Semana Santa

´Sup!

     This week was not as exciting. Time is actually going by really fast. I hope that that is a good thing.
     We got five new investigators by Tuesday and we were psyched but then once again every single one of them dropped us by Sunday. We are suddenly having crazy success finding investigators... but keeping them is a problem. Nobody likes commitment. I am willing to take advice here.

Hannah's "chapa" in front of the Alahambra

     Another issue that we had this week is Semana Santa. Okay really it was super cool. Basically, because it is Easter week, all of Spain was out on the streets and there were parades every day and just lots of festivities. But all of that is sort of an issue for missionaries who are trying to visit people. Nobody was home all week, including members. And contacting was awful because, well, normally everyone here is an unpracting catholic or catholic by tradition but they are suddenly very practicing during semana santa. It might also have something to do with the alcohol that was being sold on every street corner. Apparently the celebrations are one of the biggest in Granada. Claro.

Granada

Hannah and Hermana Muse in their new Easter clothes
that they bought at the "Chino"

     So we have this investigator that I like to call our eternal investigator. She is this old spanish lady named Araceli. she has been visited on and off by the missionaries for (get this) 18 years. And I totally get why nobody has officially dropped her. She totally has a testimony and she reads out of the Book of Mormon when we ask her to and she comes to church every once and a while and everything. But she refuses to pray. I think her problem is that she just is afraid that we are right and she will have to do something about it. So everytime we go and visit her we do it with the intention to drop her. She doesn't want to change and she has her agency. But every time we go, we either have a really spiritual lesson and she progresses just a tiny bit or she buys us something. This time she gave me a spanish grammar book from the sixties but our lesson was kind of a mess. She told us that there was no possible way that she could believe in Adam and Eve. So I asked if she had prayed about it. Of course she hadn't. So I pulled out a scripture. Well, I had read this scripture in my personal study earlier in the morning (in english)and it talked about praying but I couldn't really remember exactly what it said. and so I pulled it out and skimmed through it in spanish and it seemed good enough so I had her read it. But About half way through I realized it says something about people not praying and not receiving answers because of the hardness of their hearts. SO AWKWARD. But then she finished reading and I didn't know what to say and I just felt guilty (even though it is totally true) and she turned to me and just said, "That's true I have a hard heart. That's why I haven't received answers." This is me. Welp... yeah. So we called her  the next morning and she had prayed and she said she felt peaceful. So I geuss we arent going to drop her yet.
     Yesterday I heard the best talk of my life. It was the bishop's daughter's first talk (she just turned 12 this week) and it was probably 1 mintute long at most and it ended with "este es mi testimonio y yá está" which means "this is my testimony and that's it" and then she sat down. She said a lot more than I could've in Spanish.
     We visited Yasmine last night por fin. I really think that she is going to be baptized in the near future still. I have never seen someone with a stronger desire to know the truth. She is so precious.
   
    This morning we just kind of wondered through the city and it was pouring rain. But it was fun.
And this this lady was trying to get us to rent segways and so she let each of us take a turn riding one. soooo much fun. I think I might actually rent one one of these days....

Trying not to slip

So thats it!












Love
Hermana Ashby