Hiding in Doorways – 3 Months Down June 24, 2013

• the tri-panionship is fine. It’s hard to contact people on the street, that’s the only downside really. we all get along though so thats good. and when we are knocking doors in apartment buildings one of us takes turns hiding in the stairwell so that only two people are presenting themselves at the door. we're not sure what we'll do if someone ever lets us in at the door. hes really funny and knows english well. i think we´re gonna go on splits with members so that we can be in different pueblos at different times. that will help us cover more ground.

• i´m not sure what happened to his companion. he told us but i dont remember. elder vosters is leaving at the end of this transfer, so about a month, and elder leon will stay with me i think, if i end up staying (which i think i will). he´s really cool i like him. he´s a really good teacher and likes to teach a lot. he speaks really good english too, so he´ll speak to me in english sometimes and i´ll respond in spanish. my spanish is getting a lot better each week now. some topics are hard to talk about because i don´t know the vocabulary, like the resurrection and judgement. i tried to stumble through that the other day and it didnt go very well. they could understand me but i couldnt go into much detail about it.

• we just baptized a kid named david yesterday. he´s 18, and was going to be a catholic priest but now he´s mormon. he´s a cool kid and is already planning on serving a mission. 

• those two teenage girls are getting really cold. they keep making excuses about how they can’t make it to church or meet with us. i dont know whats happening with them but its a bummer. we´re teaching two other teenage girls...one of the new girls is getting baptized in a couple weeks and she is really excited so it seems like a sure thing. the other girl has catholic parents who won’t let her come to church so that will be tough.

• also we´re teaching parents who have kids that are members. the parents work all day washing dishes so whenever we meet with them they are super tired and its hard to teach them. and it never seems like we make much progress with them. but they both have more time now off of work and a miracle happened this week: we met with them saturday, and the dad (dario) told us that he had had a dream, where he died and he was looking over his body on the ground, and was thinking about how he regretted his life and was crying because he was never baptized. interesting, right? well he had the SAME EXACT DREAM THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW. so yeah, they seem much more engaged now. and we gave them a date for july 21 to be baptized, and i think we are actually going to move it up a week.

• friday i went to alicante which is one of the major cities of spain. its an hour away and is where our "zone headquarters" is. we were doing intercambios with the zone leaders so i went to alicante while a zone leader went to crevillente with the other guys. alicante is a really cool city. its a party city because the beach is really nice and study abroad students always go there for the weekends. but this weekend in particular was a huge fiesta. they have these huge effigy things that are made of styrofoam and stuff in the middle of the street, and then at night everyone gets really drunk and dances around them and then they light them on fire and they party until 4 in the morning. it was pretty tough to sleep that night, but it was cool to see so many people in the city during the day. i want to serve in a big city like that. crevillente is starting to lose its flavor...

• ive been reading an old testament student manual because im bored and the history parts of the book are really interesting. i was reading about when david slew goliath, and in 1 samuel 17, david stands up and says how he'll defeat goliath or something like that, and his brother accuses him of having too much pride. and in verse 29 david replies by saying "is there not a cause?" i love that scripture a lot. there is always a cause to stand up for what you believe in. it may seem easier to sit back and be quiet but if you really believe in something, and the cause is just, you have every right to proclaim it. 

Popping Pills and First Baptism (June 3, 2013)

·       the two teenage girls dropped their baptismal date last tuesday. we set them back up for the 22 of June along with a teenage guy we´ve been teaching. we don´t really know what happened. they were fine and ready for baptism one week and then a couple days later we go to visit them and they said they aren´t ready and need more time. we´re hoping they don´t just blow us off. they said they need to learn more about the church, but they told us they are still drinking and smoking a bit so obviously they aren´t going to recieve the answer they´re looking for. 

·       we randomly found a family of ecuadorian evangelists and they let us in to talk. we gave them lesson 0 which is just an overview of the restoration, plan of salvation, and gospel of jesus christ. and then they invited us to stay and eat with them. we had another lunch with members scheduled but we weren´t going to turn down a meal from a family of investigators. we ate a huge meal with them and had time to read from the book of mormon too. they said they would read and would get baptized if they came to know it was true. we invited them to church too. they were really nice and fun to talk with. but then we had to go eat at the members and i was so full. i could hardly eat anything so my comp told them i was feeling a little sick, so the mom gave me some pill that she said would help me feel better. i had to take it, but im not sure what it was. o well.

·       we also have an old lady we always talk to in crevillente. She’s probably 80 years old, and whenever we start to talk to her, she starts sobbing. her mom is still alive and is 103 YEARS OLD. she lives in this small little cave/house and can´t see or hear anything. so this woman´s daughter is always really sad and we talk to her about the church and she says its beautiful but i dont think she´d go anywhere as an investigator. 

·       on thursday we did exchanges so i went to elche. elder lish and i went to a gypsy village which is basically just run down housing projects. we aren’t allowed to be there after 8 at night because of prostitution and stuff. but we walked into this really sketchy building and my comp was asking someone where a certain building was, and gypsys were just yelling at us to leave, and i think some guy was doing heroin. then we came across some gypsys watching and betting on roosters fighting. i guess its a big thing there and they train and breed roosters to fight. i wanted to take pictures but my camera probably would have gotten stolen. the people in the gypsey villages are so poor its incredible. their apartments have nothing in them at all. the gypsey girls are all gorgeous, but they all get married young (like 17ish) and then by 20 they’re overweight and miserable. 

·       friday we went to alicante for specialized training. the president and the AP´s were there and taught us a bit. we all had interviews with the president which was cool. i really like him a lot.

·       then we had to do exchanges again with the zone leaders. so elder vosters stayed in alicante and zone leader gochez came with me. we were going to go to orihuela which is one of our pueblos. we had a bunch of good lessons planned with investigators, but we missed the train so we had to go back to crevillente, and we had nothing planned there. so we mostly just went around looking for old investigators.

·     then we did a service project at some guys house saturday morning and then took the bus back to alicante to pick up elder vosters. then we came back to crevillente to plan the baptism which was annoying because it shouldnt be the missionaries job to plan the baptism.

 
·       church was really good because we had 8 investigators at sacrament. one is a 17 year old whos mom and grandma are both very inactive. shes really nice but has had no interest in learning. but she and her mom and grandma all decided to come. and then this kinda crazy guy and his wife randomly showed up too. we got 7 new investigators this week so we´re really excited to work with them.
 
·       then we had the baptism sunday night. i was pretty nervous to baptize. i kept saying the baptismal prayer over and over in my head. when it was finally time, i said the prayer fine, and then put him down in the water. i was about to start to pull him back up when i looked down and i saw he wasn´t anywhere close to being all the way in, so i had to just give him a second shove down. it was ok though he got all the way in. 

Happy Birthday to Mom (June 17, 2013)

• hey happy birthday, it was friday right?   flag day tambien. i didnt get to email for very long last time so i think you were the only person i wrote to.  today was pretty hectic. we had to go to alicante in the morning because elder vosters had to do his residency card. we had a zone p-day in alicante after, playing soccer, BUT, we weren’t going to be able to go because we had to go back to crevillente because our NEW COMPANION was arriving. yes we are now in a trio. President Deere called and said we were going to be in a trio, but not for very long. we're not 100% sure yet but i think edler vosters will leave in a few weeks and me and Elder Leon will stay in crevillente. its a little weird, but it happens. we just met Elder Leon. hes from barcelona but his parents are from peru. He’s been out 3 months i think. He’s a native spanish speaker so that will help with my language.

• not much to say this week. the 18 year old we´ve been teaching, who lives with the branch president and both his parents are members, is getting baptized next week. he didnt even tell us, they just announced it at church yesterday morning. we were a little annoyed and felt like he was leaving us out of the process, but he said he had literally decided on his way to church that morning. but its ok, since his family are members they are organizing everything which takes a lot of pressure off us.

• there are a couple other teenage girls we are teaching too. one really wants to be baptized and has a date for the 7th of julio. her friends is catholic but comes over to be taught by us and is reading and prays and stuff, so things seem well with her too.

• i guess you can say we are a good team. we work hard. the standards of excellence for the mission is 20 total lessons a week, and we usually get about 25-30. personally i think we should be teaching our serious investigators more...

• i really cant think of much of what i want in a care package...ooooo instant propel/gatorade powder packets to put in water. PLEEEEASE. and a usb drive with music please.

• pdays we usually just go to elche where the other elders in the district live. its fun. theres a burger king and a shopping mall there. its annoying having to bus back and forth though. we might stay in crevillente more now that there are 3 of us. Theres’ a golf course an hour away we want to go golfing for a bit.

• yeah and i read in D&C 77 that cato will be resurrected!!! it made me so happy when i read that. just read the section summary. it gives me peace and hope to know that i can live with my dog forever!?

New Washing Machine! Entertainment? (June 10, 2013)

• We got a new washing machine finally. the one we had was terrible. it would try and spin around the clothes but it was too tired and just quit. and the draining didnt work so our clothes were just soaked when we'd take them out and it took about 3 days to dry. but our new one is so cool sometimes i put a load in and just watch it for like 30 minutes. que bien. (Mother’s note here: My son is a freak of nature! Haha)

• This week had its ups and downs. But it also included my favorite moment yet as a missionary. There's a less-active woman we teach english to. She knows english well so we just help her practice and we can have normal english conversations. She was baptized in Hungary as a teenager, and has been away from the church for many years and is married to a non-member and has two small children. She told us she had different beliefs now and is agnostic or something. She's the nicest woman ever, too. We have brought up the Church with her and a few times and it seemed like she was somewhat interested again. So one day a couple of weeks ago we brought her a Liahona and met her husband. We didn’t see her for 2 weeks and when we did we respected her beliefs and didn’t talk about the church.  But she began speaking about how hard things are right now. She brought up how happy her old church friends seem with their families, and asked how our parents dealt with us. She was basically begging for the Gospel! We talked about how Christ unifies our families, and she said she wants to return, has always known the Church was true, and can feel the Spirit again whenever we come by. She told us that when she decided to leave the church when she was still in Hungary, she was on a bus and was crying and praying silently, saying "i´m sorry im so sorry i just cant do this", and she heard the song playing on the bus and it said "you will return". it was amazing and i was almost crying the whole time.  She thinks her husband is ready to listen to us as well. She speaks english very well so I was able to share my thoughts and understand well. I remember thinking during the lesson "this is what being a missionary is". It was really cool.

• there is a less active woman we go see, she really likes us around  and she has a daughter who is 17, and we were visiting them and her daughter asked us what she had to do to get baptized...so that was cool. our first lesson with her she had a friend over, and we just were like whatever so we taught both of them. her friend is a catholic but she was really interested and is going to read the Book of Mormon. So now we have 4 (maybe 5) teenagers that are all ready to be baptized. we could totally change the branch if it all works out. we want to give them all the same date for baptism and try and get them to hang out a bunch before. it'd be really cool.

• heres a quote our mission president sent us that i really like; The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of the people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.

• Yes, Christ changes men, and changed men can change this world. Men changed by Christ will be captained by Christ. . . . Men captained by Christ will be consumed in Christ. . . . To paraphrase President Harold B. Lee, they set fire in others because they are on fire.