Sevilla

WHAT A WEEK. ill start with a short overview..

monday-pday!! we helped the hermanas change pisos. then we had an awesome FHE with our investigator and some of her family that are members! it was great!

tuesday- we started the 8 hours treacherous bus ride to the other side of the mission. we got to sevilla at about 9pm and stayed in an awesome hotel! party! (jokes haha)

wednesday- we had the first mission wide conference in the history of the mission! We had Elder Allen and Elder Dykes come and speak to us about being agents and not being acted upon, but acting ourselves. and also how we can use our new technology (IPADSSSSSSSS) to bring to pass the eternal purposes of the Lord. it was such a good day!! then we headed back to cartagena and got home around midnight. whewww.

thursday- weekly planning and noche de hogar. 

friday- clases de ingles and a noche de hogar at our favorite members house! 

saturday- we had a fútbal activity with lots of investigators, members, and random kids who came by:) then there was a baptism of our good friend Andrea!

sunday- we had 3 investigators come to church! one of our new ones who also brought his friend. we are so excited to be working with him and have some exciting things ahead of us! he also brought his friend. 

then.. we got to SKYPEEE!!!!:) ahh i was so so happy to be able to see my family´s beautiful faces that i miss so much! besides our slight technical problems it was the BEST. 

then we had a dinner cita at an investigator's house who brought her mom, and her friend who wants us to teach her and her daughters. i love when investigators share the gospel with their friends. its so much more effective than what we can do alone. 

i feel as if i have learned so many things this week. it has been a constant struggle to put of the "natural man" and become a saint. This we can only do through the atonement of christ. every day as we work harder we are able to accomplish this and become perfected in Christ. I'm so grateful for the opportunity that we have to repent and become better everyday, because we all have shortcoming that we need to overcome. if we humble ourselves, and become meek and submissive, we are able to do this. 

hope you all had a great week!!! love you all!

con amor, 

Hermana Knowles

Consecration = miracles

hooollaaaaaaa! we have had a great week with some cool miracles as a companionship and as a mission! this was our semana de consagración, or our week of consecration. we set some hard goals and consegrated ourselves to the work as we buckled down and worked for our goals! we found a lot of new investigators and we surpassed our goal for baptismal dates as a mission. I know as we consecrate ourselves for the work, that the Lord will bless us for our efforts and put these prepared people in our path. 

a coupled of cool little miracles we had this week..

one of our investigators who had not been progressing the least bit, had come to church last week. and something has changed in her. She has started singing hymns, praying, and reading!! this is HUGE. haha she has read four chapters in the Book of Mormon in one day and said she couldnt put it down. We are so excited for her! and have some good things planned. 

we were able to find 6 new investigators this week. One day we were walking around, and decided we should drop by an old investigators piso to see if they were there. He never had been there in the past. But we got there just as he was preparing to leave. so we were able to share a short message, say a prayer, and set another cita. if we had shown up five minutes later he wouldnt have been there. and the same exact thing happened with another old investigator an hour later. this is what happens when we consecrate ourselves, the Lord will find a way to put these people in your path or lead you to them in the right time. 

on saturday, our RC abraham took us out to his sisters pizzeria, so we were able to meet her and her sons. i love how excited he is about sharing this with others! he also gave us these little pins for his one month mark, of an eagle carrying a book, that he says is the Book of Mormon haha. and the eagle represents us as we search with eagle eyes to find the people who are prepared to receive the gospel! hes the BEST! 

well we have some really exciting things planned for this week!! tomorrow, we head to sevilla in an 8 hour bus ride for a mission wide conference to talk about our ipads! unfortunately, apple hasnt finished our order, so we should get them in about 2 week.s which probably means more like 6 months haha. we´ll see. pray for the ipads! 

we will also have some members of the 70 come and speak with us. we are super excited to hear their inspiring words as well! 

les quiero un montón!  

chaooooo

hermana knowles

Yo no sé que debo poner aqui

Hoooollllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

How the heck is it Monday otra vez? 

Pues, its been a good week! I started it out in Murcia on intercambios for Monday and Tuesday, because my compie and another hermana´s compie had to go to the mission home to do residency. So we had some really great experiences there! 

Wednesday, we got lost AGAIN taking a bus out to a members house to eat (haha whoops.) and we visited with one of our recent converts, and taught a lesson to one of our investigators from Ecuador who always makes us dinner when we come by! people spoil us here. even investigators! 

Thursday, we had weekly planning and we visited a reference from a member, and it was one of the most memorable lessons we´ve ever had. She was a young mom, who was just weighed down with problems and challenges in her life. She was crying to us as she expressed some of her feelings she was having. As we were sharing our message, she explained that was she has been looking for is an opportunity from God to fix her life, and to get rid of these bad feelings. And she then told us that she knows that this is that opportunity. as we were leaving, we asked if there was anything we could do for her, and she said that this has already helped her so much. ahh! just the perfect example of someone who had been earnestly seeking the truth without knowing where to find it. sadly, she doesnt live in our area so the other hermanas are teaching her, but thats okay:) we are all part of the seach!

We also had a really interesting lesson in a tobacco shop with the owner. (before you all freak out, that's where we have to go to buy stamps. never knew it would be a good finding activity!) he wasn't interested in changing but he said how amazed his was of our courage and our service for what we believe. I hope we were able to plant a seed in his heart. 

We also learned this week that brownies can be a good way to bribe your teenage investigators to listen to you haha:) it worked for us! 

Friday, we had a conference with our stake president about how we can animate the members into missionary work. we can't do it without them!! 

"Missionaries are full time teachers, members are full time finders."

Then we went with Abraham, our RC, to go to find his sister and to eat pizza! Sadly she wasn't there working, so we got ice cream, but its so cool to see how eager he is to share the gospel with his family:)

Saturday, we played futbal with some investigators and missionaries! and I had a really awkard experience avoiding besitos (kisses) from one of the men. hahah oh boy. When men go in for that its like matrix action as we try to avoid it. 

Then there was an activity at the church, festivo de las naciones! where all the members brought food and stuff from their countries, it was so fun! We taught them all the cotton eye joe. it was awesome:) 

Then, funny story of the week! we were walking home, and hna swenson was looking backwards talking to someone, then doesn't see this tree in the way, and trips, hits the tree, and falls to the ground from the impact. hahahaha then i fell to the ground laughing so hard! funny memories! 

Well thats about all! Haha looking forward to this next week! We are working hard to consecrate ourselves to the work as we prepare for some big changes in the mission:) 

Have a great week! 

Les quiero! 

Hermana Knowles

7 Meses

hooolaaaaa. 7 months.. this time is just going by so fast! i cant believe it. and it keeps going faster and faster! ahh! 

Soooo.. its been a pretty good week! i dont have too much to update. Haha lets just say we´ve been working reaaallly hard to try and find NEW investigators! thats what we really need.. we were able to get a few new ones this week, two of which we set baptismal fechas with! in the first lesson! which is exciting.. BUT, they dont live in our area (im crying inside). But thats okay, as long as someone takes good care of them i am happy:) 

Also, i am in this awkward stage where i dont speak spanish OR english.. so i always get everything messed up! haha i was trying to say today, and would say tadoy, and how we got to "eat" the new hermana! (meet) Well these dont sound funny now but i promise they were in the moment aha. I CANT SPEAK ANY LANGUAGE. 

We did get a new investigator last night who is from Africa, and super open. And we were able to set a baptismal fecha with him for the 9th of may! so please play that he will be able to progress and be able to be baptized on this day.

We hit a pretty cool milestone this week.. we finally got our investigator to pray... in the name of Jesus Christ! and if you knew how long we had been trying to get him to do that for you´d know it was a BIG DEAL. He believes in the Book of Mormon, so all we had to do was show him that reference that says that we need to pray in Christ´s name. and he was like.. Oh, Okay! And afterwards we were like.. that was so easy. thats all it took?? haha so we are working hard with him for his baptismal fecha on the 9th as well! 

I love the mission! i grow to love it more and more every single day. i know will always hold on to the truths that i have learned here. and i want to challenge every one of you to strengthen the tesimonies that you already have. A member of the relief society in our ward challenged us to all read in the Book of Mormon, and to use Moroni´s promise, and pray again to receive a confirmation if the book of mormon is true, even if we have received that confirmation before. I did that, and i can just say that i know for CERTAIN that the Book of Mormon is true. It is the true word of God. And i receive this confirmation more and more everyday! so that is what i challenge you all to do. READ, and PRAY. even if you have already done it, and i promise that you will receive a strong confirmation of the truth:)

have a great week!!!

con amor,

hermana knowles :)

Hay que trabajar

The beginning of a new transfer! luckily, i will be staying here in Cartagena with my companion Hermana Swenson! im so happy to be staying! Bu transfers always bring about a big change, and a new start. So we have some exciting things planned for this transfer. 

I dont think anything exciting really happened this week.. haha we have been trying hard to find new investigators, because we dont have any that are progressing at the moment, which is tough! But, we have been able to find five new investigators this week! And one of them seems really great! We found him by street contacting.. We had walked past this guy who looked to be from south america, and looked about 22-23 years old, but we had walked past thinking nothing of it. But then something just kept pushing me to walk back and talk to him. So we did! And we had a great conversation with him, and now he is investigating the church! i love those promptings of the spirit. It is so important to be listening, and waiting, for those quiet promptings to come. And as we act upon those promptings that we receive, the Lord will trust us more, and put more of those people in our path, and we will be even more receptive to the spirit. 

One of our investigators is from africa, and we have been meeting with him for a while. And we are still trying to help him get faith in Christ as our redeemer. Its frustrating, because he believes it is true, and knows what he needs to do, but wont do it! ugh. poco a poco. But we are in need of investigators who are progressing! But we have some good new ones this week that i am really excited for.

One of the things that i have been able to learn on my mission is how to be a better member. I can see the importance of visiting and home teaching, and how important members are in missionary work! We have a great example of a member missionary in our ward. We visited with this member, and when we asked him for references, he easily just gave us five different names! From a couple of his neighbors, to some lady he barely knew, to the people who even sold him tomatoes hah. I realized that they dont have to be the best of friends to try to introduce them to the gospel, but that they can be aquaintances or neighbors. Friendship doesnt need to be a prerequisite. But the gospel can be something that grows you together. So with this member we went to go contact his neighbor, who wasnt there. So we went around for almost an hour trying other neighbors and friends of his! What a great example!! 

It has been a great transfer! i cant believe how fast this time is going.. this week i will be completing 7 months! crazy. 

i hope you all have a great week! and follow the example of the member in our ward, and not be scared in sharing the gospel with friends and acquaintances. And i would love to know of anyones experiences:) 

les quiero muchísimo! 

con amor, 

hermana Knowles

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#graciasaqueÉlvive (6 April 15)

mi querida familia, 

I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE. If you havent watched it all yet.. you need to!!! there is nothing quite as spiritual or refreshing or eye opening or life changing as this oportunity that we have to listen to our modern day prophet and apostles. we luckily had the opportunity to watch all of the sessions.. in english! so that was really lucky for us:) and we got special permission to watch the sunday afternoonsession live, which started at 10:00 for us here! haha so we were watching conference till midnight. it was great! and inbetween sessions we had a great missionary easter egg hunt! and prepared an awesome dinner. Haha we were at the chuch from about one until midnight. 

It has been a pretty uneventful week. haha, we are in desperate need of new investigators, so we are working hard to find those! but had little luck this last week.. but, we are continuing to work hard!! 

OH. GUESS WHAT. WE´RE GETTING IPADS!!!! WOOHOO!! in a month! they just made the announcement this week! so we are having a huge conference with the entire mission, and we get IPADS!!! we are so excited! ahhhh!!!!

Also, this week was the semana santa, or holy week here in spain. Which, for those of you who dont know, is a catholic tradition where the remember the week of Christs life right before his death. So everyday they have prossessions with something new each time, carrying around these huge images of Jesus or some virgens. Anyways, if you want to know what really happened in the Holy Week, you should go to helives.mormon.org, and it has a great overview of easter week and the events that happened in Christ´s life. 

This is the time when a lot of the catholics here actually practice their religion, i think this next week they´ll go back to normal life. haha but we did have the chance to see one of the prossessions, which was really interesting. We saw the one on the night where Christ died, and the streets were dark, and silent. It was really powerful! 

But, as sad as this event was, Christ raised from the dead. He lives again. CHRIST LIVES. and because of him, we can live again. So this isnt a time to mourn, this is a time to give thanks, and to rejoice on the Living Christ. Our Heavenly Father gave us his beloved Son to come and to atone for the sins of the world, and to conquer death. We have this opportunity to be cleansed from sin,. and to be worthy to be in God´s presence. What a blessing this is! should we not rejoice? I am so grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ. And i know that i will do all that i can to serve him. 

Elder Holland gave a really powerful talk about the atonement of Christ, so if you have not seen that i invite you to do so. He said.. 

"So today we celebrate the gift of victory over every fall we have ever experienced, every sorrow we have ever known, every discouragement we have ever had, every fear we have ever faced- to say nothing of our resurrection from death and forgiveness for our sins. That victory is available to us because of the events that transpired on a weekend like this more than two millenia ago in Jerusalem."

I know that my Redeemer lives. 

Love you all!!

Hermana Knowles