January 27, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!!!! Well another week in the mission field! This week was a really good one.

Well, I will start off with the bummer news. Laura and Scott have moved!!!! They are the cute American couple that we stayed with for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Oh man, we are so bummed! We went to their house one last time on Thursday and had a good time. We even made them an anniversary dinner because it is this week and they will miss being together. It was great. Scott got a job in Antarctica, and Laura and their little girl are going back to Texas. It is the worst situation in the world that just makes you want to die for them. Hard separation. We will definitely miss them! Keep them in your prayers because being away from family for that long is hard.

So, I went to Valdepeñas this week. Whew! It is cold up their! It´s a beautiful city though. We had some great lessons. One made me think a lot. We were teaching this guy, and his roommate came in and sat down to listen. We gave the first lesson and at the end, gave the baptismal invitation. The one guy accepted it, but his roommate just sat there in silence. The Spirit got so stinking strong at this point. The room was just filled. I wish you all could have felt it. Just incredible. So this guy says that his family is all Mormon, so we asked him if he thought they were happy. He said that they are the happiest people he knows and he knows it is from the gospel. Then we asked if he wanted that same happiness. Whew, the Spirit just kept getting stronger and stronger. He sat there for a while and then told us that he was baptized a long time ago, but wants nothing to do it now. He just shut it down. It was sad because the Spirit was so strong and then he just slapped it away. He felt the Spirit and then shews it off. We were talking about how that happens and how it is so hard to see people who could have so much in their lives, but then shut out what will bring it to them. The girls there are going to work with him now though.

One of our cute 8 year old investigators Alba moved away this week. We had one last lesson with her and we taught about  how a man was waiting in the water for God to save him. A boat comes to help him, but the man says he is waiting for God. An airplane comes, but the man says the same thing. Well, he ends up drowning. The moral of the story is suppose to be that God works through other people a lot of times, but we hadn´t said that part. Well, Alba had 2 friends over and before we could say the moral of the story, one little girls face got super shocked and said, ¨So God just let him die???!!!¨ Haha, it was pretty funny. We cleared everything up, but just her look made us giggle afterward.

Alright, well those are all the highlights of the week! Next week is the council in Málaga.  We are thinking of doing splits with Jaen afterwards since it is so far from here, so I might not be able to email next week. We will see. Hopefully we will get a little time. Love you all and thanks for everything!

Hermana Kunz

 

Flamingo dress shopping!

Silly girls!

 

January 20, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos otra vez!

Back at it again with another week. This week was really good. We did two splits. One I stayed here in Dos Hermanas, and the other I went to Sevilla. It was a great exchange in Sevilla. We met with a man who doesn´t want to believe there is one church and we had a great discussion. In the end when we invited him to baptism, he couldn´t accept that he had already been baptized, so we invited him to pray about it. He sat there for a while and the Spirit got really strong and he said he would. Oh wow, it was such a cool lesson.

So we did some missionary work in Sweden! There is a less active guy named Manuel, and I have talked about him before. He is really trying to make a change so that he can come back and make it to the temple. Anyway, his girlfriend is in Sweden...she just moved there and doesn´t know the language or anything. She is less active as well, but she really wanted to find the church there. We called the mission office in Sweden so they could call her. She was living with a friend also from Spain who is not a member of the church. Well, the missionaries weren´t calling her and she was waiting for so long. But one day she was just walking along and she found the church on the street! So she went and her friend wanted to come, so now the missionaries are meeting with them both! They have to have someone from the ward translate everything. It´s so cool! Missionary work everywhere!

My nametags got stolen last week in church by this family so I had to go the whole week as Elder Warburton. He said it was better having some kind of nametag than having no nametag at all. So I was an Elder this week. I ordered new ones. The family did give me back one of them though.

Alrighty, well that´s all for now. This week, I´m going to Valdepeñas to do splits with the hermanas up there. It´s going to be coooooold! Thanks everyone for everything and hope all is well. Love you all!

Hermana Kunz

January 13, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!!!

Well, I have more time to write today so I will start off by talking about the New Year! Sorry it was a while ago. This has been quite the year I´ll tell you what! I feel like I have grown a lot being out here on a mission. I don´t think I have ever grown so much than I did this year and I´m so happy for all the experiences I have had. Being on a mission is quite the ride. And most of this year will be filled with even more mission experiences! Lucky me. The mission is the coolest thing in the world. One of the hardest things, but one of the most rewarding. 

So this past week, we had zone conference which means Hermana Wilcox and I had to give part of it. But this time we talked about something unusual. We talked about love and how we need to first recognize the love God has for us before we can try to teach someone about it. We also talked a lot about how the people we teach need to feel that love that we have for them and the love that God has for them before they are going to change because one is more willing to change when they feel that love and support. It was actually a good thing to talk about and we learned a lot from it.

I am officially an expert on ironing. There is a woman in our ward who has back issues and asked us to come iron the clothes she had. We were thinking a basket full but when we got there...holy mother of gondor...we were ironing for hours, haha. But she fed us at the end so it turned out all right.

Everything else is going well. This week was a pretty tough week as far as lessons go. We couldn´t seem to get as many as we had hoped for. But, what we always say is that when we have a bad week like this, it only means that it can go up from there. Haha, looks like we needed some humbling.

Alright, well thanks everyone for everything. I miss you all and love you all! Hope all is well!

Hermana Kunz

January 6, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!!!

Well, we are going to Málaga today for a meeting so I have about 10 minutes to write. So this will be short. 

This week was super fun. It was New Years so we went to a member´s house and had fun there. They have a fun tradition here. At midnight, they eat 12 grapes in 12 seconds. It was pretty funny. Everyone trying stuff their faces with grapes and swallow them in time. We should do it in the states.

Also, they have a fun holiday called Kings Day. It was insane. Yesterday they had this huge parade where all these floats came around and threw candy everywhere. I mean loads of candy. There was candy all over our shoes at the end and we were all sticking to the streets. Last night the kings came to everyones´ house to give them presents. It´s exactly like Christmas in the states but Kings Day is 10 times bigger here. So now Christmas is officially over. But we are just in time to start preparing for next year! Never too early for Christmas music!

We also had a girl from the ward do a mini mission with us. Her name is Maria Isabel and she is amazing. She is planning on going on a mission in December and she is going to blow it out of the water. She helped us out a lot, especially because she got to meet all of our new investigators and now they know someone. It was really fun with her.

We did two splits this week. One with Cordoba and Hermana Wilcox went and one with Jaen and I went. Jaen is amazing! It´s all built on a mountain. Really fun. Plus I was with Hermana Lyons and she is a really great missionary. There is a lot to learn from her.

Dang it, I feel like there is so much to write but I am out of time. Well, thanks everyone for everything and I love you all! Hope you have a wonderful week!

Hermana Kunz