and apparently it's going to be a big change.

Hello everyone! How has you're week been? Mine has been absolutely
wonderful. We have contacted and talked with a lot of people on the
street this week because we're trying to find new investigators. It's
been fun. I love talking to people. It's so interesting to hear about
the many different lives of the people and where their from and
everything. We found a few people that gave us their numbers. One of
them was a girl named Sandra. She was walking home from work and we
stopped her to talk to her. She's super nice. She's evangelist and her
boyfriend is atheist, but she WANTS us to come to her house when her
boyfriends there so that we can share what we know. We have an
appointment set up for tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes. I'm excited
for her.
Well, as far as transfers go, I was expecting to stay here, but I
guess the lord works in mysterious ways. ;) on Friday, I received a
call from President Andersen and he said that the lord has put these
experiences here for me to be prepared for my next area. I'm getting
transferred to San Fernanado to be a Sister Training Leader! I was
quite shocked, it I'm excited to be able to serve in this way.
Although I'll miss Elche and all of the people here, I'm excited for
what this change will bring and all of the things that I'm going to
learn from it. The down side...I have to prepare everything for two
new missionaries here...poor Hermanas. They're not going to know
anything about the area, Ward, members, people, nothing. I was talking
to president in having them come here Tuesday while I'm still here so
that it would be a little better for all of us.
I love the mission and the many edifying experiences that we have
here. I hope you all have a fantastic week! Love you all!
Con amor, Hermana Rowley


With a recent convert and member.

At times, we need a little change.

hola a todos!!!! This week was really great. It flew by fast as does most of the weeks here. On Tuesday we went to Murcia, about an hour away, for our Tri-Zone Conference. It was really good. We truly have inspired leaders called of God. They talked about the importance of working with the members and the importance of teaching from the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is so important in this work, in this Gospel. It literally is the key to knowing the truth. At one point during the conference I was translating for my companion because they were talking in English and she was the only one that couldn´t understand. It was an interesting experience and really helped me realize how much I really need to improve and work on my Spanish. 

On Friday, I received my new companion for a week and a half. She´s a returned missionary from the 2nd ward here in Elche. She finished her mission in March, so it really is a pleasure to work with her and to learn from her. Friday we were also able to meet with a lot of inactives and they all said that they were going to start coming to church again and we were really excited for them. One of them is Fran, the son of our bishop. I was really wanted to meet him and know his story, why he stopped going, his life, etc. He is really nice and super fuerte(strong) with his testimony. He says that it has nothing to do with his testimony why he stopped going. Only that he gradually just stopped. He says though that Natalia, his sister, calls him every Sunday morning to invite him to come to church. He wants to start going to church again too. He said that the other day he was praying for consuelo and just things and then we called him to meet with him so he knew that was an answer to his prayer and basically the reason for why he met with us. He's super ready to come back to church and said that he was going to come. I'm super excited for him to come back to church and start participating in things again and to also be a huge help for the ward. It was a super good lesson with him. He hasn't stopped praying every day, so that's really good, but he's kind of slacked off on his reading of the Book of Mormon so he's going to start reading it again. He mentioned how ironic it was that on his mission he was teaching the Menos activos and couldn't really understand why they were less actives, but now it's him in that position. Pray for him though and for our other menos activo, Carlos. We had a cita with Carlso the same day and he was so excited when we got there, there was just joy radiating of his face and basically the first thing he said was "I read Hermana!" The last time we had assigned him to read Alma 34-36 and he said that he read more, that he read all of Alma! He was super excited about it too. He shared a little bit with us some of the parts that he thought were important. It made me super happy too! He also said that he was still planning on coming to church with us on Sunday. So for some reason or another both of them weren´t able to make it on Sunday so pray for them please that they´ll have the courage to take that first step to come back into the fold. 

Sasha is doing good. He tried dropping us again, but we had a cita with him and really talked about the importance of asking god for answers and letting him respond, so we´ll see how this week goes for him. 

Thank you so much everyone for your support and for your testimonies. You are all amazing examples to me. I hope you all have an amazing week and look for opportunities to share the gospel with others. 

Love, Hermana Rowley

No life is like the mission life...

Hello everyone!!!! This week was really good. We were able to go to a leader´s training meeting this weekend for the stake because we were asked to speak to the relief society leader´s for about 5 min. Before they were split up according to the callings, the Stake President and one of his counselors talked to everyone. They asked us all what qualities a good leader needs. After receiving feedback they proceeded to tell us that to be a good leader we have to have regular temple attendance and pay our tithing. Something they said that I really liked was when they were talking about tithing they said that paying our tithing shows in what place we put our Heavenly Father in our lives. In not paying tithing, we put the world before God. They also mentioned that when we don´t have desires to fulfill our responsibilities in our callings it´s because we are spiritually sick. If we are in a position to where we don´t fulfill our callings, when we don´t go to the temple, when we don´t pay our tithing, we need to do all that we can to "heal" ourselves. This is my challenge to you all too. If you are spiritually sick, read the scriptures, pray, serve, have Family Home Evening, go to the temple. Do all that you can to heal yourself. There is a huge difference in being a member of the church and being converted to the Lord. 

I´m still working with Hermana Benitez until this Friday and then a different girl will come for the last week of the transfer and then we´ll see what happens. I might stay, I might leave. It´s all in the Lord´s hands. This week I officially hit my halfway mark. The time flies by so fast in the mission, but it is worth every single second. 

Our investigators are doing well. Sasha is doing great. Last week we didn´t really have a lesson with him. It seemed as if he was kind of avoiding us, so one night we saw him and stopped to talk to him and he said that we´re wasting our time and that he´s not going to change. He can´t and he doesn´t want to. We had a lesson with him the next day and he had the same mind frame and the next day too, but the same day that we had a lesson with him in the morning, later on he called us and told us that he had been reading a little bit in the Book of Mormon and "looking in the mirror" and didn´t like what he saw and so he really does want to change. One of his major difficulties is believing in God. He doesn´t have a belief or faith in God, but that´s changing little by little. Although he can´t see it, we can see a change in him every time and that he really is starting to believe. 

It was a fabulous week and I hope that yours was just as wonderful. Thank you all for the support that you give me and for the prayers on my behalf. Love you all and have a fantastic week! 

Con mucho amor, Hermana Rowley