#17

Just to start out with some bullet points because I enjoy bullet points. 

• Hermana Spencer se va. that woman has done wonders here IN Alcala and I'm sad to see her go but I appreciated my time with her so much.

• I get Hermana Garcia who I've just heard WONDERFUL things about. I am PROPERLY ANIMATED (!!!)

• i get to stay here in lovely Alcalá for another 6 weeks at least and I am sincerely pumped about that 

• Loe came to church yesterday and she is just one dynamite gal (bonus points to whoever can name the movie) seriously she has come consecutively for a month and she is praying and reading and repenting and she is deepening her faith in Christ and we love to see it and we are so so proud of her.

• I read Jacob 5 yesterday. And i understood it. And i enjoyed it. And this in itself is a major accomplishment 

• Nuria (our best friend) invited her boyfriend over to revive the charlas and He is keeping commitments and has accepted to be baptized SAY WHAT? This is huge news. We had an absolutely lovely lesson with them and the spirit was thick and it felt good. We have so much hope for her to return to church and for him to find truth. 

• WE FINALLY TAUGHT JUAN JOHN. AND IT WAS FABULOUS. He also accepted to be baptized... sometime in the future 😉 Juan John is the coolest. Poor guy thought that by him getting baptized he would have to become a missionary for life. El pobre. We definitely cleared that up

• our area is absolutely huge. It's just huge. Seriously I think it's the size of Maine or something like that. We have a huge chunk of Sevilla in our area so on Wednesday we went out and ventured into the unknown. We went by some menos activos to rekindle a light within them and one was a man who wasn't home but his mother was there and his girlfriend was as well. We have never met any of these fine women but we were preaching like we do and all the sudden we were wanting to invite ourselves back to enter into their lovely home and we were trying to set an hour and we were explaining that we had to catch the bus at certain times and JUST OUT OF NOWHERE the GIRLFRIEND was like I'm going that way right now get in the car. And you know what we did? We got in the car. It was just all such a blur and I can barely even remember what her name was because we didn't even know her. But we are alive. And she was a very nice woman. I don't know it just kinda makes me laugh. But al final, no we never got a return cita with them, thanks for asking. 

• this week I taught myself how to play Where Can I Turn for Peace on the piano. Cool. 

• i continue to just do the most embarrassing things here in Spain and I am past the point of caring, Spain should be able to see the real  Hermana Rust, and I think it has. I think they still accept me...

• I just really am so proud of Loe. 

• We finally had a cita with Paula and Lili. We taught them at the beginning of my missionaryship and we finally had another lesson. We taught a decent Plan of Slavation 45 minute lesson with some good commitments and we were really pumped about that. We actually have another appointment with them tonight. 

• Loe wants to invite us over to meet her husband ( when he is actually home) This is huge.

• Loe comes to sacrament ever week and sits next to me and she sings the hymns so loud and cheerfully and she takes notes of every talk and then she goes home and tells her friends and husband about it and SHE JUST MAKES ME HAPPY. I feel so proud like an overenthusiastic soccer mom. No shame.

• I don't know if there is anything else. 

• my hair still just falls out all the time but no pasa nada 

• Spaniards are so sweet (so honest) but so sweet 

Some bullet points about some of my studies that I thoroughly enjoyed this week. 

•Jacob is awesome. I love Jacobs words, he describes the "pleasing word of God" as "the word that healeth a wounded soul". I agree with this 100 percent. I have the biggest love for the Book of Mormon because it just makes me feel good! It's so true. And it inspires me to repent and come closer to Christ. I just love the Book of Mormon! It helps our investigators feel good and helps heal their sorrows and i love the peace it can bring. The Book of Mormon is the biggest helper in missionary work. I love when the people I love here express their love of the Book of Mormon and their testimony of it. Reading it brings innumerable blessings.

• Jacob also says "Why not speak of the atonement of Christ and attain to a perfect knowledge of Him?" Word, Jacob. WORD. just like when Christ came to the Nephites and invited them all to come touch his hands and really come to know that He is the son of God, He does the same things for us now! He invites us to come to Him and to receive a personal testimony of Him, that He is the living Savior of the world. So why not speak of Him and His atonement? Why not come to really know our Savior? We have at our disposal the opportunity to COME TO A PERFECT KNOWLEDGE OF HIM in the near future! This is huge news. There isn't one other person that I would love to know more. I love Jesus Christ with everything that I am because everything that I am is because of Him.

 • also my good friend Zenos says in his grand allegory 10 simple words that really just put me over the top with joy, " and the Lord of the Vineyard labored also with them" 

Some context; we are talking about the allegory of the olive tree. In verse 71 the Lord of the Vineyard called His servants to go labor in the Vineyard. Hint: I'm a servant in the vineyard of Spain and the Lord has called me! But he hasn't called me to do anything solo, He labors in the vineyard with me. He walks down the streets of Alcalá with me and He knows our investigators and He is nourishing them and helping them in their efforts to change their hearts. 

I don't know if this means anything to all of you, but I really enjoy it. 

 Antonio Marin is a happy fella. 

 Yes, we planned to shower the same night just so we could take this picture with our matching head turbans. 

 Nuria💓💓 and Dani 

 Melisa💙 Sofia💜 Mirna 💛

#16

*from Hannah's mom - I asked her a couple of questions last week so I have included those emails as well.  Here are the questions I asked:

Can you share your greatest joy thus far in your mission and maybe your  greatest struggle? 

Hannah's response:

Okay greatest joy: there are a lot of little joys I feel from being a missionary. Just little bursts of joy that random things give me. But one of my favorite joys is the prayers of investigators and other menos activos and other members. They are so sweet and personal and I just love them, I first started loving their prayers when I heard Aldair ( he's 17. He was baptized when he was 14 and basically hasn't come to church since. He's the only member in his family and he's such a joven3) so we have been working with him to help him out. We committed him to start praying every day. And then invited him to say the closing prayer and I LOVED his prayer so much I wrote dow what I could remember haha so I'll share that. He says "please bless the hermana that they will be able to preach your word and that the people will have faith to know that your church is the true church" and then at the end was my favorite part he said very quickly "and bless me with my prayers this week" and then he closed his prayer. I don't know why but I thought it was just the sweetest thing. And our investigadora  Loe gives the BEST prayers. We always tell investigators that a prayer with God is like a conversatio. And her prayers are a sweet conversation with God giving thanks for everything, just simply telling Him what she learned that day and always praying for a closer relationship with God. She absolutely loves praying on her knees and so every prayer we say is on our knees. Spaniards really pray with their hearts and with might. I absolutely love it. So as of right now, that's the best part of being a missionary. 

Struggle: oi. I'll just be completely honest here okay? Recognizing the Spirit is DIFFICULT I'll be the first one to tell ya. It is no easy thing for me; it is insanely difficult. I know I am worthy enough to feel it but recognizing it is hard. I talked to President Anderson about it and he told me that as missionaries we live in a way that the "norm" is to always have the Spirit with us. Because 100 percent of our day is dedicated to The Lord and feeling the Spirit. We live so close to the Spirit that we've kind of lost how it feels to not have the Spirit. So that comforted me a bit, but I don't know. All the stories about having the Spirit tell you to go somewhere or talk to someone or something like that, I know that the Spirit is completely capable of doing that for me, but nothing like that has happened to me (that I can recognize) and it can be a bit discouraging. Sometimes I think that trying to learn to recognize the Spirit has been harder that learning Spanish. It's like learning a language, it takes practice . I remember President Messer telling me that the most important thing for me on my mission was to learn how the Spirit talks to me and I'm still learning and that's okay!  I know I'll get it one day. I know that the Spirit will always 100 percent testify to me of the reality and divinity of the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ so I just go with that, the Spirit is my testifier. 

Okay I hope that was sufficient. Ask me that question again in about 4 weeks 

I bet I'll answer differently.


Hi all, this week was just full of all types of good things. But this coming week is FULL of so much more, WAHOO how fun! 

So I'm just gonna tell you about some of my friends 

JESÙS- We knocked on Jesus's door about a month ago and we just a really friendly guy we left him with a Restauracion folleto and said we could come back another day so we went back the other day and he wasn't home, so we went again, like 3 more times and he was never home. So randomly we went again on Monday and he was there! And he had read the folleto  and he had so much interest in this Joseph Smith guy and the book of Mormon, so we gave him one and we have a cita tomorrow with him! We have had so much hope for Jesus so cross your fingers that he shows up! 

LOE-  I can't remember how much I have told you all about Loe but Loe is our miracle. She was taught by the missionaries a year ago and we got a call from her about a month ago and she said Hi can you come to my house right now and teach me? And so we did just that, and we have been seeing her about three times a week since then. She is incredible. She works all day and makes time for us in the night time to come see her. She is praying and reading every day and she has come to church for the past three weeks straight and she has just sacrificed so much for this religion already and now she is preparing for baptism for the beginning of September ( we are working on getting it a bit earlier 😉) she just soaks in everything and understands it so well. We are so proud of her. She even reads the BOM in English so props to here, because that is difficult! We were able to kind of start new with Loe so we are really trying to do it right! I think we are doing alright!

JUAN JOHN- Juan John is a man that comes to our English class and he speaks very well. He is the nicest man really. He has come to English classes for a while but we don't think anyone has taught him so we finally sat him down and basically just told him that we want to teach him! So we have a cita tomorrow with Juan John and we just think he is so prepared and golden, he just doesn't know it 😁

We have had so many opportunities to teach people this week. We just meet people and just start teaching; it has been great! Definitely a good habit to get into, teach when you find, find when you teach. 

Hmmm what else!? The mission does weird things to my memory, I just forget everything! Everything just kind of smashes into one big memory. If you want to know about anything else in specific, ask me questions cuz it helps trigger my memory 😄

Kevin and I took selfies at English class 

We went to the bar where are bar friends work and got some yummy tapas. That's a tiny quail egg 

 Little iris was baptized! We sang "when I am baptized" for it and her sister Jara was supposed to sing but she got too nervous hahaha

#15 OUR BEST FRIEND FROM THE BAR IS NAMED SERGIO. AND WE LOVE HIM.

This week was rad. We started it out with a good district meeting celebrating the great USA. We have a whole bunch of Americans in our zone so we went all out. We sang an emotional   rendition of the Star Spangled Banner and ate a pancake feast. And then we stayed the whole day there in Sevilla for intercambios with a Brit named Hermana Prior (no we have not compared our family fancharts yet 😉) and Hermana Favero. They're the best I love em. I'll send pictures of that when I have em.

▪I locked the keys in the apartment this week

▪We waited 2 hours for a bus that was never coming

▪I dropped my brand new nail polish and it burst and now the floor is blue

▪We had a cita with all of our investigators this week (!!!) That doesn't happen a lot.

▪We made them prayer and reading LDM check it off charts so they will read and pray!!! And they were so excited about it so I have high hopes. Everyone loves a good check it off chart.

▪We ate dinner with our best friends Nuria and Mabel.

▪We actually have a lot of people who want to feed us lunch and stuff and that's a miracle!

▪OUR BEST FRIEND FROM THE BAR IS NAMED SERGIO. AND WE LOVE HIM. He always calls us over and gives us agua frescito on these nice hot days and we saw him driving his car and you know he honked and waved. He just always makes our day

▪ I've been meeting people this week that I've heard so much about because we have been trying to meet with them for 10 weeks now and I finally did! Wahooooo

▪ We've gotten some referrals and new people to teach and Loe came to church!! Again!!

I know this is so random but it's been a super long but really good week. We are still seeing miracles from the fast and a real pick up in the missionary work here in Alcalá! The members are really involved and are doing Noches de Hogar in there homes every week and are inviting their less active friends and non member family members and we get to bring put investigators! It's bound to work put wonderfully. I'm super excited. Being a missionary is the bees knees. I still can't understand Spanish but heeyyyy still loving it. I'll send some pictures.

                      ▪One time I put twists in my hair and I looked like a                                                        long horn sheep 

We made a real life Spanish tortilla 

         And a cheesecake to celebrate America for our district                                        #favoritehermanasnow 

Iris ( the niña on the end) is getting baptized this Saturday! And the other is her sister Jara! They're the cutest little girls we absolutely adore them. We have been giving Iris the charlas in preparation for baptism, she's a pro! 

▪Our pancake feast

#14

 Thank you for the talk from Elder Holland, it gave me goosebumps! Just a quick fun fact, He is coming to my mission on September 16th and the entire mission gets to to go to Málaga and hear the words of this great man. Yes I know, I'm in the best mission in the world. I have read on lds. Org about Melton Gonzales Trejo in the CCM , but I would love to learn a bit more. I  think about my ancestors often because there are talked about so many times in my patriarchal blessing so I'm curious. I feel so blessed to be in Spain learning Spanish and just being here knowing the people I know it's a beautiful thing.

We had a fantastic week this week! FANTASTIC. We had zone conference on Friday and interviews with President so we were in Sevilla a lot this week. Zone conference was so refreshing it was awesome. I learned so much and we got a lot of this on how to involve and strengthen the members. And one thing that was super stressed was having Family Home evenings in the homes of members and have them invite non members, Investigators, menos activos or anyone, which we have tried to do, it just hasn't been working very well. But we took this idea  to the ward council on Sunday morning, and our stake President/ bishop was all over the idea and that day it was announced in sacrament meeting, Sunday school and relief society! A calendar was made to have the missionaries in the homes of members and the members could sign up for a day and it just really took off WHICH IS A MIRACLE. A MIRACLE. We have been trying to do things like this for so long and they just never really turn out BUT THIS IS A MIRACLE. I'M SO HAPPY IT WILL MAKE SUCH A DIFFERENCE HERE IN THE STRENGTH OF THE WARD. And we can find some new people while we are at it. 

This Saturday and Sunday we did a mission wide fast and we included the members for the mission work here. And more specifically we fasted to be able to meet our goal of 22 baptisms for the month of July. We were all encouraged at 3 pm on both days to pray with whoever we were with together and open and close out fast. I was really looking forward to it because everyone was just so faithful about it and I have already seen so many miracles. So many! We had 3 investigtoras in the capilla yesterday! And we had 2 less active there who haven't come in months and years! Members invited their friends and there were just so many MILAGROS. I'm so pumped right now for this hot month of July. It will be a good one. 

 Comp selfies from last Pday 💜

Old district -> new district 

Sergio 😂😂😂😂

#13 Sweat lines and tan lines and blessings.

Sweat lines and tan lines and blessings. 

Hola amigos como estáis?  So last week. We met with our investigator Loe and had some wonderful lesson! She is so sharp and so willing to learn. She also speaks English very well so that's a plus. She is from the Dominican Republic and she made us some yummy chocolate creamy oats type dish that's from her country. So that was nice. 

There is a member her named Nuria and she has been studying English and she had a huge exam last week and we have been helping her out with it. She invited us over for lunch and it was so fun! She is the cutest woman I have ever met I just want to be best friends with her forever. And then on another day we ran into her and got to meet her boyfriend (who we are wanting to try to teach) and they are just so cute! So it was fun being able to help her and leave her with a message also.

It was a really good week! We met with some awesome people and contacted a whole bunch! We handed out tarjetas to every person we passed haha.

One if my favorite things is that right below our apartment there is this restaurant/bar and here the tables are just all over the side walk and at night they are filled with people. So this bar we walk by quite often and there is one man who works there who always calls out to us EVERY TIME we walk by " Hola guapas! Or hola amigas!" Or something like that and he is just so friendly and always offers us water haha. I love that guy. And then there are other guys that go there very often and are a little creepy but we are still friends hah I love our bar friends.

This morning for pday we went to the plaza of Spain in Sevilla and it was super cool! It just this huge building and park plaza thing and there are dancers and people selling things. And then we went to the only Costco in our mission. Aka the only place you can buy peanut butter. I have to stock up for My entire mission I love that stuff.

I'm ALMOST DONE WITH TRAINING! THAT'S super weird! My Spanish is getting better! I still have a hard time understanding some people especially on the phone. Talking on the phone freaks me out. So I have 3 weeks to get better at that.

This week we have interviews with President and zone conference so I am excited for that! I will send some pictures! I hope all is well with my family! Oro por vosotros todos los dias porque os quiero muchísimo!

This is what a successful hot day looks like