Finishing a great week and preparing for another...

Hello everyone!!!! How is everything going??? I´m really enjoying Elche. It´s really pretty here and the people are really great. It´s a bit bigger than my previous area and I love it. There are a ton of Palm trees here too. It´s known to be the palm tree capital of Europe, and I believe it. The picture is a view from our window.

This past week in our mission was a "Week of Consegration." We worked hard to really do the Lord´s work and find new investigators that are prepared and we found 6 new investigators. One of the people that we found, that we have a cita with today is a woman, well, I´ll just tell you the story. We had just finished English class and our cita cancelled on us and all of our back-up plans didn´t work out either, so we were on our way home and we walked passed this woman. My head was down because I was writing something in my journal, but I felt a slight impression of something when she walked by, but we kept walking and my companion said that she had a really strong impression that we should talk to this lady, so we walked really fast to catch up with her. By this time, she was about three streets away, so we hurried along and caught up with her. It turns out that she´s met with the missionaries before, but about eight years ago and she´s really nice and we have a cita with her today, so we´ll see how it goes.

We have an investigator, M, that I met for the first time the other day. He´s about 20 years old and from Ecuador. My companion and her companion before me had only talked to him once or twice before. We met with him and talked to him about the Plan of Salvation. For some reason I was really struggling with the language during this lesson, well, more than usual at least. The spirit was there though for sure and he´s very prepared by the Lord in this time. We asked him to baptized and he said yes! We don´t have a baptism date right now, but little by little he´ll understand more. He has a lot of questions though and wants to know for himself, so please pray for him!

The past couple of days were really hard. Basically all of our plans failed on us and so we were walking around a lot to our back-up plans and knocking on doors. In addition to walking around a lot, it´s REALLY hot here right now, and apparently this isn´t usual for this time of year. I hope it cools down a little bit or I´m going to die...well, not literally, but figuratively. ;) My companion and I have decided though, since our plans keep failing on us, it´s God telling us that we need to continue to work hard to find new people that are prepared. We´re continually praying for help to do exactly that, so please pray for us too!

Last Sunday and this Sunday, the choir director asked me to play for choir for those Sundays because they didn´t have a pianist for those days, but yesterday, he asked me to play for the actual thing in June, so now I get to play the piano for this big huge program of singing and narrating. Pray for me that I do well! Just pray for me for everything. :)

This week is going to be a long, but fantastic week. I get to go back to Sevilla!!! Basically an all day trip back there. All of the missionaries in our mission are going and two general authorities are coming to talk to us, so it will be really great. I´m really excited for it!

Well, this is it for this week. Thank you all for everything you do for me. I really appreciate the e-mails that I get from you all. They really mean the world to me. Although it´s hard at times, missionary work is the best and I wouldn´t trade this experience for the world. Continually look for opportunities to do missionary work, because there is no other joy that can replace this one. Love you all and hope you have a great week!!! I know I will!

Love, Hermana Rowley