Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Día de San Valentin chumps. I wish I had something cool to say
about it.....but it was just another day. Totally forgot about it
until Hna Pickett said after exercise, "Happy Valentines Day." And
yeah......there's that.

Well....what to tell y'all. I don't know. We went and played paddle
ball again for Pday that was fun. Get some blood pumping and some
sweat going there. Great. I actually learned the rules today so that
was even better. But y'all don't want to hear about that. Let's get to
the good stuff.

This week we worked A LOT with the Big List. One experience we had was
really cool. We went to the house of these members who have kind of
been skeptical about this from the beginning. We got there and sat
down and the wife just starting cuenting us these stories. There were
two people who she put down on the list that she had the opportunity
to share the gospel a little bit with. One of them was her sister who
lives in Australia. She told her sister that there were missionaries
handing out Books of Mormon there and sent a picture of it to her
sister. Some other stuff happened, I can't remember what, but she said
she told her sister, "Look for it. Look for God." Then the mom of the
best friend of her daughter was over at their piso one day and saw a
quote from some apostle I think and she really liked it. She had seen
the way they lived and was interested about it so they are trying to
plan a Noche de Hogar with this family. I didn't completely remember
all the stories but I remember she said, "Thanks to this list, I had
these experiences. Because if we hadn't written those names down and I
hadn't been praying for these opportunities, I wouldn't have even
thought about it!" So that was really cool to see and we're excited to
see the miracles and fruits that will come out of this. We have a lot
of citas this week where we will start planning noches de Hogar and
other ways to get into contact with this people. I keep imagining
what's going to happen if all goes well....I just imagine having too
many people to teach that we need to bring in more missionaries and
then 2 families getting baptized at a time. Maybe I'm getting ahead of
myself but I'm really excited. The lady also said, "This list that you
got from your President really is inspired." And I agree. It's such a
good way to work with the members and it gets them excited about this
work. This work is almost impossible without the help of the members
so I'm stoked to get them stoked about sharing the gospel.

Something funny that happened on Sunday (funny for others....not so
much for me). I'll back up for a second. A few weeks ago (like Hna
Garcia como compi status) one of us got asked to give a talk in
church. I offered to do since Hna Garcia had already given one earlier
and I've yet to do it so far. So I prepare it all week and it's good
to go. Then they tell us this girl is leaving on her mission and wants
to do her farewell talk so we pushed it to the next week. No pasa
nada. But....they forgot. So they said they'll get us in sometime. So
fast forward.....to last week. They asked one of us to give a talk
this last Sunday. I already had it written so offered again. We put a
reminder on so that we remembered to do it. Sunday comes and it was
insane. We missed the bus to church and it was 9:45 and church starts
at 10. We live like 20ish mins walk from the church. So we walked as
fast as possible, got to the church panting, a little sweaty, and sat
down in relief society 30 seconds before 10. #BLESSED So we relax, go
through classes, then right before sacrament, one of the counselors
from the bishopric comes to us and asks, "Which one of you Is speaking
today?" We both are like, ".......uh wat?" And then both our eyes got
huge and I was like, "HAH Yo!" TOTES FORGOT AND MY TALK WAS IN MY
STUDY JOURNAL NOT EVEN ON MY IPAD ITS FINE! So I went and sat up on
the stand and literally went mad hands on that Gospel Library. The
whole time I'm praying, "Heavenly Father, please let there be a lot of
announcements today. Please let one of the deacons drop his tray.
PLEASE HELP ME WRITE THIS TALK!" Awful to pray for those things
but.....I have since repented. ANYWAY.....it's my turn and I have like
5 bullet points and ya está. Now if you know me, you know I HATE
public speaking and I always write out my entire talk and read it word
for word bc I get nervous and forget it all. But that's all I had. And
then the moment came when they called my name. I stood up, took a
breath, and prayed, "Ok Heavenly Father, you're gonna have to help me
on this." Under pressure, next to no talk prepared, AND I HAVE TO
SPEAK A FOREIGN LANGUAGE! I was started on a downward spiral to say
the least. Result? Actually decent! Now I know I can speak off of
bullet points and stuff so that's cool. Literally all the spirit. God
really blesses His missionaries even when they're almost late for
church and forget about their talk. #BLESSED

Ok spiritual stuff. So first off, Satan is the worst. And he tries
really hard to get you to throw in the towel every day. The worst. So
he was working on me a bit these past few weeks and just making me
feel like a bad missionary and that nothing was gonna come out of my
time here. On Friday I was sick of feeling that way and I knew they
weren't feelings and thoughts from my Heavenly Father. So in my prayer
for personal study I just asked to find something in the scriptures to
help me. I've been reading them in Spanish to help my Spanish but I
got the impression to read in English. Then I flipped open my Book of
Mormon and started to go through (at this point I'm in 3rd Nefi) just
trying to see where to read when I got a thought to my head to read 3
Nefi 19. This is after Christ comes, calls His apostles, then ascends
into Heaven again and people come from everywhere because they heard
that Christ was ministering to the people. The 12 Apostles had to
break up into 12 groups because there were so many people. Well they
were praying and the thing the desired most was to have the Holy Ghost
with them. So Nephi went and was the first to get baptized and then he
baptized all the apostles and as they walked out of the water, the
Holy Ghost descended upon them. Later angels minister to them and then
Christ comes down and commands them to pray. As they are praying,
Christ goes off by himself and just thanks Heavenly Father for giving
them the Holy Ghost because of their belief in Christ. Then He goes
back and as they are praying, He blessed them and then He thanked the
Father for sanctifying them because of their faith and their belief.
The verse that I liked a lot and that helped me was verse 29:
"Father, I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given
me out of the world, because of their faith, that they may be purified
in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may
be one, that I may be glorified in them."
When I read this, it hit me that Christ prays for us. Us who He has
called out of the world to do this work. Us who are trying to do what
is right and follow His example. HE IS PRAYING FOR US!! He is at the
head of this church and He knows that the adversary works on us
constantly so He's doing all He can to help us follow Him. NEVER GIVE
UP!! CHRIST IS PRAYING FOR YOU!

Guys....,God is so cool. I feel so blessed to have this experience on
the front lines of His work here in Spain. I love these people and
this work so much. I got an email this week from a girl who got called
to this mission (S/O Future Hermana Rust Coming March 21st) and I just
having the opportunity to tell her she got called to the best mission
ever. I love the mission with all of my heart and I feel so blessed to
say that the Málaga Spain Mission is my Waters of Mormon, because it
is where I'm coming to know my Savior.

Thank you so much for the support. You people are the greatest. Love
y'all and have a great week!!

Kia Kaha❤

Hermana Twede

Random video of caterpillars.....