UPS and DOWNS (July 8, 2013)

holaaaaaa...this week was a week of ups and downs

we met with our branch president last monday night to talk about "the work". he wants us to focus more in the city of crevillente and not go to our pueblos as much. crevillente is hard to work in but i agree because we're baptizing everyone in the pueblos and its annoying to travel there anyway. he wants us to go visit members constantly, and not to be knocking on doors 24/7, which i can kind of agree with. he says we should be better friends with the members, but at the same time we need to be finding people to teach. the members have to do their part. i think it's a good idea, but it will be rough numbers-wise for a few weeks.

monday-wednesday we had 13 lessons which is really really good, but then after we did horrible. thursday we had to go to murcia for an area conference. we missed the train so we were an hour late, but it was fun to see everyone and listen to the president.

when we got back to crevillente that night, we went to go visit a deaf couple in the word. elder vosters knew sign language pretty well but he was gone, so it was really difficult to talk with them. we just showed them a scripture passage and they read it, and then wrote down some questions and they answered in sign language but we didn't know what they were saying. they were really happy that we came though so that was good. 

Friday night we did exchanges because the district leader had to come and interview nissa for her baptism. her interview went well and she was really excited for her baptism the next night.

ok so i was freaking out all week about this baptism. we had to do it on saturday because nissa's mom had to work sunday, and a lot of people in the branch work saturday nights so no one was going to be there. me and elder leon got the chapel in elche at 3 to get everything ready. i was expecting like 10 people there, and felt really bad for nissa because she would have no support from the branch. we told everyone the baptism started at 6:30. at 6:45, the only people in the capilla were the 8 missionaries in our district...i was freaking out. at 6:55 nissa calls and said they were lost, so we had to go walk around the city to find them. we finally get back to the capilla at 7:20, and there were like 20 people from the branch there, and people had brought food for after and everything. at 8 we started the baptism, and actually had to bring in more chairs, and people only had room to stand in the back. i was so excited it was such a miracle. elder vosters came back to baptize her and it was really good. nissa had said she didn’t want to bear her testimony after, but she ended up doing it so that was cool. 

the next day at church we did her confirmation. i just assumed our branch president was going to do it. right before sacrament meeting he told me i was going to do it. i freaked out because i didn’t know the prayer in spanish or how to give a blessing afterwards. i was super flustered and because of that i didn't have the spirit with me at all i felt. they whispered the words in my ear, and then i gave her a really short blessing ( like two sentences) that i don't think made sense. i was super embarrassed and mad at myself. i should have wanted to give the blessing and prepared myself for it. its ok though she said she liked it.

we had testimony meeting and nissa went up and bore her testimony again which was really sweet. i went up afterwards and gave a testimony saying thanks to everyone for the help with the baptism and saying that it’s amazing we've had 3 new members in 5 weeks. i wanted to say "the work of the Lord is hastening" but i didn't know how to say that in spanish, so i said "la obra del Senor esta iendo adelante muy rapidamente" which means the work of the Lord is going forward more quickly. i think they all understood though.

o it was super funny at church, so we have this old investigator who’s a woman from ecuador, and i've only met her twice, but she told us she was coming to church sunday, but then we called her sunday morning and said she couldn't. in sunday school this woman walks in and sits down alone. i was super glad that she came and i went and sat next to her and said i was so happy you came and blah blah blah. i explained to her the priesthood because that’s what we were talking about in sunday school. and then she was telling me about how she knew spanish was difficult because she was from brazil and had to learn spanish when she moved here. and i was like wait, isn't this woman from ecuador?? and then she told me she had two married kids, when i knew this investigator had 2 little kids. so i figured out that this wasn't my investigator. and i found out after that it was a member visiting a friend. luckily i didn't call her by the investigators name or anything...

that's it for this week. something spiritual i guess: during priesthood meeting we were talking about the temple, and i was thinking to myself about how i wanted to go to the temple now, but as missionaries we're not allowed. and i thought about how temple work is a sacred work, but so is missionary work. and that working in the temple is a way we can sanctify ourselves, but i think also that when we share the message of the gospel and participate in the missionary work we can sanctify ourselves.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

love ya

HOT HOT HOT with Great Shopping! (July 1st)

It's been above 95 here, but I'm never sure of the exact temperature. We have air conditioning in the main room so we move our beds in there each night and sleep on the floor. So the heat isn't a problem.

 

Usually the person being baptized chooses who they want to baptize them. This time a member in the ward baptized our investigator because they are good friends. O yeah a bunch of people in my ward want me to have cool-aid sent from the U.S. fruit punch flavored. 

(his mom is rolling his eyes right now as we just sent him a case of Gatorade powder-now he’s taking orders??!! We’ll get right on that!!)

Wow that's cool about Lauren(Hatfield) and Taggart (Krueger). Is Lauren's boyfriend going to BYU?

I'm not sure why the rooms are decorated like that. I think the church just buys apartments and doesn't worry about changing the style or anything.

Last Monday night President called Elder Vosters and said that he was going to leave this week to serve in Alicante. It's a weird transfer because Alicante is in our zone, and he'll only be serving there until the end of the transfer (3 weeks) and then going somewhere else. An Elder in Alicante had to go to another zone so Elder Vosters was needed in Alicante. He left Thursday and it was a little sad, but he's only an hour away and we have a zone conference this Thursday so I'll see him again. And then the girl that we're baptizing this Saturday said she wanted Elder Vosters to baptize her so he's coming back for her baptism too. 

Malaga was really fun. We took a really nice bus and I got to see a bunch of friends from the MTC that are serving in other zones. We got into Malaga around 5 at night and we hung out at the Mission home and ate for a bit. And then President talked to us and we had a discussion about getting members involved in the mission work. Then the next morning we got to watch the recent missionary work broadcast (it was nice because we could watch in english). It was really good, I think everyone in the Church should have to watch it.

Then we went and got our ID cards, so I'm officially a resident of Spain which is cool. Then we went to go catch our train back to Alicante, which we missed, so we had to wait 2 hours and take one to Madrid, and then from Madrid to Alicante. This was cool for two reasons:

#1 was that the train station is in a mall, so we had two hours to shop during rebajas, which is the time of the year where everything is ridiculously discounted. so I bought a couple pairs of linen pants from H&M which I love.

#2 was that when we took the train to Madrid, we were technically out of our mission boundaries, which was also really cool.

But then we got to Alicante and I had to say goodbye to Elder Vosters. We took a picture I'll put it in the dropbox. 

Our investigators are going well. One of them is getting baptized Saturday which is really cool. Before sacrament meeting I asked a member of the presidency to announce the details of her baptism, and when he announced it during the meeting he called her Lisa 3 times, and finally her inactive mother had to yell "NISSA", and then a mini argument ensued about what her name was. It was a pretty embarassing thing for a 17 year old girl to have to sit through. And then after church I was talking to her and another member of the presidency came up to me and asked me who Nissa was, and I had to tell him that it was the girl standing right next to him...in a branch of 60 people you'd think the presidency would know who our investigators are, right??

I'm not that bitter though. We are meeting with our branch president this week to talk about the mission work so I'm thinking he wants to get things organized.