I love the mission

Hola a todo! This week was a great learning experience. That´s what I love about the mission so much. I have learned, am learning, and will learn so much more. This week I´ve learned that no matter how hard (or hot) it gets you have to keep going. You have to "forget yourself and go to work." We had intercambios this week with the SHE´s and something that the one I was with told me was what someone told her onetime "Work until it hurts." Many times that´s how it goes, but I think it should be work until after the pain because that´s when we can see the blessings. The blessings come after the trials.

This week we had an eating cita everyday. We didn´t eat lunch/dinner at our piso all week. It was crazy and I´ve never eaten so much food in one week in my life. They feed us here like we´re giants or something. It´s really good food though, it´s just a lot.

It was kind of a slow week, but we did a lot of things with the members that I think´s going to help us have more missionary work in the next few weeks. We talked a lot with the members about friends that they could share the gospel with and to think about and pray for them, so it was really good in that aspect.

Well, I don´t know what else to say at this point. Any questions? I love e-mails! :) Thank you all for the support you´ve all giving me through everything and keep helping the missionaries where you live and praying for all the missionaries, because we definitely need prayers and help in this work. Love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!!

Love, Hermana Shanda Rowley

Another great week, as I predicted.

Aloha everyone!!! I am just doing absolutely fantastic here in Elche. As I was expecting, this was such a great week for us and for me especially.

First off, remember that woman that I told you all about last week? The one that we had to run to catch up with? Well, we had a cita with her on Monday and she was so excited to learn. She says that she doesn´t know what to believe because one religion says this, another says that, and so on. We were talking to her about the Book of Mormon and we were reading Moroni´s promise with her, Moroni 5:3-5 and she was reading it and kept reading until the end of verse 7 and when she finished she was so excited, she started clapping her hands and basically jumping up and down in her seat exclaiming, "It´s true! I know it´s true!!" She was even crying. We could feel the Spirit really strong there and it was such an amazing experience to see a reaction like that. We´ve had another cita with her since, and she even came to a Stake Relief Society with us. She really likes it so far and we´ll continue teaching her and see where it goes. Her name is ....A. (haha some people in my family laugh at me/with me for using only letters and say that all they have to do is say the alphabet in their prayers and they get everyone. :P It is pretty funny.)

Tuesday we started the long trip to Sevilla. We basically spent all day in a bus and stayed the night at a hotel there in Sevilla for the conference the next day with all 201 missionaries in our mission. The conference was a-ma-zing. Many people thought that this conference would be all about getting ipads, which it was, but it was more about principles of the gospel that we need to use in our lives, such as repentance, agency, listening to the Spirit, and so much more. This conference is not only going to help me in the mission, but help me in my life. They talked a lot about is being agents not objects and how we should be in control of our decisions and the things we do daily. The people that came to speak to us were Elder Dyches of the Seventy and Elder Allen of the Missionary Department. Here are a couple of quotes that they shared with us that I really like...

"Are you an agent? or are you an object?" Sometimes we let things control our lives when we should be the ones in control.

"If you always do what you´ve always done, you´ll always get what you´ve always got." and to go along with the first, "If you´re not satisfied, quit doing the same things." Sometimes we´re not happy about some aspects of our lives, but we don´t do anything to change it. Another one..."A bird sitting in a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because it´s trust is in it´s own wings."-unknown

As we strive to have the spiritual strength to overcome all, we won´t ever be afraid of the unknown and unexpected.

I just learned so much there that I want to apply in my life, especially my life when I get home. We spent the rest of the day after that in the bus and we arrived in Alicante at about 1:00 in the morning, so we spent the night in the SHE´s (Sister Training Leaders) piso and went to our area the next morning.

Yesterday was a great day. I was able to Skype home to my family! It was good to see some of them and talk a little bit.

Well, I don´t have much more time to write. I hope all of you are doing well and I appreciate all of the e-mails! Love you all!

Love, Hermana Shanda Rowley

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

New Area

hello everyone!!!! How are you?? I am doing great! It was a long, but fantastic week. I spent the first part of my week packing and saying my goodbyes to some people and then Wednesday, took the long trip over to Elche. Elche and Huelva are on complete opposite sides of the mission, so yes it took all day long and I had to switch buses at one point. Huelva was such a great starting point, and I´m excited to learn even more here in Elche. My companion is a native and basically only speaks Spanish. It´s awesome! It´s definitely testing my Spanish skills, and I have already learned so much just the few days that I´ve been here. It´s definitely a help with the language having a native companion. She´s really awesome though and I love her!!

Our district consists of 5 companionships, 10 missionaries. Half of them are native speakers and half of us are foreigners. It´s really great just being surrounded by the language. I understand almost all of it too, and the speaking is coming along slowly, but surely. When people talk really fast though...no way. I understand the concept of what their saying, but there is no way that I could translate it word for word.

The members here are great too. This weekend, we had Stake Conference here in Elche and we went to Alicante because the church is newer there although it´s the Elche Stake. The conference was great and really focused a lot on missionary work. 

I don´t have much else time to write, but I just wanted to let you all know that I love you all and that missionary work is the best!! Please please please involve yourselves in the work wherever you may be. There is no other substitute for the feeling you get when you´re doing missionary work. 

Love you all and I hope that you have a fantastic week!!!!

Love, Hermana Rowley

p.s. the picture is of us missionaries in Huelva our last P-day before transfers

Transfers

Hello everyone!!!

How is everyone doing?? This week was absolutely fantastic, per usual. We were able to share a lot of the talks from conference with some of our investigators and they really seemed to like it. We had cleaning checks for our pisos this week and it went really well. I really enjoyed the scripture that they shared with us in D&C 109 about the dedication of the Kirland temple and how our homes are like temples and we need to always remember that.

We´re teaching this family here that are from Bulgaria and their really awesome. They´re very accepting of what we have to say and they relate it a lot to what they already know. They´re willing to learn too, which is super cool. Basically they´re whole family lives in that neighborhood, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Almost every time we go over there, we meet someone new. Yesterday we went and there were three new girls and two of them and one of the others that we´ve already met all wanted a Book of Mormon for themselves. It´s a really cool experience and every time after we go over there I just feel so good and I know that all of their family is going to be baptized eventually. It might not be super soon, but I know that it will happen.

So Saturday, we got calls for transfers. It´s official, I´m getting a new companion...and a new area!!! We were all expecting my companion to leave since she´s been here for three transfers already and we´re done with training, so she was telling everyone here that she was leaving, but God works in mysterious waysand now I´m leaving. I´m a little sad because I was all mentally prepared to stay, but it will be good. I´m getting transfered over to Elche, which is on the complete opposite side of the mission than what I´m on now. It´ll take about a whole day to get there with switching buses and everything inbetween. I´m going to have a native companion, so I´ll be speaking a ton of Spanish, which will be good. I´m excited for this new change and all of the new people I´ll meet and everything I´ll learn.

Yesterday was my last day in church here and we had testimony meeting, which was amazing. The Spirit was so strong and I got up and gave my testimony. A lot of the testimonies were centered on missionary work and how important it is. I love missionary work and I hope and pray that all of you are finding ways to share the gospel. I also love hearing about all of the missionary experiences you all are having. Remember, the field is white, ready to harvest.

I hope you all have a fantastic week, I know that I will!!!

Love, Hermana Rowley

Happy Easter/general conference

What a wonderful time of year we have to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Did you all watch the #BecauseHeLives video I talked about last week? If not, I encourage you to watch it and try to share it with as many friends as you can! It truly is beautiful!

This week was a crazy week in Spain with Semana Santa. Every day the centro was packed full of people and there were processionals every day in the centro of Jesus Christ and the Virgen Mary. It´s an interesting thing to see. Some of it´s sad though when they have the processionals of Jesus being crucified and the music is just so haunting. I love that we celebrate His resurrection and that He lives. What a wonderful gift we have with the knowledge of the gospel. 

General Conference was absolutely great! With the time difference, the first session are from 6:00-8:00 at night and then we watched the second sessions the following day, but I was able to watch them all, including the General women´s session, but not the Priesthood session. I heard that it was really good though and I´ll probably go back and read/watch the talks from that later. I loved every talk, but my most favorite talks were by President Uchtdorf, Wilford W. Andersen, and Michael T. Ringwood. I learned so much and I can´t wait to apply it in my life in the mission and my life after the mission. One of the things that really stuck out to me was the saying, "Don´t let the fear of failure overshadow faith." Do we have true faith to do anything and everything the our Father in Heaven asks of us. At times it´s really hard. It´s hard to share the gospel. It´s hard to stop a bad habit. It´s hard to change your life for the better to follow God, but we shouldn´t let the fear of failing to do so overcome our faith. Faith is the first principal of the Gospel. Without faith, we have nothing. I encourage you all, if you missed any session to go back and watch it. There is NOTHING more important than hearing the word of God from the prohets on what we need to do in our lives in these last days. I have really learned to love General Conference and I hope all of you realize the importance of it. 

That was the highlight of my week and not much else out of the ordinary happened. Our investigators are doing good and some of them came to Noche de Hogar and some others came to General Conference. The work is slow, but it´s all in the Lord´s timing. I hope you all have a wonderful week and I can´t wait to hear from you all about how everything is going. I love getting e-mails! ;) Love you all and have a fantabulous week. Make it the best week of your life. 

Love, Hermana Rowley

Happy Easter

Hello everyone! 

How is it going?? Once again, I do not have that much time to write, but I just wanted to write you all and ask you to take advantage of this Easter season to share the gospel with friends and family. Some of you have probably been hearing about or even seeing the new #BecauseHeLives video, but if not, here it is: http://www.mormon.org/easter?cid=HP_FR_3-27-2015_dMIS_fMRMN_xLIDyL1-A_. I encourage you all to watch it and to share it with someone else too. It´s a wonderful thing that we are able to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ this time of year. Also, General Conference!! I´m so excited to listen to our prophets and apostles speak to us and I hope you all are too! It´s not all of the time we get this opportunity and I didn´t really realize it until I was out here on the mission. I hope you all are doing great and I love hearing from everyone and I hope to hear from more people too! I love you all and hope you have a great week!!

Love, Hermana Rowley

P.S. We sometimes get hit on by weird people in the streets, but we heard a pretty funny one the other day from a guy. He said "Oh how beautiful is the word of God." haha Even though he was a weirdo, it´s a pretty good pickup line. ;) Anywho, have a fantastic week!