Saying Goodbye...

Oh yeah, see you tomorrow!

The Time is Far Spent

I love the hymn one of my best friends/cousin shared with me when she finished her mission, it's helped me in my mission and illustrates the feelings I've had these last few months. 

1. The time is far spent; there is little remaining

To publish glad tidings by sea and by land.

Then hasten, ye heralds; go forward proclaiming:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven’s at hand,

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven’s at hand.

2. Shrink not from your duty, however unpleasant,

But follow the Savior, your pattern and friend.

Our little afflictions, tho painful at present,

Ere long, with the righteous, in glory will end,

Ere long, with the righteous, in glory will end.

3. What, tho, if the favor of Ahman possessing,

This world’s bitter hate you are called to endure?

The angels are waiting to crown you with blessings!

Go forward, be faithful, the promise is sure.

Go forward, be faithful, the promise is sure.

4. Be fixed in your purpose, for Satan will try you;

The weight of your calling he perfectly knows.

Your path may be thorny, but Jesus is nigh you;

His arm is sufficient, tho demons oppose.

His arm is sufficient, tho demons oppose.

His arm has truly been more than sufficient these last 18+ months. He has been with me through every step, tear, turn and smile. Although there were times I fell to my knees crying to the Lord to know where He was, He came countless times to my rescue with the spirit of peace, love, gratitude and an invitation to keep going. I am eternally grateful for my mission. 

I love the end of transfers right before someone in the companionship leaves. Throughout my mission they have been the moments in which the Lord pours an abundance of miracles and prepares both the missionaries and the area for the change. These past few days we've been able to recieve some of these miracles. 

First off we have been using technology. We have an app here called WhatsApp and EVERYONE uses it because it's free and you can make calls and texts to people all over the world. Only a few days after receiving this blessing of an App we met a new friend Benedikt. He's here for a foreign exchange program and still has his number from Germany. We taught him the whole lesson of the Restoration and prayed with him in the street. He had so many questions and was enthused to learn more. Because of WhatsApp we already have been able to have easy daily contact with him and are able to send uplifting messages and extend reading invitations in his native language. It's a miracle! I am looking forward to continue to invite others to come unto Christ knowing that my work isn't finished as my time as a full-time missionary comes to an end. 

Thank you all who have supported me throughout this journey in Spain. Thank you for your prayers and your encouraging words, you have been an answer to my prayers and through your prayers I have been able to recieve strength beyond my own. I know that God lives. He loves us. I know that the Savior of the world lived, died and resurrected so that each and everyone of us can enjoy the blessings of repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and the gift of eternal life. The Lord knows us perfectly. He can make weak things strong. He has and He will. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and is evidence of His restored Gospel. Don't go even a day without it.

Thomas S Monson is a Prophet of God, he is our prophet. I love him and sustain him. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I love the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Isn't it just incredible? Everyday as I study more and more the work of the Lord I am in complete awe at what He has done and continues to do for me. The world is growing ever so cold and confused, but we have something to get us through it. There is literally a light that comes with the knowledge of hope and potential that awaits as we accept His will and His Gospel. 

As a missionary I've been able to have a front row seat to witness God's love. There is a lot of rejection, tears, heartache, sadness and feelings of defeat, but with it come peace, comfort, joy, hope and love. Not going to lie, there have been days in the which I have asked myself, "Is it worth it?" Is it worth it to go out every single day full of hope and desires to work, only to be disappointed with canceled appointments and the mockery of side way glances? Is it worth it to build a relationship, to put your entire heart, life and soul in the well being of another only to watch them take what you have offered and throw it over their shoulder as if it were a useless invention of yesterday's waste? Is it worth the pain? As I have pondered time and time again on this soul searching question the spirit places in my heart an increase of strength, hope and love. He helps me to see these people the way He sees them, and helps me to more fully understand the way He looks at me. 

24 ​He doeth not ​​​anything​ save it be for the benefit of the world; for he ​​​loveth​ the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw ​​​all​ men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation. (2Nephi26:24)

        

24 He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation.  (2Nephi26:24)

28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.         30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mat11)

Sometimes life is hard but the difficulty we go through is nothing in comparison to what Christ has gone through for each of us individually. I'm so grateful for the opportunity and the privilege that God has given me and each of us to taste and partake of His matchless love as we recieve with gladness the reality of His restored Gospel. I hope that we all may be a little bolder, stand a little taller, and have a little more confidence as we open our mouths, use our hands and offer sincere love to share this gospel with others. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week full of miracles and happy peaceful moments!

Con Cariño 

Hermana Warner

 Chalk art! It was really cute, little kids would come up and draw with us, their parents loved it and we were able to talk to them about what we were drawing.

18 months in the mission!! Whoot whoot!

Some funny things happened this week even though it was kind of a bummer...

My comp picked up a lizard after I told her, "Don't worry, it wont bite you, I promise" then it bit her and she threw it at me.

They have weird vending machines here that you can buy waffles, hamburgers, chicken burgers etc so I bought a crappy waffle covered in chocolate haha it was interesting. Better than a Twinkie.

There is this old sad drunk man who is so drugged up he is legit not even there any more. He just dances with his cigaret in the street and looks a little bit like Bob Dylan. Anyway he came up to us the other day to give a nice "Hello how you doing" We shook his hand and talked to him for a while. He didn't really make any sense but he seemed pretty happy to have human interactions. As he left he pinched my arm then continued to pinch attack Hermana Willden like a grandma pinches a chunk your baby. It was pretty funny. After he left she turned to me and asked, "Is this normal?" Yes my dear, yes it is.

We wanted to try a new tracting technique. We decided to take the picture of Christ off our wall and walk around the streets with it to talk to people about Christ. It was interesting and pretty sad. I feel like it really weeded out the people who aren't interested because they seemed to repel at the sight of the portrait. It was an interesting experience. As I held the portrait in my arms I was able to feel the literal significance of my calling as a representative of Christ. I didn't just wear the name tag and go out and talk to people. I literally carried Him in my arms and tried to share Him with others. I stood taller. Smile wider. It was probably most courageous thing I had ever done as a missionary I stood up and stood out in my trust and faith in Jesus Christ. And with it came the rejection, laugh and scorn.

The experience brought the words of the New Testament to life. John 15

18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

21 But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. 

Being a Latter Day Saint in a world full of confusion and devilish popularities is brutal and hard. But I wouldn't trade the picture of Christ in my arms for any of the things the world had and has to offer me. I'm grateful to be a member of His church. I"m grateful for the blessing that I had to be raised in the gospel and the incredible parents God blessed me with. I'm so grateful for you and Dad every day. Thank. You . Thank you.

I love you mom. Keep being strong and keep working hard. 

Have a wonderful week!

- Hija Jacquelyn

We went on a hike today

I guess I have to figure out technology.

Hey fam and friends! So we got some pretty exciting news! 

"This  past week, I  received two  exciting announcements from  the missionary department.  The first  announcement is  that our  mission has  been approved  to begin online proselyting.  This  means  that  after  being  properly  trained, we  will all be able to  use  social media  applications  such  as Facebook,  Instagram, Google Hangouts,  WhatsApp  and possibly others  to  proselyte.   This  is  a miraculous  blessing  that  will allow  us  to  find people  that we  otherwise might  not encounter.   The  second  announcement is that our mission  is  one  of the  first missions  worldwide approved  to  use smartphones.  In  the coming  weeks,  each  companionship  will  be issued  a smartphone with  a data  plan  to assist in  their  proselyting efforts.  We  expect to  begin  online proselyting and  roll-out the smartphone  usage during  the  month  of September. "

      Crazy! I'm so so so so soooo excited! Especially for WhatsApp EVERYONE uses it and they almost don't use anything else. The Lord is truly hastening his work.

     Another exciting announcement, VIRGILIO HAS A FECHA!! And he's so excited! On Sunday he went up to all the members telling them about how much he was looking forward to entering the waters of baptism and is basically planning out his own service making sure it's all ready. The Lord truly is preparing people to receive His gospel.

     Alma 13:24 ​For behold, ​​​angels​ are declaring it unto many at this time in our land; and this is for the purpose of preparing the hearts of the children of men to receive his word at the time of his coming in his glory.

     Our mission has been seeing many miracles. I'm grateful to be a part of this work in Spain. I'm grateful for goal setting and planning in order to reach these goals. Here's a quote I love from Elder Ballard.

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”

I'm so grateful for this gospel! I'm so grateful for prophets! I'm so excited for Conference! I hope you all have a great week and that you are all prepping to have a fantastic General Conference experience as well! 

     Awkward besos,

Hermana Warner

Saludos from across the Atlantic Part 2

I am all out of time! Ahh! Virgilio is doing great! He is already past Alma 17 in the Book of Mormon! He glows more and more every time we see him. This week we also had intercambios with the cute sisters Liddicott and Wihongi in Vecindario, it was cool to take a plane to do intercambios. And I learned a lot! You never get too old to learn! The church is true and the book is blue!

I hope you all have a great week! 

Hermana Warner

We went to another beach

Miracles on my moms day. I love you mom!

So so so good!! Sorry about not writing last week, we are still getting used to p-days here and I didn't make time for it... but hey! This week was FANTASTIC! The lord just keeps blessing us more and more. We've been able to meet with the members and we are getting the first lesson down. Hermana Willden is so great, she is so patient with me and is such a hard worker. It's been a little hard to talk with 25 people everyday but we have really been looking outside of ourselves and doing our best to share the gospel with every one (:

I just wanted to share two of the miracles that happened this week, so I'll just cut to it. When we got here to La Laguna and asked about how we do English class, the elders looked back and forth at each other, shrugged and told us, "Uuhh about that, they don't really happen because no one comes..." In my previous areas I've loved having English class because it's really one of the only ways we can serve here in Spain. It's also a really easy and relaxed way for people to get to know us without the fear of a religion they aren't familiar with. I've also just made some really awesome friends through English class so I am all for it. Anyway, like the elders said, no one comes. But Hermana Willden and I have been diligent in going to the church and the Library that we hold them in every week with the faith that maybe one day someone would come. So Thursday afternoon comes around. We had been praying all that morning that someone would come. We got there right on time and the guy at the front desk told us, "There's a girl waiting for you upstairs"  we went up and SHE WAS THERE! It was a miracle! We were able to get to know her and help her with her english, it was so nice to finally be able to serve! As the conversation continued she asked us more about our beliefs and expressed interest in reading the Book of Mormon in english. Luckily Hermana Willden had been listening to the spirit and although walking around a Spanish island with an English BOM didn't make a lot of sense she kept saying, "I just have a feeling that we're going to need it." So she was able to give it to our new friend. The library is closing until September but she agreed to meet and take english class in the house of a near by member. We are so excited to see how things go! Send her your prayers!

So when we start the mission we have this thing called "The first 12 Weeks" which is basically just a study guide for new missionaries and their trainers. This week it had us focus on asking inspired questions and teaching people, not lessons. It was the perfect preparation for the lesson we had with our new friend Virgilio. We hadn't actually ever met him before, but we had his number from the previous sisters so we decided to keep calling him to see if he could meet. We were finally able to on Saturday. we had originally planned on meeting at 1:00 with a member. When we called him he told us that he was still on the other side of the island and that it would take about an hour for him to meet with us.

Background on spanish culture. We have this thing called mediodía. It's like a 2 hour break in the middle of the day from around 2-4:30ish so we don't eat lunch until 2. Anyway, just a fun fact. So after a while of waiting we dismissed our member friend so she could go get some lunch and move on with her life. Hermana Willden and I had other plans but we unanimously expressed that this lesson was far more important than eating right at two. We had to wait until about 2:30 before we finally came to the park we arranged to meet in. It wasn't flawless but the spirit was so present as we discussed our purpose of meeting. We didn't even start teaching him about the restoration when he started asking about how we go about baptizing people and expressed interest in witnessing one. 

Him: "Do you have a baptismal service coming up anytime soon?" 

Me:"Yeah, whenever you want."  

Jk jk but seriously. It was legit. Aaannd we are going to meet with him again on Wednesday. PRAYERS! It was hands down the most incredible first lesson I've had on the mission. He understands the purpose of our meetings clearly and is willing to do what we invite him to. I am really excited. PLEASE SEND YOUR PRAYERS!

No lie. Prayers work. Please pray.

I was reading in the gospel of Mark this week and something that Christ said really hit me like a load of bricks moving 80 km/hr on a brand-new shiny red radio flyer.

22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.

23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11)

I've been asking a lot of my Heavenly Father, not something I usually do. But as I have been praying for these miracles He gives them to me in ways I couldn't even begin to hope for. I know that as we truly ask in faith, God will give us whatsoever thing we desire. It's too bad it's taken this long for me to really start to get it. I hope to be able to recieve all the miracles the Lord has waiting for us these next few months. 

That's all I really wanted to say. Well that and also a huge HUGE GINORMOUS shout out to the best mom in the world for turning another year older an wiser. I love you mom! I've been doing some extra arm workouts in the morning to be ready for our big bear hug. I've also been blessed with an awesome comp who gives me some practice ;) 

I hope you ALL have a wonderful week full of beautiful sunrises and blissful last minute summer adventures. 

All the awkward besos.

Hermana Warner

We were walking around this lovely area and a nice old man let us hike up the hill in his back yard to get a better view.

These flowers are everywhere and I love them. 

But not as much as my sunflowers (:

...Hermana Willden and I are working on getting some pictures together but.... eh this week you can just enjoy the pretty flowers 🌺 🌻 

La Laguna and Hermana Willden

Where do I even begin? This week has been incredible. A little bit hectic but incredible. First of all I bid farewell to my beloved trio and Carabanchel. It was a happy sad moment but we are just grateful for the time we got to spend together and I'm grateful for all I learned in Carabanchel B9.

     Crazy. So we had to stay in Madrid for a while before getting to the islands we got to spend time with Hermana Glover and Hermana Wilkinson oh yeah, duh and my awesome new comp ... Hermana WILLDEN!!! Whoot whoot! She is legit the best. The second I

saw her I knew she was going to be my comp, she is the cutest.

So we didn't get to Tenerife until Thursday morning but we are here and we are safe! :) I LOVE LA LAGUNA! We are praying for and expecting many miracles here. We got here and started calling the "investigators" their records indicate that they aren't progressing and that they are usually unavailable so the two of us are starting from zero and going up. We made as many calls as we could on Thursday and only a couple people answered. One of which is named Fidel.

     I found Fidel's number in the phone under future investigators and he miraculously answered. I still don't know the area super well and I didn't know the members either so I decided to invite him to a ward activity we had planned Saturday afternoon. We continued to make more calls and did a lot of planning on Friday.

     When Saturday came we continued to pray for a new investigator who would be prepared to be baptized. 5:00 hit and the activity started. Fidel still wasn't there but we still hoped he would come. Around 6:00 he called us back telling us he was lost and that he would be taking a TAXI to find the church. (If you don't already know, taxis are pretty pricey) but he was determined to come.

     Finally around 7 he arrived! He speaks really good English so my comp didn't feel left out at all. The members were so great and welcomed him in with open arms. We played a few games and the bishop said the activity was over and that we needed to wrap things up. We quickly changed into our skirts and asked a member to help us share a message with him. 

     As we began teaching in Spanish he asked that we would do it in English, we were able to teach him that God is our Heavenly Father and that he will help us change to be who we want to be, to be happy. He expressed his true desires to change and to meet with us. It was a miracle, luckily the member knew a little English too. It was such a powerful experience and we will be meeting with him again on Tuesday.

     When we ask for miracles, do our best and act in faith, the Lord will bless us with miracles. Even though I am training in an area I don't even know, the Lord knows this area and He knows these people, with His help I can do all things.

Have a fantastic week!

Hermana Warner

     Hikes and pictures of our beautiful coming soon! To start off, here's a view from our Piso.