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.