San Fernando Zone at Zone Conference in Malaga.So, I leave Jerez this Wednesday!! I have mixed feelings, but I´m excited to see Almería!!! Apparently it has the biggest and strongest ward in all of our mission, and my new companion will be Elder Hamilton, who is in my group. We get along great,except he doens´t like onions in his food, but we´ll llive. I´m extremely excited. I didn´t get to visit everything that I wanted to in this province, but, maybe I´ll have another chance in the future.
This week, with Elder Long, we´ve been working like bulls!! We´ve been going on splits with members often, and this week we exceeded the standards of excellence by far!! We have 6 baptismal dates. Elder Long and Elder Waite will even have more baptismal dates when I leave. I´m excited for them. Elder Long is struggling to understand the accent of the people of Cadiz, but he has excitement!! We´ve been talking to more people on the street since he's been here. And more people have been giving us their information. It just goes to show, when we try, the Lord helps us succeed!! We taught 24 lessons this week, and 20 of those were to investigators. We had 14 people show up to the last English Class.
I feel like I just got here...into this town! (I did just 2 months ago) It's easy to be happy when you are having success. But, I know I´ll have success wherever I go!! I have a strong testimony of success from contacts from the street.
One night when I was serving in Dos Hermanas, I got a strong feeling that I needed to contact someone. It was late at night, and we were late returning to the piso when I had the prompting to talk to the next person I see. I didn´t speak Spanish well yet, but I did exactly that. Some man was standing on the corner, I approached him and starting talking to him. His name was Felix. Now I heard he just got baptised in Dos Hermanas by the Elders over there! I´m so happy.
Three of our upcoming baptismal dates in Jerez are from contacts on the street. If there is one thing that I learned from this city is learning how to love the people. It's easy to dislike those who dislike us, but when we show christ like love, it blesses every aspect of the work. Contacts, lessons, and so many things.
Singing the mission song at Zone Conference.I´ll miss this town Jerez. We have some awesome members and some awesome investigators. I´ll miss Calixto, the awesome Bolivian man. We teach him almost everyday outside in a public courtyard. He reads and prays everyday, and we´ve given him a ton of pictures religious to hang up in his Finca. Then I´ll miss Paloma, the lady who mistook us as Jehovah´s Witnesses but still invited us over to her house. We became really good friends with her son Kevin. We´ve had an intense week with her. She called us and asked to be put in the water as soon as possible. Cuz, she was moving to Madrid. But, she had to quit smoking first. We´ve taught some powerful, spiritual lessons, and we gave her some good inspirational things to help her quit. But, she called us crying one day and saying that she couldn´t quit in one week. Then we told her that the church of jesus christ also existed in Madrid. She was happy after that. Kevin, her son should be baptized this saturday.
Paco has been awesome, and he´s been introducing the gospel to more of his friends, who wanna be baptized. He showed his buddy Tano, the baptismal bulliten, and pointed to the spot where tano´s picture would be.We had an awesome ward activity this week as well. I haven´t eaten so much in so long!! The Ward had all sorts of great foods.
I´ve been memorizing scriptures more recently, and they´ve been really helping me to be a better teacher and improve my Spanish by a ton!! I feel a whole lot more confident with Spanish.
We also had another miracle. We vistited an old, dropped investigator, named Felipe. He is a 16-year old from Brazil. He knew the church was true, he just wasn´t ready to drop his wreckless lifestyle. But, something changed. You can see it on his face. He gave Elder Waite his last lighter and said, this was my last lighter. I don´t smoke or drink anymore. He wants to go on a mission. And his girlfriend, cousin and friend are all being taught as well. His girlfriend has a baptismal date set up. We gave them a blessing of health the other day, and it was super super spiritual. I just love seeing the change of people. When they let the healing rays of the gospel warm them up.
Elder Long, and Elder Waite are awesome dudes. I´ll miss them a lot. Being in a trio rocked.
Malaga Time
