Letter from 9/16/2013

These are the Malaga and Fuengirola sisters at the mission home on Monday with Elder Cortes, my district leader). I am third from the right.

Becca and her new companion

 

Greetings from the wonderful city of Malaga Spain! Another week, more stories and por fin its getting cooler:) AND I hit my 3 month mark this week... WOO!! I feel like that just flew by... Pero bueno. This week was insane. So fun. So tiring. So crazy.

Thursday was CRAZY!! Every single one of our lessons was draining and it was such a roller coaster day. We had people tell us that its still "too hot" for learning about the gospel and acting in faith, but maybe later on when it cools down they will be willing to learn more

 Estrella´s family is progressing like CRAZY!! They loved church on Sunday and they are so excited to be baptized next week. I love going over and teaching them because they have such a desire to change and really want to be baptized. AWESOME!

Cool experience. Saturday, I could NOT get it together. I left the phone at home, the Book of Mormon and the address to one of our appointments later that day. It was bad. So since I´d left the phone AND the address at home, I had to try and find our way to this family of recent converts who I have only visited once and it was in my first 2 weeks here.. I prayed so hard the whole way and I can´t really remember the walk but somehow we were led to their doorstep. It was so crazy and such a miracle that we were able to find them becuase they don´t live in our area and we didn´t have the phone to call the elder´s for the address. THEN it was a blessing that I left the phone at home because my water bottle leaked all in my purse and soaked EVERYTHING! So it was a blessing that I didn´t ruin the phone! Crazy how the Lord watches out for you, huh?

OH wierd connection, Hermana Nielsen´s aunt and uncle are the Hickman´s in our stake (Graham). Crazy, huh? AND Sister OHara just moved into their ward in North Salt Lake. This girl is crazy connected to me! But can I just take a moment and say how much I love Hermana Nielsen? I would not have been able to make it through this week without her and laughing off the scary/crazy/stressful moments! Okay I´m done now :)

So this week was long, fun, crazy, but so wonderful at the same time. I feel like I am really getting to know the members now and our investigators are doing well. Thank you all for your love and prayers and know I am praying for yo uall back home as well:)

 

 I wanted to share with you my experience this week from applying the Work of Salvation broadcast into missionary work. Our new bishop has really adopted an attitude of missionary work and the blessings for our ward from focusing on this are showing! The ward council is working together to welcome in our new members (we have 14 planned for this month!!) and its so wonderful to see the ward being run the way the prophets and apostles have been telling us to run it. Its cool seeing how much better the work can go with the whole ward involved! Really makes me excited and feel not as overwhelmed with all the work we have to do!

 

love you all and miss you and have a great week!!

Hermana Folsom



 

Letter from 9/9/2013

Preparation Day going toFuengirola

 

Heyo fambam!! Another week has gone by, holy fast! Can you believe that Thursday, it will be 3 months since I reported already? 1/6th of my mission, gone. Holy guac. But its been great!

So this week, Hermana Johnson left and Hermana Nielsen came! She´s from Salt Lake City, she´s 20 and she´s AWESOME! I haven´t laughed as much as I have in the past 5 days than I have in so long! We get along really well and teaching with her is super fun. I am really hoping we will be together for at least another transfer because so far so good! Really, she´s aweome and already love her so much. Its been interesting getting a new companion so soon, its really testing my knowledge of the area and the people since I´m having to show her around, but I know a lot more about this area than I thought! And with the changes, now our district is HUGE!! We have 5 companionships. We all traveled to Fuengirola together today and I was like, Holy Hannah. But its so fun!

Estrella, the gypsy family that is like all women and all less active, they are our miracle family! I love my gypsy family here, they are so loving and so excited about the gospel. Everytime we go over, they have another family member there that they want us to meet and teach. We now have 4 baptismal dates for their family and more coming, I´m certain! The whole family committed to coming to church next week too.. Presidente Muñoz, the ward mission leader, jokes that after we reactivate/baptize this family that they are going to HAVE to build us our own chapel because the ward will be too big to hold all of them! Its so great and I love going over to teach them. They love reading the Book of Mormon and sharing their testimonies with the members of the family not familiar wiht the Church. My favorite moment from last week was when we invited Corral, one of the grandkids, to offer the closing prayer and she was uncertain and all of a sudden EVERYONE started explaining and offering help and testifying about prayer. Such a great family!

Funny story, we were talking to this man at his door and all of a sudden the door opened and his daughter walks out with a sheet over her head, waving her arms around and holding a pencil like a wand. And this was right after he was telling us how so many of our celebrations come from Paganism and how witchcraft is of the devil and stuff and he looked SO embarrassed when his daughter did that! It was so hard not to bust up after that!

I have officially arrived. Wednesday I couldn´t go to FHE because I was picking up Hermana Nielsen from the train station. On Sunday, ALL the Nigerians (our most faithful Noche de Hogar students) came up to me and said they missed me on Wednesday! I am officially cool. I can die happy now. Hahah but really, I love the Nigerians here, they are such good people and have such a close, family centered culture.

So overall, all is going well. I am disfrutando my time with Hermana Nielsen and we are working hard to prepare Estrella´s family for baptism. We are keeping busy and loving the work. I cannot believe its already September! Oh and on that note, I was cold for the very first time this week since I´ve been in Málaga!! It rained and I actually wore a sweater!! Fall has arrived :) I love you all and am praying for you all!! Stay cool and have a great week!!

Love all of you and enjoy your week!!

Hermana Folsom



 

Greetings from Malaga! I am going to stay here next transfer!!!! WOOO!!! BUT Hermana Johnson is leaving me:( And Hermana Nielsen is coming to finish my training. She´s been out about 4 months and from everyone I´ve talked to, she is SOLID! I´m super pumped! I´m definitely going to miss HJ but Hermana Nielsen sounds cool and I think we will do a lot of great things here in good ol´ Málaga 3.

Holy hannah this gospel is perfect. The more I study it, the more I am convinced that only a perfect God could make it. Every single thing is accounted for and all is balanced and fair and perfect. Seriously,Heavenly Father is the best. I am in awe of how perfectly things work out when we are doing His will. I love this gospel and I am so grateful for the opportunity to share it with His children here in Málaga.

I love that you sent something bout the Atonement being for everyone because thats really been the focus of my study this week. I´ve been studying a lot about mercy and justice and I´ve discovered Alma 42 is golden. It's really remarkable how perfectly balanced the plan is. Were we only to be judged by justice, nobody would receive eternal life, but were we only to be judged by mercy, it wouldn´t be fair. As I am studying mroe about the Savior and the Atonement, the more Ï come to realize applying it is a daily thing that every person should do.
 

The biggest miracle this week is named Dolores. We were visiting this Gypsy family which is very menos activo. The grandma, Estrella, is in her 70s probably and she has 8 kids, almost all of which are less active, or never were baptized. Her youngest daughter, Patricia, lives with her and was never baptized and her oldest daughter, Loli, goes over everyday with her daughter, Dolores, and granddaughter, Island. So we go over to visit Estrella for the first time and turns out she really wants to come back to church, but she can´t walk and has no way of getting to the chapel! And as we are teaching this family, they are all getting so excited about the gospel again. Loli told us that she looked up the videos on YouTube that the missionaries showed them when she was little and they were all baptized and she just cried and cried because of the feeling she felt! THEN her daughter, Dolores, asks us a million questions and wants us to teach her more, and said she would be baptized September 21st!! I am so excited to see this family come together and all come back and hopefully be sealed in the temple. Its such a miracle that we met all of them and they are prepared to come back at this time.

ALSO ANA MARIA SAID SHE WANTS TO BE BAPTIZED!!! Remember my Polish friend? She told us after church yesterday! I was so giddy!

 

We took over teaching Palma´s mother in law, Ana, this week and let me tell you, that woman is a gem! She buys special treats only for the missionaries and she has such a tender heart. She holds that family together single handedly. She cracks me up, such a typical Spanish woman, and she is really earnestly trying to know if this is the true church. She came to church for the first time yesterday and said she felt really peaceful and tranquil there. Good sign, right? Haha but Palma is doing well, I love having her in lessons with Ana because its like having a member present. She explains things to Ana and testifies along with us. We are really working with this family and I really love them so much, they are like my malagueñan family.

 

Anyways I´m excited for my new companion, sad to see HJ going, but ready for this new adventure and finally working in our area! Its really beautiful and it's the historic part of the city, so you could probably look up what some of it looks like, Plaza de la Merced and the castillo and everything. Its beautiful and there is work to be done!

Roman ampitheater in our area... like right down the street from my piso. Pretty cool, no?

 

 

One things a lot of Malagueñans say is that malaga doesn´t take care of its history, which is sad cause there is a lot of Roman history here, it being one of the oldest ports in Europe. Pero bueno... Its still beautiful, especially the part I´m in now.

 

Okay my nerd moment, I was on exchanges this week, and the hermana that came to my place with hermana johnson is named hermana brimhall and she wrote me a note and signed it HB, but it looked like HP with her handwriting and I got SO excited thinking Harry Potter wrote me a note.. alas no!

My ward is smaller now, I really have no clue how many members, but we usually have around 100ish membesr at church on Sunday. They just divided the wards so its smaller now. But it's good cause we are getting to know the members. Yes I get enough to eat, maybe a little too much but that's okay!! One of the members feeds us every Thursday after weekly planning and her maid cooks like a BOSS so I´m content:)

Love you all and thank you for your love and support!!

Anyways I love all of you and love mondays:) Have a great week everyone!!

Love,

Hermana Folsom

A Fair and New Investigators

 

Oh my dear heavens it is already week 6! My first transfer is almost done... Wow this is madness. I hope that the rest of my mission doesn´t go by this fast otherwise I will blink and it will be over! I am loving it still and we are definitely getting into a rhythm here in the centro.

SOOO our crazy goal for this last week! 555 new investigators as a mission, whereas the most we have ever gotten in a week was 236. AND the outcome is.... 558!!!! It was an amazing, miraculous week really and I don´t think I have ever prayed so often before in my life! But it was wonderful really.

To describe my week, I would relate it to Ether 12:6, you receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. I started this week super excited and with a lot of faith that we would be able to get 7 new investigators this week, I was really excited to get started! Then Monday night, all of our plans failed us and then all of our backups failed us. And I swear we knocked the doors of every single person in our area book! I was dead tired but it was just Monday and I knew we could get new investigators the rest of the week. THEN Tuesday night all of our plans failed us again. AND all of our backups. We walked even farther and knocked even more doors on Tuesday than we had Monday. We talked to everyone we saw and we prayed all evening. It was a really rough day. Wednesday we were all talking at FHE with the other missionaries and it was really hard hearing about all their success stories and knowing we still had 0 news, and we were starting to get down, but we decided to keep working. AND WE RECEIVED A MIRACLE!!! Thursday we had FIVE new investigators!! I know that we needed to work hard and put in our effort so that the Lord could bless us and that He led us to these elect. From then on, the rest of the week went amazingly! We finished with 10 new investigators this week, higher than we were expecting! It really was a week of miracles and faith and trusting in the Lord.

On Monday we went to the Feria for pday and it was okay, but watching the flamenco dancing was so great. Our new area was the hub of feria and so it was hard to work at nights because there were a LOT of tourists! Our street at night was buzzing with people all week. But it's cool because a lot of people dress in traditional flamenco clothing for feria so we saw the coolest clothes all week! My favorite is when the kids dress up, so cute :)

One of our new investigators, Kingsley, is awesome. I swear he is going to be a bishop or stake president someday. He is so faithful and really solid. His one hangup is that he prefers baptism in natural waters rather than in the baptismal font. BUT I have no problem with that because that means we get to have a baptism on the beach :) He´s Nigerian and I just love Nigerian English. It really is different. My favorite thing he said was, "Kingsley you are a king!" He has such hope and knows his divine nature, its a miracle we met him! Actually it was because we were on a bus we take a lot and we missed our stop somehow. We were really worried about making it home on time and I joked to Hermana Johnson that I guess we were just going to have to have a lesson in the street so we had more time to get back when this man stopped us and asked if we were missionaries! He´d met with them before and wanted to meet with us again! Such a miracle we met Kinglsey!!

We went to the home of a less active woman and she has 5 daughters and 3 sons and a few of her daughters were over and they all only have daughters too, so I was in a home of all women. It really made me miss home and my sisters! There was one moment when I asked them a question and all of them started talking at once and I was like, "Am I at home right now??" hahaha so great! I´m excited to go back!

 

A parade during the fair right outside our window.

 

 It is really multicultural here but I love it! I´ve met people from all over and its so fun hearing different people´s stories. Its a little hard sometimes though because we switch between teaching in English and in Spanish and my brain is so confused when I go from one phone call in English to our Nigerians to another phone call in Spanish to our Spaniards! Hahah but its fun. Unfortunately, we had to hand Francisco off but he still will call us occasionally and tell us about his progress. hahah apparently Pres Deere was out with the elders when they taught Francisco and he raved about his "angeles" and how we are the best missionaries here. No complaints coming from me about that :) Palma is really making progress. She´s gone 3 days without smoking and she really is a changed woman. She´s happier and has such a hunger and thirst for the word of God. She really is an elect lady and I feel so blessed to be able to work with her. I think she teaches us more than we teach her! I absolutely adore her.

Anyways I love you and have a good week!!! Be good, do good!

Love you all and know I am praying for you!!

Hermana Folsom

Sois Mis Angeles! (you are my angels)

First package from home! I can get mail-hint, hint!

My new address:

C/La Victoria No. 64

BLK A 1oG

29012 Malaga

SPAIN

Hey familia!!  Not going to lie, this week was pretty hard! I started out the week going to Fuengirola for residency (which was awesome by the way, homemade food by Hermana Deere and time to talk to other new missionaries about their experiences, it was cool!) then Hermana Johnson and I got to work in that new area finding people and setting up stuff for the elders. We had a lot of miracles with finding and new investigators, so that was so great!

All week we have been running into this man, Francisco, and his son, Jose. Seriously we did not go a single day without seeing them! Even as we started teaching them, we would still run into them as we were on our way to other teaching appointments too!! The Lord REALLY wants these two to have the gospel I guess!! hahaha even they started commenting on how "somebody up there wants us to meet!" Francisco started referring to us as his "angeles" because every time he would think about us, we would show up! They are such good people and so ready to hear the gospel now, I am so grateful they were put in our path and we were able to start teaching them.

Since they are both men, we can´t go into their piso without another woman and one day we just could NOT get a member to come to our lesson! We called EVERYONE and nobody could come. We stopped by Francisco´s piso to tell him that we couldn´t go in and when we told him about the situation, he said no matter! We would have the lesson in the plaza outside! Hahah so while we were teaching them outside on a bench, this woman walked up and asked me what church I´m from and when I told her she got SO excited and asked if we could come by and teach her! If we hadn´t been on that park bench we would have never met Nicole! Obedience really does bring blessings!

Nicole is wonderful. She´s in her late twenties, from Romania (but her Spanish is better than ours!) and she has the most beautiful little 5 year old son.  It was such a miracle meeting her and really I know that she was prepared. Its cool seeing the Lord´s promises come to be!

Spain is so funny becuase really everything shuts down in August! It's DEAD everywhere but in the centro or at the beach. And yes, its is HOTTTTTTTT here!! I get out of the shower and stay wet all day from sweat!

Then here comes the hard part, we´ve been working hard in this new area all week and then Friday afternoon the elders called us all together and said they think it would be best if we just started working in our new area now and that we should switch pisos. SO Friday night we packed up our piso and switched with the elders and now we are working closer to the beach, in the center of the city. In under 2 weeks now, I have worked in 3 different areas!! Hahaha so crazy... But its been hard because just as we are starting to see success and the fruits of our labors, we move areas. So its been frustrating these past two days but I know that this week will be amazing. Look forward to hearing about LOADS of miracles because we are really going to have to rely on the Lord this week. Our mission made the goal of 555 new investigators this week and the most ever done before is 236 in one week so this is the perfect week to start in our new area because we are really going to work hard to get new investigators!

Overall though, I am settling in and the language is still coming. I can understand our Chilean district leader now, so I know I must be improving! I love this work and I love this gospel and seeing how it can help people! LOVE YOU ALL!!

Oh and by the way, Elders do NOT know how to clean! We´ve been slowly cleaning the piso because it is GROSS!! But also HUGE!!

I think I will be here for awhile but we will find out in two weeks with transfers! But we are all pretty certain I´m staying in Malaga. So you are pretty safe sending stuff here.

 

 love you all!!!!!

Hermana Folsom



Malaga-week 3

Heyo familia mia! Holy guac is time moving like crazy here!! I cannot believe I am already halfway done with my first transfer!! Its so exciting but so scary how fast its moving! This week was definitely a hard one, but not for lack of work but for the circumstances right now! I´ll explain later... Here are the highlights of each of my days this week:

Monday: We had our first lesson with Ann  and her "marido" Unna  and their beautiful baby girl, Sarah. Oh my goodness if there ever were golden investigators these would be it!! Unna was SO excited to read the Book of Mormon and he has a million questions. He says that every night before he goes to bed, he reads the scriptures, sings hymns and prays. When we brought Ann a Polish Book of Mormon on Thursday, the look on her face was priceless and she was so excited!! She is so great, having a hard time leaving the traditions of her childhood but is eager to follow Christ. When we committed them to baptism, Unna said "for real."

Tuesday: We visited Juli in the hospital. She has so much faith and we talked about Christ and His role as our Savior and Redeemer and she bore the most beautiful testimony about trusting in Him. Those Romanians are such good people! It was hard seeing her deteriorating (they think this is the last stretch before she passes away) but she has so much faith and really trusts in the Savior.

Wednesday: SOOO this is the cause of this week being so hard. With the ward changes, our area was split in half and all of our investigators are in Barrio 4, but we are being moved to Barrio 3. So we´ve been redrawing boundaries and exchanging investigators and pretty much opening new areas. Wednesday was district meeting and we spent a lot of time going through our Area Book and getting everything organized for sometime this week when we hopefully move into our new apartment and start working in our new area. Its such a weird transfer and its my first one!! Its hard leaving our investigators and starting anew after all the success we´ve been having lately.

Thursday: We had a special training for the Malaga districts and it was fun getting toknow the other missionaries in our area and meeting some other sisters finally! Oh and we are teaching a Nigerian (scratch that... WERE teaching) woman and her daughter and her daughter´s friend. The girls are 7 but both want to be baptized when they turn 8 and Hope, the friend, really wants us to introduce her mom to the church. She´s so cute, we taught her how to introduce the BoM with the pictures in the front and she practices it and is SO excited to show her mom!! We´ve got our little missionaries helping us :)

Friday:  We went for our final lesson with the Romanian kids.

Saturday: We started working in a newish area and we thought it was going to be such a hard day, but we had such random accidental successes all day! So great and we accidentally found an old investigator! The Lord rocks. Really.

Sunday: I had to translate Sacrament meeting for one of the recent converts and it was so hard! I was basically just giving him summaries because they speak so fast and slur their words here! But it was kinda fun at the same time.

So this week was a really great, really difficult week and a really strange transfer! I am excited to just get in our area and start workign their and stop this weird in between state!!

 

So my day goes as follows: We get up at 730, exercise, get ready, eat and start personal study at 9, then at 930 we start companion study and at 1030 we do training for an hour. Then we leave the piso at 1130 to start working! At 2 we come back to the piso for mediodia. We have an hour and a half to make and eat lunch and get things done that need to be done (SO NICE, I write in my journal but other missionaries siesta during this time), then we finish personal study at 330 and update the area book at 4. from 430 to 530 we do language study, then head out to work! if we are not in a lesson, we have to be back in the piso at 1015, but if we aren´t we are back by 1045. Then we plan for 30 minutes and are in bed by 1130. That's the summer schedule for training, but in the winter everything is just earlier by 30 minutes and without training you just leave the piso 30 minutes earlier in the morning and after mediodia. MEDIODIA IS BOMB! And if we eat with members, even better!

 THEY HAVE DORITOS HERE OH HAPPY DAY!! Haha or maybe not so happy day... I´m gonna get fat. And nutella here is cheaper than pb. definitely gonna get fat. !!We cook together so we share food and the cheese here is so much better. I actually have started drinking coke too cause its the beverage of choice here and when you are thirsty, even that brown poison tastes good!!

 BE GOOD DO GOOD AND BE AN EXAMPLE ALWAYS!!!

love you all and miss you!! be good do good!!

hermana folsom :)

Rincon de la Victoria. So beautiful. (part of her area)

Week 2 in the field

Hola familia mia! Its your favorite missionary again:)

This week was so good, but so fast! Hahah the hard pace of missionary work finally hit me and Saturday I was EXHAUSTED!! But in the best sort of way. Its getting hotter here, hard to believe but I am loving it all the same! Its funny because different people keep calling us and asking how I´m doing but really i am loving this. I have waited since October for this and I´m finally here!!

I thought I would give you a little synopsis of all our investigators right now, so here we go!

Happy is Nigerian and she has had the saddest life, contrary to her name. She is about 26 and has 2 little girls but the government took them away because she couldn´t feed them. Her "marido" lives in Switzerland and only pays enough attention to her to send her money for rent. She can´t understand why any of this happened and it breaks my heart. She has a baptismal date, but fails us a lot so we´ll see how it goes with preparing her for it!

Then the Romanians. They are a family but the adults have said that they don´t want to change, they are really Evangelical Christians. BUT the kids (there are 3 over the age of 8) have all said that they know that this is the true church and that they want to be baptized in it. The only problem is that their church preaches that its an abomination for children to be baptized and so they think it would be a sin for them to be baptized before the age of 16. We are working with them right now. Seriously those little Romanians capture the hearts of everyone they encounter. We brought a member to one of their lessons last week and by the end, she was talking all about what she was going to do for that poor family. Its the grandparents, a few aunts and uncles and 8 cousins living in one piso right now and one of the little girls´mom is dying of cancer. We don´t know how much longer she has but I would be surprised if she lives longer than my transfer.

Tina and Peggy are a mother and daugher, she´s from Nigeria but Peggy was born here. We are just waiting for her to get her papers so she can get married to her "marido" and get baptized. They are so sweet! Its funny because sometimes we have to teach two lessons, one in English for Tina and another in Spanish for Peggy. They are sweet and have given us a LOT of references already!

THEN our miracle Saturday. We had a cita set up with a future and we tried so hard to get a member there since his wife couldn´t come, but nobody was free Saturday, so we had to cancel. It was really sad and really disappointing. And even though Hermana Johnson was way crushed, she was determined to keep working (she´s a great trainer!) so we went to Tina and Peggy´s and wonder of wonders, WE GOT TWO NEW INVESTIGATORS THERE!! It was amazing! She had a friend, Ana Maria, over and this lady is so prepared. She knows everything and is super excited for us to come back! She´s from Poland and speaks a little English and even less Spanish so its a good thing we have the Spirit so she can understand!! Hahaha! We´ll see how teaching her goes today! Oh she has the most beautiful baby girl, 4 months old! Peggy was holding her and saw me making faces at her, so she tried to hand her to me, but when I told her I couldn´t hold babies as a missionary, she looks at me and goes, "just take the nametag off!" hahaha what a demon! And so tempting... BUT I´m obedient :)

 I think the hardest thing is that we are serving in a really poor area and the stories of these people just breaks my heart. The other day we sat in a lesson with Happy while she just cried and cried about her babies and it broke my heart. Both Hermana Johnson and I just lost it in that lesson. I can´t imagine going through what these people go through but i know that the gospel can help them, if they let Christ in.

So the ward split on Sunday and our area straddles the divide. Actually it cut most of the missionary´s areas so they are redrawing the malaga areas this week. I should hopefully find out tomorrow what area we will continue working and what area goes to the elders.

 

I really am enjoying it here, Hermana Johnson is great and super chill and we get along really well. I´m definitely going to get fat from all this ice cream people keep giving me and I´m trying not to let my obsession with Spanish tortilla show out because I really don´t want to get fat. BUT SPANISH FOOD IS BOMB!