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