My Last Week in Granada!

Hey,
     So nothing crazy happened this week and I have used all my time sending pictures. So  I am just going to talk about transfer calls!
     President called Saturday morning, and sure enough I am leaving. I am going to Puertollano. Never heard of it? Me neither! I am just picturing wide open plains with lots of windmills because, guess what it is in La Mancha! Don Quijote country! President said it is the fastest growing branch in the mission- they just increased their Sacrament Meeting attendance from something like 12 or 15 to 18. Which is a pretty good percentage. Hermana Hoffman is going to be my companion. Everyone says she is awesome. She just opened Puertollano last transfer. Okay going to be honest here, I am sort of terrified. But I am excited to. Every time  I tell someone where  I am going they tell me I am going to learn a lot. Which is a good thing, right? Right? It is definitely going to be an adventure. This is as close to Toledo as I could get, mom. I am sad to leave Granada but I feel ready for something new. I need a change before I get into a rut. Okay breathe.

And thats it! Love ya!
H. Ashby

Here are lots of pictures!

American flag outside of the hotel next to the Alhambra that Jose Rafael took us to. Don't worry I remember where I came from

Graná 

Jose Rafael himself

Hermana Clark and I

Hermana Muse and I in our sweet new hoodies

Us and Yasmin and Nayeli

Claire Whitby at her baptism

More with Claire

Us waiting for the bus

This is what the bus looks like

Chapas

Alhambra Group

Hermanas

Graná 

Amphitheater (I think)

My chapa in the Court of the Lions

Hermanas

I am a fan of chapa pictures...

Goodbye to Carmela, Julio, and Manu

Saying goodbye to Yasmin

Jose Rafael threw me a party! Complete with honey!  Zach is right, Morcilla is usually in sausage form like here on the toast things. But the first time he fed it to us it was just fried with pears.

The Alhambra outside Jose Rafael's apartment

Peter! He is my favorite! Okay maybe his real name is Pedro but I call him Peter because he always tries to speak english with me. He is like the only member that we can get to come to lessons with us.

Here is Violet! I like teaching her because our lessons are in English. She is from Nigeria.

Araceli! She doesn't come to church because of good ol´Chico here. She insisted that Chico be in the picture. 

Fireworks went off outside of our piso! We started singing the Star Spangled Banner in honor off independence day that is coming up! Woo hoo!

Si No Has Visto Granada, No Has Visto Nada

Hey!
     Wow a lot happened this week! Last monday we went to the church and played futbol with chairs. Hard to explain, but it was fun.
     I can't believe this was all this week.
     Tuesday morning we interviews with president. Nothing terribly exciting there. He said I look like a real missionary now, not just someone following around a missionary. Woot! Goal made.
     Then we had district meeting. Told everyone that it is important to be a diligent missionary.
Then I left for Málaga. These members came up to us at the bus station and were crazy excited to see us and took pictures with us like we were celebrities and then they boarded the same bus as me and they sat by me and literally talked to me the entire hour and a half there. It was this old couple and now I know their entire life story. I was pretty proud of myself because I was able to hold my own in a conversation in Spanish. Maybe I will get this someday.
     Then I did intercambios with Hna Brown. She trained Hna Reed and I just had a blast with her. She had a note for me from Hna Reed. She is doing great.
     Thursday we had 8 lessons. In one day. Oh yeah. Things have definitely started to pick up. This is awesome.
     Friday we went and ate lunch with Jose Rafael (he fed us morcilla AGAIN) and we told him that I am probably going to be transferred this next week and I have still never been to the Alhambra and so he drove us up right then to make us go buy tickets. But they were sold out. So then he took us to the hotel and bought us drinks (my drink of choice: fanta naranja) and it was all just kind of ridiculous. I have some super sweet pictures but I left my camera in the piso. Sorry, next week!
     Saturday. Saturday, Claire, the 8 year old daughter of the American family was baptized. She has become pretty good friends with Yasmin so we got Yasmin and her friend Nayeli to come with us. Afterwards Nayeli came up to me and asked me if she could be baptized. My response: "Uh... sure! Can we teach you a few things first?"
     Then it was Sunday. I don't remember much of Sunday but I had a huge headache. Oh right. The Hermanas from Jaen came and stayed the night. Yeah, That was only yesterday. They stayed the night because the guy at the ticket office of the Alhambra said if we got there at 7 Monday morning they might have some extra tickets to sell to us.The Alhambra, for those of you who don't know, is this ancient ginormous muslim palace. It is apparently the most visited monument in Spain. So if you are anywhere close you kind of have to go. So they came in at like 10 last night and we did not get to bed very early and then we woke up at five to get to be able to get there by 6:30 because apparently people start lining up at like 6 but we all got there and stood in line for like two hours. An Elder brought uno so we literally played uno all standing up in line at like 6:30 in the morning. Then this Muslim guy from Singapore asked if he could join us. Just try to imagine it because it all felt like a weird dream to me. But it all paid off because we got in! IT WAS AMAZING! You will get pics next week! But I am soooooo glad I got to go do that before I left. Totally worth it. We spent like 6 hours in total just traveling through and I don't even think we saw it all. And it is up on a mountain and you can look down and see all of Granada and the sight like literally took my breath away. Granada is amazing.
And so that's pretty much it.
I love you all!
Hermana Ashby

Summer is a Comin'

     Stuff happened this week, but like honestly nothing happened.
     We went to zone conference and had to give a thing about the missionary handbook. Speaking Spanish in front of other missionaries stresses me out more than anything. But really no pasa na. Tomorrow for district meeting I am giving (by myself) a two minute lesson on diligence in missionary work. And we have interviews with president and then I am going to Malaga for intercambios, so tomorrow is going to be a busy day.
     After we are done emailing we are going to the chapel and are going to watch "The Best Two Years" with the rest of the district. I have heard watching  "The Best Two Years"is different as a missionary so I guess we will see.
     Okay I am sorry this week was really slow.
An investigator called us Friday to invite us to a choir concert and we called and got special permission to go and we were super excited and then we got there and it started and then a bunch of five year olds walk on stage and then their teacher comes on and plays a simple tune on the piano and they start clapping along to the rhythm. Personally, I thought it was awesome. But I guess our investigator was expecting something more... sophisticated... so he made us leave. Sad day.
     We street contacted this lady that works for Herbal Life and she invited us to come over. She gave us her lesson 1- facials and then asked us for references. It all felt very backwards but we left her with a Book of Mormon.. yay?
     This week for personal study I have been reading Jesus the Christ. If you haven't read it, I suggest you do, and if you have, you should read it again. But I know all of you are probably not going to do that so you should at least watch the Because of Him video. (Sorry if that turns out to be in spanish)
     We have been showing that video to absolutely everyone since Easter. It still makes me emotional every time I watch it. I feel so privileged to be allowed to be a part of the Lord's work. Being a missionary is absolutely amazing.
Well, have a good summer everyone!
I love you!
Hermana Ashby

¿Que Haces?

Hola,
     Another crazy week in the life of a sister missionary. I think what I enjoy most about missionary work is having the opportunity to watch as the gospel changes lives.
     Remember Araceli? I think I've mentioned her before but I am not positive. She is our eternigator. This like 70 year old spanish women who is very stuck in her ways. Most of the time I am not quite sure why we even go back and visit her, but keep going we do. Missionaries have been visiting her on and off for almost 20 years now, but nobody has lost hope yet. When Hna Parrilla and I first visited her she went off on a rant about all of the 'faults' of Joseph Smith. Basically all of the crazy things she had read on the internet. All we could do was bear our simple testimonies and run the heck out of there. I was seriously terrified. So this week we were planning for her and we didn't really know what to teach her. We have run out of 'easy' principles like faith and prayer so I suggested watching a movie with her. But we are all kind of tired of watch Finding Faith in Christ (I seriously have half of it memorized, in Spanish) so we decided to go for Joseph:The Prophet of the Restoration. I did not realize how much she has progressed until this lesson. She was literally crying when Alvin (Joseph´s older brother) died. And afterwards she told us over and over again how much she loved that movie.  We bore our testimonies about Joseph Smith and about God´s love for his children and that is why we have the restored gospel today and she was just like "that is so true." I left there in shock. I still think she might throw us out of the house if we invite her to be baptized but poco a poco.
     Next story: Esperanza e Ivan.
I am pretty sure I have never mentioned them because before this week They had never been that interesting. Ivan is an inactive member. His parents found the church when he was super young, he was baptized at 8 and then he left the church at 14 because he never felt like he received answers to his prayers. He is 28 now, divorced and has a 5 year old kid that lives in Alicante. He is now living with his girlfriend, Esperanza. Ivan´s sister, Vanessa (a very strong member here), called us a few weeks ago and asked us to visit her brother because his girlfriend had just had a miscarriage and they were both taking it hard. So we went and taught them the Plan of Salvation. The whole lesson it just kind of seemed like they were humoring us just because his sister asked them to. Esperanza is very catholic and her only reaction at the end was asking us if we knew where she could get a bible because she had lost hers. Sort of just frustrating. But we kept going because you can´t really drop an inactive member. This week we visited them and suddenly everything was different. They have been competing with each other to see who can read more and understand more out of the Book of Mormon. We read a chapter with them and they were trying so hard to show us that they were understanding and liking it. Ivan told us he never listened to the missionaries before because it wasn't his moment yet but now it is his moment. When we left we called Vanessa because we were just so excited and she told us that she had been at their house the other day and Esperanza had proudly shown her that she had her own copy of The Book of Mormon and was asking her all sorts of gospel questions. I am really excited to see where things go from here with them.
     And to end: JuanJo
JuanJo is crazy. His wife's name is Gema and they live in this tiny piso with like 5(feisimo) cats and their two kids. Just to give you a taste of JuanJo, our last lesson with him he told us that Obama is actually English royalty, England never actually stopped owning the US and Michael Jackson knew that and that is why he was killed. All very interesting. He believes very strongly in the Bible and kept getting mad at us when we tried to teach him out of the Book of Mormon so this past lesson we tried only sharing one scripture, and one out of the Bible. He was like wait isn't that in Peter? we said yeah. He was like But Peter is in the Bible. Yes. JuanJo: You really do believe in the Bible, don´t you? Us: YES. Him: Hmm. Well that's a relief. Maybe I will give this blue book of yours a chance then. Us:  mental eye roll
     Honestly we didn't really believe him and had kind of decided to only visit him once more and then drop him, but then he texted THIS MORNING. He said he would really like to meet with us tomorrow if possible because he had good news to share with us. Well last time his said something like that to us he told us that he had been reading in Isaiah or Revelations or something and was sure that the world is going to end any day now. Actually, now that I think about it he just told us that time that He had read something in the bible and wanted to discuss it with us. Guess we should have seen that coming. Anyways, we scheduled the cita with him but I guess he was just too excited to tell us the news that he sent it through text. Hna Muse read it and started yelling and so I took it from her. Basically (translated) it said: "I have been reading that blue Book of Mormon of yours and I like it a ton. Looks like at the end I am going to end up with you preaching door to door to the Gentiles."
Our response: fetch.
     I am seriously still in shock. I would also like to point out that all of these people are Spaniards. Usually we only get anywhere with South Americans.
     So yeah we had a pretty cool week. Being a missionary is the best. Talk to you next week.
TQM
Hermana Ashby

If We're United, We All Things Can Do

Hola!
     This is going to be short because I need time to download Mormon Messages. Sorry. Also not a whole lot of exciting things happened.
     I ate a few super gross things this week actually. We do visiting teaching for the ward. Don't ask me why, not exactly my favorite thing ever and it takes up a ton of proselyting time. But this week we went to visit this little old lady that lives in one of the spiraling alleyways underneath the Alhambra so I was actually sort of excited for this one. We go there and sit down and she asked us if we wanted anything, we said no but she is old and from southern Spain so she put us out these ridiculously stale cookies. Like I had a hard time chewing and swallowing them so then she asked if we wanted anything to drink. I asked for water but that just wasn't good enough I guess and she brought us out some soy milk. Like basically everyone here drinks soy milk instead of real milk so I have almost gotten used to it, but this wasn't even refrigerated. So we just sat there eating stale cookies with warm soy milk. Every time one of us emptied a glass she would automatically feel it until the entire carton was gone. It was just such a ridiculous situation that I had a hard time not giggling as she is forcing us to chug warm soy milk. I have felt sick since.
     And then a few days later one of our investigators fed us Morcilla. Hermana Clark made the mistake of asking what Morcilla actually is. And we both almost threw up right then. Then we were forced to eat seconds. If I don't come home with some crazy disease I will be lucky. For those of who do not know, Morcilla is basically straight up fried pigs blood mixed. Our investigator mixed it with pears, because what is more appetizing than pears covered in pigs blood? Nothing according to spaniards.
     We (the missionaries in Granada) organized a ward talent show for this weekend and it was a smash. Apparently talent shows are really just an Amercian thing because nobody had really heard of one before but it really pulled together. We even did a singing skit thing with the song "Ye Elders of Israel." I will try to figure out how to get you the video eventually. Such a blast.
     It's starting to be tourist season so we are getting all kinds of Americans at church and it's fun to talk to them and explain what is going on in lessons and stuff for them. There are actually people out there in the world who understand less Spanish than me. Woot!
And that is pretty much it.
I love you!
Hermana Ashby

Somos Tres

Querido todo,
     This was a long week. A lot happened but I don´t have a ton of fun stories.
     Well I have officially eaten the grossest thing in my life now. We have this feeling that the members here don't really like the hermanas very much so we have been trying hard to work with them and gain their respect. So on Tuesday we finally received an invitation to eat with this one family that usually only likes it when the elders go over. So we go over and we are on our absolute best behavior and we offer to help and they won't let us so we sit at the table and wait for them to bring out the food.

District Numero Dos

They set this bowl of soup in front of Hna Muse. My first thought is, "yay I like soup," but then I look closer and saw the tentacles. This soup had octopus, squid, shrimp, some kind of shell fish and who knows what else in it. Mom, you would have probably enjoyed it. But I do NOT like sea food. Of any kind. And so I go into a panic. We have been trying to get an eating cita with this family for forever, and the first thing I do can't be refuse to eat their food that they obviously worked hard to make. Or worse, throw it up. They asked me to say the blessing and I asked that we would all be able to enjoy the food. Probably seemed like weird wording to them, but that is what I needed. I don't know how, but I ate it. Barely even chewed at all, which let me tell you, is difficult when you are eating animals whole. Eww. It was worth it though when they gave us cake at church on Sunday. Woot!
     So lets see..... Tuesday we got our new companion! Her name is Hermana Clark. She is from Heber City, Utah. She goes home one transfer after Hna Muse. She is great. Hermana Muse and I were super worried that it would be not fun, and teaching as a trio would not work very well, but it is actually working out just fine. We had to pull in another bed into our bedroom and now the whole room is just one big bed. We call it mega bed.

"So this is supposed to be like a 12th century building with an "animal fountain" inside of it. We walk by it all of the time and we didn't realize that it was anything special until we walked by this morning and there was a huge crowd taking pictures of it. so we stopped and asked what it was and then some man told us. I don´t know how reliable this information is."

     We stopped by a members house the other day just to check in on her because she had been to the hospital and then when we were about to leave we asked if we could close with a prayer and she got upset and realized that we hadn't started with a prayer. So then she made us do two! We decided you probably can't pray too much so we just went along with it.
     If you can, putting some beef jerky in the package might be nice. There is this family here that every time we go over they talk about these missionaries that brought them beef jerky from America. At least we think that's what they are are talking about. They call it dry Texas beef because the missionary was from Texas. So yeah if I brought them some they would probs love me forever.

Statue of Christopher Columbus

     We had a crazy amount a appointments cancel on us this week. Which means we did a LOT of knocking doors and just trying to talk to to people in the streets. Not the most fruitful of activities but, what else is a missionary supposed to do?
     By the way, I am officially a real missionary now! Training is over! Go me!
I am sorry I can't think of anything else that happened. This week was snail slow for all of the people we teach because we could hardly meet with any of them. But the work is still going. The church is still true.

Thanks for all of the support!
Hermana Hannah Ashby

By Their Faith They Wrought Mighty Miracles

¡Buenas Dias!
     I think I learned more this week than I have ever learned in my life. This week of consecration was really something. Through faith and prayer we saw miracles.
     Last Monday after Pday (well I guess it was during the end of pday) we went to the American's house and taught a lesson to their 8 year old daughter Claire who is about to get baptized. And I had a realization. The mom (Nicole) was telling us about her study abroad she did in India before her mission and I realized that exactly a year ago I was still in high school. Like this is crazy that I am out here doing what I am doing fresh out of high school. I made the mistake of saying that out load to this family and they all just burst into laughter. Like really? You were in high school last year?! They didn't talk about anything else all night. By the time we left I was feeling a little inadequate. Like I am too young to be doing this. But that's not really true. Whom the Lord calls he qualifies, because this week was spectacular.
     I think I am going to do this a little out of order to make it flow a little better. Friday night we were finally able to meet with Yasmin again. We brought Nicole and her twelve year old daughter with us because Nicole is Primary president and we really kind of wanted a mom's opinion on whether or not we were going to offend Diana by baptizing Yasmin without her. So we started the lesson (Gospel of Jesus Christ=Faith,repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) and it was going great and Yasmin and Addy (Nicole's daughter) were really hitting it off and Yasmin kept bearing her testimony of the things that we were teaching before we even taught them and it was great and then we got to baptism and Diana walks in. Diana pulled us way off topic and suddenly everything was crazy and she tells us all these stories about her job and things that have happened since we saw her last and everything and we were worried we were never going to get to challenge Yasmin to baptism until finally Hermana Muse asked Diana how she would feel if Yasmin wanted to get baptized into our church. It was a miracle. She said she would be really happy for her because baptism is really important and she is eleven so she is old enough to make her own decision about it now. I think even Nicole was shocked. So we turned back to Yasmin and kind of told her why we are baptized and asked if that is what she wanted. She said yes. Then we told her that we are going to have a baptismal service the 11 of May and then we pulled out a baptismal calendar we had made for her and told her the qualifications for baptism and we promised that if she did all of these things she would be ready. She seemed really excited and Diana seemes happy. It was amazing. It is really going to happen.
     Remember Alejandra? I think I must have mentioned her last week. But we basically didn't find her until last Sunday. We have been teaching her almost every day since and she is amazing. There was a ward barbecue on Thursday and we brought her with us. The members were absolutely amazing. All of the young adults (there is an odd amount of young adults in this ward) just kind of gathered her up with them and got her to play football and jump rope then they made her eat with them and they all traded numbers and facebook info and Hermana Muse and I were just bouncing with excitement watching it all unfold. So then we prayed about wether we should challenge her to be baptized on the 11th too and we decided she was ready. So Friday we went to her house and just started asking her about how she has felt about everything so far and she was just glowing with happiness and telling us how she agrees with everything we have said and so we did it. She seemed a little surprised about how soon we wanted to do it but she accepted. But then she asked if she wasn't ready by then if she could do it another day. We decided that that is a good sign because she wants to be ready and she wants to be baptized. It's the day that is the problem not anything else and I totally understand that. So uh.. yeah that makes two of our incredible investigators getting baptized.
    And then it was Saturday night. Keep in mind these two girls have to got to church both on the 4th and on the 11th to be baptized on the Dia de Blanco. So first we call Yasmin. Nicole had offered to give her a ride but we just wanted to make sure everythng was still going smooth. But Yasmin doesn't answer the phone. Then we call Alejandra. We were more worried about her because she had told us she might not be able to because she might have to babysit her three year old brother. We told her to bring her brother but she said she would have to talk with her parents. Alejandra did not answer her phone either. Needless to say, we were more than a little nervous. We got home and we started half heartedly planning for the next day when Yasmin finally calls us back. SHE CAN COME! Woot! Then when we got off the phone with her we saw we had a missed call from Alejandra. She does have to babysit her little brother and her dad is very very catholic and doesn't want her bring him to a Mormon church. Poor girl could totally hear the disappointment in my voice when I asked her if she had any other options. She said normally she would leave him with a cousin but the cousin can't this week but  she will def be there next week. We hung up and Hna Muse and I just stared at each other about to give up when we decided that we did not fast for four days out of this week for nothing! (Okay maybe we went a little overboard on fasting but this is really important to us.) So we call our district leader Elder Powell and ask him for advice. He tells us that maybe we can find a member to wait outside of the chapel during Sacrament meeting with the little boy. So we call her back and we tell her his idea and she said that she had to talk to her mom. So she hangs up again and we just stare at the phone. By this time it is like 11:15. She calls again and asks another question then hangs up again. I don't think either of us breathed. We knelt down and prayed that somehow she would be able to come. Then she calledback and guess what? SHE CAN COME! We hung up with her and just started screaming then we called Elder Powell and he said he and his companion and just finished praying for her too. It was so powerful.
    And they actually came too. Alejandra left her brother at her mom's work for an hour while she was at church. Yasmin came with Nicole y familia. It was testimony meeting and all the testimonies were amazing. And perfect for our investigators. We even had an unexpected investigator show up.This old man José Rafael that neither of us really enjoy teaching because he never stops talking but I guess we should really appreciate him more. And they all really seemed to enjoy it.
     So after church we got home and we started counting up our numbers for the week (Sunday is at the end of the week in the Spanish calendar). Our mission has this thing called Standards of Excellence. They are standards of things like how many lessons taught, new investigators acquired, investigators in Sacrament meeting and baptismal dates set during the week to be excellent missionaries. To give you an idea of how hard they are to reach Hermana Muse has never gotten standards of excellence in her entire mission and she goes home in a few months. And we realized that week we were one baptismal fecha (date) away from reaching the standards. We were crazy happy with how well we had done. So we gave our numbers to our district leader and went merrily on our way to visit members perfectly content with ourselves. Then a few hours later our zone leaders call and basically orders us to go make another fecha because we "have to" make standards. We decided to buck up and try. So We basically went by every single one of our investigators and nobody had time for us. Then we went by every single person we had contacted in the street that week and nobody had time for  us. We were kind of disappointed but by that time it was 10:15 and we are supposed to be home at the very latest at 10:45 so we decided to just be happy with what we had and start to make our way home. And then the APs called us. They asked us what we were doing and told us that in the next 30 minutes we had to do everything we could to find somebody to challenge to baptism. We thought they were crazy. And then Hermana Muse asked them if they thought we should try just talking to people in the street or knocking doors. They said we should get on our knees and crawl to them. So that's what we did. We went to an allyway and prayed. After the prayer I turned around and walked to an apartment complex and pushed on the door and by some miracle it was unlocked. So we just started knocking doors. People we kind of angry actually that we were bothering them so late so  we went back to the street and prayed again, and then we just started walking in the direction of our piso and talking about baptism. Needless to say we mostly just talked to a lot of catholics about the "original sin." We were so desperate and about to give up when we stopped this one lady. We broke the ice with her and found out she was cuban and believed strongly in Jesus Christ but she always regretted that she never got baptized. I stopped breathing. Hermana Muse pulled out the restoration pamphlet and we taught the whole lesson right there in the street. We recited the first vision and everything. We got to the part about how our church has the authority of God and asked her how important it would be to be baptized by someone who had the proper authority to baptize. She said it would be really important. So then I asked her if she would follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the authority of God on the 18th of May (I just added seven to 11 right there on the spot) her response? "Claro! Bautizarme!" translated baisically she ordered us to baptize her. We did not speak the entire way walking home. When we got home we called the APs back and they started screaming. We started screaming. Elder Walker told us this was going in his journal. It is def going in mine. Then we called the Zone Leaders. A lot more screaming went down. Elder Rojas asked us to share it in our next zone meeting. Then we called our District Leader. More screaming. He told us that finding a cuban means we will have a ton of baptisms. Then the SHES called us and said the APs told them they had to but they wouldn't tell them why so we got to tell the whole story over again and told us that this was the miracle of Semana de Consagración. We went to bed happy.
      This morning President Deere texted us and congratulated us.
And so now here I am on an old computer reliving it all. I hope i was able to communicate how incredible  this all was. Now we just have to work twice as hard this week to make sure Alejandra and Yasmin are ready for baptism. I am crazy excited. Life is good.
Talk to you next week!
Hermana Hannah Ashby