Calvin Wiley with his "Zone" colleagues in Alicante on their P-Day (day-off..kinda') May 20, 2013

An “Almost Miracle”

May 27, 2013

Thanks for the pic...it makes my heart melt. I try and play with dogs whenever I can. I haven´t seen any that match up to Cato yet though.

I haven’t gotten your letters yet. They went to the mission home so I only get them when we have zone conferences, which we are having this friday. the president is coming to speak with us so it should be really good.

last p-day we were in elche (we are today too) and shopped and then just went back to crevillente and relaxed for a couple hours. then we went to a ward members house in the campo (countryside, like a normal house). they are the strongest family in the branch. the dad is the former branch president and is now in the stake presidency. we go for family night every monday. 

we met this guy who is a super wealthy author and talked with him for a while. i dont think hes interested in the church at all. he seemed really smart but at the same time i feel like he could have just been bs-ing us about everything. its hard to tell in spanish. he smoked like 5 cigarettes while we were there so we felt sick for the rest of the day.

in the branch we have 5 members that are deaf, so they always want the missionaries to learn spanish sign language. but it’s really unfair because we´re trying to learn spanish too...but we go to class once a week and its pretty funny to try. 

ok so we have a book full of information on old investigators. people who were being taught and then stopped for some reason. one morning i just randomly called one, and he answered, and he said he´d call us back when he had time and we knew that just meant we´d never hear from him. but then that night, he called us and wanted to meet the next day. and we were thinking MIRACLE!!! we read all his information and found out he was a CATHOLIC PRIEST. but we decided to meet with him, and he drove us to another pueblo to his office next to his chapel. and the first thing he did was show us a really long letter he recieved from the Vatican that was basically a warning of excommunication.  so he believes that we are already all in heaven, but we just don´t know it. and he drew us a bunch of timelines on paper to explain. and he wants to preach about it but the catholic church won´t let him, so he just called us to rant about these crazy ideas. it was pretty ridiculous. he´s nuts. we´re gonna meet with him again just because we want to take a tour of his catholic chapel.

the two teenagers we´re getting ready to baptize are going really well. i was really worried about teaching them chastity and word of wisdom, but they both just said “yeah that’s logical and it makes sense.” it was really cool. they live alone with their mom so we really want to teach her as well.

we have our 3 baptisms next week, but after that we really have no one. its hard travelling to other pueblos because we can usually only go once or twice a week. we need to find people in crevillente but its amazing how unfriendly they are compared to the other pueblos. they literally just ignore us and stare at the ground even if we only say hello as we walk by them. but we´re gonna start to contact everyone

an elder who just finished his mission a couple weeks ago just came to visit with his family. he is kind of a legend here in crevillente.  He baptized 5 people in 6 months which i guess is a lot. i want to do more though, even though we shouldn´t compare...

i´m almost 1/8 of the way through my mission which is pretty crazy...

o yeah and can you tell maddie to unprivatize my facebook? people are always trying to find me but my name doesnt show up when you search for it. i always have to click domineau and then search for me under her friends.

i found a couple scriptures i really like this week. one is alma 36:21. it reminds me of a quote from the odyssey that says "even his griefs are a joy long after to him that remembers all that he has wrought and endured".

and then another scripture that makes me LOL is alma 27:16-19. when alma and the sons of mosiah meet, it says ammon had so much joy that he feinted. and then it says "now alma, omner, and himner (or whoever it was) also had much joy, but not enough that they feinted". i thought it was funny that it had to be clarified.

things are good here. we teach a lot of lessons. we need to find more investigators that will progress. 

love you all and miss you!

High Fashions and Delicious Paella!

May 20, 2013

[Uh Oh – We were doing so well with the punctuation – that’s over!  Little worried that he’s only been in Spain 2 months and he already wants a Man Purse!!  -- Suzie aka Mom]

All-

• so sorry to hear about grandpa., i´m glad you had an opportunity to be with him before. (my,Suzie’s, father passed away this week)
• my companion had to go to a meeting in malaga so i was in elche for a couple days and went out with the two sets of missionaries there.
• the elche soccer team just won their championship so they moved into the primera league with barca and madrid so the whole city has been really excited
• we have an investigator getting baptized in two weeks, and hopefully will have a couple more for that week as well. we haven´t found anyone new to teach since i´ve been here which is rough. i feel like i don´t really know any of my investigators very well. but hopefully we get some new ones soon.
• i ate paella twice this week. one was with seafood and it had shrimp, jumbo shrimp, tuna, oysters, squid, and some other time of squid too. it was really good i loved it. and then i had a chicken paella at another house which was really good as well.
• it was a weird week because i was in elche, but we still managed to teach a bunch of lessons. one less-active woman who we teach english to says she wanted to bring her young children to see the chapel one day. this is amazing because last week she was telling us how she didn´t believe in the church at all anymore. this week she was asking a lot of questions about the church in our area so we´re excited. she´s really nice and from hungary and has a non-member husband.
• today we went to the mall in elche. omg i´m in love. im literally going to buy $5000 worth of clothes before i leave. everything is so cheap and stylish. i bought 4 slim short-sleeved white shirts for 6 euros each. and a really nice pair of tailored pants for 15 euros. i was so close to buying a leather man purse, but i think i´ll wait a few more months...

Best Mother’s Day Ever! (until next year!)

May 13, 2013

[We got to Skype with Calvin on Mother’s Day and it was amazing! He is tan and happy! He got a bit choked up when our dog Cato entered the picture!He spent time telling stories about the people he’s met, who he’s teaching and where he lives.

Here’s a funny and awkward story he told us about the European custom of greeting:]

“So the kiss thing. They are called bessos or something but basically it’s the custom where when you meet someone you kiss both of their cheeks. as missionaries they told us to try not to let it happen to us. last week we were at this 18 year old investigators house and his mom and aunt came in so i stood up to introduce myself and shake her hand. when she took my hand she pulled me in, and at first i freaked out because i didn’t know what was happening so i was hesitant, and then she pulled me in harder and then i realized what she was doing so i tried to back away from her, but she just pulled me in tighter and then i was just like whatever i´ll just let this happen. so she kissed my cheeks and i backed away and it was really awkward. i got bright red and my companion was laughing so hard. everyone was laughing really hard and then my companion explained that that was the first time anyone had ever done that to me. it was funny and it turned out ok. the investigators family doesn’t really like that he’s talking with the missionaries so it was good to have a funny and light-hearted encounter with them.

im getting better at speaking. I´m using preterite and imperfect (past tense) and starting to use past participles well (which is like ¨we have spoken¨ ¨hemos hablado¨ and my companion said it took him months before he could do that. but understanding is still really hard for me. i really like all my investigators and care about them a lot so it’s difficult to not be able to express myself because i don’t know what they are saying.

o well! Adios!

Hello From Crevillente!

Sorry I couldn´t find my cord so no pictures. I´ll try and buy one today. We got into Malaga Thursday morning and some people got their companions and were sent to the closer missions. 12 of us stayed the night at the mission home. That night we went out to a peublo way up over the city of Malaga and it was so clear and early in the evening that you could see Africa in the distance! I have pictures I´ll try and upload them next week. Wednesday we went out on splits with the missionaries who were ending their missions and going home the next day. The Elder I was with was from Madrid and we went to a lesson at a recent convert families house. I didn´t say much except that I like that families can be forever...then we met  up with other missionaries at the train station and we ate Taco Bell (sooo good here) and then we just sat down and watched soccer for like 2 hours. It was weird. All of us new elders were really confused and were wondering if this was what missionary work was...but I think it was just their last days together so they wanted to sit and talk. Understandable. Then all the new missionaries went to the Castillo´s piso and sat around for 5 hours until our trainers arrived from the north. At about 10:30 at night we started the meeting and got out new companions. I like Elder Vosters a lot we get along well. Dad seemed to have everything about him right. He´s a good missionary and works hard.

He´s been super positive but I get the vibe from him that he really doesn´t like Crevillente. It is really hard here, but he has found a lot of people. The pueblo is small and pretty run down. It´s not very pretty or cool at all. Our apartment is nice we each have our own bathroom and shower. My first full day was ridiculous. We had I think 9 lessons planned with investigators and no one let us in. We tried talking to people on the street for like 3 hours and everyone rejected us. I couldn´t believe it and I thought to myself that this was gonna be a long mission. But then the next day we planned for the next week and we actually have several investigators with baptismal dates, just not in the town of crevillente. There are other Pueblos like 10 minutes away that are doing well and they are cooler to be in too.

Sunday we had ward council and I didn´t understand much. The Branch President is a really cool guy. He´s young like 35ish and is an RM and from Ecuador. The chapel is small and we had about 61 people at sacrament. We had two investigators who are both teenage girls. I´m not sure how close they are to baptism I haven´t taught with them yet. I introduced myself at sacrament and bore a quick testimony. I was pretty nervous but it went well. After church we always have lunch at the Branch President´s piso. We ate soup with meatballs and vegetables it was really really good. After that we took the bus to Redovan to meet with other investigators. One of them is Carmen. She´s an older woman who has been taking the lessons a lot and knows she needs to be baptized but she can´t stop smoking. She seems really poor and life has been hard on her. She has no faith that she can quit so I think she just gives up on being baptized, but she has a good relationship with the missionaries so we always come and teach her. It´s tough. Elder Vosters had to call our district to get the weekly numbers so I spoke with Carmen alone for a while. She could somehow understand me but I shared with her Alma 34:32 I think?? The one about how this life is the time for us to prepare to meet God. And I said that we are like rocks and our trials slowly chip away and we are perfect. And we should work hard so that when we come back to God we can show him how much we´ve grown with the time he gave us. And then I tried to tell her that although life is hard, when we look at what we will recieve in the next life, our problems on earth will seem like nothing. Like it was only a stubbed toe or something...I´m not sure if she understood that.

Then we talked with a less active woman for a while and again I spoke with her alone for a while. I´m getting really good at pretending like I understand things.

Then we went to a member´s house and she told us she had been teaching her friends and coworkers by herself for a while (which made us mad because she didn´t trust us) but now she says they are ready for the missionaries so we can get like 5 new families from her which we are really excited about.

Malaga is really cool I hope I can serve there at some point. It´s big and colorful and pretty much just like the pictures.

Yeah I got the package and it was really lucky because we left for crevillente and i still didnt have it, but we coudlnt fit all our bags on the bus so the AP´s had to bring it up the next day. and the package arrived before they left so they brought it up to me from Malaga along with a letter from grandpa wiley. also, send packages to the mission home, its easier to get through customs that way. letters you can send to my piso. and im not actually sure what the address is you can prob call the mission office.

they just put 140 euros in my account each month automatically. (This was an answer to his mom’s question about how he gets his money every month)

Ready To Go!

Calvin left the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Madrid this past Tuesday and took an express train into Malaga with the other 28 new missionaries.  He spent a few days at the mission home doing paper work and waiting for his first assignment/area.

He’s going to be in Crevillente,  which is in the Valencia region, close to the city of Alicante.

We should get a letter from him tomorrow morning as his P-Days are now on Mondays!  He’ll also be calling/Skyping us in just one week on Mother’s Day!

27 new missionaries arrived via the fast train on Tuesday, April 30. 

















Elder Wiley and Elder Vosters are going to Crevillente.

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