Best Birthday Ever!

So, yes I am going to Chiclana de la Frontera!  And yes that is Elder Fetzer´s first area!  However, there is one piece of information that you have not connected yet... That is the ward that the Rodriguez family live in!!!   It was more than a year ago that Juan Rodriguez and his family moved from Aljarafe to Chiclana and he told me to tell President to let me finish my mission in Chiclana!  I did tell Pres. Mellor because I knew he would be long gone and would have nothing to do with transfers then!  I said nothing of this to Pres. Clegg!  Well, we got the call on the way to district meeting this friday telling me I´m headed to Chiclana!  I told other missionaries that I either wanted to finish the mission in Sevilla or Chiclana!  I´m going to Chiclana!!!

My new companion is Elder West.  I´ve heard lots of good things about him and I´m excited!  The only downer to all this... I think that I´m sent to the run down pisos to fix ´em up.  haha  It is a pretty bad piso but from what I hear, the missionary leaving there is a clean missionary!    I don´t have his mom´s email yet but I do have the address to the new piso. 

This week was an amazing week to end on!  We hit the mission goal of 20 lessons in the week! It´s probably the first time that Alcazar has hit it in a long time!  And to top off the record breaking numbers we had two baptisms!  They went really well!  The spirit was way strong as they came out of the water!  This was the first baptism I wasn´t really worried/stressed/nervous for.  I was way calm!  I loved it!  Afterwards, the Branch President told us to leave the water in the font with the hope and faith that the other two sisters would decide to get baptised next weekend!!!  That would just be AWESOME!!!

The Chicken noodle soup turned out a little more like the soup that you make!(thanks to the large pot that Ana lent to us)  It´s usually more like a stew for us!  They all... well almost all... loved it!  The gluten free noodles worked too! (That was for the mom).  The only ones that didn´t like it were those that don´t like vegetables!  We did have left overs and gave some to the Cleggs from Ciudad Real.  They had been traveling all week and hadn´t eaten much for the past two days and came straight to the baptism!  We sent them with some soup!  They were way grateful for that!

I had a great birthday!  I received the letter that you sent on friday and loved the many compliments that were sent my way!  Thank You!!!  We had a Christmas activity and Ana made me brownies!  I got a present from the missionaries/me... a new watch!!!  But it´s not a digital watch and not an analog watch.  It´s a binary watch with led lights!!!  It´s SOOOOO SWEET!!!!!!  Check out the picture!  Then of course I found out (the day before) that I´m going back to be with the Rod´s in Chiclana!  

It is a binary watch.

My sweet birthday watch!

I am happy to be here in the mission!  I am sad to not have a car anymore!  But I am happy to be going where I am going!  I hope the warmer weather heals me!  I´ve had a cold for the past two weeks now!  I have gone through about 3 rolls of toilet paper now and it seems like it will never stop!!!  Any suggestions in case I continue ill next week?

I´m glad to hear that Amber is doing fine!  So what are you supposed to do on ice?  turn into the slide (wheels in the dirrection you want to go?) and let off the gas and not push on the brake?  I think that´s what I remember but I´m not sure!  Luckily I´m not in too great a danger of that happening here!  Especially with the weather like it´s been this past week!  It´s strangely warm!

As far as those ideas for Christmas... and life... (inserted below from Meridian Magazine) I am going to keep those in mind and try to keep them in action!  I love you all and wish you all the best!

He Loves Us One at a Time

As I turned to Heavenly Father in prayer, I felt His counsel to me through His Son. I began to understand that Christ doesn’t atone for all of us at once, en masse. He atones for us one person at a time; He cleanses us one heart at a time, and He loves us one at a time as choice and unique individuals. 

What Part of “Always” Do I not Understand?

I choose Him every hour, consciously, deliberately.  I touch bases with Him and ask what He would have me do this hour. I “listen” to the answering thought or impression, trusting that if I ask of Him bread, He will not give me a stone or allow Satan to, either.  If I ask of Him the truth, He will not lie to me.

And in this act of doing exactly what the Sacrament prayer tells us to do—to always remember Him—I find the gift of guidance and wisdom so far beyond my own that I am constantly astounded at His generosity.

Con Amor,

Elder Heywood

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

Transfer :)

Well, I guess you are not going to get pictures of the baptism... I tried but the computer just keeps freezing up. We had a really good baptism last saturday and the mom was able to come! I ended up baptising her... or trying... three times! :P

I am so frustrated with this computer right now! So you are not going to get a very long letter. Sorry! We also had dinner at their house yesterday... I love spicy food! I miss it! Well, as far as transfers go... I´m getting out of here and spending the next while with Elder Bytheway ... NO RELATION TO JOHN!!! hint hint* That will be down in Tenerife! My area is Los Cristianos. I have the address...at home. I don´t know what fruit to like... I will maybe have some new favorites in a cuple days! :) We have most of the normal stuff here and then a couple more tropical fruits. I will tell you more of that next week! I Can´t type more than 15 words a mintue right now! GRRRRRR

I was told though to tell you that I need my student ID from MVT so that I can get in places cheaper here. So next letter you send to me try and throw that in... if you can find it! I am loving my camera! Thank you so much!!

I love you all and I´m sorry I did not write yesterday and I´m not able to write much today! Apparently the sevilla winter is too much for this computer! It is frozen solid!

I sent a package... there is a note inside explaining what goes to who! Mom is to open the box. I hope you all enjoy everything!

Well, I´m fed up with this computer so...

Have a wonderful week!
Elder Heywood

Missionary work is amazing!!!

I didn´t have my address for you last week, but here it is.

Plaza de Astreo, 3 - BJ 4
41927 Mairena del Aljarafe
Sevilla
Spain

Yes letters would be nice more than just once a transfer! I pretty much wrote my best and most spiritual experience to my president so I am just going to copy that to you!

President Mellor,

This week has gone by a lot faster! Now I´m in the groove of the schedule and walking all day and things are picking up quite a bit! I´m learning to understand spanish quite a bit more now! I found out first hand this week what missionary work is all about! And I´m actually not talking about the baptism. There is a lady in our ward that has been inactive and Elder Going found a scripture that would help her so we had planned to go visit here a couple days later and then the day before we planned to visit her she found us in the streets and we went to talk to her. well, Elder Going did most of the talking... Or I guess the spirit did. Anyway, long story short, She found us, She stopped us, she read what he had asked her to read, She was very receptive to the spirit (we all were... it was very powerful), and she made the decision to come back to church. There were things said that were definitely guided by the spirit and I´m sure the Holy ghost was telling her a lot more things. It´s simply amazing what an open heart, willing mind, and being sensitive to the spirit can do in creating a change in heart in a person... or persons... and creating a love that missionaries need to have for the people!

Having to walk so far to our main proselyting area has turned out better than I thought. It creates a time that our companionship can strengthen. I can only say good stuff!


There it is!

As far as Charmaine´s experience! I had a similar experience!

***Here I am going to insert what I told him about Charmaine so it makes sense to you, the reader. ***

We had a powerfully strong testimony meeting today. One testimony that stands out to me was testifying of the Holy Ghost. Charmaine said she has spent 6 months planning her class reunion up in Washington State. The time finally came and she was excited to go. She arrived and spent some time with the friend she was going to stay with. After driving around the school and the neighborhood, they went home to rest before dinner.

As she was lying in the quiet, she got a foreboding feeling. She brushed it off, thinking it was just nervousness about seeing everyone. But the foreboding feeling persisted. She finally said a little prayer and asked, "Is this the Holy Ghost?" With a confirmation that indeed it was, she talked to her husband. Her 4 day trip was reduced to 7 hours. She is home. She is safe. And she has no idea in the whole world why she couldn't stay.

I think the thing that strikes me the most poignantly is that she asked if it was the Holy Ghost she was feeling. What a profound thing!!! So many times we just question it, but we don't ask. Let's make a habit of asking!

I asked for an answer to something just before going to bed and then I ended up having a dream about it that would answer a definite one way, but I wasn´t sure that it was the the right answer so this morning I asked if that dream was the answer to my question... except my answer was the opposite. Mine was not the Holy Ghost answering my question. And I believe your telling me this experience is a confirmation of my answer! Thanks!

There are 2 missionaries per ward! I must have been pushing the shift button because here the " is on the 2. ¿Comprende? sorry! I am getting better at understanding people! Thanks for the Prayers! They really are answered! When we were over at the Rodríguez´s house for dinner on sunday I understood most of what was being said! just about a 180º turn from last week! She says I am difficult when it comes to milk... but easy to feed me other than that! haha We actually cooked for them last week! I´ve decided that the ovens here stink!!!! They don´t cook hardly anything!

Before I forget... I need a picture of the family! Marilou wants to see a picture of my family and I can't really stall that one for too long! :S She did get baptised and the service went well! before the baptism she was really nervous but now she is really happy about her decision.

And while you´re at it I wouldn´t mind a few pictures... just normal size (Some of the family, friends, whatever you feel like sending me... that would be awesome!) and I can get a picture holder here! I don´t want it to be too expensive!

So Dad might be getting released or become the first counselor huh? Well I hope it goes well for everybody! (The first counselor is moving in a couple weeks.)

We played soccer today and I realized how much I learned in the CCM. I tore it up! I had one really sweet goal that... I was off to the right side... After stealling it... and I took a shot and it went in just barely, and probably nicking the top right corner! It was the best shot I´ve ever made... and yes it was a little lucky! BUT AWESOME!!!

So another story! Background... I have had a tendancy to to see the time on my watch an hour later than it really is. SO... We were really tired the other day and we actually stayed in the piso a little long after mediodía. oops! We are supposed to leave the piso at 5:30 and we got walking and we got into San Juan... Our main proselyting area and it was about 6:10. I decided to play a joke on my comp... who was completely out of it and I said, "Oh! It´s only 10 after 5!" I´m afraid that if I didn´t start laughing when I did that I would have had a punch coming my way! :/ haha That one was great!!! I think it´s about the funniest/meanest joke I´ve ever made! We learn to find our nap time here as precious as the Spaniards!

Hey can some one post my address on the azfriends blog? Thanks that would be nice cuz I would like a letter or two from friends and I think that´s about the only way to get any. Thanks! I´ll be here for probably 4 transfers... or in realistic terms... 6 months! Almost till Christmas! You can do the math! It´s a long time! 24 weeks from the 24th of june! Transfers are on wednesdays!

Oh yeah you asked about our teaching pool! Well, it´s small and hard to catch any of them home! but there are a few that apparently are really good! I just haven´t been able to meet some of them!

Well, Make use of my sword! I love you ALL!!! Thanks for writing! I got to go now!

Con Amor,
Elder Austin Heywood