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!

 

 

Finally In Malaga

Hello my lovely family!! I am doing so great. I am serving in Malaga 3!! My companion´s name is Hermana Johnson, but I´ll give more info later.

So I got into Malaga around 11ish on Tuesday, we were herded to a nearby chapel and did orientation and ate until around 5 when they finally introduced us to our trainers!! You´ve probably already seen the pictures on the blog? maybe not though...

 

 

MALAGA 3 IS GLORIOUS! Hermana Johnson rocks. She has such enthusiasm and love for this people, this area and this work it is so contagious!! She is 20 from Utah and went to BYUI before the mission. This is only her 3rd transfer, but i´m her 2nd kid already! She is awesome really and so sweet. We serve in the Malaga 3 ward along with 2 other sets of missionaries (elders). And its crazy because even with the ward divided into 3 areas, there is still SO much work to be done! Our area covers the most rundown part of Malaga, La Palma and La Palmilla. We take care not to be in that part of our area late at night just because its got lots of crime. But all is well. I am falling completely in love with Malaga 3. The members are so kind and welcoming and SO excited about this work. There are a lot of people interested too! We do make a lot of contacts, but a lot of people come up to US and want to learn more. Most of our investigators are Nigerian immigrants. The Lord really is preparing people for this gospel!!

 

Haha okay so the ward is going to be divided next week. Our capilla is already really small for ONE ward, so with two Sundays are going to be hectic. But hey, that is definitely NOT a bad problem to have, right??

There was a wedding on Thursday and I´ll send pictures. The bride was very adamant that the missionaries come because most of her friends are nonmembers and her husband too. We did talk to a lot of the people there and I got to know the ward a little better.
 

There were 3 baptisms in our ward on Saturday (none ours) but we got to sing at it. I LOVE SINGING WITH HERMANA JOHNSON!! It was fun. Hahaha it was so cool helping out at the baptism too! Hopefully we´ll be getting one too soon with one of our investigators. Its kind of crazy because here a LOT of people have stopped me and asked how they know me and members will ask if we´ve met before. I had one girl shout across the street to know my name to see if she knew me already. We must have some distant relative here that looks like me or I met a lot of these people in the pre existence. Either way, I am certain I am where I am supposed to bee right now!!

 

Basically I have never been more sore and tired before in my life, but at the same time never been so happy and at peace with what I´m doing. THIS is what I´ve been waiting for and I know I´m where I´m supposed to be doing what I´m supposed to be doing. Its not easy, but its so fun!!

Our address: (send to this if you will be sending me letters sometime between now and in 5 weeks otherwise send it to the mission home just to be safe)

pasaje saturno 2 bajo 5

29011 Malaga

SPAIN

 It really is so wonderful here. Everyday I notice something new and realized I am here in this ward, working in this specific area, with this specific companion for a reason. It is so wonderful to know that I´m where I´m supposed ot be doing what I´m supposed to be doing. Oh and it doesn´t hurt that I´m getting a nice tan at the same time (i now am wearing my watch, even when its off! hahaha). Its pretty hot, like I basically just sweat all day, but I love it. AND it makes me more motivated to get citas(appointments) so we can sit and teach people in their pisos!! Oh and they have these treats here that I think you would love, napoliteanos. They are SO good, kinda like eclairs but a little different. Oh and I will have to send you some of the recipes to try because I am absolutely falling in love with spanish food!! SO GOOD!!! We get ice cream kinda a lot here.. shoot i am going to get FAT!! I love spanish food, when the members cook for us it is my absolute favorite! Kinda funny, so when all of our investigators fail us and even our back ups, its a mission rule that you are allowed to get ice cream. We got it twice this week already... BUT its super good and super rich here. It does help the disappointment ease at least a little! Its taking my stomach some adjusting to eating at 8, then not again until like 2 but thats a HUGE meal, and then not again until around 1030. I am going to buy snacks so i won´t be so famished this week! Oh and our schedule IS different because we are in Spain. remind me next week to describe it!!

Yes, Elder Ward was actually one of my good friends in the MTC and luckily I´ve been updated pretty regularly on his conditions. When Sister Deere and the members found out that he´s my friend, they have all made a special effort to let me know, haha they even let me watch the cnn clip of his interview! What a cool missionary experience for him:) He´s awesome and if anyone could bounce back from this, its him!

SO pretty much I am doing really well! I´ll have to let you know next week what is happened with my area with the ward divisions but I really love this area and this ward. LOVE YOU ALL AND MISS YOU IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE!!

Hermana Folsom

Finally in Malaga!!!

Heyo familia!! I was given a few minutes to send you an email and let you know that I am in Malaga!! President and Sister Deere are so nice and we even got donuts at the train station. I'm pretty tired since we had to get up at 4:30 this morning so we could catch the train to come South. The train went SUPER fast the whole time! We averaged about 200 kph the whole time, i'm not quite sure what that is in mph but I know its fast!! hahahaha!
I find out by 5 today who my companion is, and from the sound of my interview with President, I will NOT be spending the night at the mission home and will go with my companion to my area tonight. Which means I'll be serving within about 3 hours of Malaga. WOO!! I won't get the opportunity again until Monday to email you and I'll give you my address, but only send letters there if you are CERTAIN it will get there during the transfer. Otherwise it will be kind of a pain to get to me. It feels so surreal to finally be here but I am so excited and so anxious to start working!! TONIGHTS THE NIGHT!! Oh and thank you so much for that package from your reunion!! That was such a nice surprise to come to when we got here (okay so we are doing orientation in this pretty small chapel and its so crazy how random it is on this store front!!) so thank you to everyone who wrote me stuff and thank you for that postcard (except for you, Chris. You know what you did.) I love you all and miss you loads but I know that I am definitely where I am supposed to be!
 Meeting President Deere was so cool, I felt so deeply that I am where I am supposed to be and serving with the group I'm supposed to be serving with. The whole 3 hour train ride, most of us were pretty quiet, but the second we pulled into the station, all of us started realizing we were the only familiar faces to all of us and we stuck REAL close! Its pretty funny what being in a strange place will do. I love you!! You get like a million emails from me this week you lucky dogs;)

E-mail you on Monday!!! (You even get like 3 extra days this time to send me emails!!)

Love,

Hermana Folsom (finally a real missionary!!!! Even though I'm just a little guy still....)

My district--no, we are not learning Russian

We celebrated last P-day in MTC by going to Burger King

I love my new scriptures!

We love Rexy!

(editor-It took me a while to figure out what she meant so I circled the relevant object for you.)

IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

Holy Hannah where has the time gone?? It is already my last week in the MTC and I leave for the field in a matter of DAYS! I feel like just yesterday I left for Spain and now i´m getting ready to leave for MALAGA!! This week has gone by way too fast but here are the highlights:

On Thursday, we watched a “Jeffrey Holland Classic Devotional” called don´t you dare go home. I´m pretty sure every missionary ever has seen it but it is so good!! HE is such a powerful speaker, especially when he is talking about missionary work. It really riles me up! Hahhaa but really. I love what he said and I really think this applies especially now to younger missionaries “we´ve got to be bigger, better, older and bolder!” and then he told us to grow up. Hahah! So the other day, I was talking to my companions and I said “Go big or go home right?” and one of them said “DON’T YOU DARE GO HOME” So I was like, “Guess I gotta go big then!” and that is just one example of the bad jokes going around here right now… we are ready for some outside influence of the members!!!!

Saturday in the park (seriously I always have that song stuck in my head when I talk about it!) was definitely my best Saturday so far! We actually got to be with our own companions this time and it was AWESOME! The energy going into it was so incredible. We kept on joking that we renamed the lake in the middle the waters of mormon and that we would get a chain of elders baptizing. Haha it was awesome! We talked to anyone and everyone and actually my companions and I had a lot of success. Funny story, on the way back on the metro, I sat by this lady reading something on her kindle and so I asked her what she was reading and she got really sheepish and like wouldn´t answer my question directly, saying stuff like, “that book that all women are reading now” or “you know a woman book” and I was like DEAR HEAVENS PLEASE DO NOT BE READING FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY! But she was. Haha that was so awkward and all my thoughts of transitioning into talking about the book of mormon were completely gone. So completely awkward.

On Sundays, they have got to be my favorite! I love the devotionals and the firesides, but like I think I said before, my favorite time is singing hour!! I look forward to it all week! I love just singing my little heart out. And elder Sullivan picks songs that have really fun soprano parts. I didn´t realize how high my range was until I looked around and no other sisters were singing up there with me. Elder Sullivan stopped and commented on my “powerful soprano” and I turned beet red and could not formulate a coherent sentence. Hahah I was so embarrassed to find out I was just jamming and nobody else was with me! but I continued to sing and sing loud and proud! So its ok I supposeJ

With this being our last week here, we are finishing up lessons with our “progressing investigators” and it’s a little bittersweet. it is making me so excited for next week getting to go out and actually teach!

On that note, today being our last pday here we decided to celebrate it with BURGER KING! How American are we?? But we luckily missed the really… interesting… squid meal that the rest of the missionaries enjoyed!

So I know mom will probably be freaking out for info, so i´ll tell you what I know about Tuesday. I leave at around 6 in the morning and I am taking a high speed train straight to malaga where I meet with my president at around 10, then have lunch and orientation and meet my trainer and then we are all shipped out to our areas! If I can, i´ll let you know more info because I have some time to email Monday MAYBE.

So I have a few requests: JOKES. I AM SO JOKE DEPRIVED! Just stupid, silly ones please! I love jokes and I keep retelling the same ones hoping they will stay funny (so far not so good). ALSO would you send me the living Christ? I cannot believe I didn´t bring a copy… And one final request, I finally figured out who grandma has been talking about. Hermana Findlay is from uncle kent (I think)´s ward and she is my roommate but is going to Barcelona.

OH AND LOOK AT PAGE 107 OF PREACH MY GOSPEL I SWEAR IT IS BATES FROM DOWNTON ABBEY

LOV EYOU ALL AND MISS YOU ALL!! Stay strong and be good!!