Almeria 03/28/11

We had a good week again. I´m excited for General Conference. We´ll be watching it in our church. Remember it's not broadcasted here. I´m excited anyway. It's such a great oppurtunity to invite investigators to come hear the prophet speaks. Elder Bennett picking up Raphael (the gypsy) for Church

Raphael in front of the Church.

I get the Liahona in Spanish and English, don´t worry about sending me one. It's starting to get warm. It's gonna be really hot pretty soon. Beautiful view of a castle


beautiful monument of Jesus.

Water fountain with European colors

We had a fun Zone conference. Elder Swatz from Germany came down and spoke to us. I really liked it. Our investigators are doing well, and we´re hoping to baptize 2 of them this week, Victor and Ruslan.

a beautiful sunset from our piso.

Almeria 03/22/11

Everything is going well this week. I am getting to know this area a little bit better now. Things here have a lot of potental. The missionary programs, such as 1 of 5, and English classes are starting to be a success. I´ve had fun posting English class flyers on poles this week. We had curious people come up to us and ask if it was really true that we were having free english classes. We met people from Argentina and Berlin, and we even gave away a book of mormon (biblia de los mormones) and set up a return visit.

Elder Christenson & I on splits.

I found a really interesting book in our apartment, about tips in missionary work. It's pre-preach my gospel, but... some of the things really do apply here, to Spain. I´ve tried a lot of these tips for door contacts, and they´ve been working!!
Specialized training - Granada Zone

We dropped 5 of our investigators, cause the dad of the family doesn´t want them to change church, But... we will try to talk to him again and hopefully soften his heart. He's so busy all the time. He works all day and every day of the week.

We set a new baptismal date, for April 2, (during conference) with a guy named Victor. He's super nice. He´s from Columbia. He´s got a heart of gold.

We are also helping our Ukrainian investigator meet his baptismal date in April 2. He´s struggling to quit smoking. He's had a hard life but, we´re helping him realize that God loves him, wants him to be happy and that a foundation in the gospel will help him.

We are still teaching Lily, the 28 year old Portugese lady who runs a shop. She always brings baked pastries everytime we teach her...like chocolate covered croissants. Our last visit with Lily was quite fantastic. We brought a returned missionary from the Bilbao mission with us, named Alma. Alma just barely came home, and she has this big desire of assisting us with our lessons. She teaches really really well!! She had a lot of good examples. The members are really helping us!

We had the father of a Romanian family that we´re teaching who called us this week to ask if we had a car. His daughter broke her ankle at school and he asked if we could help him out. We called up a member, and we helped him out. The Romanians are super nice. They feed us really well, with cake and m&ms everytime we go over. We had a hard time teaching them because of the language barrier, but... we started to get the message to them, and we provided matierals to them in Romanian. They rock. They have some Russian friends we may start teaching soon.

We´ve been blessed with a ton of success. and we have had lots of fun on p-days. We saw the big castle last week, and we´ll go see an underground Hitler city pretty soon.

Ahhhhh!!!!!

I saw some footage of that Japan earthquake.. Its crazy!! And I heard America invaded Lybia for oil, along with Italy, spain, canada, france, and england. Whats going on with that? Thats pretty close to where I am. My spanish is getting better and better.
Below are more pics taken on our P-day.

View from the inside of a cave


This is a cloudy day in the city


What a cool looking castle, he thougt...


What a beautiful view behind me!


Elder Lignell and I ducking


The Beach


The cool castle of Alcazaba

Touch down!!!

Almeria 03/15/11

I heard about Joseph. It's absolutely wonderful that he´s leaving for Brasil soon. Everything´s doing good in Almeria. We´re working hard and stuff. We´re having a lot of people to teach. I´m glad to hear Neil and Linsey are doing well. I hope all is well with the rest of the family also. Here are some pictues for you to enjoy....

Baptism of Teddy and Rocio (Teddy is the small brown boy to the left, and Rocio is his mom)

Here's our group of Missionaries serving in Almeria. Awesome!!!

Hna Capener, Hna Frandsen, Elder Beck, Elder Lignell, Elder Bennett & Elder Hamilton


Until the fat Lady sings


Famous monument


We love P-days


We are simply enjoying visiting historical statues & castle.


The Strip

Bad parking... come on Elder Lignell, we can move the car ourselves:)1-2-3 lift!!!
Elders, you are too funny. Stop showing off your muscles (lol)!!!


rock coast

Magical Alcazaba

Almeria 03/07/11

Almería is a good place. I like it. I live in a piso with my companion Elder Hamilton and 2 other Elders: Beck (he's from Anaheim CA) and his trainee Lignell (he's from Holladay UT), and it's an absolute blast. I can see the beach from my apartment, which is cool. We also have 2 sisters in our area.


Right now, it's kinda hard, cuz before I arrived here, it was a 2 Elder area. So now we have to split all the work between 2 sets of Elders & 2 sisters. It's been kinda slow and the work has been suffering, but we'll do our best.

Elders Hamilton & Bennett coming out of their piso.

We had a double baptism last night. Its cool. The ward members are supposed to be legendary in their support and thats good. They do like 99% home teaching which I think is outstanding!!! We get fed everyday here, it's awesome!!!
President & Hermana Clegg visited Almeria over the week-end. After church we were invited to the home of the Moraza family. We had a great meal and a wonderful time.