Almeria 04/11/11

Elder Hamilton left and so did Elder Beck. So now it's just me and Elder Lignel. We´re getting along fine. This week, we cleaned the house!! It's all good.

Almeria Zone at training and conference

We had a good week. I gotta tip my hat to the saints of Almeria. David Moraza, the High Priest´s group leader, (I think that's his calling) gave a great lesson last Sunday. He used Jacob 5, and talked about the laborers in the vineyard. He said that we all have the tools, but how are we using these tools? Are we using our pruning hooks to clip our nails or to do work?
The Ward had 99% home teaching again this month, but David was advocating improving the quality of the visits. He shared a great example, 5 free men can do the same work as 50 slaves because the free men actually care about their work. As Saints of the church, we get to care and enjoy the fruits of our work.

I´ve seen so many acts of faith from the members here that it blows me away. For example, a member approached us one day at church and told us she wanted us to go with her to the hospital to visit a man who was badly injured. Since this man didn't have any family, she thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for us to fellowship him. An other example, a recent convert named Jose Miguel has spent a lot of his time doing over 210 names of geneology work! He´s also doing contacts in the street and passing out Book of Mormons to people he knew years ago. I´ve really been moved by the people here. They are always looking out for mission oppurtunities. They understand the gospel. They always go out of their way to help our investigators. It's awesome!!!!

Victor will not be baptise soon because he has some health isue that he didn't talk to us about. We finally met his mom and she strongly forbids him to be baptized. Victor takes anti-depression medication and his mom believes his medication affects his decision making abilities. So we´re holding off on him. And as for Ruslan, he is moving to Granada.

We chanllenged Patricia, an ohter investigator to be baptise but she isn´t ready for it by next week, so we´ll work with her some more. We taught the first lesson to a Bolivian man named Geraldo, and he likes it. He´s never been baptized, and he accepted a fecha for May 1st. Lola, accepted a fecha for May 1rst as well. Some of her children are showing interest in the gospel. We´ve been visiting her with the help of an ecuadorian member, named pablo. He's a RM from the Madrid Mission. He´s 31, but he´s still got the spirit!! We´ve adjusted how to teach with him, and now we teach well together :)

The Romanian family finally understand who we are and what we´re doing in their home. They have no interest in changing religions so we dropped them, but it was alright. They still love us.

I appreciate your letters. Thank you for your love & support.

Almeria 04/04/11

The Almeria District

We just had a very cool mission experience. We fixed an important date to teach someone named Nikolas, but somehow we lost contact with him. We didn't have an address or a phone number to reach him at. So today, as we always do on our P-days, we went to the usual "cafe" to use the internet to write emails but the place was closed (We thought it was odd cause it's never closed). Anyway, we went on to the other side of town to check out the cool computer cafe that offers "Apple" computers. When we arrived at the "Apple" computer place, it would not be open for another 10 mn. So Elder Beck decided that we should go for a walk by the beach. As we walk along the beach, we saw a gigantic sand sculpture of a crocodile and we decided to check it out! And guess who we found standing right next to the sculpture....yess it was Nikolas!!!! He was the creator of this magnificent sand sculpture. We were amazed by the beautiful work of Nikolas but more so that we have found him!!! What a miracle!! Nikolas believes God had bless him with his talent and wanted him to share with others. He's so positive and I'm so impressed with his trust in God. He's been reading the Book of Mormon and had lots of questions for us. What a happy & blessed day.

Nikolas the random miracle and his amazing looking sand dragon.

The baptisms for Rusian and Victor didn't take place but they are rescheduled for a later date. We are thinking April 16th. All of our investigators are doing well. Our Romanians are doing great. I learned how to say the word "baptism" in Romanian. It's Botez! The gospel is very hard to translate in Romanian but we do our best. Conference was good. We had a ton of investigators come. For some of them, it was their first time in a church building. I personally liked Elder Bednard's talk.

Here's a real truck in Spain

We are doing a lot of good work with one family that lives out in a small village. We have like 8 potential baptisms there. And we also started teaching a super awesome family, a less active member, Francisco Angel, his wife, their 5 kids and other relatives as well. They are super interested because the ward has been helping them when Francisco was in the hospital. I can easily see Francisco be like Paco, a valiant member of the Church.

Taking the elevator, it was pretty cramp in there

We had one transfer. Elder Hamilton has been transfered to the North and he'll be with Elder Barsuto. Elder Beck is going home really soon and he's excited about that. I am with Elder Lignell now. I´m super stoked to be working with him. He´s a hard worker. he knows whats what and he studies extremelly well. I am blessed to be with him.

Elder Beck, Elder Bennett, Nikolas & Elder Lignell

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.

Almeria 02/28/11

Its been a crazy week. I said goodbye to all our investigators in Jerez. We were teaching 5 lessons a night. I´ll miss Elder Long and Elder Waite. They´re super cool Elders, and I´ve learned a lot from them.
This is a pic taken with a couple in Gibraltar.

My trip from Jerez, to Almería was a bit hard. I had a lot of stuff. I´ve been meaning to send a package home with some of my souveneirs so I don´t have to carry it everywhere. The Journey was only 8 hours in bus. It was a nice bus with leather seats and stuff.

English classes are great. I was inspired by my English classes. One old lady was super offended as I said goodbye to her cuz i didn´t do the Besitos (you kiss them on the cheeks). That's more normal here. It's like their version of the handshake.

I´m here in Almería, and it has a reputation for being the most supportive Ward in all of Europe. It's so true. People here, actually care about their calling. They get like 99% on their home teaching every month. I´m excited.

Me, 2 more Elders, and 2 hermanas, are all new to this town. Before, it was just a 2 elder area. Now we have 6. We´re all new, except for my companion Elder Hamilton. Elder Hamilton left on 5 de mayo with me. We never met eachother in the MTC, but, he was in my district when I was in Dos Hermanas de Sevilla. He´s from Utah, from a little pueblo, south of SLC. I forgot which one. We get along really well.

That's great news. I´m so happy that I get the summer off from school when I get home. :)

6 Elders finished their mission and are returning home with honor. Elders Bullen, Larsen (my first companion in Dos-Hermanas, Sevilla), Thatcher, Wallace, LeBaron and Han.