SILENCE=SPIRIT TIME!

Oh Heyyy Family!!!

Are you ready for the greatest email of your lives?! haha jk, it's not too special but I have quite a few funny stories about Spanish and cool spiritual stories too :) First off, I AM SO HAPPY ABOUT THE SNOW!!! YAYY!! It was so much fun to see all of the snow and make a snow angel in the centimeter of snow that we got. It is freaking cold but that's ok, I'll be warm in Spain soon!! So, still no VISAS...super sad. But hey, we still got like 2 1/2 weeks left till we are OUT OF HERE!! Can you believe it?! I am going to be a legit missionary in 2 1/2 weeks. Unless I get reassigned to the referall center, boooooo. Ok now time for the good stuff!!

So we have this hour long workshop thing every Monday afternoon where most of the Spanish missionaries go to and we are taught about how to better our lessons. So this last workshop was HILAROIUS! You all may not think it's funny because you either A) don't speak spanish or B) don't understand how missionaries learning a language sound when teaching their first lessons ever in Spanish. Our teacher was super funny and he did a role play with just himself of how ALL of us sound when we are doing a lesson. It goes someting like this:

Missionary: "Hola Nacho, como esta?"

Nacho: "bien bien"

Missionaries: "oh bien bien, bueno bueno....ummm como esta su esposa?"

Nacho: "bien bien"

Missionaries: "oh bien bien, bueno bueno..." *one whispers to the other, "what else should we ask him?" "umm....como esta su perro?"

Nacho: "bien..."

Missionaries: "oh bien bien, bueno bueno.....umm....uhh...esta bien si uhh...usted orar?" (in a terrible gringo accent) hahaha anyways, you probably think this is not funny at all but we were just all dying because we are the worst at Spanish. That was definitely me at the beginning!! But don't worry, now I know how to say this instead: "Que bueno!!" haha jk I can do more than that but it's still pretty pathetic

Super funny story #2: So Hna stark and I go into teach our investigato (our teacher), Pedro, and we are teaching the word of wisdom. We go in there and we're speaking legit Spanish and totally just owning up the lesson and then Hna stark starts to say the line, "our bodies are sacred." So she says it like this..."Nuestros cuerpos son sangrados." She then looks to me and whispers, "Sangrados, right?" and I look back at her and say with total confidence, "yeah, sangrados, you're good." She then continues to look at Pedro with a smile and continues on with the lesson. So we leave the lesson skipping down the hallway because we were like, YEAH we totally owned that lesson! Our Spanish is SO GOOD! YEAH! A couple minutes later, our teacher, Hermano Doxey, (aka Pedro), comes down the hallway with the biggest smile and is kinda laughing. He says to us, "heyy, so you two are super chistozo (funny). In the lesson you said 'nuestros cuerpos son sangrados.'" We look back at him smiling and thinking...heck yeah we did!! I bet we totally blew him away with our vocabulary....Hno Doxey says with a smile, "yeah, that's not right...you just said our bodies are bloody." hahahahaha we should've said SAGRADOS not SANGRADOS yeahhhhhh soooooo we are defiinitely NOT ready for the field. We were on the floor laughing our heads off and Hna Stark says, "We only said that like once, right?

Hno. Doxey just stares at us and quickly says, "hah, no. Four times. You said it four times. I was trying incredibly hard to just bust up laughing during your lesson. It was still good though!" hahaha ok end of that long story

Ok Spiritual side!! This week was AWESOME! We focused on how to teach with the Spirit and how to listen to the Spirit. The mathmatical equation to this is: SILENCE=SPIRIT TIME. So we practiced with someone who wasn't our companion and we taught each other one-on-one. I was with my other favorite, Hna Haglund. We pretended to be real people that we knew who weren't members and then one of us would be the missionary and the other would be the "investigator" or the person that you know who wasn't LDS. So Hna Haglund taught me first and I pretended to be one of my dear friends. We started the quick role play lesson with the baptism invitation. The Investigator would of course say no and then it was the missionary's job to have long pauses during the lesson and to listen to the Spirit so that they knew what INSPIRED QUESTIONS to ask them. We had quite a few long pauses and just stared into each other's souls. Hna Haglund asked a few simple questions to get to know the real concern that I had with being baptized and then after like a two minute pause she asked an amazing question that had hit me so hard that I started to tear up. I couldn't even asnwer the question because I was so choked up. I knew that that was the question that I needed to be asked as my friend. Hna Haglund then began to cry because she knew that that question was definitely the right one to ask me. It was so amazing and it only took about 4 minutes to feel the Spirit that strongly. The whole class was doing this exercise at the same time but our teacher was only watching Hna Haglund and I the entire time. He then came up to us after we finished and said that he was very impressed and felt the Spirit also during our little 6 minute role play. PS this was all in Spanish and I felt like I could totally speak whatever I wanted to when I felt the Spirit right then. It was incredible. SO BOOM! It totally is the Spirit that is the teacher and I am so glad that I got to understand a little snip-it of what it will be like when I am teaching real people in Spain.

I am just amazed at how much I didn't understand about the Spirit and about the Church until now. If I didn't go on a mission, I would've missed out on HUGE spiritual opportunities that have already changed my life and my perspective on our purpose here and the life to come. There were other funny stories I wanted to share but I have zero time!! :( I hope everyone spends time to have some silence during their day to listen to the Spirit :) It is amazing.

Fun Facts!! I am officially the NEW coordinating sister and I have been helping a girl in our Zone who just had knee surgery...yuck. It's been a crazy couple of days with that. I am excited to be a host next wednesday for the new missionaries! I also gave a talk in sacrament meeting IN SPANISH a couple weeks ago haha sorry I forgot to mention that. Everyone was impressed. BOOM. Go me. haha jk, that was totally Preach My Gospel's handy dandy work ;) We also taught our first 40min lesson in Spanish at the TRC. Super cool experience. We finished all of our grammar lessons and now we just have 2 weeks to speak spanish!! Our District is the most coveted District in all of the Spanish Branches...no joke. Every teacher that has taught us...ehm 20 teachers....LOVES US! We have 2 legit teachers but then we are taught by 20 others every now and then haha. Hno Doxey just says that all of the teachers keep asking why we are so amazing and awesome and funny and can speak spanish and are spiritual. Yeah we rock :) ok I really gotta go! LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Be safe!!

Love love love,

Hermana Daly :)

Batch #2 of MTC Pics

6 week mark at the MTC, VISAS & Ambassador of Spain!

Hola Familia!!!!

HEY EVERYONE! I cannot believe that our District will officially be the oldest District in our Zone starting this next Tuesday when our other FAVORTIE District leaves us :( I have gained sooooo many awesome friends here and I love all of them. I thought that the 19 year old Elders would be totally retarded and no fun at all, but turns out they are the coolest and funniest Elders ever. I love them :) Just thought I'd say that us four Hermanas are by far the most popular in all of 17M. Yeah, we're a pretty big deal haha. Or we are just the cutest Hermanas in the world. I love my Hna's so much. Greatest friends already and I haven't gotten to meet my Zone in Spain yet!! Love the mission!

BIG NEWS!! The Ambassador of Spain was here these past couple of days and they only chose ONE District to go and meet him. They chose the District RIGHT NEXT to our classroom that has 5 Elders going to Malaga as well. Us Hna's know them pretty well from playing four square. We were super jealous that they were the only ones that got to go. So I guess the First Presidency had the Ambassador fly to SLC to check out the MTC and the missionaries are taught Spanish and all of that. This also means that the Church is trying VERY hard to freaking get our VISAS going. There are now about 140 missionaries waiting on VISAS to Spain. It's getting ridiculous. But, once we knew that the Ambassador of Spain came...it was serious business. So all of us Spain missionaries have been getting together a lot this week and talking about what we've heard about our VISAS. The rumor is is that we will for sure have them by the end of our 9 weeks. I REALLY hope that's true!!!!

Well this week has been a very hard working week. Usually we goof off quite a bit haha but we actually buckled down and got a lot accomplished. Our Spanish has definitely improved because we only speak in Spanish during all three mealtimes. This has helped incredibly much even though we just talk about our food in Spanish because we don't know what else to say haha, it's probably the funniest part of the day. Hna Stark and I totally ROCKED the TRC again :) We are quite the team. Once again we taught two 20 min lessons at the TRC and we loved them both. First one was a cute old man who talked super slow for us...so nice :) Then the next one was a girl from BYU and she was dang cute and totally loved us. We ended up talking in English for like an extra 10 minutes because we wanted tips on how to better our Spanish skills haha. She was super cool and gave great advice.

SAD NEWS! Our favorite teacher in the ENTIRE world, Hermano Andersen, was forced to go teach another District. SO SAD!! Our district was so devastated that we threw him a going away party even though he's just teaching a few doors down haha. Our Elders found some Happy Birthday signs and balloons hahaha they are the greatest. Hno. Andersen just loved it and said we were his favorite district ever :) THAT'S RIGHT!! He visits all the time and gives super cool spiritual/funny stories from his mission. He is freaking amazing. Too bad he's married....jk jk I'm a missionary ;) haha anyyyyywayyyss.....

I am definitely burned out on the MTC. Ending Week 6 and so ready to get the heck out of here even though my Spanish is horrible haha. I feel so bad for those 12 weekers that would only be half way done. TERRIBLE! Gotta love the MTC, but dang, that's just too long. OH!! pretty sure I found the next Apostle! Shayne M. Bowen of the 70 spoke to us for Devo on Tuesday. BLEW OUR MINDS! He was fantastic!! Our Branch Presidency says that he is totally the next Apostle. So mark my words!!! haha

Thank you again for the package, mom!! Love the letters everyone :) I am so spoiled every day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEAN!!! I hope it isn't as cool as your Bday at lagoon last year ;) jk, I hope it's awesome!!! Love you, bro :)

Have a great weekend! Eat lots of delish pumpkin stuff...the MTC is lame and never gives us seasonal food. So enjoy the pumpkin stuff while you can!!!

Love Always,

Hermana Daly :)

General Conference was AMAZING!!

Hola Everyone!!!

WOW! I am half way done with the MTC! Where did the time go?? I feel like I have been here for foreeeever, yet it feels like time is just flying by! I am definitely not ready for the field so I hope that time doesn't sneak up on me too much. GENERAL CONFERENCE!! Oh my gosh do I have SO much to tell all of you about the new changes happening with the age rule change!!!!!!!! GET THIS!! So, we heard that nobody knew about the rule change except for the first presidency and the Apostles and some of the 70. The MTC presidency had NO CLUE. Of course, they suspected it was going to happen sometime but it was so hilarious/amazing being in that big huge gym with the entire MTC when we heard that announcement :) As Monson said that, the ENTIRE room was booming with cheers, screaming, clapping. AHHH it was AMAZING!! Not gonna lie, my first thought, "I AM SO JEALOUS! You have got to be kidding me? Why did this happen right after I left? Now I am old and crippled. So lame!" hahaha but then I was like, "YEAH, go sister missionaries! We are going to change to Gospel forever! BOOM!" The MTC has been talking about it NON STOP. Ok, here are the HUGE changes....I feel terrible because I probably shouldn't be saying this because it won't take effect till January but I just can't keep it in. So try to keep it on the DL even though this is going on the internet haha. SO!!! The MTC presidency said they are expecting more than double the missionaries. Keep in the mind that the MTC is completely packed to the max during the summer time and that's about 3,000 missionaries. They are expecting 6-7,000 missionaries in the next few months!! And it should stay like that for a year or so and then go down to about 5,000 and stay there. CRAZY CRAZY! This means they are working on getting all brand new text books that teach missionaries to get ready for the field in HALF the time. Asian languages 12 to 9 weeks, Spanish and other 9 weekers go to 6 weeks, GET THIS English from 3 weeks to 10 DAYS!! Woahhhhh! Oh man, you new missionaries better be freaking prepared to get your world rocked!! haha...in a good way I swear ;) So, I am definitely grateful that I do not have to do this in 6 weeks haha. Good luck to the new wave of people. Also, they are freaking out about how to feed that many people and how to house them. Rumor has it, they are going to use freshman BYU dorms for housing...Hogwarts buildings are gonna be taken over by missionaries! HECK YEAH! Then they have to figure out exercise areas, classrooms...oh dang I could go on and on. Lets just say, the Lord definitely is hastening His work. So awesome. You have no idea how the world is changing right now. It is the most amazing thing in the world. This Church is so true. It is incredible how quickly and effectively our Church runs. I love President Monson. He really does speak with the Lord and receives awesome revelation.

Ok next topic, GENERAL CONFERENCE! haha SO AMAZING! Favorite talks by far...Elder Nelson on "ask the missionaries, they can help you!!" hahaha, the entire MTC was just laughing and loving every second of it. Elder Nelson really paved the waved the way for missionary work to boom :) Then next fav was by Uchtdorf on how we have so much potential and we need to work with diligence to be the person that we were assigned to be. I loved his quote, "Don't be the boy who dipped his toe in the water and claimed he went swimming." I also love how he said to not compare ourselves to others but sometimes it's good to be competitive and work as hard as we can to be the best we can be. YEAH UCHTFORF! Then of course, the bomb.com...Elder Holland. WOAH! He totally knocked it out of the park. Just incredible. There are no words. I love how he said that our Heavenly Father needs our loyalty at every stage of our life. We have a marvelous work to do and we should NEVER look back until our work is done. BOOM! Go Holland!!!

Ok moving on...TUES DEVOTIONAL!! We have Devo's every Tues night...guess who it was... ELDER BEDNAR!!! BOOOOOM!!! AMAZING! I can't even tell you how freaking awesome this week was. We have been so incredibly spoiled and I just absolutely love it! I am totally running out of time.

First of all, here's my FAVORITE QUOTE from him, "Just so you know, us Apostles are not assigned topics for Gen. Conf. It's not like Monson says, 'Hey Bednar and Ballard, you got conversion unto Christ, Holland....just light it up my man" hahahahahaha ah, he is so freaking funny.

Here's the gist of what he said/did. He taught us how to take good notes during Gen. Conf and how to receive revelation for ourselves during it. He played 3 clips from this past gen conf and had us write down the following things from that clip: the doctrine being taught, the principle from that doctrine, the invitations extended, and then the promised blessings by following those invitations. He then said to write down NOT what the speaker said, but what it means to us and what we need to do about it. WOW! I was comparing those notes to the gen conf notes I took and they were COMPLETELY different and the ones with Bendar's Devo were way more inpsiring and have taught me way more than the notes from the actual conference. SO DO THAT! Bednar said that that is how he does it and he grows so much from it. So, you all better listen up to Bednar and follow that council ;)

Ok and THEN! our Sunday fireside after conference was CHAD LEWIS!! He played for BYU football and then in the NFL with the Eagles and the Rams. Wow, what a beast. He is so spiritually strong! He showed tons of football clips....man that was the best haha and then he showed tons of pics from his mission and of him hiking some crazy mountain in Africa....can't remember it at the moment. Ah, it was the funniest fireside and the most powerful :) I LOVE THE MTC!!!!!!!!!!! You all should be so freakin jealous right now ;)

Wow, I have so much more to say and zero time. I really hope you all LOVED conference. Keep reading it over and over when it comes in the mail. There are so many good things in there that are coming from our Heavenly Father, NOT the Apostle's own words but HIS words. So you better pay attention. Bednar also said to us, "Not knowing what the Apostles say is like not believeing in them." OUCH! So you better know what they are saying or you are basically saying you don't believe in them! GET ON IT!

Some quick funny stories from the week :)

During our 2 hour free time that the Pres gave us after conference....ummm my hermanas and I built the greatest fort in the world in our room hahaha and then slept in it. Good times. check out my comp's blog www.everythingvamonos.com Hopefull there are pics on there. Sorry I can't send pics anymore. Freakin MTC took out all memory card readers forever. We can't send pics home anymore :( :( :(

Next funny story...after we got done eating our dinner we have to put our trays away in this tray drop off conveyor belt dealy. So it's wednesday, which means newbie missionary day ;) And so, I was getting up to put my tray away and there was this MASSIVE line of newbie missionaries with their orange dots just staring at the belt waiting for ONE person to put their tray down. I slyly just went past the whole line and went past that ONE retard person and put my tray on the belt and moved on. Easy. Boom. Done....and THEN my funny companera, Hna Stark, was just chillin in the back of the line waiting like a good girl. And I just shouted at her, "HEY! Hermana! Just go passed them! I have no idea what these newbies are doing. There is nobody putting their tray away. Just pass them!!" ALL of the newbie missionaries just STARED at me with kinda sad/confused faces. My whole zone heard/saw this whole scene and were DYING laughing. I honestly thought I wasn't being rude at all by saying that. But oh man, I am such a jerk. MAJOR jerk hahahaha I felt terrible but we were on the ground laughing for an hour or so. I then apologized in front of the whole cafeteria and then taught them how they don't have to wait on ONE person who is putting their tray away. It's HUGE conveyor belt hahaha. Anways, good times :)

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Shout out to Matt for sending those delicious Eclairs, you rock Matt!!! And I love all of the letters :) keep them coming. They are the greatest thing ever! Have an awesome weekend!!!!! YAY FALL SEASON!

Love love love,

Hermana Daly!! THE CHURCH IS SO TRUE!

"Just fake it 'til you make it"!

Hola Familia!!!

Wow, I cannot believe I have been here three weeks!!! I feel like I've been here for like 3 months haha. We only have 6 weeks left! I still don't know anything about Spanish and just fake it. My companion always says, "just fake it till you make it." haha Not sure if that's the greatest advice ever but it's pretty dang funny :) Let's see, quite a lot of little spiritual things have happened but nothing too huge. Our lessons with our two investigators have been pretty rough and we were super down most of the week. BUT THEN, we had an epic lesson in class on like Wednesday night and we realized that we had been preparing and teaching our lessons super wrong and not doing it effectively. It was pretty hard to admit that we really screwed up, but once we decided that we really needed to change our study habits and lesson preparation, we taught SO MUCH BETTER! It was such a miracle. Hna Stark and I have been having the longest and most sincere prayers of our lives just asking for help and guidance on how to learn Spanish and teach these investigators. Heavenly Father TOTALLY blessed us on Thursday and we totally owned the lessons in TRC and for one of our investigators. It was so awesome :) TRC is still my favorite thing in the entire world. It is so much fun to talk to people from the outside world and get to know them and just have a good time with it. Of course this is all done is super bad broken up Spanish haha but we always have the nicest volunteers and they end up teaching us so much in these lessons. It's like an ego boost for us haha. I just can't say enough how much I love my district and zone. They are THE funniest Elders I have ever met in my life!! Love them to death :)

We got a new district this last Wednesday with FOUR NEW HERMANAS! FINALLY! So now we have 8 hna's in our zone. Me and my hna's are still the coolest ones though...not gonna lie ;) we're just too funny and cute haha. Anyways, these 4 new hna's are going to Chicago and a bunch of other state side missions that I can't remember. They are all super nice and cool, but we don't see them too often. So, I still haven't met any other hna's with a foreign mission call yet in our building...super weird. Also, this past week I was asked to help out with another zone and act as their "coordinating sister person." So I had to help out their four hna's and show them to their rooms and tell them the 8 million rules that we have. They looked just like I did when I came haha all wide eyed and didn't know what the heck they just got themselves into haha. It was a lot of fun helping them out!!

Not too much else has gone on but I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for the huge package :) I LOVE my new clothes and necklace. I am already so dang sick of my clothes...and I have to wear them for 17 more months. Oh gosh haha I am going to do some major shopping in Spain ;) Some other fun news: I am the new master at four square. Seriously, like everyone in the MTC knows who I am because I owned a million Elders at four square. I get pretty intense and smash the ball in their face. It is very theraputic for me hahaha I mostly run on the track though during morning gym, then play four square for 10 minutes and kill everyone. For afternoon gym, we all go outside and play softball with our zone. I have never really hit with a baseball bat before and I am getting SO GOOD! haha ok, not that good, but I got a home run once ;) But it was only because the Elders couldn't freaking catch the ball when they threw it to each other. Ah, so much fun. Love gym time :)

I hope everyone is loving the fall season! This is the hardest time for me because I am in love with Fall and I love going to pumpkin patches and going to haunted forest places. Ahhhh, sooo much fun! I hope all you BYU kids are taking advantage of the fun fall festivites!!!! I would never miss one. I love you all!!!! Thank you for writing me and making my day every time :) I am loving my mission and my companion and other hna's SO MUCH! They really are my best friends. Miss you and think of all of you often.

Love,

Hermana Daly!

VISA status

Ok, here is the status on VISAS: Hna Haglund's mom wrote a letter to the Madrid MTC presidents about it and he wrote back saying that there are over 100 US missionaries waiting on VISAS from Spain and all of their VISA people quit in April and then they had a huge August vacation so the Church sent some people over to fix this whole mess. They said no one will be getting any VISAS until like end of November.....bummer! So I will for sure get reassigned for a while cuz my 9 wks are up around Nov 13. So they will tell me where I am going like two days before I leave. I'm fine with staying here but i really hope my VISA comes when the 9 wks are up...we'll see! Thats all any foreign missionaires talk about are VISAS haha we are all suffering together...well just the spain ones. Anyways, this week has been AWESOME! yet super hard and eye opening. I'll write you all soon :) LOVE YOU