Mama Mia!

     This was probably one of the most dramatic weeks of my life.

     Monday, we went to Jerez to play futbol. Woot. Hey geuss what! There is an Elder in Jerez that went to Richland High his freshman year and there's an Hermana that's in San Fernando that is from Benton. Cool, right? The things you learn when you wear your bomber shirt to pday.
     Tuesday morning, the Relief Society president called us to tell us that the mother of one of our inactive members died and she asked us to visit her. Well, we went right away and I was really surprised to see a ward support system. The Bishop and her visiting teacherss were already there. Three cheers for a functioning ward.
     Wednesday, I hit 9 months. Super weird.
     Friday, we had Zone Conference. Then we did intercambios. I went to Jerez again. This intercambio was actually pretty fun because we woke up on Saturday and went and played futbol all morning with members and investigators. Yay for not having to work in somebody else's area.
     Yesterday. Welp last night we went to go visit this member who's mother died. She invited us in and we went and sat down and her nine year old son ran in and sat down next to us and we were talking to them both when we could here yelling in the next room. So the member ran to the next room and the yelling escalated. We sat there trying (and failing) to distract the nine year old. then they all migrated into the kitchen and I didn't really see it all because I was focused on the kid, but the sister of the mom took a knife, and then the mom yelled at us to take her son and run. Hna Volpe says she saw the brother in law trying to strangle somebody. So we did as told and we could here screaming almost until we got to our apartment building. Then we sat down and tried to call the Bishop but he didn't answer. And then we called President because, like, we were stranded with a kid and in a pretty dramatic situation. Then the cousins of this kid came to the park next to where we were at, and a huge group of teenagers gathered around them and they started fighting each other and so then we ran again. It all kind of felt like a big nightmare. President called the Elders and ordered them to jump in a taxi ASAP and come to our rescue. So we went back to our buliding and the mom was sitting there waiting for us, crying. Then the Elders showed up, and they all came up to our apartment (totally not allowed but like the rules were already out the window at this point) and the Elders gave both the kid and the mom blessings. The boy was going through our stuff and he found my robot fish and I gave it to him. Sorry Mom, that was a birthday present from you. Then they all left and we were at peace again.
     So I called President to tell him everything was fine and he didn't have to worry. He told us we aren't allowed to go back to their house at least for the next several weeks, which I am not all that uspet about.
     He also told me that he was just in La Mancha and the second son of the Montes family has started preparing for a mission. He is a little on the older side to be preparing for a mission, so President asked him what made him want to go all of the sudden and he said it was because of the two hermanas. I just started crying. I still feel very emotionally about Peurtollano.
And yeah, that was my week. Good times.
Talk to ya lata
Hermana Hannah Ashby

Usted

Hey!
     So a lot happened this week and I don't have a ton of time to write it all. So bear with me here.

Hannah and her enormous birthday box

     Tuesday, I got a giant package from my mom! We threw a mini birthday party during medio dia. My companion made me pasta and I opened everything--it was great.

"This one really excited me"

     Wednesday I went to the trizone conference in Sevilla. That was cool. I like actually knew people there this time. Like Most of my group from the MTC was there and it was super fun to see them all.
So in Spanish there are two forms to say"you": tú and usted (formal). In the white bible [Missionary handbook] it says to use usted and in the mtc they taught us to use usted but a lot of people get angry here when you speak to them in usted. So it has become our mission culture to use tu. And when I first came to the field everyone made fun of me for using usted so I dropped it quickly and never fully learned. Just lately I have even been perfcting my Vosotros. But at trizone conference President Deere called us all to repentance and told us that we all have to switch to speaking in usted form ASAP with absolutely everyone.

"me and a statue"

   






What a struggle this week has been.
     I feel like I am starting all over with my Spanish. More often than not I conjugate everything in tu and then add the word usted at the end of my sentences. It is terrible.

"Oraste anoche?.... I MEAN ¿Has orado.... usted?"
Nailed it.

     And this weekend was Conference weekend! I love General Conference!
This time I got to watch everything in English. They set it up in the Relief Society room for us, and all the missionaries in our zone came. It was fun and inspiring and just great. There is nothing like listening to a prophet's voice.
     And that's it. We are going to Jerez today to play frisbee or something I geuss. woot woot.

Until next week!
Hermana Hannah Ashby

"And now I'm a gangsta missionary"

"bufanda"

Me and the ocean"

Aío, Hia, Aío

¡Hola!
     So Cádiz is a blast. Literally everyone just loves us. They are a very warm people here.
Remember when I would make fun of the accent in Granada?

Me in front of the ocean

Well, here it is the same but ten times more pronounced and they talk ten times faster and have their own vocabulary. Instead of Adios it is Aío. Andalucia (the southern province of Spain) has its own phrase, "Que hay?" which is another way of saying "What's up?" I heard it every once in a while in Granada but it's the go to saying here and instead it comes out more like "¿Kaí?"

Cadiz: Isn't it adorable?

     A member this week told me that she liked me because I have a face of Pillina (by theway their ll sounds more like the Argentina ll) and I had never heard that word before so I went home and looked it up. Not in the dictionary. So I asked someone else and apparently it is like the Gaditana way of saying mischeif. You learn something new everyday. This really is an awesome city.
   

The Mar

 Saturday was my birthday! Woohoo! 20 years. We decided to plan a small activity with a few members. Hna Volpe is Italian so therefore she makes great pizza and so that is what the activity was: her teaching everyone how to make pizza. I didn't really tell anyone it was my birthday but somehow they all found out and a ton of more people came than was expected and they brought like three different cakes and a ton of food. They all chipped in and bought me a really fancy journal. I have only been here like a week and a half. I haven't learned anyones names yet, but I love them all.
   
Hna Volpe is great. She makes me delicious Italian food like every day, so of course I like her. We speak Spanish most of the time, but she really wants to learn English so when I remember I speak English when we are in our piso. We both need to learn Spanish so it's our go to language.

The view from our piso. You can see the ocean in the distance.

Me, Hermana Volpe, and a member. People are so nice here!

     Hna Parrilla called me for my birthday and I anserwed the phone in Spanish because I didn't know who was calling and so we just kept talking in Spanish and about halfway through the conversatoin  she realized it and she was like "You understand me!" I didn't even notice. It's weird how fast time has passed.

Arroz con Leche. Normally a plate
this size is enough for a family of four!

     Sunday, I gave a real talk to a real ward. The ward is big and self functioning. It's beautiful. I translated during Relief Society for a German lady. She knows English but not Spanish. She asked me to and I was terrified and I told her I didn't know if I actually would be able to and she asked me if I could just kind of give her the main subjects. But then I did it and I did fine enough. It was actually a pretty good lesson too. I haven't had Relief Society in a long time and I appreciate it more now.
This week we have Tri Zone Conference in Sevilla. That's pretty exciting.
So yeah, until next week!




Beso!
Hermana Hannah Ashby

Hannah said she was super behind on pictures, so sent a bunch this week! Most of these are from Puertollano

Last Sunday in Puertollano. Kind of a random group of people. Including are our one and only real investigator to ever come to church. Had to be our last Sunday.

Presidente and Hermana Montes

Two of their sons

Ramona y familia

They dumped water on us on pday. Alicia Montes took this picture. Sghe wanted to make sure the door got in the picture so that i wouldn´t forget where she lived. Number 20, Granados

Rosa and Raul. Rosa has been inactive for like 25 years now and her son is 9. They gave me a soccer jersey.

The sun setting on my last day in Puertollano

Fernando y Perla

Fernando(padre) and a small fraction of his familia. Most frustrating family in the world. But I love them all.

The Hermanas of La Mancha

Belen and Sabrin. They gave me a pair of shoes

Antonia and her son Demetrio. They were some of our red zone miracles.

Cádiz

Howdy,
     This week was kind of a rollercoaster. Saying goodbye to Puertollano was way more difficult than I ever thought it would be. There were a lot of tears. We basically spent all Monday and Tuesday bareing testimony of Elders and begging people to listen to them even when we leave. I hope they have a lot of success.
     Bright and early Wednesday morning we took a train to Sevilla, because they wanted us out of there before the Elders got in. Then I said bye to Hna Hoffman and took a Train to Cádiz.
Cádiz is GORGEOUS. I have been told that it is actually the oldest city in Europe, but my source wasn't super reliable so someone should check that for me. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful city. It is kind of on a weird peninsula thing so the ocean is on both sides of our area. We have a full ward with a real chapel and everything. I don't know how big the ward is because we had Stake Conference this weekend. That's right, we are in a stake. It's pretty nifty.
     I also get PDays back. We are going to Chiclana today to do something or other. I don't even know but like other missionaries invited us because there are other missionaries here and traveling is cheap.
     I don't have a lot else to tell. Just figuring things out here.
I love you!
Hermana Hannah Ashby

Zion's Camp

Hannah's peternal Grandfather died last night. Her mission president's wife told her over the phone. As a family we have been trying to all think of two or three words that we think of when we think of Grandpa. This was Hannah's response:

I don't know what two words I would say about Grandpa. I kind of just have no idea. I know he was faithful. I know he cared about his family. I know he was creative. He invented some crazy things once upon a time. He was very smart.

And here is her email:

Welp
     Im outtie. We're outtie. Peace Puertollano.
     This weekend was transfer weekend. President Deere called us Friday medio dia. That is very early for transfer calls so we were double surprised. I answered and he asked me if we wanted to hear what was happening for transfers together. I didn't really care and I have always done it one at a time before so I told him one at a time was fine. He hesitated but then he told me that he was taking us both out. My heart dropped and I stopped listening and immediately pressed the speaker phone button and interupted and told him to repeat it so that we could both hear. Hna Hoffman imediately started sobbing. It took him a while to explain everything to us because we kept interrupting him with questions like, "what did we do wrong?" and "why were we here in the first place?" That was probably bad. Okay that was really bad. Poor, poor President Deere. There are a lot of Hermanas leaving this transfer and not very many coming in. And there are like 20 Elders coming in. And we don't really have any priesthood members in this branch. So Elders will probably be more effective anyways. We just cried. More than is socially acceptable. It is mostly just upsetting because the area was only open for Hermanas for 3 transfers.
     After he heard us react so strongly, Presdient Deere asked if he could actually taslk to us seperately. He told me that Puertollano was our Zion's Camp. Good thing I have read Our Heritage. If any of you know Church History you will understand how that might not be extremly comforting. It made me feel worse at first but actually I feel beter about it the more that I think about it. So I am headed to Cadiz. I geuss it's the oldest inhabited city in Spain. Or something like that. And Spain is old, so Cadiz must be, like, really old. I am going to be with Hna Volpe. Her first transfer in the mission was my last transfer in Granada. She started in Jaen. She went to the Alhambra with us. She seemed like a nice girl. She's Italian, so that's pretty sweet.
     We gave goodbye talks in Sacrament Meeting yeaterday. I am pretty sure that literally everyone cried. That was surprising. They liked us, who knew? We are going to go spend the rest of our Pday hanging with the branch president's family because they begged us to spend it with them. When you leave, everyone loves you. They said they would come visit me on my birthday in Cadiz. I told them that that was completely unecessary.
     We set two baptsimal dates with investigators this week. The Elders better baptize them.
It is nice that I will be in a ward again. There will probably be a Ward Mission Leader. We will probably go to a Ward Council. I bet there will even be a Relief Society President. Weird. THREE HOURS OF CHURCH. I didn't think about that until just now.
     Well got to go. I love you all.
Hermana Hannah Ashby

You Know You Live in Spain When...

     So today is the day of "La Virgen de la Gracia" the patron saint of Puertollano. So we were not able to have computer access this morning. Literally the entire town was lined up this morning to give flowers to the virgin. The line was longer than the line for Space Mountain at Disneyland. Some people were even dressed up in weird black lace nun type dresses. I can still hear the marching band from the town square.
     Thankfully, Mom, you are an ANGEL and you sent us The Work and the Glory. We watched all three of them today and yelled spanish insults at the mobers that called Emma Smith guapa. Literally saved our day. The grocery stores are also all closed, so for lunch we ate all of the potato chips we had hidden from ourselves. I feel a little sick. Hopefully things open up again tomorrow so that we can eat.
     This is pretty much the most exciting thing that has happened to me all week. Guess how many people we had at church on Sunday? 19!!! Remember how last week there were 10 and we were excited it hit double digits? 19 is a big jump. By far the most I have seen. There is a whole other family that lives here now. Everyone is coming back from summer vacation and it is so exciting. I can't even remember what it is like to have a full ward. I feel like that would just be overwhelming.
     My companion and I bought matching key chains that say I <3 Puertollano. They are SWEET. Only souveniors we have been able to find. Everyone at zone meeting laughed at them like it was a joke and I was offended. I love Peurtollano.
Yep that was my week.
I loveyou! Have a good week everyone!
Hermana Hannah Ashby

Así es la Vida

¡Buenos Días!

     Sort of an uneventful week. 

     We picked up two more investigators that are sweet. Fernando y Perla. He is 20 she is 19. They are dating secretly because he is a gypsy and she is not and their parents aren´t allowed to find out. It is all very Shakespeare-ey. We assigned them to read a story in The Book of Mormon and they came back very animated about it and told us the story back in detail. They are cute. We gave Fernando`s dad a lecture about how it is a commandment to love eveyone and invited him to invite his son and his friends to church. He is a member by the way. Then we told Fernando about it and he kept saying "Las Hermanas son guays!" (the sisters are cool) over and over again in surprise. Won them over. 

     

     We are still teaching that guy we found last week but he works a lot.

     A new member moved in and it got our sacrament meeting assistency up to 10 this week. He also loves missionaries and that is always nice. 

     Okay, that is it. I love you!

Hermana Hannah Ashby