58 days til Christmas!

Can you believe that it is just about 58 days until Christmas?  You know what that means...

SKYPE (speaking of which... am I supposed to set that up or what?)

I can´t believe anything that in just a lil bit I will be hitting my 6 months and skyping with all of your lovely faces. Time is weeeird! I don´t understand. Hahah I probably say this every time! But it is true! Every time P day comes around I can´t believe it. I can´t ever tell if time is going by fast or slow! I can´t believe that I have been out here on an Island for over 100 days. I feel like I just got here but then again at the same time I can´t like remember life not being here. The mission is definitely a time warp I´ll tell ya that.

So how are you doing? Ready for Halloween?? I can´t believe its cold and stuff and halloweenish in Utah. Here it honestly just feels like summer! But hey I can´t complain. I'll take it while I´ve still got it ha!

So speaking of Halloween... guess how I will be celebrating? (well kind of..) The day after Halloween you can bet that I will be celebrating with...A BAPTISM!

That’s my NEWS! This Friday at approximately 6 in the afternoon.. my dear friend Rita will be getting baptized. YES! My first baptism here! Ha, someone that Sister Phillips and I found and taught from the beginning. What a blessing! Seriously!!! We are getting to see the fruits of our labor this 3rd transfer and it is so cool. Rita is probably the most prepared little lady I have ever met in my life and I just know there are SO many blessing that are ahead of her! WOW..She has gone through so many things in her life.. especially being from Cuba. She has such an incredible INCREDIBLE testimony of Jesus Christ. Wow I have never met someone who is so devoted to her Savior and Lord. Rita is an angel. She really is! She has the biggest heart and the most pure desires. I can´t tell you all how much I love her. Also she asked me to speak at her baptism and do a musical number so I am excited about that. This will be a good week. I am excited. It’s cool getting to go all of the way with her!

So I came to a cool realization one night this week.. just about how COOL missions are. Holy cow. They are pretty dang tough but they are the coolest things in the w o r l d. I truly believe that there is nothing better that you can do than serve a mission! This work is so important! There is nothing better. Anyways walking home one night from the bus stop we were contacting right down by the beach (haha how LUCKY AM I) of Los Cristianos. We were talking to evvvveryone trying to finish off the night strong. It was during this moment that I had the super cool realization of how cool a mission is. And how it truly is a once in a life time chance! How many times are you going to be able to literally talk to EVERYONE up and down the streets with the most incredible message to share?! It made me think of a testimony Ruby Matesen shared at the last fast and testimony meeting for me in Utah. She spoke about how excited and happy she was to serve a mission! How EXCITED she is to literally run up and down the streets with the most happy message for all! I am so excited for all of these girls who are embarking in this work. It give me chills. It was cool. As we talked to everyone from all different places that night I was able to realize that I...Hermana Nydegger...am living that life right now. It hit me hard! After this short 18 months you can still do incredible missionary work don´t get me wrong.. but you don´t have that same authority and spirit. You can´t just run up and down the streets talking to everyone like a mad woman! (haha well unless you want to be a weirdo) Really it just hit me hard. In a good and happy way! Seriously how lucky I am to have this opportunity to be a representative of Christ e v e r y d a y. I am going to continue to cherish these moments and not ever come home with regrets. Being a full time missionary is a blessing. Missionary work is thrilling and invigorating! It is changing my life.

Most awkward act / Bold act of the week/mission:

Haha, okay so this week me and Phillips got our creative thinkin’ on with a new finding activity. I don´t know if I ever told you but here we teach English classes! It is such a simple service that we do every week. Not too many people have jobs.. it’s really sad! And for this a lot of people will do ANYTHING to learn English! Their chances of getting a job goes up like 80 percent if they know English. So we teach them for free in the church! Haha nothing better for them than learning English from American mormon missionaries in the Lord’s home! Also we have found SO much success with these classes. In fact it is how we have found a majority of our investigators! So we made a ton of flyers to go put up everywhere to spread the word. So we were doing that one morning after studies and we decided to go to an employment center and pass them out. We walked right into the building and breezed right past a room FULL of people waiting. We make eye contact, read each other´s minds, and turned around. Haha, we turned around and walked into this huge room and guess what we did...

"Hola que tal! Somos misioneras de la iglesia de jesucristo y estamos aqui enseñando clases de ingles.. GRATIS! Sabemos que es muy muy importante hablar ingles en los trabajos. Tenemos las clases cada martes y viernes a las 7 y nos encantaria ayudar a ustedes con su ingles!! Sabemos que estas clases ayudaran sus vidas muchisimo! Ustedes tienen interest??"

Yep. THATS RIGHT! Ha we made an announcement to about 50 or so people. We told them who we were and what we were doing and then asked them if they had interest in learning English. Here is where it gets awkward. First of all it is hard enough making an announcement in ENGLISH to people you don´t know.. imagine trying to make one in Spanish to about 50 Spaniards just staring at you.

Right after we were bold big girls and made this announcement in Spanish....

*awkward silence*

Pretty sure I saw tumble weed rolling in the back

Picture us just standing there just smiling hoping someone will break us free from this awkwardness.

6 long seconds go by and all of a sudden a girl raised her hand and says

"yo quiero!"

Sooner than we know it the whole room turns from a quiet waiting room into a chaotic jungle!!! (I have never seen a setting change so quickly in my life) EVERYONE begins asking for flyers and begins giving us their numbers like it was no tomorrow! Haha, I literally THREW my planner to some man across the room for him to write down his info while I talked to this other lady!

So there you have it! English class is about to get real and DONE in here haha.

I gained a testimony that if you just be bold and endure the awkwardness you will see miracles.

Three words to describe a mission.

awkward

bold

thrilling

LOVE YOU ALL!

Hermana Nydegger

Loving Life

I AM LOVING LIFE. Really who knew being so far away could be so hard, yet so fun? I am amazed every day.

But first...

My good friend Ursula informed me and showed me a picture of Miley Cyrus the other day. Needless to say my world is SHATTERED. What is happening in the world? Sometimes I wonder if prophets from the Book of Mormon saw her when they were having visions of our day... something I have been thinking about, ha.

SO this week has been so fun and so great. Basically I am just so, so, so, so happy to still be here Los Cristianos with Sister Phillips. We work hard and we have fun! I seriously am so grateful and love Sister Phillips.  She is one amazing person. 

This week I have gained such a strong testimony of prayers of faith. Prayers of faith are ALWAYS answered! It is so incredible. I know with all of my heart that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us, hears our prayers, and answers our prayers. I had the coolest week that confirmed that truth to me more than it ever has before.

First off.. M. Remember him from a while ago?? Yes. M. is the 9 year old boy that we found through reactivating his mom! He was supposed to get baptized like forever ago.. we had him set on the 28th of September. We began to give him the lessons and everything when randomly his mom J. wanted to take him off date. She still wanted him to have the lessons...but she didn´t like the idea of him having a baptism date!! It was the weirdest thing. She started to act really weird with us for some reason and it literally broke our hearts. Cute M. wanted so bad to get baptized so badly and for one reason or another Jaqueline wasn´t crazy about it. It was so odd! It confused me because literally her heart just closed right up in front of me. But for the past month we have been praying so hard every single day. We have been fasting so hard. We just have been doing every little thing possible trying to get M. and J.  to open back up to us! This went on for about of month.. we kept trying and trying yet she wouldn´t give us any sort of info why or what her doubts were. We kept the prayer of faith in our hearts despite the fails though.. we left her two weeks ago though with the commitment to pray and find a day that she would feel good about for M.s baptism! We hadn´t heard anything from her UNTIL yesterday night. We went over to have a noche de hogar with her and some of her Colombian friends and as soon as we walk in... guess what happens--

"Me voy a ser bautizado el 30 de Noviembre!!"

I AM GOING TO BE BAPTIZED ON NOVEMBER 30TH! says little M. 

You can picture the surprise on our faces! It was a miracle. J. literally had a change of heart. It was SO cool. She turned completely 180 degrees!! Talk about a MIRACLE! At that moment I gained an even stronger testimony that Heavenly Father is looking out for all and that he hears and answers our prayers. It was a defining moment for me as a missionary! The power of prayer is incredible. It is real. There have been so many times on the mission when I have quickly said the hardest prayer pleading with Heavenly Father for the spirit to open up someone’s heart.. and you know what? I am always able to see miracles from those specific prayers of faith. Basically I learned not to ever give up in the work of missionaries. We have the best and most loving Father in Heaven who is looking out for us! I have been thinking a lot about the prayer of faith this week. It is so powerful.. I can´t even comprehend it! Faith is so powerful and it is something that we can all have! I know that if we pray and have FAITH that anything is possible. Especially with missionary work.

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.

Doubt your doubts before your doubt your faith! Faith in Jesucristo is so real and so powerful. I love how all we need to start with is a desire. In D&C 4 it says he who has a desire is called to the work. All that Heavenly Father requires of us is a desire! That’s ALL. I invite you all to take whatever desire you have to Heavenly Father! Take your desires of your heart and counsel with him - He will give you an answer. Maybe not in our time.. but he willlll give us our answer. When we have that desire to do good. And when we have the faith to do that good. WE will see miracles. I know that with all of my heart.

I wish that I had more time to tell you about the other miracles that I have seen this week! But I will just have to wait until next week. And being my forgetful self... I forgot my camera cord. HA next week I promise.

The church is so true! Never doubt your prayers of faith. Never give up. Find joy in the journey!

I love you all!

Love,

H. Nydegger

Hallelujah!

I am so happy that I have more time this week finally send you a nice and juicy email of my life. The past few weeks.. actually the last transfer has been CRAZY on p-days! So glad to have more time. So hopefully this email will do justice in giving you my update. I wish that you could see what every second of every day is like out here in the mission but it’s impossible! I ESPECIALLY wish I could give you every detail about every investigator but that is even more impossible! Mainly because things are changing so much all of the time.

First off.. TRANSFER CALLS. 

Transfer calls were this week! It’s true... they really are like the Reaping from Hunger Games plus opening up a mission call all over again. Needless to say they are AWESOME. But also insane. I am talking sweating bullets insane! Your district leader calls you Saturday night and gives you the news.. They don´t tell you until Saturday night that way you don´t blow your last week with goodbye visits and such.. but at the same time it still is distracting because it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to not think about it. Anways... so yeah all of Saturday was super long. Sister Phillips and I felt like we wanted to throw up just thinking about it. Ha seriously.. biggest butterflies you get in your stomach. Similar to opening up your mission call. Especially when you are on the islands not knowing when they are going to boot you off.. So if you are all wondering..

I AM STILL HERE! All of the worrying was for nothing. Haha I felt so weird and stupid after! We got the call.. I felt like I was going to puke.. and then we found out that we would both be staying together. All that nonsense and waste of worrying for nothing! But I am so happy to still be here. Just like opening up a mission call, you get the great confirmation after that you are or will be exactly where the Lord wants you. Everything is so inspired! I love it.  It is so cool.

Speaking of inspired things..

DID YOU ALL JUST LOVE CONFERENCE?? Wow it was so great! It made me so homesick though! Conference weekend is the best. It was so good as a missionary though too! I luckily got to watch half of the sessions in English up in Santa Cruz! It was so funnnnn. We got to watch the Sunday night session up with all of the other missionaries so it was a party let me tell you. And the amazing Sister Anderson made us all food. It is so fun being on the Islands! The coolest missionaries are here and I just love each one so much. But conference was so cool. I loved how almost every talk was about missionary work. I am excited for the Ensign to come out so that I can really study each talk. Especially the ones that I had to watch in Spanish haha. BUT I was so surprised though at how much I was able to understand in Spanish though! Really though!!! I understood so much. My Spanish is progressing and it FEELS. SO. GOOD. Remember how last time I told you about how I can speak more than I can understand haha? Well now I think I can understand more than I can speak! Either way.. I am progressing. The gift of tongues AMAZES me. It is so real. Missionaries are so blessed.

So as far as investigators... I will tell you about my two favorites! (not that I have favorites or anything haha) But these are two amazing ladies. And out of our investigators they are progressing the most!

First, Rita. Remember Rita?? She is the darling lady from Cuba that we found through English class advertisements. She is my miracle! She is so so so great. And so receptive. Every lesson that we have with her is so spiritual! Haha and she cries at practically everything that we tell her. And everytime at church. I love it! She really feels the spirit so strong and it is so cool to be able to watch her just soak it all in. And she is a saint. She is in her 60s! She has lots of problems with her body.. and she lives really far away. But she is a saint and never fails to miss anything we invite her to. She takes the bus everywhere and walks a long way also.. but she never fails to come. She is a huge example to me. Yesterday we went out to visit her! And guess what.. she is going to be baptized on the 2nd of November. I can´t wait! She is such a Christ-like person and I know that she is prepared. She has been waiting to find the church her whole life! And now she has finally found it. Miracle.

Second, Gloria! Let me just tell you I LOVE Gloria. She is also so great. And she is hilarious. I don´t even know how to explain her! She comes to English class. She also is so incredibly receptive. We just started teaching her a few weeks ago! She is from the Evangelical church which is kind of scary.. but it’s okay because she loves what we have been teaching her. Especially the Plan of Salvation. Anyways.. I LOVE HER! And she is committed to be baptized also on the 2nd of November. So I am really excited!

We are teaching a bunch of other people.. our teaching pool has gotten so big!! It is so cool. And it’s cool because we white washed the area. Every person that we are teaching are people that we have found through our own efforts. Mainly off the streets! So it so cool! And it’s another reason why I am SO happy to be staying here for the next 6 weeks! In missionary work there are always 3 steps. Planting seeds, cultivating, and HARVESTING! It’s cool to be able to stay in an area long enough to see and participate in all 3 parts. I am loving being a missionary here in the Canary Islands. Life is so great!

I LOVE YOU ALL!

Line of the week:

Gloria: Wow, que linda su nariz! (Wow, how cute your nose!)

Me: MY NOSE? Hahahaha best compliment ever.

A visit to Teide National Park with all the Tenerife Hermana's and the Anderson's.  Teide is the highest peak in Spain and 3rd largest volcano in the world. . 

Week 11 of Training...What???

Hey everyone! How is it going in good old Utah? I miss Utah SO much sometimes! And never thought that I would say it but I miss AMERICA. With experience of living in a foreign country I can officially say that America is the best country in the world.

I am actually in Santa Cruz right now too and unfortunately have forgotten my camera cord so no pictures. I am on my first INTERCAMBIO! My first exchange! Now with other sisters here on the Island I can finally go on splits and what not. Cool! I will be working here with Sister Money until Wednesday when we will have a Zone meeting. It is so great and so fun. Anyways.. NEXT WEEK! get ready for pictures.

So this week was GREAT! And it was even cut a little short from the AMAZING stake conference that we had last weekend. So the conference was amazing. Wow the spirit was so strong. And it was just fuuuun being there. It seriously is such a privilege to be here serving on the islands during this exciting time! It still blows my mind that I am a missionary. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and just lay here wondering...

HOW did I get here? How?

I look back and think of all of the little things that I have experienced in my life that have put me where I am today. Deciding to go on a mission. Putting my papers in without any idea of what I was actually getting myself into. Just leaving everything back home to serve the Lord... honestly was the biggest leap into the dark. It is so weird to think about. This week I was thinking a lot about the night that I opened my call.. haha and I wonder what was I even thinking! I do know that it was the happiest day of my life. You honestly have NO idea what you are getting yourself into, yet it is the coolest thing that you may ever ever EVER do in your life. It is truly a heaven sent journey! When I lay here at night I can´t help but just feel my Heavenly Father´s love so strongly. It is REAL! He IS there and He IS watching out for us every step of the way. I have no doubt in my mind that we are all constantly being prepared for something bigger. Sometimes when I lay here I feel SUCH a great gratitude for all of my friends and family who have kept me in their hearts my entire life even through all of the stupid mistakes that I have made in my life. I am here today as a missionary doing the craziest most enriching thing ever. I love you all soooo much. So much and I really just wanted to thank you for all. I love you guys.

LILY. I cannot believe that you are baptized. I seriously talk about you all of the time! To EVERYONE! I love it. And you now have the Holy Ghost? So cool. On Wednesday we had a baptism of the CUTEST little boy named Gabriel. Of course we invited EVERY one to come and guess who came? Rita. Rita is the lady who is a miracle and who started crying when she saw the name plaque of the church. Remember? Yeah she is doing SO great. She is SO great! She is from Cuba and I love this little lady so much. Anyways so I had to the lead the music for the baptism on Tuesday and right during the last verse of Soy un Hijo de Dios I see cute little Rita pop in. And then Alex and Anatoly (coolest little guy from Ukraine.. GO TORI!) pop in too! I am so glad that I saw her because I was able to split with my comp in the room for a second and go sit down with her throughout the baptism. Anyways Rita is just the CUTEST! She will get baptized soon. I just know it. She was so teary through-out the whole thing. She loved it. After the baptism I was just talking to her about it. I told her about you LILY! That you were getting baptized in just a few days. I bore my testimony to cute little Rita about how important baptism and the holy ghost is and how CRUCIAL it is for everyone! Everyone needs it. I told her how SO excited I was for you and how grateful I was for your desire. Man the spirit was SO strong. We both started to cry hahaha. But I KNOW that she felt the spirit so strongly because not only did I see it in her eyes, she told me. She told me that there is sometime really special about what I was doing and who I am. Tu es siempre con sonrisa. You are always with smile! Thats what she kept saying to me. Its true though I am so happy! This is the only true church in the world. We have SO much to be happy about.

Que mas?

This week was so great. Time is flying. Like really flying. Soon I am not going to be the trainee! We will see what happens in dos semanas! Hermana Phillips and I are doing great. Your companion really becomes your best friend! You learn so much from each other. I love her so much. She is such a rad girl and I am SO lucky to have her as my trainer. Who knows what will happen next transfer!

I am so excited for conference. It will be SO great!!! The only sad thing is that it will be in Spanish.. It will be the ultimate test to see how much Spanish I know. And whether or not I fall asleep due to brain exhaustion. Ha, but I AM SO EXITED! Also, I cannnnnnot believe that it was just a year ago that an announcement was made that changed my life.

I love you all

line of the week:

(during a power hour of contacting.. of which Phillips and I got 11 references no big deal.. ha MIRACLE)
Us: Hola, somos misioneras de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias! Are you a person who believes in God?
Man: Well I own a bar named Hell.. (as he flips us off)
Us: Well Pray to God, He is waiting for you!
hahaha