Monday, May 5, 2014

Not Cinco De Mayo - in Spain! (May 5, 2014)

Yes I´m pretty sure I will be transferred. A bunch of people have told me. I don´t know where though. Saturday we will find out.

No you don´t need to do anything to help with the week of consecration because it´s already over. maybe the longest week of my whole mission.

The castle was pretty cool I guess. There´s really only one castle and one old church. the rest is pretty [run down]. 

On Monday as we were going to the castle. we were wearing normal clothes, and we were walking onto the train and some lady just walks by us saying "church, the church" (in english) so we look over and she just walks by as she pulls down her shirt and flashes us. it was the weirdest thing. I don´t know how she could have identified us as missionaries.

But the rest of the week was really hard. It seemed like everyone hated us and no one wanted to talk to us. But tuesday we met with a girl we talked to in an elevator. She´s an evangelist and is the craziest person I´ve ever met. We couldn´t go in to her apartment because we didn´t have another male present, so we ast outside of her door on chairs. But she told us that she gets taken up to the heavens often and talks with prophets and casts out demons on her banjo. then she said she wasn´t surprised that we wouldn´t go into her apartment because her apartment is holy and unholy things physically cannot pass without being burnt. that made me mad, because we were just trying to follow a rule. so i had to assure her that we could have gone in if we really wanted to. but then after i prayed she said there was an angel right next to me confirming my words so that was pretty cool.

later that night after we got stood up at a lesson, we decided to go by the soccer court where a bunch of members play on tuesday nights. we were looking for an investigator but he wasnt there. we were about to leave when we saw one of our members, who´s an old man, had collapsed against the wall of the court and had passed out. everyone ran over, and luckily we were there and had oil. he regained his consciousness and we gave him a blessing. the ambulance came after about 20 minutes. luckily a young girl who was studying nursing saw him fall from her window and ran down and helped us a lot. It turned out to be a loss of blood pressure or something like that. but he´s the strongest member i´ve met on my whole mission so i´m glad he didn't die! 

The rest of the week was really boring. Full of people being rude to us. At one point I contacted 8 people in a row without a single one of them stopping to talk. they just waved their hands and kept walking. It was laughable. I LOVE SPANIARDS!!! O yeah, speaking of that, we ate with the bishop the other day and he asked why all the people being baptized in spain are south americans and nigerians. It´s frustrating because the ward council gets mad at us because we don´t baptize "normal spanish families", but if they want certain... people, they need to introduce them to the gospel and us. A "normal spanish family" [may not] let two random young americans into their home  -- without a referral. 

That was pretty much it. Nothing more exciting happened. 

Love ya



Calvin

"We just stared at each other.... in horror" (April 30, 2014)

This week was fairly eventful. We had a lesson with a guy who has known the missioanries for years. He´s from Philadelphia and has lived in Torremolinos for a really long time. He really has no direction in his life. But he´s a good friend of the missionaries. He always calls the Book of Mormon the Joseph Smith Bible. Not in like a mean way. He´s just a very simple guy who doesn't understand much about the church. He has a lot of problems but he likes us and will make us fried chicken sometime.


We found a new investigator this week named M...... He´s a 20 year old Romanian kid who speaks perfect Spanish and English. We teach him in english. When we found him he told us he had been praying every night for help, because his life has been so hard. We think he´s pretty golden. We tried to see if he could get to church this weekend on his own, but he didn´t come. So next week we´ll try and get a member to take him. We´re really excited about him. We found some other really good people that we´re excited to go by. The problem is they all live in a really far part of town that we have to take a train to. But we´ll figure it out. 

Thursday we went to I... and the fam. They are doing good. L..... got the aaronic priesthood Sunday and I ordained him. They told me right before the ordination that I was going to do it and I didn't know how to do it so they had to whisper it in my ear. It´s funny, Lorenzo really loves church but his only desire is to sit and listen. The bishopric told us to get him excited to bless the sacrament.

Yesterday I gave a talk at church. The sacrament meeting was about missionary work, so the primary sang, and some returned missionaries talked, and then I talked about what it means to be a missionary. It went well, I think.

O yeah one funny think happened this week. We had to go to Malaga for a meeting on Tuesday morning, and we were running late to catch the train from torremolinos to malaga, and so we were running and I jumped on the train just as the doors were closing, but Elder Marchant was a little farther behind me than I thought, and he didn't make it on the train, and the train started leaving immediately. So we just stared at each other through the window in horror as the train left. The train goes by every 20 minutes, so he just waited until the next one. And then I got off at the first train stop I could, and waited there until the next train came by with Elder Marchant on it. So we were only apart for about 20 minutes. I called some other missionaries to let them know we were separated, and then talked to a nice Austrian couple while I waited. All is well.

For Pday we are going to the castle in malaga. I´ll try and take some pics. Things are going well with Elder Marchant. He works hard and we get along. Not much of an age difference except a year ago he was in high school. I heard you emailed his mom you stalker...

Well that's it for the week!

Love ya all


Calvin