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!

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

From last week . . .

Well I´m glad to here that Kayla´s wedding plans are falling into place and that everything seems to be working out! I´m also glad to here that the house is going to be so much nicer when I get back. So what´s the deal then?... are you moving or not? Or do you still just not know?

Well, about the packages... #2 arrived but I haven´t seen the one with the camera... I´m getting kind of worried! Are you sure you got the address right? You put plaza de astreo 3, BJ4 right? haha jk I got the camera and I´m loving it! I should get the other one in a day or two! I wish I would have gotten it early today because I don´t have access to any money at all! We were planning on getting mission money this morning but it didn´t come so I can´t even use that money to go shopping and then pay it back with my personal card. So we set this day aside to go Christmas shopping but... well that only works when you have money. :´(

As for the baptisms... Yes they are doing well and K, in my opinion, just needs a couple more good friends in the church and she will do great! She´s just a little shy! A, on the other hand, is not shy. She fits in so well! She loves the church and is willing to follow the commandments! And I don´t know what we (the missionaries here) will be doing for Christmas. But that´s why we´ve got 25 days to figure it out!

THANKSGIVING!!! That was a good dinner! It was a young couple that has been married for 5 years and this was the first time they cooked the dinner by themselves. All the other years it was their parents and they just sat back and enjoyed it. This year they were scrambling to figure things out on MarthaStewart.com! haha But it turned out quite delectible!!! We played some American football that morning and I think I may have released a little bit of extra frustration. :/ It was still fun though. Just a little dangerous with the wet artificial turf and metal fences surrounding it. Nobody got hurt though! It was a good day! Well, that night Bryan... the American that we ate with took us home... We got out of the car and realized that we didn´t have my stuff. We called the other missionaries and they called him and he was back at our house in 3 minutes! He pulled up and said, Don´t you love cell phones?!?

They really work miracles sometimes.

I will start doing that gratitude thing every day!

I have asked our family to do what President Eyring spoke of a little while back; each day, no matter how tired you are, before you go to sleep, write something the Lord has done for you during the day. We are doing this every day from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and then we will discuss it on Christmas Eve. It is really hard sometimes, but I understand it gets easier. If you can, I' love for you to join us in this endeavor.

That sounds like a great lesson that Bishop gave! I wish that kind of thing worked for investigators, but they don´t really know the problems that they faced in the Book of Mormon. It would be good for a ward lesson here though! We do have to teach every now and then so I´ll keep that in mind.

Today's combined Priesthood and RS lesson was good. Bishop asked us to list all "our" problems - not with specifics, but what our ward is facing. Then he asked us to move to "The World," naming the things that are drastically worse than ours or that we don't really face. When the chalkboard was pretty full, he asked us to name all the problems that were in the Book of Mormon that aren't already on the chalkboard. . . There really weren't any that we could come up with. Umm . . . there really aren't any. Then he asked us where we could turn to find peace and aswers. He finished by asking us to find book of Mormon references that teach us how to deal with the challenges we face. I really thought he did a great job and gave us all pause to think - with a belief that we could improve in turning to the Book of Mormon for answers, as well as the desire to do so.

I´m glad to hear that I now have 2 Ukrainian cousins!!! And I´m glad that transfers are coming up! And I´M GLAD TO HAVE AN AWESOME CAMERA!!! :D When I showed it to Hermana Mellor, who is a camera person, She said that that is the one she wants to get! I think I made a wise choice!!! Thank You So Much For Sending it for me!

Love Always,
Elder 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