Chiclana!

Alright, first thiings first!!!  I will be spending Christmas at home away from home!!! Yup, with the Rodriguez family!!!!!!!!!!  That will be our pday so you won´t get an email from me the following monday... or the one following new years day.  New years day will also be a pday so you can´t wait till sunday to write!  So, I will be in the Rod´s house and they will have their son calling home as well.  They are going to find out what time they will be calling around 7 tonight so I will somehow get you an email during the week saying what time to call!  It will be easier for you to call me because I´ve never bought a calling card here and neither has my companion so I don´t know where to get one!  

So Kike(Elder Rodriguez) will be calling around 12:00 noon here. That means that you can call me at 10:00am your time! (that´s 6:00pm my time)  Then we will have one hour to talk so have some questions!  This will be the last time you get to call me on the mission!!! 

The other day a member took us home and said that Maricarmen came up to her and started going off about how she knows me and how good of a missionary I am and how excited she is to have  me here!  But... now they all have huge expectations from me!!!   I´ll be finishing well, I guess! haha

We have a great ward!!!  There´re between 80 and 120 people that attend regularly... depending on the time of year!  We have regular meetings and great leadership!  I´m way stoked to be here!  And my health is getting better!  The only thing I will be missing is the fun part of Christmas!  The package from richard did arrive on tuesday and I picked it up.  However, your package arrived on thursday... in Alcazar.  I will get it on the 8th of January... just in time for el día de los reyes magos!  So I will be a little spaniard and celebrate 3 kings day instead of Christmas this year!

That was a way cool story!  I love when lessons turn into a powerful testimony meeting!  That´s the kind of thing that really keeps/brings people in the church!  N will never forget the spirit and love that she felt there!  Personal invitations are key in creating relationships!  That´s why we make invitations to give to people whenever we have a baptism!

As far as baptisms go... They did not end up baptising the two sisters... yet!!!  They´ll come around soon!!!  And we might have a baptism soon with the roommate of a recent convert!!!  She is a single mom of a 5 year-old and has tonnns of potential!  We´re just waiting for after Christmas when she can come to our church.  She is kind of committed to go to the evangelist church because her daughter is part of their Christmas program.  She will come soon!!!

Well I gotta go!  I just want questions from you all on Christmas!!!  And I want Richard to guess who this is!... 

hint: lanzy

Con Amor,

Elder Heywood

New President, Companion and area (temporarily)

I am glad to hear that Elder Swenson is doing well.

I did get the package and I am enjoying it a lot! I haven´t opened the peanut butter yet because I... well you´ll understand later in the letter. Sometimes I think you might be a litte too protective of my trunkiness... No pictures of the sailboat or my room! haha The altoids were definitely a huge bonus! And I love the ocean spray!!! Thanks for the books of music! I think I might just start using those for a while to play in sacrament meeting! An oven 5 feet wide?!?!?!?!?!? That´s AMAAZING!!! Can I have one? ;) you know what? I just want the plans to their house and I´ll build one of my own!!! hahaha

So how is Tara Schlappi doing? That was a hard letter to read, but it was so amazing at the same time! She has a strong testimony! I want to hear any important updates! ok?

Santy and Igor did end up at the temple! They had an amazing time there! Santy was able to be baptised for his grandpa and great-grandpa! It was great for them to be there! They also shared great testimonies yesterday in church! We now have one less less-active member!!! We are so excited for them both!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We met the new president, President Clegg and his wife! They are way awesome! This is going to be a great 9 months with them! He greated Elder Hafen and there were a couple comments made to inform Pres. Clegg that he´s going home in less than a week... Pres. Clegg said, "Then I don´t know what you´re doing in a week!" Then he turned to me and said, "But I do know what you are doing in a week." We had the little meeting with everybody and then he told me and Elder Solari he needed to talk to us. He talked to Solari to tell him who his new companion is. Then he called me in...

He said that he thinks I need to train, but... My new companion (whoever it will be) is waiting for his visa. I will be waiting for him in Algeciras with Elder Bullen, who is in the same boat. He´s killing off his companion right nw and waiting for a new kid. Elder Bullen is one transfer older than me. And you can find out what he look likes by looking at my aljarafe pictures! He was born in the same district as me. I am looking forward to this soooooo much!!!

It´s going to be wierd leaving an area for two weeks and then returning! We have our branch missionaries committed to pass by and visit our investigators and read from the Book of Mormon with them. Those missionaries are Santy and Igor! :D

We have what seems like a whole evangelical congregation trying to beat us down and claim that everything we preach is a lie! We´ve now talked to 5 people in 2 days. :P They make me so mad!... speaking of love! haha I just hate when they tell me I´m wrong and won´t alow me to defend myself. whatever! Just one more trial I guess!

Well, I kinda would like a picture of that memorial for Robert. I was probably one of the few people that knew his name back in the day. The guys at the shop knew him from way back and called him by his real name! I don´t think I was still there when he made it public that he wanted to be Robert again. Robert "Dizzy" Disbrow has been a Mesa icon for many years. You can read just a little about him here He also has nearly 5000 facebook friends ~ Diz-Z is his name there.

Anyway, I look forward to these two weeks and the fresh bottle of Peanut Butter... AND PECANS when I get back to Jaén!!!

Thank you so much for everything!!! I just remembered hte one thing I can´t forget... the FRISBEE!!! AND THE MUSIC!!! I will enjoy that stuff very much!!!

There is a mission blog that Hermana Clegg has up. Check it out!

Love you all!
Elder Austin Heywood

Arrived in Jaén

Dear Family,

It is a good time to be in this area. The weather is a little bit wet and pretty cold but I´m doing well. I ended up with a piso find of Elder B´s in Sevilla so I have a hoody now and I´m loving it. I guess I just have to be glad to not be in Madrid right now. However, I do wish I would have ended up there in the end. Oh well! I´ll survive! I know it´s a while away but I wonder where I´ll be during next winter.

As far as transfers go, everything went smoothly... after I finally got my carry-on bag down to weight. I didn´t think they would be weighing it but apparently they started weighing them lately. It had to be 9 Kilos! I think that´s about 20 pounds. Well I had 15 Kilos in there. :/ So I went back to where the other Elders were sitting and unloaded almost all my stuff, went and reweighed it and then loaded it back up. It wasn´t the absolutely most honest thing to do I´m sure but for missionaries in the islands that´s almost impossible.

My 4 hour lay-over in Madrid wasn´t bad. I wrote a letter and when I finished it I had to use the restroom, but I didn´t want to leave my stuff alone... Natuarlly. So I looked around and decided that the girl across the way who had just sat down looked pretty trustworthy so I l eft my stuff with her. When I returned... she wasn´t there, and neither was my stuff. Joke! She was there still doing something on her computer. I said thanks and asked where she was from. She´s from brazil. We continued to talk... in english once she found out that I´m from the US and we talked for about 2 hours. I had brought a Book of Mormon with me and wasn´t going to let it get to Jaen but it didn´t do me any good because she didn´t really speak spanish all that great. She´s a cool girl. She came and was touring Europe for a month. She was going to meet a friend here but the day before she came she got a call saying that her friend didn´t want to continue traveling. So she´s been here a month on her own with no itinerary whatsoever. So my 4 hour lay-over turned into a new friend from Brazil! :)

We got to my piso at 11:30 at night on Wednesday. :P We have a way nice but quite dirty piso. The nice is good, and the dirty will be taken care of. It´s just me and Elder Pitts that live there now. There used to be 4 missionaries there but they closed the area and now we are flying solo here in Jaen. It´s a Branch for all of Jaen. And our branch is newly wed (with 8 kids) or nearly dead. I think my purpose here is to learn how to make my study more spiritual.

We do have one good family in the ward. They have strong testimonies. The mom has been a member for a while but was inactive for a while. The husband just got baptised 8 months ago and they are planning on going to the temple soon. My last lesson with L... It went really well! I wanted to set a fecha with her... of course. When it come down to it ishe wanted to know more about Joseph Smith first. Since all our beliefs in the church, Book of Mormon and many other beliefs are based on testimonies of the first vision she wants to learn about him and his story and gain a testimony of him first. She´ll be baptised soon enough.

We had no idea when the webcam updated. So I´m sure we got a few weird looks but i don´t care because they were never going to see me again. It was right before we went to see L and FHE and right after that I took off to sleep in the Zone Leader´s piso up north. I had A crying again. She really did not want me to leave!

I´ve seen the same thing as Bro. Tebbs has. I can see a big diference in the times when I study the Book of Mormon and when I just kind of read something here or there just to kill study time. I will try to be more consistent on the studying.

As conference comes up I am going to reading a conference talk, from past editions, one every day. As far as spanish study I don´t Study all that much but I do write in my journal in spanish every day so I learn new things that way. That also means that for the last 16 months of my mission none of you will be able understand what happened except for Richard... that is until I translate it back to english.

Well, the area here is big and we have no investigators as of now. I have pleanty of practice with that type of work! :P So, I´ll try and work my way though it and find some good investigators. Onward and Forward.

Anyway, that´s about all I´ve got to share this week! I hope you all have a great week! I love you and hope to hear more good things next week!

Lots of Love
Elder Austin Keith Heywood

Well???

I´M GOING!!!

I´m going to be in with an Elder from my group. (Please email me - his mom - for his new address. He'd love to hear from you!) His name is Elder Pitts. I will be in the coldest part of the mission. It will be a long day! I leave the airport here at 10:30am, I have a 4 hour lay over in Madrid and then I arrive in Malaga at 6:40pm. Then I hop a bus to Jaén and that takes about 2-2:30 hours. I´m not really looking forward to this travel... unless I´m able to go tour Madrid. haha JOKE!!! Elder Bytheway is getting Elder Namelka. They´re from the same group and will be going home in April. I have called both my transfers so far... well this one I changed my guess once I realized that I only got the amount of money you receive when you are in the peninsula. Before I had guessed somewhere in the islands.

We do not have a fecha with L yet. :( But she did come to church and enjoyed it a lot. She is way awesome. We will be meeting with her this tuesday so I hope to set the date then. I gave my testimony in church as a leaving missionary. Before church I told my land lady that I was leaving and she didn´t believe me. Then I got up and gave my testimony and she started crying. After sacrament meeting I was talking to her and she was just crying her little heart out. Do missionaries give their testimonies when they arrive and leave a ward there? I can´t remember.

So mom, you did not miss anything by not being at the computer, because I completely forgot about that. I had it written down and everything but we got a little occupied. I feel so bad about that, because I told you I would be out there and I wasn´t.

So now we´ve got a green truck again? I feel like I´m going to come home to a completely different family... well, as far as what we own. New cars, new house, new nephew, new brother. All I ask that you keep is my sailboat. I´ve been so trunky for that lately... walking passed the ocean every day and seeing sailboats out on the water. Oh well, I am leaving that distraction as well.

H and P are doing well and they are looking forward to the temple visit in a year to be sealed. :) We also found a new investigator this week... well, she used to live here and she was receiving the lessons and had a fecha but moved back to Africa about a year and a half ago. Then this week we found her on the bus with her mom who got baptised back then and she came to church. She wants us to basically pass by whenever we can and wants to get baptised. she speaks pretty good portañol (portugués and español). :) Elder Bytheway is excited because he loves portugués.

You had a good lesson in RS. I received the same one this week, but mine was learned the hard way. :/ I´ve been doing so well in temperance for so long...years... and I randomly blew up over something so small. The other lesson that I´m glad I had learned back a while ago was quick to repentance. It makes such a difference. Waiting and not repenting out of shame just is not worth it. Thanks for helping me learn these things!

It wasn´t a very fun filled week. I did realize, however, how judging the members are of the missionaries here. I´m kind of curious what they think of me. But after what I got told by some of them on sunday I know that I should not listen to their opinions. They have a distorted view on what a missionary is supposed to be and if you don´t conform to their ideas then you are a horrible missionary.

Well I don´t have much more time or things to say so... I´ll catch you all on Monday... unless you want me to go out to the webcam again... and this time I´ll go! I will be out there at 4:40-4:50 on tuesday afternoon. I know that´s probably going to be tough for some of you but someone can get on and save the picture off the internet. Sorry once again!!!

I love you all,

Elder Heywood

I saved the pictures - Click on them a picture to make it bigger - then you can see the handsome elders. . . at least a little. . .

Do you really think they knew when the update would happen, or were they being crazy the whole 10 minutes???

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