Hace FRÍOOOO!

I THINK THIS DIDN´T GET SENT FROM LAST WEEK...SORRY EVERYONE! :(

¡Buenos Días!

I am no longer sickkk! Life is good. But I do think I might have gotten half the ward sick...ya never know. I tell them all I´m sick and not to give me besos but they don´t care and kiss me anyway...what can you do.

It´s cold. I don´t have a coat and our apt doesn´t have heat soooo I´m freezing but that´s okay I´m going to buy a bunch of warm things today. And by cold I mean like low 50s but it feels colder with the humidity and all the wind. Seriously, who knew that Málaga was so windy.

Remember how I said we are teaching a woman from Ukrainian name Lina? Well we set a baptismal date with her for January 18th. It´s far away because she seems a bit nervous about it and wants to be sure, but once we get her to come to church and be more comfortable maybe we can move it up. She has a ton of faith but also smokes so shes trying to quit. It doesn´t help that her husband always comes in and out of the lessons smoking. But we have the sweetest Ukrainian woman that helps us in the lessons from the ward and she even took us to a Russian/Ukrainian store and bought us food afterwards. Anyway pray for Lina! We also are teaching another woman named Teresa from Málaga whose daughter actually got baptized once upon a time and we just found that out. She doesn´t want to commit because of her husband but even though her mouth didn´t say yes her eyes definitely did, so we´ll see where that goes.

The Romanian part-member family are still my favorite people ever. We ate Romanian soup with them this week and played Bible charades. Good stuff. I love the other members here too they are so strong, it´s great. We kind of got stuck in one of our pueblos (small towns) because the bus never came...twice and then we ended up getting hot chocolate, cake, and a ride home. They have a daughter serving in California so they can sympathize.

Anyway, not much else is new. A member family invited us and the four elders over for thanksgiving and they are going to try and make it authentic so we´ll see! And no pictures this week, sorry for being lame.

Got to go buy a coat now. Don´t forget to feed the missionaries during the holidays ;)

Love you all, 

Hermana Thompson

Estoy resfriadaaaa :(

Apparently my body doesn´t respond well to mission life, because I am sick again! This time it´s a cold that is still going strong...It started on Thursday. But I´ll survive of course, people keep telling me to rest so I´ve started to listen to them. But the whole medicine thing is too much bother to worry about here. 

Anyway, I still love Málaga and our ward. It´s just great. We even had ward council yesterday so life doesn´t get much better than this haha. So as for the Romanians...I have no idea what is going on exactly. On Tuesday we paid a surprise visit in the morning since the Sunday visit fell through. It was just Andrea there and so I was like well she doesn´t understand enough Spanish for us to teach the Plan of Salvation so we might as well just talk about baptism. So I asked her if she knew the word and she said no. Ok. I tried explaining it with my hands in other words. She thought I was talking about fishing. Perfect. I finally got her to understand what it was and then asked her if she would be baptized when she knows what we´ve taught her is true, and she said "creo, creo" (I believe, I believe) while pointing to the BOM. So we committed her to the 30th of November and set up a return appointment. We walked away hoping she actually understood haha but also amazed are her willingness despite the language and reading barrier. When we went back for the return appointment with Lorena (a 10 yr old member) the family members wouldn´t answer...umm yeah. So we are going to try and go back when only Andrea is there in the mornings and see what happens. We´ve also started teaching a woman from the Ukraine named Lina so we´ll see what happens with her! Again, we seem to only teach people from other non-Spanish speaking countries here oddly enough. 

Let´s see, not a lot of interesting things happened this week. Oh wait, I almost forgot our lesson with the jehovah´s witness, Marcelo! I told you about him last time but we taught him again with the help of a member and this time the topic was the Plan of Salvation. First of all you have to understand that he a bit on the older side and has some health problems and that I made sure we had really good scriptural references to back us up. So when we showed him certain verses in the Bible that he didn´t know existed about the spirit world and baptisms for the dead he started getting a bit sweaty and nervous and was holding his heart. And I was sitting there like uhhh I really hope he doesn´t die right here in front of us while talking about the plan of salvation. We stopped short for his benefit without getting to talk about the 3 kingdoms of glory, but I don´t think we´ll be going back again. He wouldn´t let us pray again but this time his excuse was because we are women...yeahhh.

So last Pday we went to the Catholic Cathedral in central Málaga. It was funny because they weren´t going to let us in for free at first because we technically aren´t what they recognize as "priests" or "clergy", but one of the elders from our group was like, well in our church we are priests sooo...and then we got in for free. The architecture was gorgeous of course, like all of them are, but the absence of the spirit was definitely notable. 

Anyway, today we won´t do much since I am sick but I do have a request from any of you wonderful family members who wants to do research for me! I wanna go to the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga and another art museum with the initials MAUS to see a Shepard Fairey exhibit if I can get permission...so will someone email me the addresses, entrance fees, and phone numbers please?? ¡Gracías!

Love you all and have a good week! Also if you want longer responses to your emails, send me handwritten letters instead ;)

Hna Thompson

ps photos!

1. and 2. inside and outside of the cathedral

3. and Michael (recent convert) and I on the exercise equipment they have out in the public parks here haha. 

Busy week in Malaga....

So this week had a ton of interesting things all packed into one. Castle for Pday, Halloween, special training with President, exchanges, and stake conference in Granada. So this week went by super fast.

First of all, remember how we got 11 new investigators last week? Well all the the follow-up appointments with them this week went through. So we will try again this week and see what happens. For pday we went to the Málaga castle with a bunch of missionaries so that was fun, I´ll include some photos :) And I got Halloween here after all! We tried inviting all the people we teach to come to the combined ward activity but apparently in Romania and Nigeria it´s more of a bad thing sooo I left out the part that it´s my favorite holiday. They are more under the impression that it´s evil or something. Spaniards still haven´t figured out the whole costume thing yet either haha, they all dress up as the same things...witches, devils, or dead people. But the activity was actually pretty good considering.

We also ate with the Romanian part-member family this week! And the appt wasn´t at the normal time so us being stupid ate lunch beforehand and then when I got there I was already full. Every bite was painful. But they made THE best bread, but the food was pretty strong (but good) and there was a lot of it so it was so hard to keep eating, I felt so bad. And then after that we had another meal scheduled...I wanted to die. It´s funny because all the members here think we are like the elders and can eat a lot and so when we say we are full they think we are lying...

In other news, we taught a lesson with a Jehovah´s Witness man from Africa this week...who doesn´t even let us pray or give him a Book of Mormon, that was actually the first lesson I´ve brought out the Bible to teach. But we had a super awesome member to help us with the lesson. We´ll see what happens with him. Oh and Dan- we keep eating with a Brazilian member who has a super thick accent and I have the hardest time understanding her but she is so good to us and always feeds us :) Speaking of food...Phil and Carola- the Argentinians are winning...sorry but overall I always get better food with them than the Chileans but there is still time left for them to change my mind.

Friday we had a special training meeting from President Deere and the APs and after that I went on exchanges with our sister leaders in the area. Which reminded me how much more I need to contact people on the street, so that´s what we are focusing on this week. Let´s see if I pluck up more courage. I have no time left but Stake Conf was awesome! The Granada chapel is HUGE and gorgeous, even better than ours at home. Well love you all and send me letters if you can instead of emails so I can respond with more ;)

Love

Hna Thompson

photos!

1. us and some elders from our district, one of which is Elder Chumbipuma, best name ever right?

2. hna Andrew and I at the castle

3. view of Malaga

the halloween party, elder england bobbing for apples

us and all the ward 1 and 2 missionaries (missing the APs though)

and another pic of the castle

¡La Semana de MILAGROS!

Man, I love Málaga! It´s a great place, you guys should definitely come visit. So for those of you don´t know Spanish, the title of this email is Week of Miracles! I loved these past 7 days, little miracles keep popping up everywhere! First of all we found 11 new investigators all in this week and it would´ve been even more if some of the people we taught agreed to a return appointment. But get this they are all either from Africa or Romania...this week my Spanish didn´t help anything haha. English did though since all the Nigerians speak English. It seemed like every person we passed by let us in without a prior appointment and a lot of our backup plans turned into actual teaching opportunities. Which is definitely not the norm even in Málaga. My face probably showed my surprise every time someone said "come in" to us. And then even more surprise by the amount of people who were there when we did come in.

I want to share about one experience in particular. There is a Romanian family in our ward called the Patars. The four children are all baptized and the parents would like to be but are saving up money to make a trip back to Romania to get married first. The missionaries first started teaching them over a year ago and they have been actively coming to church ever since. Florina, the mother, barely knew any Spanish and also didn´t even know how to read in Romanian. But in order to attend church and read the Book of Mormon she has been learning. The family is incredible. I have never seen people like them. They live in poor, humble circumstances, but have extremely strong testimonies. They children (ages 8 to 14) are always eager to learn and pray and sing and are so sweet. They read the Book of Mormon on their own everyday and always ask us for more pamphlets to fill out the questions in the back. They literally melt my heart.

Anyway, we passed by an old reference from that family to see if they were home so we could meet them. Her friend´s name is Andrea ironically enough. She was home and let us in. We talked about the Book of Mormon and the gospel. She brought out her BOM that she already had in Romanian but told us she didn´t know how to read. She also barely understood what we were saying in Spanish. But we setup a return appt for Sunday evening and asked Florina and two of her daughters to accompany us. When we showed up they let us in and there were a ton of people. The sister, mother, husband, brother-in-law, her 3 kids, and her 3 nephews. There were also other people coming in and out of back rooms...I think I counted around 13 or 14 people in that small apartment. So I was sitting there like "holy cow...what do we do...I´ve never seen this many people in one place and they all speak Romanian..." Florina explained who we were a little bit better and some basics. I tried to watch the Restoration DVD since it was in Romanian and there were a lot of kids, but as always, it didn´t work. I swear Satan controls all technology in every investigator house we enter haha. Anyway, Florina summarized the story of the Restoration for us in her own words and then I asked her to explain the book of Mormon. She was like...I already did it. So I asked her to share her experience finding out it was true and her testimony, and she was like...I already did it. She is seriously so great. We read a little in the Book of Mormon and invited them all to read and pray and come to church. And I just wish you could´ve seen their faces- full of hope and welcome to our message. I wanted so badly to be able to communicate more fully to all of them in the moment but I knew they understood and at least the children can understand and read. But here I was listening to this woman, who is not even baptized but has been actively coming to church for a year, share her testimony in Romanian and feeling the spirit so strongly. At the end she said "we could all talk forever! when I talk about God my heart feels warm" and all the Romanian women were smiling back at me. She has incredible faith and they are all such good examples to me. I´ll let you know what happens from here!

Nigerians are interesting. They are also very receptive and humble. It´s definitely weird teaching so many lessons in English. Plus they are all men too so that makes our life difficult. Oh, there is also a recent convert here from Haiti! She has family in Florida and so we talk about that sometimes. She is so sweet and has such a great testimony. They let us stay to eat last time we visited :) Well there are other things but I´ve got to go! We are going to the castle today! And apparently we are supposed to be having a Halloween party in the chapel so we´ll see how that goes haha.

Love you all!

Hna Thompson

ps-photos!

one member, Patricia, had a turtle and a cat so we were playing with them after FHE. That´s Michael by the way, a recent convert from Nigeria. 

First week in Málaga 2!

Hey everyone! I´m in Málaga, the promised land, and I´m loving it. Not that I got here with a lot of work since there is only like one investigator and not much else...but hey we´ll fix that. So the ward here is huge. And the members are incredible. See a correlation? Because I sure do. Like I said before there are 4 wards here and two of them meet in our building. Our area is split between us and the elders so it´s actually not very big but it seems huge because Málaga is huge and it could be that our small chunk of Málaga is bigger than Benidorm but maybe that´s just me. And we keep getting lost ALL the time. My trainee Hna Andrew still doesn´t know the area very well and our map is actually in book form so I keep getting confused haha. We´ll figure it out soon though. I still can´t get over how great some of the members are here, it literally feels like I am in the states in some of the houses. And of course when I tell people I am from Florida they always ask about Alligators and the beach haha. 

You wanna know my favorite part so far? And please don´t think I am bragging but I am just so happy about it...but I´ve had people ask where I´m from because they thought I was American but I sound Spanish so they get confused! And these are people from Spain that ask. So if I just looked a little bit more española I could pass! Heh. When I come home you´ll all think I sound funny and speak with a lisp but I actually love the general Spanish accent. The Málaga accent not so much. They drop the s on words, shorten the endings, and use the "theta" on the s´s as well...they are a bit harder to understand in the beginning but I am getting used to it. And people here are so nice! I heard that Andalucia was more friendly but seriously, people actually say hello back and I´ve had people come up to us to help us when we are lost without asking. The demographics here are different as well. Less south Americans, more Africans, and A LOT more people that are actually from Spain. In the Benidorm area everyone was from somewhere else and so I was used to asking and here when I ask they say Málaga...of course...sorry for asking. 

The area has been in the hands of fairly new missionaries for a while so I am trying to change things and get everything reorganized...including finding all the information out for 6 MONTH OLD baptismal records that weren´t ever turned in...poor people still don´t count as actual members haha. Oh hey, and yesterday was my 7th month mark! Weirdddd. Time passes by differently in the mission. 

Leaving Benidorm was weird...so incredibly weird. It kind of felt like I was starting a new mission or something. It was sad too of course but I needed a change. And Málaga is the complete opposite. On Sunday we were almost like a side note...I didn´t get called up to introduce myself, I didn´t have to teach any classes, and I couldn´t even count the number of people. So different! But it is so nice to see a ward that actually functions! I´ll let you all know how things go! Oh and Hna Andrew know Spanish! So that is a nice break. Obviously she still has a lot to learn but she gets by really well and contributes well to lessons already. She is 20, from Ohio, and went to BYU. People are always surprised when neither one of us is from Utah (or the factory as they call it haha). 

Love you all and keep praying for missionary work!

Hna Thompson

my new address: 

Avenida Manuel Torres 6, 1ºB

29003 Málaga, Spain

ps- photos!

1. Last Monday in Benidorm- Mario (an investigator who has a baptismal date...fingers crossed!), Carlos and Griselda (members from Uruguay)

2. My new piso in Málaga! It has a CAT pillow. It was a great welcome and I new I was at home. 

3. Hna Andrew and I in the internet place. We didn´t get the chance to get a good quality one earlier so we just did this selfie right now for yáll

I´m being transferred to the PROMISED LAND!

OKAY. So I am finally leaving Benidorm! It still hasn´t sunk in completely. I know nothing else...I now associate my mission with Benidorm so it´ll be weird leaving. And any guesses as to where I will be going? MÁLAGA! Yep! Exactly where I wanted to be transferred to. Funny how that works out huh? There are four wards there with 6 missionaries in each ward. I will be serving in the 2nd ward with 4 elders and Hermana Andrew. She has only been out 6 weeks so I will be finishing up her training. Foreverrrr training. Haha but no it´s good, at least it´s not the first 6 weeks again ;) I leave Wednesday morning to head down there by bus (8.5 hours ughhh) and next Monday I´ll let you all know m new address!

Sunday was bitter-sweet. Oh and funny too. Funny thing first. So when the meeting started there were only like 18 people there and while we were singing the opening hymn one of the families came in late and their 11 year old son just starting throwing up right next to us in the aisle! So gross. I was trying not to laugh at the whole situation as the members kept singing and staring in disgust. That´s when you breathe through your mouth. The father came in during the opening prayer and started to mop it up but the smell lingered. Poor child, he looked green. In total there only ended up being 28 people there in church which is the lowest I have ever seen :( But it was fast and testimony meeting so I went up and said my goodbyes and bore testimony. It was hard to get through. I really am going to miss the people so much and I will always remember the experiences I had here. I can´t believe how much I´ve changed in the last 6 months in Benidorm. It seems like forever ago that I arrived and felt overwhelmed with the language and useless. It makes me nervous to leave the area behind to other missionaries but it has to be done. Saying goodbye to the members and the chapel was sad but I´m sure I´ll return someday...well I better since I promised certain people that I would haha. 

This week we had a meeting with all the missionaries from our stake, the stake presidency, and the mission president. Oh it was so good! The topic was the work of salvation in the stake and their vision for the specific areas. The stake president and his counselors are such incredible men. And young too, two of them in their early 30s. They´ve all served missions as well and so their counsel to us was specific and particularly meaningful. I learned so much from them and felt the spirit so strongly. It´s just too bad that I am now leaving right after hearing all of that. 

Today we barely have any pday, we had an appt with an investigator this morning, right now we are going to go eat for the last time with a member family, and then later tonight another appt. But it´s okay, I´m almost done packing anyway. The weather is nice right now too! There is a breeze and at night time it actually feels a little chilly. 

Oh and last Monday I totally got to play Settler´s of Catan in Spanish! Are you reading this Dan and Audrey? One of the elders in my district splurged and bought the game with an extension. I was close to winning but was short a point in the end. Still fun.

Well love you all and I will send news from Málaga next Monday! I still can´t believe how lucky I am to be going there! I´ve always wanted to serve in Málaga and to be so close to the other missionaries and Pres during Halloween and most likely Christmas? Score! Oh and I ´ve tried contacting Miri a million times with no luck, we even had an appt set up with her and she failed on us. I have no idea what´s going on...but thanks for your prayers!

Take care!

Hermana Thompson

ps- photos!

1. us and Vicente, our favorite person on the planet

2. my district! Elder Dansie, Elder Day, Hna Camacho, Elder Tudela, Elder Orr, Hna Parrilla, me, and Hna Noriega. The photo kind of stinks but oh well...and elder Orr is 6´10 i think if anyone was wondering haha

The Lord is aware of us!

Happy conference weekend everyone! Didn´t you just love it? And if you have not watched all the sessions, repent and go watch them online. It was kind of a fiasco being able to watch conference for us. Our branch only broad casted one session in the chapel on Sunday night (the Sunday am session for you guys) and we didn´t find out about it until late Friday night so we couldn´t tell our investigators or members any concrete details. Lame. But Saturday we went to the chapel by ourselves to watch the relief society broadcast in the morning and the sat am session live that evening at 6pm. Sunday we went to the chapel after they had finished showing priesthood and found the branch pres on the computer ugh so we ended up having to watch the sat pm session in an Internet cafe. Not ideal but oh well. Sunday evening we watched the sun am sesh in English on the computer and the others on a TV and two investigators came so that was nice. We later had a FHE and dinner at a members house with the two investigators, Estela and Angela. They come to all the activities and things but the father doesn´t like religion so we can´t do much. Angela is an angel, she is 10 years old knows the BOM is true and wants to serve a mission...I hope one day she can get baptized. 

We still have yet to be able to watch the last session of conference but we will succeed, I am not going to miss it that´s for sure. Well I know everyone says conference is just for them but this time it really was. All of my questions were answered and all of my concerns were addressed rapidly, as soon as it started. This conference was very focused on trials, the atonement, covenants, and missionary work. All the things I think about and talk about everyday. It´s because they are the most important and most prevalent. I also noticed how every topic and scripture addressed was something I had just studied for personal study. That happened last conference as well. It confirmed to me that if we are in tune with the spirit and are seeking for guidance and revelation that we can receive it- the same revelation that apostles and prophets of the Lord receive, but for our own personal instruction. 

Favorites? Well obviously always Elder Holland, Elder Bednar, Pres Uctdorf, Pres Eyring, and Pres Monson. But also Elder Ballard, Dyches, and Soares. Ok I don´t mean to list them all. Also from Relief society, Sister Reeves. I think one of the things that struck me the most is what Pres Eyring said: that there is not one person in this world that God does not desire to save, and there isn´t one person that he hasn´t made a plan to save. That spoke directly to one of my concerns. Many times I get discouraged at the amount of people who need the Gospel and despair for the overwhelmingness of it all, but that helps to remind me to trust in the Lord and His divine design. There is so much more I would love to share but I lack time.

This week was one of learning. To make a long story very short, I felt awful on Tuesday. Completely discouraged and hopeless for a few hours of time. I couldn´t feel the spirit and I didn´t want to communicate. I doubted myself and what I was doing. We then had a lesson with investigator family. I had tried so hard, so hard, to get a member to come to the lesson because I knew they weren´t progressing and that was why. Nobody could come. Every other time the lessons were distracted, a baby was screaming, people were in and out, and it wasn´t the best teaching I´ve ever done either. But Tuesday was different. The baby was asleep, both Liliana and Johnny were there and waiting and ready. The change in the lesson and spirit was remarkable and we didn´t even have a member present. They were receptive and more engaged and we walked away filled with gratitude and amazement. I then realized how aware the Lord was of me. I no longer felt the despair and self-criticism, I felt the gloom lift and saw clearer. I had tried my hardest to do what was out of my control and on top of that I was feeling bad for other reasons but the Lord saw fit to give me a tender mercy and I am so grateful. I add my testimony to those of the apostles and prophet this weekend that the Lord loves us and knows our circumstances. He is always aware of us and with His atonement will come to our rescue just when we feel like we can´t carry our own personal crosses. I love this Gospel and I love this wonderful church.

Love you all!

Hermana Thompson

Zone conference and South Africans!

So this week went by incredibly fast! Last Monday feels like a couple of weeks  ago already. That´s what 2 days out of your area does to you. Tuesday we had Zone Conference with 2 other zones so there were a lot of missionaries in one place along with Pres and Sis Deere and the APs. The focus was on finding new investigators and reaching our goal of 555 baptisms this year. There is a photo of our zone on the blog (http://thespainmalagamission.blogspot.com). I got a lot of personal self-instruction on what I need to change to be better and what we should start applying. And for lunch a HUGE paella made by one of the stake presidents, who by the way is an incredible man with a strong testimony who has been here since the beggining of the church in Spain. People like him are such good examples of patience, perseverance, and faith. 

This week we had a ton of lessons and plans fall through which was disappointing but on Friday we got a wonderful surprise. Since I´ve arrived here in May I have tried to get people to come to English class. We have put up a ton of flyers and passed out cards and done it by word of mouth as well. And nothing. No one barely ever came...except some members or our own investigators sometimes but even then not steadily. But Friday a good number of random people just walked into the chapel for English class and now we are teaching two classes and have some good prospects of future investigators from the group. After class on Friday 2 people came up to me and were asking questions about the BOM and if we were normal people or if we were like the polygamists they´ve seen on TV. One man, Carlos, stayed after and let us teach him. And boy is he ever a talker. The lesson went on and on and on breaking off into tangents I never knew were possible. All I wanted to do was introduce the Book of Mormon. That´s it. But I would say a few words and boom, cut off. It wins as the most frustrating teaching experience I´ve had. I should win a prize for overwhelming patience or something. And at the end he critiqued our teaching English and our Spanish abilities as well. What a man. But we will be teaching him again this week...wish us luck that his tongue will be bound? Haha. 

So Thursday we met our new mission leader, Joan Millán. He just returned home from the Madrid mission on Tuesday (after being an AP, so you know he´s a good missionary). Well, we are incredibly overjoyed to have his help. We ate with his family and another family from the branch and he basically directed the message afterwards for us and then told us when he was free to help and went in to all the branch and area details. At that point he didn´t even know he would be mission leader. I can´t express the happiness, I just wish he was here earlier, because now I´m leaving and don´t get the blessing for long...Sunday he went around talking to leaders for us and gave out mission prep books to the youth (who already had them haha) and talked to our investigators and helped out the in the class I had to teach. One helpful member seriously does makes a whole world of difference to the missionaries. Even a little support helps us so much. So remember that please! 

Sunday was really cool. 2 our older investigators, a mother and daughter (Estela and Angela) came to church with a member family and then the boyfriend of one of the youth as well. His name is Daniel and he is from South Africa. We met him last Sunday and yesterday ate at the member family´s house with him and his parents and brother. The members, are half British and Spanish, and the investigators half south African and half Spanish. So everyone in that house spoke both English and Spanish and it was soooo weird. I was confused a lot of the time trying to get my head straight. And like I´ve said before talking and teaching in English is super strange for me now. The family is incredibly cool and have a lot of the same morals so I am hoping to be able to teach them all. Daniel, the boyfriend, is already going to seminary, activities, and church, and is super spiritual and mature so it´s just a matter of setting up teaching appointments and I´m sure he´ll get baptised. My favorite part was when they couldn´t figure out my accent. They thought my English accent was from Norway (I still don´t understand that since I sound American) and then after I said the prayer they were like ¨whoa, how well you speak Spanish! you have no accent at all and that´s really hard to do!¨ so not to brag, but I was sooo happy to hear that, since I try really hard to speak well. And of course I still make a ton of mistakes especially when I am speaking fast or am nervous, but hey it´s progress. 

That experience was such a blessing though. That is the way missionary work should be and needs to be. That was honestly the first time that has happened since I´ve been out, where a member family invited over their non-member friends just to meet us during a meal. That is how the work progresses and how families are blessed! So I encourage you all to do it too! I know it seems scary and awkward but trust in the Lord and have faith that it will work out! Pray to know who to invite and then do it!

Well as for Miri, she said she was to busy to come to church on Sunday and that Itzayana was out of town so that she would come this Sunday coming up. We´ll see! I want to see her get confirmed before I leave in 2 weeks and since this week is conference it´s making me nervous. Keep praying! Love you all!

Oh and something funny/embarrassing for the week: The branch pres asked me to translate to a new Norwegian member in English to have him say the opening prayer. So I turned to him and asked him, but in Spanish. So basically I just turned to him and repeated the request in different words and after weird looks from the two, realized that it wasn´t in English and re said it. Haha, and the sad thing is that this isn´t the first time it´s happened. I never understood RMs who would come home and claim to have problems speaking English but I find myself relating to them more and more everyday as i start making more English mistakes and wording things weirdly. 

Anyway, have a good week and enjoy conference! Invite everyone to listen and share links online!

Love, 

Hna Thompson

ps, pictures!

we went to a American style restaurant with Vicente this week (not that authentic but it was cool to see American things and hear oldies music...i mean not that we enjoyed the music...we aren´t allowed.)  i got to eat a real chocolate milkshake! happiness! and we brought home giant gumballs since we can´t chew gum in public and this is what happened...note that it got in my eyelashes haha