Murcia 12/26/11

Well, thanks for the phone call, it was nice. I liked the picture, that was pretty funny. Thank you for the money on the card.

I discovered last night that I can put mini SD card chips into our new church phones. And i put in the one that you sent me for ´hump day´ and for christmas and was able to see the pictures and listen to the songs for the first time. Thanks for the stuff! I really liked them and enjoyed them. Now I can listen to all the songs on our phone.

Have a very merry Christmas! :)
Elders Forrest, Shaver, Bennett, and Melgarejo enjoyed a little Burger King time. Nothing like some good old American food once in a while.

The Murci/Elche Zones say Merry Christmas

Murcia 12/12/11

I´ll probably get my package on the 21, with my card, so... you´ll be getting your Belén after Christmas, if you don´t mind.

Everything is going good here. We´re having a good time. We´re probably gonna be moving to a city named Molina de Segura. Its 15 minutes north of Murcia. They´re gonna be splitting the ward, and a new chapel will be built there. It´ll be cool.

The coolest guy was baptized, last week, in less than 2 weeks. Now he´s got the priesthood, and he´s a ward missionary. He´s given us 6 references, and he´ll be giving us more he said.

Murcia 12/05/11

I haven´t got the Christmas package and I haven´t heard anything about it. I´m sure I´ll get it soon. That's pretty crazy about the 100 mile wind. Did it do anything at home?

You want a Belén? The Spanish Nativity is a super huge tradition. It's more like an art rather than something you pick up at Wall-Mart. Belén is like our next door neighbor's Christmas village. But, everyone has one! There is a man in Archena, who started making Nativity when he was 8 years old and still continues until now, he's 60 years old. And its like 1000 square meters big. And this man made everything by hand.

Belén you have to recreate the entire city of Jersualem pretty much. And you have the 3 wisemen starting their journey far away from the nativity and they get closer every day until 3 kings day, Jan 6. I´ll look around and see what I can do. I´m sure some china store would sell something for half the price of Wall-mart.

I finished the BOM. It was a good exercise. So i´ve read the Book of Mormon 4 times on my mission. 2x in english and twice in spanish. Its a good book.

I´m glad that Neil is doing basketball.

Murica 11//20/11

Almeria reunion: Elder Lignell, Elder Hamilton & Elder Bennett


I like the Jacob scripture, I read it this week. I like the cross reference in the D&C 101:
55 And the lord of the vineyard said unto one of his aservants: Go and gather together the residue of my servants, and take ball the strength of mine house, which are my warriors, my young men, and they that are of middle age also among all my servants, who are the strength of mine house, save those only whom I have appointed to tarry;
56 And go ye straightway unto the land of my vineyard, and redeem my vineyard; for it is mine; I have bought it with money.
57 Therefore, get ye straightway unto my land; break down theawalls of mine enemies; throw down their tower, and scatter their watchmen.
58 And inasmuch as they gather together against you, aavenge me of mine enemies, that by and by I may come with the residue of mine house and possess the land.

We have to read the entire Book of Mormon before Christmas, and mark every time it says God, or Jesus, or Santo de Israel, or Cordero de Dios, etc... And i´m in Alma right now. I´m doing it in Spanish. I´m having fun doing it.

Gabriela was baptized 2 years ago. One of her friends name Cesar came to church yesterday, and he´s super pumped about the gospel. The Hermanas are teaching him. The only thing, is that in his Book of Mormon, he´s got a big ole´ sticker of the Virgin Maria. Cesar used to live in Archena with a Bolivian man named Jaime who is a member of the Church but inactive.

Jaime and most of his family was baptized when he was 14, but lost contact with the church when he moved to spain 8 years ago. The Father of Jaime, after years of investigation was baptized about a year ago, and he has a super strong testimony that the church is true. Missionaries never worked in Archena where Jamie lives.

When Cesar lived with Jamie, Jamie talked to him all about the church, about the Book of Mormon, and it was the true restored church. Then Cesar moved away.

Jaime found me and Elder Corradi about 3 months ago, walking on the street. He walked up to us and asked if we were mormons. We got in contact and reactivated him.
Jaime and Cesar were super suprised to run into eachother at Church yesterday. They both found the church seprately. That's awesome!

The whole town of Archena is doing good. One of the guys we taught a while ago wants to change and be baptized now. His name is Luis. he was so impressed by his buddy´s good example and also by Gabriela's change of lifestyle. He lives with a couple of menos activos, and they also are becoming excited about the church again. Archena is great. Its just far away.

Dia de la accion gracías, en Murcia!! We ate at a place called "Foster´s Hollywood"


Thanksgiving was cool. The food wasn´t the best, but it was fun nevertheless.

Murcia 11/28/11

Murcia & Alicante Zone Conferences.


Everyone agreed that the food was deliciously good!



Elder Bennett particularly loves the dessert. One thumb up for the cook!!!!

Murcia 11/20/11

I got to confirm Luis this sunday also. I had to repeat it. I said, by the authority of Melkisdec, instead of ´sacerdocio of Meldesidek.´ But, nevertheless, he got the gift of the holy ghost. His friend, Gabriela is awesome. She´s just flirting to convert. She brought another guy to a baptism on Saturday, and I think he´ll be next to go into the water.

These are some of the saints that come into Murcia once in a while and then other times the Missionaries go out to them to take them the sacrament. The wards are growing and in the near future there should be another ward in Murcia. That is great news.

This thanxgiving we´re not gonna do anything. There aren´t any american families here. So we´re gonna celebrate it today, on p-day, and go to an American restaurant. (which is super expensive, it's like 12-18 Euro meals.) but it's Thanksgiving... might as well splurge and it's the only norteamericano restaurante here in spain. (Although other missionaries tell me there is a kfc, I still have not found it yet.)

When do I have to decide to get into school?
When do I have to do my registration? its comin´ up, isn´t it?

What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving and for Black Friday?
Thanks for taking care of the credit card.

Murcia 11/07/11

I don´t really have a pday today. I´m at the mission home. There are 7 of us who are getting a son or a daughter (greenie to train).

Elder Avellar, Elder Bennett, Hna Perera, Hna Bascope, Elder Velasco, Elder West and Elder Peterson


The table is ready to sit a lot of us for a good meal.



My son's name is Elder Melgarejo (see pic below). He's waiting for his visa to come before he leaves for Puerto Rico where he's been called to serve. I'm excited to be working with him.

Murcia 10/31/11

The loss of the car did suck!! It certainly changed the way we do missionary work, but that's ok. We just have to make a few adjustments. The bus system is really really bad. But, one city is doing well. It's called Archena. We´ve been having good success there. We have quite a few people investigating the church in that area.


We also had stake conference in a city called Alicante. We rented a bus and had the meeting in an university auditorium. It was cool. I saw Elder Hamilton there. I can make a few spanish dish. I learned to cook this Spanish food called "Paella". It has rice with chicken, chorizo, shrimp, onions, peppers, and stuff. It's so good. I also found the best Italian desert called "Tirasumi"... Wow!!!


We had a companion change lately. I am no longer with Elder Corradi. By the way, I thought that maybe when I get home, we could speak french...so until then get practicing and "parlons francais."
Elder Bennett & Elder Corradi

Murcia 10/1711

President Monson announced that a Temple will be build in Pari-France and I wanna go to the dedication. I like all the talks the General authorities gave. They all pretty much say that they have no claim to the truth. Which is true.

The police got us this week. We were driving and the police stopped us and expected us to give them money right then. So they escorted us to the nearest city and made us give them the money. I talked to my mission president, there´s nothing the mission can do. It was a 100 Euro. I paid half, and so did my comp.

The police got us again this week, except we didn´t have the money, so we kinda got arrested,

Leadership Training at the Malaga Mission home.

Murcia 09/26/11

We had another good week. We did splits almost every day. We´re gonna be working on getting people to church this week. That will be our goal. We´re gonna ask for member's help, look at all the bus lines to Murcia and get a system that will help members, less active-members and non-members to church.

I taught an investigator named Sandra for the first time this week. She´s absolutely golden. She believes in everything and wants to be baptized. She just needs to come to church 2 times. I´m baffled of why she hasn´t been invited to church in the past. But, she´ll be coming to conference this upcoming week.

José-Maria is another prime investigator (Not only cuz he has a car and can drive to church.) but, we had a powerful lesson with him where he spilled all his doubts on the table. He knows his bible very well. He can quote it. He read the book of mormon, and he admits its true because its loaded with wisdom. But, he doesn´t believe in the restoration and that angels can minister to men in these latter days. We showed him all the scriptures, but he doesn´t seem to want to accept it. Then, we invited him to pray at the end of our lesson, on our knees, and he was almost crying. He didn´t ask Heavenly Father on a specific topic...pride prevented him. But... I think the spirit is converting him. This man is incredible. I have a book about every doubt on the church with answers, and I think he´s brought up about half of them. Anyway... I have the feeling he´ll be baptized. He wants to be baptized.

Today, for P-day, a less active member invited us to play tennis. He's going to introduce us to his friends and also invite his friend to come to church on Sundays. Another less active member named Gabriela did a bus contact and gave us the reference. She´s stoked to work!

I wrote my first letter in french this week (with the help of my companion of course.). I want to write to uncle Gilles, what's his address? He sent me a post card and I want to thank him. French is so hard to pronounce. We´re giving French classes right now. C'est chouette, n'est ce pas?

Murcia 09/19/11

Murcia is finally going good. We have 12 new investigators now and only 2 non- members. We´re gonna be doing a lot of exchange every day this week, so we'll be visiting a lot of different cities. We´re excited. We had a baptism yesterday of a young girl named Karen. My comp really wanted to do the ordinace. Me and my comp get along well. We´re hoping to have more baptizms soon. Our teaching pool is growing slowly. I can´t send pictures cuz the computer place we go to suck.


Having a car is amazing. It makes a big difference. There are only so many places you can go on foot. Our area is as big as the whole province of Salt Lake and some of Provo put together. Some of these cities we walk in, the people dont know who we are and are more open to listen to us. Members come up to us on the street and tell us that they´ve been looking for the church for years, but couldnt find it.


Yeah, it's crazy to believe it's allready the 10th year anniversary since Osaka Bin Laden blew up the world trade center. Everyone here in Spain is talking about it and how it affected their lives. And how fast the time went by. It wasn´t that fast for me. I went thru some major life changes in that time frame.

Murcia 08/22/11

Yeah, murcia is "tres bien". I´m learning French with my companion little by little. We are gonna teach some Muslim-french speaking people pretty soon. My comp has almost forgotten how to speak french. Its crazy!!! I´m liking this new area. We had a lot of old investigators when I got here. There are people who the missionaries were just passing by, people who weren´t ready or didn´t want to be baptized. Its been hard on my comp, but we just about dropped all the investigators, like 20 people in 3 different cities. But, we´re becoming better organized and we´re gonna be baptizing in a couple of weeks. :) nobody specific yet, but we´re getting many new people to teach. We´re gonna be doing a lot of member work. Having a car is sooooooooo nice. A lot of these members in different cities want to help the missionary work, but they lived too far away for missionaries to visit them. Now a 3 hour ordeal is a 15 minute ordeal. Its awesome. Its a 2010 Opel.

How is uncle Gilles doing? Auntie Lina is right, the standard of living here is very nice. Its quite comfortable. But, America is 20x better from what I´ve heard.
My comp made me give besitos (the little kisses) to an old lady. She was super insistant. We gave her a book of mormon and she was super insistent to give us 10 Euros. We said no and explained why like7 times, but she said she would rip up the money and never invite us over again. So she stuffed it in my companions pocket. We decided to buy her flowers next time we see her with the money she gave us.

Murcia 08//15/11

Murcia is good. I´m excited. Elder Basurto is from this city and he might return home from his mission while I am here. I´ll try to use him for like every lesson every day. I still have yet to meet his mom and his brother. Murcia is pretty big. We have the car to work in the neighboring cities. My license has been copied and it's ready to be sent, but I keep forgetting to do it. I´ll do it as soon as I remember. The 2 wards are pretty nice. Almost everyone is from Bolivia. We had a baptism on Sunday of a lady named Dacia. I forgot my camera in the car, so I´ll have to send it another day. The area is good, but its really disorganized, we´ll be doing some work. We had 4 mini missionaries helping out for 10 days, 2 young men and 2 young women. Andres and Luis worked with us and Ruth and Kiara worked with the Hermanas.
I live with other elders, and they´re very nice.

Almeria 008/08/11

ZONE CONFERENCE: LaMancha, Granada and Malaga Zones

Almeria 008/08/11

Yeah, I´m leaving Alméría. I´m sad, but I think I´ve done my work here, and I´m ready to move on. It's been fun being with Elder Pallas as my comp, but its time for us to split and progress. I don´t really care where I serve, or in what capacity. I trust the Lord knows where he needs me, and I trust that it will be for my benefit.

Sofia and David Alverez(argentina)


Miguel(espana) and Jesi Cavero(peru)


I'm going to a city called Murcia. Its a really big city. I know almost nothing about it, but everyone tells me that it's exactly like Almería. The way people act, the way they talk, and the food is almost the same too. Murcia is a state outside of Andalucia, which is different.This city has 6 missionaries, 4 elders and 2 sisters. It has 2 wards and one of them is so big, it will split soon. The wards have a really good reputation.

Noche Hogar, with José Miguel and Janet, and José´s Mother, Gracia. Also the family of Carmen, Paqui, Gema and Juan. (de España)


Hna. Norma


Mari and her sobrino, Juan Miguel. And Jeni Peña (de Ecuador) and Ilda (de Bolivia even though she looks asian)


I´ll be living in a 4 man piso. I´m excited for that. My companion will be an European! A member told me to be careful with the Europeans, cuz they think differently... especially the frenchman!! Yep, my new companion is from France. He speaks good English and Spanish. So that's exciting.

I´ll be getting a car in my new assigned area. So I´ll need you guys to please go to the DMV with a copy of my License (which I will send you soon) and take care of the international driver´s license for me? Thank you!

By the way, I am in this week local pages of the Liahona with Elder Waite. What do you think?

A family from Peru. This is their first time to church in over 2 years. I told them that it was my last day and i wanted to see them there to take a picture.


Francis (espáña) and Lucia(Brasil) and Pablo. Francis and Lucia will be getting married this Friday!! I´m so bummed i won´t be there.

Almeria 08/08/11

The church of Almería at dusk.


Elder Sean Hurley´s family visiting Almería


Burger King


My English Class!


Alhambra