Happy 23rd Birthday, Calvin!! (March 3, 2014)

Posing during a Pre-Dawn Birthday Run

Yeah I got all the packages last week dont worry. And yes I waited and opened the birthday package this morning! This morning we went running to the beach and waited for the sunrise and took some pics. Thats what the 30 pictures of the sun are from...I think we might go to Malaga after we email to go ride bikes or meet up with some other missionaries. Im not sure. Then tonight a family is making a birthday dinner so that should be fun.

The Package

 This week went by really slow. We thought it was a terrible week but it didnt turn out too bad. I think it was just that our investigators didnt progress as much as we would have liked. We went and talked with the mother of the two kids we baptized. She´s been coming to church and likes it a lot. We asked how she was liking church and her grandpa blurted out "she loves it. She´ll be baptized any day now!" And she got kind of embarrassed but didn't deny it. She said she had some doubts about religion in general and of course wanted to learn more about the church, because we've never been able to really teach her. Cl... (the 8 year old) was practicing the talk she had to give in primary and she ended by saying (in spanish) I say these things in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen". It was so funny/cute.

Tuesday we went to the apartment where these 3 argentine people live. They´re all in their early 20´s but really like us. We got there and they were saying how stressed out they were because of work and their families. And then we read 2 nephi 4, and then Enos and talked about and shared all of our favorite parts. It was a really good discussion and even they mentioned how much better they felt after reading those scriptures. They´re super nice kids, they just arent very [educated]. That´s the problem. We´ll try and get them to progress a bit more though.

Sunrise on the Mediterranean (3/3/14)

Yesterday in Church L.... (grandpa of the kids) came and was crying in gospel principles talking about baptism. I talked to him after and we talked about him getting baptized on the 22nd with his daughter. He said we have to talk with her but he knows its important. So this family of the grandpa and the daughter and her two kids have family that are super active in the ward. and every time we talk to this active family they tell us how its a literal miracle that the grandpa and his daughter are accepting the gospel like this. It doesnt really feel like a miracle, but it´s cool to hear them say that I guess...

That´s it!!!!!!!!

love ya, thanks for the birthday stuff!!

Calvin

"...so we walked over to a tea parlor/hookah bar." (February 24, 2014)

Well, one of the baptisms happened. But I´ll get to that. Thursday we were knocking doors and found a Cuban woman who was a Jeohovah's Witness. But she is like a super strong one. She offered to give us a copy of their book and I said sure, and we went in and talked to her and her son. She just talked and talked and talked for 30 minutes straight. And I feel bad because I think she thinks I´m actually interested in knowing if their church is true or not...but o well. We´ll see if she lets us teach her anything.

Elder Calvin Wiley and Elder Englund with a new Member and friend

After, we went to go teach our German investigator, named R.... He´s really nice/interesting guy. Loves to hike and just kind of does whatever he wants with his life. He told us he wanted to go to a restaurant, so we walked over to a tea parlor/hookah bar. We took our shoes off and sat down on the ground, right next to us were three pakistanis smoking a huge hookah. We ordered some weird fruit infusions (without tea) and chatted. R... is a weird guy but I love him. He told us he´d finally come to church, and he did! But we found out he´s not married to the woman he´s lived with for 12 years, and he says he´s not sure that he loves her...so that´s sad. 

Friday was annoying because we had to get both of our investigators to their baptismal interviews in Malaga, and neither of them have any money. Luckily there was a meeting we had to go to with the ward council so we were able to get one a ride with the elders quorum president, but the other one had no way to get there, so I had to give him 4 euros to get to Malaga. They both got interviewed that night and it all went well. 

Then we had to figure out how to get M... to his own baptism. He lives in a pueblo and none of the members from that pueblo were going to the baptism, so saturday morning we had to take a bus to that pueblo, give our investigator 10 euros so he could go to his own baptism, then take a bus back to torremolinos, eat, and then take a train to malaga for the baptism. It was really annoying and I´m out of money but he got to his baptism so its ok.

So then at like 6:45 we´re getting everything ready for the baptism and our investigator C..... comes, and says he´s not going to get baptized. He said he´s still not sure if he can live all the commandments right now, and he doesn´t want to be baptized and then break the commandments right after. We were a little disappointed but happy that he was taking it that seriously. But M... still got baptized. He´s the guy in the picture on dropbox. we didnt have time to take a picture before the baptism. 

We called C..... yesterday though to see when we could meet him again, and he told us he was leaving to go live in Colombia forever on Friday. So we won´t be able to baptize him. He says he wants to be baptized over there, and I think he will. It´s a little sad but we´ll keep in touch. I´m happy he finally found a way to get back home. He had been going crazy here stuck in Spain.

Church yesterday was really good. The mom of the two little kids came again and really enjoyed it. We talked about repentance in gospel principles and she was crying like crazy. She has all week off of work so we´re gonna go over tonight and hopefully give her a baptismal date.Her kids and loving church. Cl.... has to give a talk in primary next week so we´re going to help her a bit.

O yeah, it was really weird. So I confirmed M.... during sacrament meeting yesterday, and then right after they announced that he´d be receiving the priesthood right after church. Usually you wait a few weeks...we hadn't even taught him about the priesthood yet!!!! so he´s a priest but has no idea what that means...we´ll go over it with him this week though...

Youth programs are more or less the same. no scouts. they have EFY once a year for all of spain. 

and we need to find people to teach, we've been busy with the investigators we had but now we´re all out.

O and Elder Buckway baptized a guy named M.... last week in Chiclana. He and I found M like 3 days before I left, so it was pretty cool to hear he got baptized!

Love ya!

adios

Calvin

Fake Christopher Columbus Castle (February 17, 2014)

Sorry I don´t have my journal or agenda with me so I don´t have much to write today. For P-day today we went to some fake Christopher Columbus castle in Benalmádena which was pretty lame but whatev. Yesterday at Church Elder England and I did the confirmations for the kids. We thought the Bishopric was going to do it but when we got up there they asked which of us would do it. I confirmed Claudia, and Elder England confirmed Lorenzo. The mother of the kids was there as well as the grandpa and their super inactive grandma. They all stayed for all three hours and I asked the mom after if she enjoyed it and she said "the truth is that I liked it a lot. I feel really good". So hopefully that means she wants to get baptized. 

So I bought a mate cup to make the Argentinian drink called mate. It cost me like $15, and then yesterday after church we stayed in Málaga because we had a stake meeting at 5 and we didnt want to go back to Torremolinos. So we brought food with us (and my mate cup) to eat at the Málaga Elder´s piso, but during church someone stole it from the refrigerator!!!11 I was really upset. All our food (and mate) was gone. But o well. I´ll just have to buy another.

Elder England and I are staying together for another transfer. We had interviews with President Thursday and he told us we were staying together. We´re super excited about this transfer. We have a goal to have 5 baptisms. 

I really can´t think of anything else exciting happening.

O yeah our baptism this weekend didn´t happen because our investigator had to go to Holland for a week and didn´t get back until Saturday afternoon. But now it´s planned for this saturday, along with another investigator was have named Christian. Answered prayers.

I think that´s about it. You should let dad know that I´m turning 23, not 22 [OK, really? it was a quick slip while texting at, like 5am]. 

Hope everything is going well!

Bye

"He got really flustered. It was funny" (February 10, 2014)

Yeah the baptism went well. The uncle of the kids did the baptisms. The confirmation will be Sunday, and I´m assuming it will be the uncle as well, but maybe we´ll do them. The baptism on the 15th is still a go. The investigator went out of town without telling us so that was annoying, but he comes back tomorrow. 

I had my first real lesson with a jehovahs witness this week. She was a reference from another guy we were talking to. She told us she has been studying with the JW´s for 8 months, has seen her life change, goes to church with them every week and has activities with them and her kids. She´s pretty far in. But we had a good lesson at first. Then we brought out the Book of Mormon. She was interested, and then the first thing she says is "it doesn´t say Jehovah in here very much". We really didn´t want to get into the Jehovah=Christ thing, but she pushed us so we had to explain it. The spirit was definitely gone, but there wasn´t much we can do. We showed her some more verses from the bible showing that Jehovah is Christ, but she kept saying they were out of context and stuff like that. I wanted to tell her it really didn´t matter. The important thing was to read the book and pray. But she only said she´d "study" it. We have another lesson with her tomorrow. We´ll see if she lets us in, or if she brings 5 other JW´s with her. 

Wednesday we did the baptismal interview for the kids. It went well. Later we were knocking doors and we found a short little colombian woman who was really nice and spunky. She was really closed at first and told us she believes in absolutely nothing, but we ended up talking with her for 40 minutes and she said she wanted to learn english and teach us a little spanish, and talk with her 20 year old son about God. We´re excited to go back. She was really fun to be around.

Friday we did exchanges with the Elders in our district that serve in Nerja. Nerja is a small town 90 minutes away from Málaga. It´s a huge vacation destination and so the mission work is really hard there. But it´s a super beautiful city and I heard the caves there are really famous. We didn´t have time to do much there. We went to the hospital to meet with a member that was sick. We went to give her a blessing, but we ended up opening the divider curtain and sharing a message with the stranger in the bed next to her. We talked to the stranger after for a while and she was super nice and gave us her address and told us to come by when she gets out of the hospital. It was really cool because I could tell she was the type of woman who if you talked to her on the street she´d just tell you she was catholic and walk away rudely. But she really enjoyed our company. 

Saturday (back in Torremolinos) we went by the house of a guy we had talked to a few days before and he let us in. I had a feeling he was gay when we first met him, but our visit saturday confirmed it. He lived with his boyfriend, but is super nice and wants to learn all about our church. He´s catholic and believes in all the catholic stuff except for after the death of all the Apostles (we were salivating when we heard that). In the middle of the lesson he stopped us and told us one of his neighbors might be interested so he called her and she came over. We talked about the Book of Mormon and gave them all copies. The woman said normally she doesn't read any religious material but she wanted to read this. And then she said "who knows, this could be what I´ve been looking for for the past several years". Then the guy asked us what our church thinks of gays. I tried a few times to express the idea but couldn´t think of a good way to say it. Then he asked "like do you accept them?" and I just said "Yeah! We except them." I kind of feel like I deceived him a bit but I also feel like that is what the spirit wanted me to say to him in that moment. 

Then yesterday we had the baptisms. I was really nervous but it all went well. The mom who isn´t a member was crying a ton, and the Primary President and a lot of other woman in the ward made a super good impression and were super friendly with her. I think she came from it with a really good impression of the church and that she´ll get dunked soon (I hope). And the grandpa, who before didn´t want ANYTHING from the church (his wife was a member but when they got married he told her she couldnt go to church anymore) is super friendly with us now and is in every lesson with his grandkids. I asked him how he liked the baptism and his daughter (mother of the kids) said "he´s gonna get baptized next" and he got really flustered. It was funny. I think we´ll get him too!!

Anyway that´s the week. Transfers are next weeeeeeek!!!!!!!!!!

Love ya

"My birthday is in one month exaaaactly" (February 3, 2014)

Wow I can´t believe it was like that. [Superbowl] All the missionaries thought the broncos would win, but of course no one really had any knowledge. I never got the package. But I´ll try and take a picture with the flag when I get it. 

Yeah the DVD´s are all really good. We have a german investigator who wants to know the story about the helmuth huebner guy. If you could find some type of history of the church book. I have our heritage or something like that. But I´d like something a little meatier. 

For P-days we havent done a ton yet. Last week we walked through central Malaga but its mostly just stores and stuff. We were going to go caving/spelunking with our german investigator but he got the flu and cancelled on us. He said in a few weeks. I only see like half of malaga. close to wear our chapel is. I want to go see the other half sometime though. 

O yeah, so there is this sister missionary here named Hermana Wilcox, and she goes home in a couple weeks, but I just found out that she is the daughter of Brad Wilcox! Maybe he´ll come and pick her up and I´ll see him. I have a talk by him on my pin drive called his grace is sufficient. It´s good. 

I read a talk by Ivan J. Barrett called Joseph Smith: The Chosen of God and the Friend of Man. And it is super good. I read it like 3 times. Has a lot of good/funny stories about Joseph Smith and his personality. So all week I kept thinking about what Joseph Smith would do in certain situations in the mission field. Then I started feeling like a terrible missionary and person so I stopped. 

We have a new investigator named C..... from Colombia. We were really pumped about him at first, but we had another lesson and realized he´s almost crazy. He´s been trying to get back to Colombia for years but has no money or work. He ´s getting tempted to rob or sell drugs to make the money quick. He told us about his anger problems. Super nice but he´s literally right on the edge of just going entirely crazy...later that night we knocked the door of two Pakistan guys. They were muslim but let us in and we started talking to them. It was weird. They asked us very contentiously why we came to this door, and if we knew they lived there. We said no, we were just knocking the whole building. Then one of them told us that he had been getting the discussions in Barcelona a few months before, and had gone to church as well. They were nice, we talked about the Book of Mormon, and they asked for the address of our chapel and said maybe they´d go some time. It was weird.

C.... and L....´s mom was there at the lesson with them and L wasn´t behaving himself so she said "maybe you aren´t ready to be baptized and I´ll just have to get baptized instead of you". She was mostly joking but then L told her she was too old and she said it was never too late to get baptized. We haven´t really been able to really ask her anything more because the lessons with her kids are so crazy, but she works in the train station in Málaga and we go there like 4 times a week so we´ll stop by and try and teach her. It´d be amazing if she got baptized too. We offered her her own Book of Momon last night and she accepted it, and seemed grateful. I think that´s a good sign. We´ll see.

Overrall we had a good week. We´re really excited for this next week. Things are going well. I´m content.

My birthday is in one month exaaaactly.

love you!!!

Calvin