Great Baptism!

Dear Mom,

We had a our two baptisms this last Saturday. It went really well! We were going to have it in the ocean and that´s what everybody thaught was going to happen until about 5 minutes before the baptism started. My comp walked into the room where the pool is and it was full. We started asking each other what was going on and then the branch mission leader showed up and said that the President came and filled up the pool. We still weren´t sure if we were still doing in the ocean or not. Finally President showed up and told us that we are going to do it in the chapel. It was fine in the chapel and everything worked out better that if we did it in the ocean.

As for the rest of the baptism... I baptised and confirmed H... :/ I made a few spanish mistakes but I am pretty sure it was all legitimate in Heaven. haha It all went really well and both Hugo and Pilar are happy to be baptised! :) Well, I should hope so!!! haha

And the rest of the week! It was our best week so far. We had 20 lessons total... or so we thought until we got to the piso last night and counted everything up. we ended up with 19. :( We were so confused because we had everything planned out and we were going to finish the week with 20 lessons. Then I remembered what we missed. We were going to have another lesson with L after church but she wasn´t able to come. She had to work until 4:30 in the morning on Sunday. We got a text from her telling us she was way sorry and she wished she could come and to say hi to S at church and... So we only gave one 0 in our numbers this week and that was the baptismal date. we were also going to set that with L when she came to church on Sunday. Satan´s working hard. She´s an awesome person and will have a baptismal date before the end of this transfer!(this week!)

We also met again with S, our Romanian guy. We showed him a conference talk about our beliefs of the Bible and why we are christians. It actually went well. Hopefully we will be able to get him to come to our church sometime soon and try it out. He invited us to a different church and we went and stayed for about an our. It was a Christian Church and they had some good music but it was kind of weird. They are really cool people though!

Anyway, I hope to hear from you all sometime soon. I will get back on later and see if you have written me or if I´m getting the same treatment I gave you last week! Sorry!

Con Amor,

Elder Austin Keith Heywood


Yes Yes Yes, Austin got onto his email and there was not a letter there for him today. :P Alright, I was sooo tired last night that I couldn't write to Austin - it would have made no sense at all! I looked at the emails I have received from him and the very earliest one was 5:17 am. Only one. All the rest of them were 9ish and later. I felt safe in getting up this morning at 4:25 to write to him. Yeah, well, he wrote while I was writing, but I didn't notice till he was gone. Sooo - he checked back later and wrote again.

So here is his second round:

I was quite fond of Janine´s joke about the cookies! It gave me a good laugh!!! (Austin is in Las Galletas, which translates to The Cookies)

Who is the mayor of Las Galletas?

Cookie Monster!

Peruvians... Those were all in Aljarafe. Except for A´s friend down here but she got transferred to a new hotel and nothing´s permanent yet so we can´t visit her right now. But from what I know she wants to meet with us.

The baptisms... H and P are from Ecuador in Guáyaquil. haha that´s a wild guess on the spelling!

L´s liking the Book of Mormon a lot better now and is feeling the spirit a lot more! :) Don´t send anything I´m just wondering if you know of much spanish MoTab? But if you wish to send a cd of spanish motab then whatever.

Don´t send a package yet. I don´t think it would get here and if it did arrive here after I left it would probably take longer to get to me than if we just waited till I knew my new address!

Well that´s about all the questions I think.

I´m glad to hear that everything is going well back there at home. So was that a hint about where you might move to? I guess you did already say that you want to move to the new temple district. :) I like that part of town! And... well as far as I know... this would be a good time to buy wouldn´t it? Well I love you all and am glad to hear that Jared is getting ready to turn in the papers! There are a lot of missionaries in the family! When does Ryan turn 19? That´s this year isn´t it? It´s exciting to have a baptism in the family too! Then they all get to go to the temple to get sealed too huh? That´ll be exciting! Ahhhh I miss the temple. I´ll have to do my time first I guess!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!

Elder Heywood

The Cliffs - Insane!

Dear Family,

I am sorry I wasn't able to write on Monday. We went to Los Gigantes aka. The Cliffs of Insanity! We weren't able to get to the actual cliffs but we went on an amazingly fun hike! I love running up and down mountains! I got quite the work out from it and I'm glad I'm a little more into that whole stretching thing than I was before the mission! That saved me the next day! I have some fun pictures but I will have to send them some other time because my time is short today.

Well I had a first last week! We were in a lesson with L and as soon as we started I had the thought come to mind that I should talk a little about baptism. I knew where that thought came from. ;) I followed the prompting and started talking about baptism. When I started to talk about it though I just kept going... with guidance and eventually extended the invitation to be baptised. she said that she needed to know for sure whether our church is true. I was totally fine with that since we´ve only met with her 3 times. So we don´t have a date with her but every time we talk to her she is more and more interested! She feels the spirit and feels that our church is true but she just doesn´t recognize that this is her answer to her prayers! She came to church even though it was raining the other day and she plans to come this next week! We met with her yesterday with V, our land lady´s daughter, and that lesson went really well! This week we are trying to not turn in any 0´s and if we get a new investigator and a baptismal date with L it will be possible, because we have our two baptisms this weekend! L is a golden investigator. the only problem she´s had with us is that we gave her the Book of Mormon and she started reading in "Mormon". the next time we met with her she asked if we had something a little more uplifting. She wasn´t too fond of all the wars that she found in Mormon and Ether. haha We had her read from 3 Nephi 11 and then start back from the begining! Things are going a lot better now!!!

Today she asked us if the church has CD´s to buy with music on them. I´m not sure but I think we´ll be able to sniff something out! ;) We will try and get her some MoTab! As soon as we were done with the lesson today it started raining so we talked a little bit more and then went to her house to get out of the rain. (we meet in a park) we listened to the little bit of religious music that she has and then she expressed that she needs more church music. The stuff she had was actually not to bad. It´s really interesting what most people in the world call "religious music." Half of it is the style of music I avoid so I don´t chase the spirit away, while they listen to it saying that that´s how they feel the spirit! I just like the calm style stuff that you can call music and not screamo.

I might get to get in the ocean if the weather calms down and we can baptise H and P in the ocean. That will be cool! I´m baptising H and my companion is baptising P. They are awesome and so ready for baptism.

So yeah I´m excited for the change in missions! I would love to go to Madrid! Yup transfer calls are in two saturdays and I will know then where I´m going! I hope to go to Lanzy to be with Elder Bullen. That would be awesome!

I´m excited for President Turk to be going to Peru. I´ve had 3 baptisms so far and 2 of them are from Peru! It´s a good place! :)

Well I better get this sent before the internet closes on me. At least this time it will have a draft saved! I love Gmail!!!

I love you all! Have a great week!!!

Elder Austin Keith Heywood

Two letters this week . . .

His letter to Dad:

Dad,

I am anxious to hear where President Turk is going! The changes of our mission are going to be crazy! I have a very high possibility of changing to the Madrid mission! I could end up with Elder Justin Hinton!!! That would be Awesome!!!I think I will be changed this transfer and if I stay in the Islands I will have a 99% chance of being changed to the other mission! That would also mean that I could go to the temple if I end up ini Madrid!

Hey who is Evan(s) Heywood? I ran into some English people at church and they said they were baptised by Elder Evans Heywood from Arizona!

As far as lessons go this week... we taught almost twice as many once again and we even had about 3 days off for zone conference. 15 lessons ... 8 were member lessons and 2 were member present lessons but we´ll take what we can get! I think we might just do this 70 hours of knocking doors! :P We´ve been doing some and found a great referral the other day! I hope that goes well!

Well, I love you Dad and thank you for all your support and love!

Con Amor,

Elder Heywood

and to the rest of us:

Hey Everybody,

I have had a great week! We had Zone conference so we were out of our area for almost three full days! But, as you may remember, last week we only taught 8 lessons (but that was double the week before)... Well, this week we almost doubled it again! We taught 15 lessons! It was great!

As you were saying about studying scriptures... There are blessings for doing it!!! It is a commandment to study daily from the words of the prophets. When we study we have the spirit with us (and as members that lasts clear through the day) but we have the spirit with us and as it says in the bible the fruits of the spirit are peace, joy, love,...etc. That is why our day goes so much better when we study every day!

Going back to Zone Conference, it was the best zone conference I had ever had! I feel that it is all due to my increased scripture study. One, because I had the spirit with me. Two, because I Had more knowledge from studying. And three, because I was a lot happier!!! That is one thing that President mentioned in our interview! He said that I seemed to be 1000% better from the month before! And the important thing... I felt it too!!!

I think I will be getting transferes this time... in three weeks... and if I go to another Island I will likely be changed to the Madrid Mission! I could be Justin Hinton´s companion, go to the temple, Serve in the Bilbao, Madrid and Malaga mission areas, and be Taylor Jackson´s companion (An awesome Elder in my CCM group!!!). Speaking of which, Who are these other people that you know from the Bilbao mission? Would one happen to be a Jackson from Gilbert?

Anyway, I love you all and I would have you all know that I am doing a TON better lately... with everything! I even got a valentines package <3 ... from Aunt LeNell!!! :D I was hoping to get the letter I heard about a month and a half ago! It was from Amy and got to Sevilla the week after I left. They gave it to the Mellors and Somewhere along the way it got lost! :´( I don´t think that letter lasts any longer. Well, as Sister Mellor said... It gives me an excuse to write her!!! :)

I love you all and am glad to hear that all is well!!!


Con Amor,

Elder Austin Heywood

Link to Webcam

There is a webcam on Las Galletas Beach, just 30 seconds from Austin's front door. Check it out here.

The Traveling Canaries. . . aka mission re-alignment

This is the letter I received from Austin this week: (his mission president is finished on July 1, 2010)
There is a real letter at the end - it arrived several hours later. . .

Dear missionaries,

The First Presidency has determined that on 1 July 2010 the Spain Bilbao Mission will be dissolved and the boundaries of the Spain Barcelona and Spain Madrid Missions will be realigned to include the areas now served by the Spain Bilbao Mission. President Richard R. Clegg (from the Bilbao Mission) will be the new mission president of the Spain Málaga Mission. In conjunction with these changes, the Elche Stake (from the Barcelona Mission) and La Mancha district (from the Madrid Mission) will be associated with the Spain Málaga Mission. The Canary Islands (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Spain District) will be associated with the Spain Madrid Mission presided over by President Watkins.

This consolidation, together with many others, will be announced in the Church News on 13 February 2010. While these changes will impact certain missionaries this summer, the move will not affect our role as missionaries to baptize worthy converts. Rather, it is a reflection of the great success which we are experiencing in the growth of the Church in Spain.

This is an exciting and positive move as the Church continues to expand throughout the earth and as ward and stake leaders and members take a more active role in missionary work and the growth and development of the Church in Spain. It is an inspired response to a number of important changes in the work in Spain.

First of all, as you well know, the number of missionaries worldwide and the number of missionaries serving in Spain has been decreasing. This decrease is driven largely by a reduction in the total number of 18 and 19-year-olds in the population throughout North America and Europe. We started our mission with 120 missionaries and by July will have 74. Other missions are going through similar reductions. Overall, the number of missionaries serving in Spain will be less than 300 this year. This is a dramatic decrease from several years ago when we had nearly 800 missionaries in five missions in Spain.

Second, the growth of the stakes in Spain has reduced the amount of Church administration done by the missions. Before the creation of the Madrid Stake in 1982, mission presidents served as the ecclesiastical leaders of all members of the Church in Spain. With the recent creation of the 10th stake in the country - the Spain Vitoria Stake, created out of the Bilbao District of the Spain Bilbao Mission - most Church members now live in stakes led by local stake presidents, and missions have responsibility for fewer mission districts.

Finally, in 2002 the First Presidency announced certain changes which gave stake presidents and bishops the responsibility for missionary work in their stakes and wards. The stake presidents and bishops in Spain have taken on that new responsibility in a very effective way, so that even with the reduction in full-time missionaries, the work of baptizing worthy converts has increased dramatically.

We are excited about this coming change and what it says about the growth of the Church in Spain. While we look forward to welcoming into our mission the great missionaries and members of the La Mancha District and Elche Stake, we will deeply miss the wonderful missionaries and members of the Canary Islands. We know that this inspired change will help the work move forward in a country which we all love deeply. I have had the tender privilege of knowing and working alongside Presidents and Sisters Clegg and Watkins. I am confident those of you who will share that privilege will be greatly blessed by their dedication and love. I invite you to include them in your prayers now as they anticipate and prepare for these new assignments.

May God bless each of you with continued success in this great work of gathering the children of our Father in Heaven into His Kingdom through the waters of baptism,

Now for his letter

Dear Family,

Well, this week we taught twice as many lessons. 4 members present and 4 regular lessons. I tried to say that we had no investigators in church last week. We did have 48 people in church though. normally we can get about 10-13 lessons a week. That´s just for this area. Most places in the peninsula will get 15-18.

We had an amazing lesson with H and P yesterday. we talked about the temptations satan is throughing at them because of their decision to get baptised. We also got into what a testimony is and we helped them realize that they really do have a testimony. I shared with them that I didn´t realize I had a "true" testimony until I was in the CCM. I´m still realizing sometimes that I don´t really know what a real testimony is. I´ve always known the definition of what a testimony is but it´s something that you really have to think about and apply to what you are living in order to truly know that you you have a testimony. It´s such an interesting concept that us members of the church take for granted. I am starting to realize what makes it so hard for others to "gain a testimony" of ... whatever it may be. They sometimes just don´t realize what it is that they are supposed to have.

So these past few days have been very stormy! There has been a lot of rain but we haven´t been caught in it. And very luckily sometimes. It got to the point one time that my companion couldn´t see across the street to the other building... I was sleeping! :) But the ocean has been acting up quite a bit! I have some sweet pictures of the waves crashing up over the walls on the boardwalk next to our piso. I also caught a rock as it flew up from the splash! I was pretty fun to watch those waves. It made me think of when the apostles were out on the sea and there was a storm that Christ stopped. I can see why they were afraid for their lives! Water is so powerful!!! I would hate to be stuck on a boat in the middle of that, because I probably wouldn´t be ON that boat for very long. :S

I´ve had many chances to look back on my life before the mission lately. I am happy with many things I did! I spent time with friends hanging out, playing frisbee. I rode bike, I ran triathlons, I finished my Eagle. However there are a couple things I wish I would have spent my time more wisely on. I wish I would have spent a little more time learning how to study to be prepared for the mission where we study every day, and I wish I had finished my Duty to God. I have found that I see a lot of respect in the people that have completed their Duty to God or Personal Progress for girls. I wish I would have worked harder to get it done, but now it´s too late for me... Morgan and Bryan, It´s not too late for you two. And it´s really not that hard. It just takes a little time commitment, and even then it´s not all that much. Just take a little time especially on sundays but a couple days out of the week and dedicate some time to it... Just like you do for church. with a little commitment it will go by without much trouble. I´m finding that with my journal. I try to write in it every day out here on the mission but I get behind a couple days every now and then. It´s soooooo much easier to do it day by day so that it´s a habit and so that I am not trying to catch up all the time. With yours you don´t have to "catch up" It is just the habit that needs formed. When doing church work do as Nike says... JUST DO IT! jaja idk just randomness!