Another Great Week!!!

Dear Family,

Man if that wasn´t a trunky letter opening! haha It´s ok though because tomorrow is our 11 month mark! :) It´s gone by sooooo fast!!!

Is this THAT trunky? I was merely being poetic in a writer's block moment. couldn't think of much to write to him this time:
Our weather is absolutely perfect!!! The orange blossoms are fragrantly wafting through the air, and seems to be spreading love with the aroma. This week it caught Tara. She will soon be marrying Zachary B from Gilbert. Ashley D, however, is escaping the throes of marriage for a time. She is heading to Australia soon. She speaks next week, and then is off. And Thomas O just returned form Australia.

As far as the 405 members... really that should be the duty of the members but that´s not going to happen any time soon here. We are supposed to have the names of 5 less actives but the branch hasn't called them to tell them we are coming by so we can´t even do that. We still pass by members here and there but usually it´s to no avail.

We did get two new investigators this week. Surprisingly they were both from member references. That can only mean one thing... they just might get baptised. No, they are both really good investigators and we already talked about baptism with one of them. That was in her first, and only lesson, so far. Soledad is the wife of an inactive member and they just moved back to Jaen about 4 months ago. They stopped us one day in the street and gave us their info. The other day they were the only ones that even stopped by the church for FHE. I hope they both get active and that Sole gets baptised.

We had a bon fire this week! Juan and Mariluz had a ton of yard trimmings that they needed to get rid of so we burnt it all. It was all wet so it took forever to get it started and once it got going it was hard to keep a flame but we got most of the stuff burnt. My clothes smelt good after that! :)

Speaking of burning stuff... :o haha My pants got burnt! No, it was not from being stupid with fire. In fact I wasn´t even wearing those pants at the time. M does our laundry sometimes, and it is really nice because she has a dryer, so our clothes come out soft and smelling good. But anyway, she didn´t realize that they were a treated material and put them where she puts all the other laundry as she´s waiting to fold it. That just happens to be on top of a running heater. :/ I now have the white marks of the heater burnt into my pant leg. haha Got any special home remedies for that one? :)

Other home remedies... Hydrogen Peroxide. You said that it will help with the whole white teeth thing. What exactly do I need to do? I´ve been meaning to ask about that one.

And other destroyed things... My shoes that we bought at Pomeroy´s are coming unstitched. Do they have any kind of warranty for somthing like that? It´s not even worn where the stitching is coming out. I think it might be because they really were to small for me. So if you are able to get new ones on warranty then get size13. If not then I´ll think about what to do. I need to buy new pday shoes today so... $$$ :P

I found out on Sunday that the wife of our Branch president is the cousin of David A!!! She was saying that he has some other "parents" up there in the USA! I can´t help but imagine that she was talking about Grammy and Papa! :) They would be great "parents." What is known about David? Where did/is he serving? They would like to know but they don´t have to much contact with his family. oh and what is Blanca´s last name?(not austin´s)

This last friday was Father´s day here in Spain so J and M took us out to a restraunt called El Gambero. Gamba in spanish is Shrimp. I ate some might large shrimp that night and it was really good. I also ate, for the first time, real crab meat. Man that stuff has so much more flavor than the immitation. It was kind of wierd eating the crab. They just give you the legs and you just suck out the meat. I don´t think I ever want to be in a fight with a crab. Those legs are hard! and sharp!!!

We have clean windows in our house. Well, at least we used to. Then in rained on Saturday. But I was just waiting for a bird to try and fly though the windows. You couldn´t tell that they were even there. We also have a clean sink in the bathroom! I love to have things clean! It´s so much nicer!

Well, I have gone for a couple weeks now getting up and reading from the Ensign from last May and I am enjoying my studies a lot. It´s been better than it has been in my entire life... in any subject. I read an article (not in the ensign) by Alvin R. Dyer titled, "The Challenging and Testifying Missionary" and it was a really motivating article for both my companion and it´s awesome!!! You should look it up and read it... maybe with the family. Apply it to member missionary work! You´ll love it.

So, Life is going well. I´m extremely proud of Bryan once again. to answer one of his questions I just remembered... no we don´t get the new era. But I will try to find one. I love you all! Have a great week!

Con Mucho Amor!!!

Elder Austin Keith Heywood

ps. When is Mothers day for the US? I want to know when I get to call you!!! :)

Town of the Lizards

I completely forgot that it was Pi-Day yesterday. I miss those days! It was so fun making pies all day long and giving them away! I remember giving one to Aubrey Noble one year... who is now getting married!!! Craziness!!! I thought it would be another couple years. I can´t believe it! However, it is awesome! Congratulate her for me when you see her!

So this is the town of the lizards?

I looked up Jaén and learned this tidbit: The legend of the Jaen Lizard.

Many legends exist in Jaen but one of the most famous tells of the Malena Lizard, known throughout Spain as the Jaen Lizard, and also the reason why people from the province are called “Lizards”. This animal was said to have terrorised shepherds at the end of the 15th century and eaten their sheep. They didn’t know what to do until one day, a man on a horse, who was said to have been a prisoner condemned to death, arrived on horseback. He called for the lizard to come out and threw a lamb at it in which he had placed a lighted branch. The lizard gulped the lamb down one mouthful and seconds later exploded and died. This led to a Spanish saying which goes; “You will explode like the lizard of Jaen”.

There used to be 4 missionaries here but they merged it a few transfers ago. So yes, we are the only ones in this city. I did know that it was a big olive producer and the biggest in spain but not the world! It´s not surprising! If you get up on a hill and look out all you can see is miles and miles of olive trees! It´s crazy! I also knew that they kind of hoard some of that olive oil to put in the food! They use soooooooo much olive oil here! It´s actually part of the food pyramid here. It goes on the bottom with the wheat. I think they are "supposed to have" a cup or two! :P It is more than I think I had ever had in my whole life before the mission.

The work didn´t change much this week! A couple referrals, pass by and they don´t want anything. However, the church meetings were a lot calmer. It was sooooo much better this week! I think I almost felt the spirit there this time. Elder Pitts and I helped pass the sacrament this week and if we didn´t I think we would have drank un-blessed water. It was us two and three old, old, old men that were almost completely clueless about what was going on. Oh well! We survived and partook of a legitimate sacrament! There are about 45 constantly attending... out of about 450! A measly 10%. It is a Branch but could be two wards if they tried at all.

As far as the carry on bag goes... that was kind of a last minute decision because if I didn´t do that I would have been wearing everything. It was more or less a mutual decision between the four of us. And I almost got stopped when I was boarding because a lady, for some reason, asked to pick up my bag. She then said to her co-worker, "I don´t know who checked that bag." But she just said thank you and let me continue!

The piso is looking a lot nicer! There is no more mold in the cabinet with the plates and stuff... or on the plates and pans themselves. I had a nice long morning of bleaching, vinegar-ing and washing lots of things! The kitchen is CLEAN!!! Now we´ve got a couple other rooms to go. We rewarded ourselves with some Pizza Turco! I don´t know exactly how to explain it but... Filiberto´s size burritos, Delicious rotisserie style beef and chicken made into a giant mouth-watering wrap! Basically one of the best foods I´ve had here on the mission. And for sure it was the best fast food I´ve eaten.

I do remember Tanya. The change in J and M is amazing. It was only one year ago that he was dealing drugs and stuff and now he is getting almost completely out of debt and planning on moving to a better place where 1) he´s not known as the mafia and 2) where the church is stronger. They are awesome!

So when do semesters start at BYU and BYUi around April 2011? I´m going to find out, maybe, if the transfer dates are going to be changed with the mission changes and if they are and school starts in that little gap then I´ll choose the three weeks earlier. I hope you understood that!

Well, I don´t have much more to say other than have an amazing week! Go to the Temple and Keep reading the scriptures as a family!

I love you all!!!

Elder Austin Heywood





ps. I know you were planning on sending me a package... when should I expect that to come?

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???

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