Transfer 8, week 2

March 2, 2011
Dear Family,

Just finished an intercambio...which means I spent the last two days with Hermana McMurray. She is an awesome missionary with a very cool history. She is the youngest of eleven children. She lived in Tonga for a year, one month and one day because her dad was a mission president there ;) She served a mini mission there and learned a lot of the language...or at least enough to share her testimony, and then she learned more when she came back. She said it really helped her get into the hearts of the people because they speak English too and she could have settled.

I got a lot of great ideas from her and I learned a lot about what I should be studying. I just finished the intercambio feeling pumped to help our investigators. I have a lot of ideas to write down and sort through now. I am excited. It was funny how obvious some of the things that I learned were....like the fact that people really need to understand the Apostasy!! If they don´t understand that then it is impossible to understand why a Restoration was necessary. I also want to focus more on helping people understand and listen for the Spirit in the very first lesson. The cool thing about Hermana Bell, my normal companion, is that she is always looking for things we can do better and she isn´t afraid to change, so it will be really fun to practice these new ideas with her. Other cool thing about Hermana Bell: She doesn´t worry so much. She has fun and she is teaching me not to stress out so much. YES!!!
Back to what I learned from Hermana McMurray...I just think it is funny too think that I have been on the mission for a year now and I am still learning the simple things....I have a lot to learn and do!!!

Today we went to a park in Torrejón where they have replicas of many important monuments in Europe. It was very cool and it was nice to be with a bunch of people. At the end one elder took out a guitar and another took out a violin and played some hymns and we sang...we were all freezing by that point but it was my favorite part.

Dad, speaking of the violin you should definitely trade if Uncle Roy needs it. It want to save up and get a new one when I get home....just save the shoulder rest. This past week I took advantage of the violin we had in our apartment for a short time and I brought it to a couple of lessons. I love to play!!!

I should probably get off. I hope everything is well with you. Good luck with the eye surgery. I don´t think Mojo would make a very good seeing-eye-dog ;) I think I emailed Jacob to have fun on the Klondike...but it sounds like it is already over...I hope the boys are even more manly now.

I love you all. Thanks for being a wonderful family and for teaching me the gospel!!!

Love Shayla.

Oh yeah, one more thing...during the intercombio, we talked to a man and sat down on a bench to teach him for about ten minutes. He had good questions and a lot of interest. We are going to meet with him in a week. It was such a good lesson and such a miracle to me. I really hope it works out with him. It is funny how all the plans seemed to fall through when I was with a sister unfamiliar to the area, but we had a lot of unexpected teaching moments come up which is even cooler. ;)