One Month Out

Last Thursday for preparation day I finally got my haircut. One of my teacher´s Hermano Cerro demanded I get it cut immediately so I finally gave in. Luckily President Sullivan is basically a master barber and he did a great job and didn´t cut it very short at all. The guys in my district all went to Domino´s pizza for lunch which was a metro stop over from the MTC. They have an all you can eat deal for 6 euros each so we just had them keep bringing pizza to us. We didn´t want any other customers to come in and slow down the process/ we wanted to share the message of the gospel so we put a Book of Mormon in the window so those that passed the store would see it...the Domino´s was really old school and looked like it hadn´t been renovated since the late 80´s. They had a thin crust pizza that had a layer of philadelphia cream cheese between another thin crust. I wanted to puke. But it felt good to have relatively normal american food again.

I wanted to go out to Sol which is the city center after but all the guys in my district wanted to just go back and take a nap so that´s what we did. Then we watched the last session of Conference which was really good. Elder Holland´s talk was amazing we all really enjoyed it. I liked the part about how we probably have a stronger testimony than we give ourselves credit for. And we should focus on those parts more.

Saturday we went to the park to preach. I was with Elder Buckway who´s from Utah. He´s really cool and really good at Basketball and Soccer. It was really hot out in our suits but the first person we talked to was a 25ish year old girl just sitting on a bench. We spoke to her about the Book of Mormon and gave her a copy and we got her phone number but I was dumb and didn´t ask for her name for the referral sheet. She immediately started reading it as we left which was really cool to see. Then we talked to a German guy who spoke english. He was a lutheran but we had a really good talk about religion. We told him about how our Gospel focuses on progress and changing behavior, which he said he really admired and wished his religion focused on that more. Then we talked to an older Spanish woman. At first she wouldnt even look at us as we were talking. And then I asked if she knew of the Mormon Temple in Madrid and gave her a picture of it and I said ¨en el Templo los familias pueden ser juntos para siempre¨ which means in the temple families are able to be together forever. and right when i said that she immediately changed her attitude and became much more open and engaging with us. SHe said her family is catholic but religion is not a part of their lives. She wasn´t interested in our message but we had a nice talk in spanish and she couldnt believe we had only been studying spanish for three weeks. it was really cool. and then the last guy we talked to was from egypt and he knew spanish, french, and arabic. he said he was a muslim turned catholic, but then said he was now part of a religion that he didnt know the name of, but just showed us a picture of mother Mary. We told him about the Book of Mormon and he was really interested and said he loved learning about other religions. I told him I knew a little arabic but he didnt seem to care that much so that was a bummer...but we got all his contact info and even showed us his license to verify it for us (not sure why) but i´m really excited about him. his name was omar bellafel or something i think.

I cant think of much else that happened. we´ve been playing a lot of soccer which is really fun...I found out that when i say prayers out loud ive been saying ¨bendice nos centarse¨ instead of ¨centrarse¨. centarse means to sit down and centrarse means to focus...some italians are now in the mtc! 4 elders and 1 sister will be here for a couple weeks before they go back to milan and rome for their missions. its pretty cool having them here, they all speak decent english. but one is 25 so i´m no longer the oldest missionary here :(( O on monday i told myself i was gonna work as hard as i could in my studies and just absolutely tear this week up. it was tough for the first few days but i worked hard. and then yesterday me and elder anderson had two lessons with our fake investigators and we nailed both lessons perfectly. i recited the first vision in spanish by heart to both of them which was really cool, and then both me and elder anderson gave a lesson to our district about 2 nephi 29, which is about the Book of Mormon coming forth and how people will deny it and say that we already have a Bible. Very important chapter for missionaries!

I wish I could say more but time is up! I might be able to come on and send some pictures later. tell everyone sorry I couldn´t email them back!

Calvin

The passage below was a letter sent to his Dad…

Spanish is going pretty well. I'm a pro at talking about the Savior´s Earthly Ministry in spanish. We just got back from the city though and it reminds me that I can´t say anything in spanish unless it's about the Gospel. I´m trying to learn other vocabulary in my spare time though. I could probably buy some stamps now. But some of my friends from school sent me a bunch of stamps so I haven´t had to buy any yet. The food has been better this week. The mission President's wife had a talk with the kitchen crew and they've stepped up their game. We just went into the city center to go shopping and I ate a really good caesar salad and a mango orange kiwi smoothie which was the best thing I've ever dranken in my life. I will day dream about that smoothie for the rest of my life. I went with my companion and two other guys and two girls in my district

We were were looking for ties but they were all really really expensive so we didn´t get any. I'm looking for slimmer short sleeve white shirts. I might just find a tailor in Malaga and have the sleeves brought up an inch or so. The weather has been great lately. About 70-75 I think. It feels like its 90 though.

The Week After Conference

Conference was so good I hope everyone was able to watch it. As of this typing we have yet to watch Saturday afternoon´s session so we have not seen Elder Holland speak yet. We keeep hearing all about it though and are dying of anticipation. We are watching it tonight after P-day. My favorite part of conference was President Uchtdorf´s talk on Sunday. I liked the quote about becoming the person God designed us to be. I also really enjoyed Elder Callister (?) in Priesthood session about aaronic priesthood leadership. But I think you can apply it to missionaries and everyone else too. The part about raising our expectations was really powerful.

I´m learning it can be fun to try and change my behavior. It can be hard and awkward at first but it´s exciting to see what we can do if we identify our weaknesses and plan out an effective way to change them for the better. I´ve been working on dilligence and humility a lot. And just remembering that I´m working on those goals puts me in such a better place. It´s also really fun here to try and guess which ¨Christlike Attribute¨ missionaries are working on. If I´m waiting in line for the showers and one missionary is letting others cut in front of him in line he´s probably working on trying to be more charitable. Or if an Elder is trying to get everyone to focus he´s obviously working on dilligence. Most of us give up on working on that attribute by 9 a.m. but it´s still good to see us all trying.

One thing I guess I totally forgot about was how funny farting loudly/making fart noises can be to 18 and 19 year olds. They really can´t get enough of it! I realized this week how young most of these guys are compared to me. They are always complaining about how homesick they are. Not that I´m not! But I´ve lived away from home for almost four years now. I love them all though and I usually don´t realize that my new best friends are all teenagers still.

I´m no longer district leader though. We changed leadership yesterday. But now Elder Cluff and Smith in my district are zone leaders, and Sister Hopkins and Benson are the sister equivalent of zone leaders. So we have all the zone power in our district. It´s weird not being zone leader anymore. I still feel like the father figure of the group, but I think I´ll survive. President Sitterud and I met earlier this week and he said our district was the most unified of any other. We all get along so well and seem to be much more united than the other districts.

Last P-day we went to Museo Prado which was so awesome. I could have spent another 3 hours there. They had masterpieces by Titian, Raphael, Dürer, Rembrandt, Tintorette, Goya, and Caravaggio. I really liked Caravaggio´s David Victorious Over Goliath. It´s amazing to think how old and well maintained those paintings are. There was a life-sized marble statue of Christ lying in the tomb, I´m not sure who created it but it was unbelievable.

On Saturday we went to the Goya to proselyte. I was with Elder Berry who I didn´t know before but he´s cool and we got along. Right when we got there we were walking up the street and I saw an older woman just standing outside of a pharmacy alone, so I told Elder Berry we should go talk to her. Neither of us know how to small talk much though so we pretty much just jumped right into missionary stuff. Her name was Hilda and she was from Ecuador. She was so nice and helped us with our spanish. She was so interested and excited when we talked to her about the Book of Mormon and she said she´d read it and try and watch conference. We got her address and email. Very cool especially because we only spoke in spanish and we weren´t too bad!

check out the scripture in 2 nephi 33 i think. its like i glory in plainness i glory in truth i glory in jesus something something its my favorite right now

 Sorry I don´t have much time to answer your questions. I´m good with the food. The language is coming along I think!

Adios!

"I´m pretty much the alpha-male around here..."

Last Thursday was P-Day and we went to this plaza in Madrid that´s the exact center of Spain. There´s a big statue of Don Quixote that we took some pictures with. I don´t have time to upload any pictures here but I will when I get out of the MTC. We went to an Egyptian Temple too and we were all really excited but it was actually the lamest thing I´ve ever seen in my life. It´s really not even worth expounding on. But it was cool to see the buildings and architecture of downtown Madrid. We went to a McDonalds and it is way nicer than any U.S. McDonalds. I didn´t order anything but the food looked way better and they sold fresh muffins and pastries too.  

We went to another big plaza too and there were a bunch of street performers. I took a picture with Mickey Mouse but then he asked for money after which was pretty weird.

Saturday we went to the Parque Retiro which is a big park in Madrid that used to be the Spanish Royals gettaway. It´s enormous and has a lake in it and statues and stuff. It´s just a big park that people stroll aroun in. We went to preach and me and my temporary companion didn´t have much success. We talked to this old man on a bench, and he was homeless and just got kicked out of his house by his wife because he lost his job. He kind of was ranting at us in rapid spanish but we somehow could understand him. He said we were only 18 years old and didn´t understand life to be able to help him. We tried to talk with him calmly but eventually we just had to walk away. 

It was a weird experience. I thought for a while about what I could learn from it but couldn´t think of anything. And then on Easter I was thinking about Christ (obvi) and I realized that it must be so much harder to endure struggles like that old man if you don´t believe that Christ is there to endure your pains. I think we all don´t appreciate how blessed we are with that knowledge. We are never hopeless. It was a good experience to realize how much the gospel can really help people and change lives.

So we were on our way home from the Park and it all seemed like a bust. But then I was on the metro with a kid in my district going home, and we went up to this man alone on the metro. He enthusiastically started talking with us and we told him about the Book of Mormon. He was from Peru and was really interested. My companion started going off about the history of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith in perfect Spanish, and normally he´s terrible at Spanish. It was pretty miraculous. We ended up giving him a Book and getting all his contact info. He was really interested I´m excited to here what happens.

Since I´m the oldest missionary and I have the longest hair

 I´m pretty much the alpha-male around here...but I think I HAVE to get my haircut today so that´s a bummer. I´ll lose all my power. We play a lot of basketball on P-day which is fun. My companion is really good at basketball.

I´ve seen Hermana Flake. She´s in the other zone so its rare but we say hello when we see each other. I think her district is coming to the Museo Prado with us today.

I just want to say how much I love my district. We get along so well we really are a family. I wrote a letter to everyone in my district telling them how much they mean to me and what I admire in them, and I found a scripture that I thought fit each of them. It´s amazing how close we´ve become. And they all mostly live in utah so we can hang out when we get home!

Adios!