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