it ended, and he said "really good" and his daughter said "better than before I watched it."  She even got a pen and paper to write down the website so she could watch it again. We gave her a Book of Mormon and when we left she was reading it with a marking pencil in her hand. So that was really cool! 

I went on an exchange this week to Leganés, which was really fun (Leganés has the COOLEST piso in the whole mission, it´s 2 stories and you can go out on the roof and the walls are bright orange, purple, green, etc.) We went to visit a less active sister who takes care of an old couple, and the old lady told me about 500 times that I was really guapa and that I needed to find a good novio. It was SO funny. She also started singing some random Spanish folk song to Hna. B and me. 

Another funny thing that happened is that we were going on the train and then on the metro and I saw this woman with a baby and she dropped something and so I helped her pick it up and we started talking and then when we were on the metro I asked her for her number and she started giving it to us right as we reached our stop, so she gave it to us and then we had to go running out the door before it shut. Hna. B ran before me and then the doors started to close so I got a super power/adrenaline rush and made it through right before it closed. If it had closed before I got out I would have had to wait until the next stop, get off and try and figure out how to find Hna. B in an area I don´t know at all. Just goes to show that missionaries literally receive strength and protection from the Lord! 

Keep your prayers coming, we´re in pretty serious finding mode right now because we really need some good new investigators! 

Hermana Lara Schaumann

p.s.  ALSO I don´t know if any of you remember me talking about A in Las Palmas, but HE GOT BAPTIZED YESTERDAY!  Hna. S is going to send me pictures...I´ll forward them when I get them. :) 

April 21

I don´t even know what to say about this week...it was a little rough...but I´ve heard that´s normal for Semana Santa. 

Our classes didn´t go so well seeing as how everyone was out of town or had family in town and couldn´t come...but we got a lot of advertising done so hopefully we can get that going. A lot of people were really interested when we told them about it. Holidays in Spain are just difficult. 

We did have a really cool experience yesterday with working with the members. We stopped by to visit the branch president and his family and we talked about how we could help them with their family missionary work and they gave us a reference of someone his wife had met in a class she´s taking. They told us a lot of stories of how they´ve shared the gospel with either people they know or people they meet in a class or in the store or on a banch and how a lot of those people have gotten baptized!  Unfortunately, the reference they gave us last night doesn´t live in our area, but they committed to having an FHE and inviting someone!  We´re really excited about that. 

Other than that, it was a kind of tricky week. Our investigators who were doing well are now being showered in challenges and problems, and we´re not really finding a lot of new people who are really dedicated and serious about learning the gospel.  We´ve been dropping a lot of people and we´re spending our time trying to work with the members, because none of the people we´re finding in the street are really that interested. 

So hopefully things get better soon! We are still working and praying and hopefully this new focus will give us some real progress. 

Keep your prayers coming, especially for M, who had an extra difficult week, and for R and G.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

April 13

Yesterday marks the beginning of Holy Week, which, as my companion says, is "spring break with a Catholic twist!" Basically every day there are processions (down our street, of course) with HUGE floats with a million candlesticks and some odd statues of Mary and Jesus. A bunch of ladies dress up with big black veils, others with giant robes and hoods like the KKK (except purple!) and 4-foot long candles, etc. It´s quite interesting. So we´ll have to see what else happens, as yesterday was the first day. :) Don´t worry, I´ll keep you all posted. 

This week we had some adventures.  We´ve changed our focus a little bit to working more with the members and doing service, and we´re just getting started, but we´re excited to see how it goes!  We´re going to start a support group to quit smoking, which will be a cool new way to contact people and will help our investigators, a few of which are in this process right now. And we´re also starting a Bible study class (well, a scripture study class, because we will definitely be using the Book of Mormon) because we have a lot of investigators that would love to come to something like that, and it will be a really cool way to show the similarities between the Bible and the Book of Mormon to them. We really think this will be a lot more effective than teaching people who aren´t progressing or trying to contact people in the streets, which is what most of our time is occupied doing. 

Speaking of service opportunities, we spent a little while this week helping clean M J´s house. They´re redoing their living room, like COMPLETELY, as in they tore down walls and put up new ones, so we had to scrape and scrub drywall off the floor for a couple hours. We walked back home covered in white dust. It was really fun though! :)

We had another lesson with our Muslim friend H and her Spanish friend M.  They are both REALLY awesome and in our lessons we are so bold in teaching our doctrine exactly how it is, and they listen and I´m sure they can feel the Spirit. We always end up staying there for a really long time because we´re answering both of their questions about our doctrine and we always end up teaching so many different gospel principles. I feel SO GOOD in that house. She also fed us again and it was DELICIOUS. 

Today we went out to eat again with the B's.  They´re going home in 2 weeks!!! But we´re planning an islands reunion at Lake Powell with them in September, so we´ll all be good. :) T, a YA from the islands, is getting sealed in the temple tomorrow!  I can´t go because we live too far away, but Hna. F and Hna. H (who are companions!) will be there, and I sent her all my love. :)

Keep your prayers coming here.  I love you all and have a great week!

Hermana Lara Schaumann

Semana Santa Week Float