Worst Week

We had the worst week I hope to ever have in the mission. We only taught 4 lessons the entire week, no members in church, no new investiators, and to top it all off we almost turned into marriage counselors last night for a couple. All I could tell them is... I think a mixture of what I´ve learned from you and dad and Bishop... that we have to have an eternal perspective of the family and when we include God in our family, only then will things really level out. That was after about 45 minutes of listening to their complaining about each other. I hope everything goes well with them! They both want to get baptised but we hope they do it together with the idea of going to the temple together!

I hope that President Turk is our new president!!! There is a need of one new president here in spain this year and... we do speak spanish over here! :)

You know, Elder Bytheway and I were actually talking about your near death experience floating down the river this week. I couldn´t remember what river it was but now I guess I don´t need to ask! I can´t remember why we got on that topic but yeah! Kind of random connection of thought! We also had a new object lesson related to yours as well. we had a rope and when it is straight we can reach salvation. When we sin we have the natural man and a knot is tied. We keep sinning and sinning and eventually loose sensitivity to the spirit. (the knots were that big slip knot chain thing that Papa does with his extension cords). And when we loose sensitivity to the spirit and decide that we won´t follow Christ you tie it off so it can´t pull loose. When it is all tied up it is short but Christ´s hand is still on the one end and wants to pull it straight again. But the little knot at the end won´t let it. When we finally decide to do our part in the atonement and untie that little bit Christ is able to do the rest to help us reach salvation again by pulling out all our sins.

It may need a little smoothing out but it turned out ok for us.

I worked on my jersey today with the alcohol and it looks 100% better!!! There is still an outline of where color used to be but it looks fantastic! I´m going to buy another p-day shirt to where so that the jersey is still in good condition when I get home! as for the roaches... We are not seeing near as many! I am soooooooooooooo Happy!!!

So soon after I left Aljarafe a letter arrived in their mailbox. It was from Amy. But instead of mailing it to me or even telling me about it they gave it to the Mellors when they came for interviews and then it was supposed to come with them to the islands to our Zone conference. It didn´t come. :´( They lost it I think! I am waiting for a letter that I know got sent, I know arrived, and I know is from Amy! Man, I want my letter!!!

I got Richard´s package this week. Thank you for my iPod cord back!!! I tried to upload music onto it today but the computer just said something about format and I quickly/ carefully backed out of that!!!

What would I have responded (about why we don't clap at church) ... just that in our church we show our reverence and respect in a different way than others. Instead of clapping we may go up to the teach after the class and say thank you for the lesson or something like that. We also show thanks to the Lord for the lesson we received by putting into practice what we have learned.

clapping in other churches seems to me like their form of respect to the speaker but we show it in a different way. also they clap for the teacher but the real "teacher" is the spirit and the way we can thank Him is to listen to what he is telling us and it is hard to do so while we are clapping as it is a still, small voice or feeling.

Well, I hope everything back home is going well and I will talk to you all next week! Love you!!!

Elder Heywood

Some Sweet Pictures

A very pretty Canarian dog


The very same spot my brother stood 5 years earlier


Beautiful sunset off the coast of Los Cristianos, Tenerife


3 days earlier from the middle of the ocean (on a boat ride to zone conference)


WAIT WAIT WAIT!!! Hermana Mellor's camera first!


What can I say?

The Cookies

Dear Family,

This past week has gone really well. We found 2 new investigators that have quite a bit of potential and one of them came to church... the other one we found last night and she will come to church next week! They both have a ton of faith and one for sure will get baptised! Her name is M___. She is from Cuba and was given a Book of Mormon a while back and then she started talking with a friend that is a member and they read it together sometimes. And the friend makes her actually read it... she basically gives her a test after the reading. It´s Awesome!!!

We still have not found L again. I hope that we will find her soon! She just works her little tail off down at the Hotel. I wish her roommates had easy access to her schedule so they could tell me when to call her. That would make things here a lot easier! But we can´t have everything that we want can we! She will be awesome when we can start getting a hold of her! And yes you are free to join in praying for that opportunity. The white hand book says not to invite your family to join in praying and fasting for mission reasons but it never mentioned their self invitations. ;)

This last saturday was transfer calls and... no I´m not leaving. niether is my companion. We´re staying here in The Cookies!

Well, not much has happened this week. After all, it was only 5 days instead of 7. SORRY!!! We weren´t able to get to internet till wednesday last week! But, in the past few days, I have only found about 5 cocroaches in our piso. And some of them were dead!!! :D We´re turning this battle around and I think that someday it´s possible that we will win it!!! ¡¡¡TOMA!!! That´s what I yell every time I kill one of those dumb bugs!!! I hope it´s not a sin to find joy in killing cocroaches! :S

As far as being able to use scriptures we randomly find for lessons... I actually just did that yesterday... but I applied one of the scriptures that Elder Bytheway had shared with me during comp study. I realize now why we shoulud share what we learn with our companions. Sometimes it seems tedious but in the end it helps us with our teaching. Our minds work differently and we can connect defferent things from the past to the lesson that we´re in at the moment.

M, M, M!!! Oh dear! Well he needs to just understand what the restoration all means and apply it to his life, but as for now he´s looking for a woman with spanish nationality so that he can get married so that he doesn´t get shipped back to Ecuador. My personal opinon... He would have a lot more support to join the church from people back in Ecuador, but to pray for... i´ve kind of given up on him.

I hope that President Turk comes to be president here in my mission!!! That would be sooooooo AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! I would absolutely love that!!! He gave me my last interview before sending in papers and he would be giving me my second to last interview before taking my nametag off... but he wouldn´t be setting me apart or releasing me! I would be quite excited to hear that he´s coming to the Spain Málaga Mission!!!

I love you all and I will try and write you on monday next week!!! ;)

Elder Austin Keith Heywood

A Traveling Week . . .

Well this week has been a lot of travelling! Last weekend we were up in la laguna for interviews and that took us out of our area for almost a day. Then when we got back we went to Hugo and Pilar´s house because they told us that they were going to tell us their baptismal date that night! They started talking about it all and for a while it seemed like they were going to tell us nevermind on the date... then they randomly told us that they are going to be baptised on the 20th of febuary!!! So as of now we have two Baptismal dates. As for Luz... she just works her little self to death. We can never get over there. We haven´t been over there for a couple weeks but I hope that changes soon! She'll be awesome when we are able to get with her on a regular basis.

Yesterday and the day before we were on Gran Canaria for zone conference! You know that picture of richard I sent home a couple weeks ago? I now have a picture of me standing in the same exact spot... or close... to where he was standing about 5 years ago... on a little island... half way around the world... in the middle of a GIANT ocean!!! Which also helped us realize how huge this world is. We spent 3 hours on a boat travelling straight to another island and they´re just tiny little dots on a map of the world. It´s crazy to think about! The boat ride was way fun and we played uno for most of it. And I got some sweet sunrise photos over the ocean!!! :)

So Autumn is living in our ward now? Where is she living? It took me a couple seconds but I was able to figure out who it was by the married name and that she went to school with me! She´s cool! Well I say hi back to her!

So a couple things... what makes teeth really white? is it baking soda? and whatever it my be... how do you use it?

also... just a thing that our branch president said in church on sunday... our church is the most active church in the world but it is beat in scripture study and prayer. I thought that was kind of interesting... and sad. Well, at least the scripture study. Prayer is kind of different in my opinion because there are some religions like the muslims that have to pray 5 times a day or the catholics that have simple quick recited "prayers." I don´t know but I think that affects things a lot.

It´s not that bad down where I am. Actually it´s the muggy from humidity that we have to fight off... and cocroaches that climb up your arm when you try to grab food!!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I lost my apitite for the first time since... the worm I found in my rice 4 weeks ago! haha ok I´ll try to stop grossing you out!

The funniest thing that happened to me this week... My whole leg fell asleep in sacrament meeting and after it was over I tried to stand up and was the closest ever to falling over. Luckily I was half way back in the room so only half the ward saw me just about face plant it! :P

The coolest thing!... We played soccer against the Gran Canaria zone and they were supposed to win and they were up by a couple but then I got a random burst of energy and scored three goals in a row in about three minutes!!! That put us in the lead and then it got tied again and then we scored one more and won!!!

I taught the sunday school lesson on sunday about the articles of faith and it went quite well. I just wish that G wouldn´t talk so terribly much! haha He´s one of the other elders´ eternal investigators. We have one of those too! M just can´t get some important things in his head that he needs to get baptised but he keeps coming to church and a lot of the activities.

You asked about our area... whether we walk, run, bus, stay in our area... We do a little bit of everything... except for the running. There isn´t ever really a need to run anywhere. I dont know if that is a bad thing or good. But anyway... the other elders in our ward have a car now which helps us a little bit. The thing I don´t get is why they are getting the car. They don´t really need it and we really need it. The only thing I can think is that one of them is from Europe so he has a liscence and we´ll get it as soon as someone here gets a liscence. or they are just going to close down our area and then they´ll need it for the whole bottom half of the island. I wouldn´t be surprised if this area gets closed down in april when we lose a bunch of missionaries...including my comp.

I hope you all have a great week! I love you all and hope this gets through to you unlike last weeks!

Os Quiero,

Elder Heywood