"Fake Christian and Muslim Wars" in Elche

The beginning of this week was pretty boring. But Thursday I was in Elche for exchanges. It was fun and nice to have a break from my companion. We played soccer with some youth in the ward there which was really fun. I had a goal which is pretty tough to do because all the other guys are really really good. Then Friday we went to Alicante for Zone Conference. As a mission we're going to try and find 555 new investigators in one week. It'll be really hard, but I'm excited. Then after Zone Conference I went back to Elche and did exchanges with someone else. They're having a huge holiday all this week and last week to celebrate the Christian and the Muslims in the City. (http://www.visitelche.com/en/world-heritage/moros-y-cristianos/) They have huge fake wars and blow cannons all night. Tomorrow night is a huge free for all, and everyone in the street just shoots fireworks at eachother point blank. It's super dangerous and last year a little kid died and the year before a woman died too. The police just leave for the night and don't want to worry about it. It's super messed up. I think the missionaries there are going to stay inside. Because literally if you're walking in the street you'll get shot at.

Saturday we went back to Alicante to help their ward find less'active youth ( they have a lot). I got to go out with Elder Dansie, we were friends from the MTC so it was really fun to work with him for a couple hours. 

Sunday night we had our baptism. I got to baptize Miguel which was really cool. It was a nice baptism, the whole branch came pretty much.

That's pretty much it for this week

Spain will find any reason to not work. So they have holidays all the time for different Saints and festivals. Pretty much once a month in Crevillente, and in the bigger cities like Elche and Alicante every couple of weeks they shut everything down. It's dumb.

I picked up the gatorade in Alicante on Friday. Everyone was super jealous!!

Cow intestines and "The Haircut" (August 5, 2013)

Yeah Elder Leon is fine. We had some good talks this week about what we want to change. Things are a bit better. 

Calvin and Elder Leon (The Comp that wanted to play barber)

Miguel is good. He's still reading like crazy. He read all of Mosiah in 2 days. 

We had a lesson with a guy who's probably about 40, and he has a family. He was investigating a while ago and we've been trying to have a real lesson with him again. We were able to on Tuesday and it was really good. He's been reading the Book of Mormon and said if he learns the truth of it he'll get baptized. He's super smart and has a really nice house. He'd be a great member I think. He's catholic though and his family doesn't really know that he's investigating, which is always a problem. Even if he receives an answer he'd still have to go through his family. We'll see though.

Some investigators fed us cow intestines. It wasn't too bad. But I didn't ask for seconds. 

Thursday was a crazy day. We had 7 lessons which is a lot. We were finally able to meet with one of the two teenage girls we had been teaching for a while, Nicole. She had a baptismal date for July 28th, but missed it and seemed super cold. If she didn't seem excited or anything to meet with us this day, we were going to stop meeting with her. But without us even talking about it, she said she was sorry for missing her baptismal date, and wants another one. So we gave her a date for 3 weeks. She said she's going to prepare and do everything she needs to. She's the same age as Nissa, so we are going to have Nissa come to a lesson and hopefully they will become best friends and serve missions and get married on the same day and be friends for life. That's what we're fasting for. 

O yeah and on our way to this pueblo, some lady called us saying she lived in that pueblo and had a bunch of church books she needed us to pick up. We guessed she was some less active woman we had never met. So we went over there, and she told us that she had been excommunicated years ago. We had to talk to some other members to get the full story, but she and this other member ( a guy) had been living together (outside of marriage) for a couple years. both super strong in the church. So they got married, and were gonna wait a year until they could come back to the church. 6 months after they got married, the guy was working on something and fell down a well (A WELL!!) (FOR WATER!!) and died. Now she has a new family and doesnt want to come back to the church. She was super nice though. She has friends who are still members, and she let us share a scripture and have a prayer. And she said we could come by any time. She also gave us a bunch of her dead husbands ties which we've been wearing.

saturday morning we played some basketball which was fun, except the people in spain are terrible at basketball. 

yeah me haircut. elder leon cut it. wayyy shorter than i wanted. he told me had cut hair tons of times but really it was his first time...i was pretty mad but now it seems ok. i'm not gonna let him do it again. 

"Re-inactivating"? (July 29, 2013)

Elche District (oh, Calvin swears his Comp won't be cutting his hair again)

[Exchanges with Scott then Suzie] 

estoy aqui. i want to apologize about that email above [last week]. i was whining so much and for no reason. i feel bad about it. by emails shouldnt be about that. i wanted to come back and say this the next day but, i couldnt. really things arent bad at all. i wish we worked a little differently, but we had 25 lessons last week and our district average was 19. we had 8 new investigators as a district and we had 5 of them. things arent bad. i'm just a whiner.

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 4:37 PM, Scott Wiley <wiley.r.scott@gmail.com> wrote:

I understand but also don't feel like you need to sanitize your letters to me. I understand what you're going through. There's no shame in pushing to do the best you can. 

I'm in Idaho taking M to visit Rexburg. Heather and Nate and kids are here for a family reunion so were having breakfast with them right now.

[Calvin] nice tell them all i say hello. i think i just get angry because i want to be the senior companion. i feel like i dont stretch myself enough because there's someone more experienced than me. a lot of my friends from my group are training now and i was a little upset and confused that i wasnt training. but its ok i need to be here.

[Calvin to Suzie] the beginning of this week was reaaaally long. and i kept thinking "this is only week one of the transfer..." but it got better. I think I'm just getting bored of the area. Every week is exactly the same. We go to this pueblo on this day and we teach these people. It's fine though I guess...

Wednesday we met with Miguel, an investigator. He is still reading the Book of Mormon like crazy, and finished 2 Nephi in two days. We were going to talk to him about 2 Nephi 31 (Gospel of Christ/Baptism), and when he opened up to it, he had underlined and marked ALL THE VERSES ABOUT BAPTISM. There's a verb in spanish 'escrudiñar' which means to read with attention and to examine and understand. He was totally escrudiñaring. We weren't going to set a baptismal date with him because we didn't want to to push him too much, but after we saw how much he had read we decided to. I asked if he would follow the example of Christ and be baptized and he replied by saying 'Claro' which is like, yes/duh. It was really cool. We decided for the 18th of August. But then, we saw him later that night, and he said he wanted to be baptized a week earlier, because the Stake is having a temple trip on the 24th, and he wants to make sure that he can go to the temple with his family for that. Of course we said that was ok. And then he said he'd only do it if I baptized him. So that was really cool. So a year ago in this family, only the father was a member. Then last november the mother was baptized. Then we baptized one of their sons, David, a few weeks ago. And now their other son is going to be baptized in a couple weeks. It's really cool to be able to bring the family closer together in the Gospel. 

We've been trying to show some of the videos the church has put out about members being part of the missionary work. I don't know if you all have seen the video "I'll go where you want me to go" with the family in it. It's realllllly cool. You should all watch it, everyone. Saturday we went to our investigators house and used his weight set for a little while. It was nice to be able to bench press for the first time in a while...I'm still pretty sore.

Sunday Elder León and I had to speak in Church about the new vision of the missionary work. It would have been really helpful except we only had 30 people at church...I talked about how the members need to treat our investigators as members, inviting them to activities and stuff. The investigators shouldn't have to be dragged around by the missionaries everywhere. O yeah and I was trying to say that we need to reactive the less active members, but I accidentally said we need to reinactivate them....to be reinactivated to have to be reactived though, so it kind of makes sense...

Today for p-day we went to Elche. We got two new hermanas opening a new area there so now we have 10 people in our district. hermans Kunz is one of them. She's  from my group in the MTC and she's really cool and a good missionary. She's already training her second missionary, and she's the senior companion opening a new area. So she's a stud.

The BYU-Utah rivalry - translated into spanish.

that's crazy about the ward. how are they going to fit 4 wards in the same building? 

i'm so homesick because of cato, it's getting to be hard for me to talk about him with others because i lose all focus on everything else... 

our mission president said that we will talk about the dress standards next zone conference which will prob be in a few weeks. i haven't bought any khakis yet but i want to.

i handled my money pretty well this month. I'm all out right now but we should get paid today or tomorrow.

Gatorade is probably here but I won't get it until zone meeting so in a week or two.

yeah you can send a package here. try and put a bunch of stickers/pictures of crosses and Christ and mary so that it doesnt get searched through customs.

yeah we heard about the missionary on the train. the members are going crazy over it. posting stuff on facebook and calling us about it. we watched an interview he had with fox or someone. pretty cool. great way to start the mission!

love you much and miss you!!

"Not Transferred" (July 22, 2013)

(Calvin was thinking he would be transferred as he’s been in the area for awhile. This blog post contains two letters written to first Mom, then Dad)

Jesus "supervising" Fusbol with Elder Leon?

I stayed. I was pretty down for a couple hours because I had heard that I was leaving for sure, so I already kind of had my head out the door.

This week was pretty uneventful. One of our investigators (the older brother of David, who we baptized a little while ago) is progressing really well. He read the first book of Nephi in 2 days, and marked up the pages with scriptures he liked and questions he had. He understands a lot and asks really good questions. He's 25 and studying to be a lawyer so he's really sharp and willing to follow through on commitments. I like him a lot, he's fun to teach.

Oh we had English class Wednesday and some people actually showed up. We had three non-members that just saw the fliers. Two of the women and super nice and the kind of people I would love to teach and would be great members. They're very put together and smart. But those are also the hardest people to change. The other is a kind of crazy lady who is studying to be a lawyer and she already knows a little english. She lives alone and has nothing to do all day during summer so she wants us to come teach her at her house.

No we get the Liahona's in english so I have those to read. Thanks though. I'll let you know if I need anything.

love and miss you lots - Calvin

-----------------------

Yeah we've been in crevillente a bit more. We're finding new people to teach but they aren't very good. a couple of old investigators that we found in the area book. one is a crazy evangelist but it’s pretty entertaining to talk to him.

I didnt get transferred. elder leon told me i was, and that he had talked to another zone leader and knew for sure that i was going to leave. so i waited patiently all day and then by the end of the day he told me that he was joking. i was super depressed for a couple of hours. i really cant imagine what this next transfer will be i dont know what to do. i know this happens often, and in 6 weeks i'll be gone, but i feel like its gonna be a really long transfer.

yeah i know this was a depressing email but i needed to vent to someone. we get along fine in the apartment at night, but we just have totally different ideas and goals about the mission. 

thats cool elder webb talked about our baptism. i like elder webb, he's pretty old for a missionary too. i think he's 21 and has only been out a few months longer than me. 

yeah we talk a lot about remembering Christ and our covenants a lot with recent converts. a lot of them don't understand that being a member of the church is really a whole life change. its frustrating when they don't understand things like keeping the sabbath day holy.

things are good though. i'm not super discouraged or anything. i just want to help people and its hard to do that when i cant understand people, and i have a companion who isn't all that motivated.

love ya and thanks for everything -  Calvin

"Poco A Poco" (July 15, 2013)

Unexpected Houseguest?

This week was pretty mehh...i don't really know how to describe it. it was good though. We're trying to stop by all the less-actives in Crevillente (there are a lot). Monday we stopped by one that I had never heard of, and she let us in. She said she went to Church like 4. She works a lot and says she doesn't have much time, but we're gonna visit every Monday night from now on so that should be good. That was the first less-active I've been able to really talk with so that was a cool experience. We're moving to a new capilla which is a little bigger, and we're going to be a ward in the future so we're trying to bring as many people back to the church as possible.

Oh on Tuesday we went out to lunch with a guy in our ward who's in the stake presidency. We went to a Wok which is a chinese/mongolian buffet thing that people are obsessed with here. It's a free buffet but the food is disgusting. Everyone just loves it because people like free stuff here. The food made me sick. But this member owns a bunch of Chino's, which are just like dollar stores. And he took us to a giant Chino warehouse, where Chino owners buy stuff to put in Chino's. It's like going to the oriental trading headquarters only cooler and cheaper. he let us pick out whatever we wanted, but mostly everything is super cheap and lame but it was still cool to see it all. 

a man and wife who were going to get baptized for next sunday can't anymore because they have problems with the word of wisdom. he drinks like 3 beers a week, and she drinks coffee some mornings. they said they know they need to stop, but "poco a poco" which means little by little. And it's so dumb because they could easily stop right now, they just don't want to. Whatever. They just need to know why it's important to stop. I like the quote from Bruce R. McConkie that says "true doctrine, understood, changes behaviors better than an understanding of behavior changes behavior" or something like that. I think that's true...

Oh a pretty cool thing took place this week. Our branch president called us and asked us to come over one night. He got an email from someone in the U.S., and it said that they were members of the church, and had relatives from England who lived in our area of spain, and they heard that one of them was in the hospital. both are very old and alone, and they wanted us to try and get a hold of them because they were concerned. we had no other info, but we found out where the hospital was and went and visited her. She was happy that we came. Her husband is very old too and is being put in a home, but she doesn't know why or where. It's a tough situation. But it was cool because the woman only spoke english so i got to do all the talking. she's not a member so we didn't share anything, but we had a prayer and we said we'd try and find out where her husband was, and try and visit again soon. and I've been emailing the guy from the states. I think his name is allen reagan, and he lives in Idaho. It sounds like Cour D'Alene, but I'm not positive.

we've been eating a lot of kebap, which is good but i feel terrible after. i haven't had a churro yet. a little churro shop just opened up for the summer here so i'll go try that soon.

that's cool about the stake. i miss a big ward like that. and people who know how to be reverent...

(Scott told him about the upcoming changes to our church boundaries)

yeah 555 is the mission goal. we're doing really bad with it right now. i think we're only a little over 200. we're a really young mission though. if you have more than a year in the mission you're considered one of the oldest.

i want to do this idea i had, which is to go around door to door in normal non proselyting clothes, and collect clothes or old toys for charity. just to show the people here that we are nice people. because the people here hate us. i want to implement that.

That’s allllllllllllllllllllllllll!