Week 36: Ciudad Real, La Mancha District
11:33 AM
Monday- p day, we set up a volleyball net in the courts of Kriss's buildings complexes and played lots and lots of this 1 on 1 type volleyball thing in the morning. It was fun, and I won against elder Llavina lots and he only beat me once and elder Llavina doesn't like to lose ;) nothing like 3 transfers together to figure out most things about your companion. I'm quite impressed with us, not many missionaries go three transfers together it's pretty rare, and we haven't killed each other yet so we must be doing a good job. That night we wanted to pass by some people we've talked to but nobody was home, and that was basically our night.
Tuesday- we had our final district meeting with this district. We will have a change of missionaries in Valdapeñas and Alcazar de San Juan. My good mission friend from my group elder Kroff from Galacia is coming to Valdapeñas so I'm happy for that. Then that night we met with Alisia and the worst thing happened In a lesson in my life (not really but it was kind of bad on our part). We were watching a video about commandments and Alisia is a very very dramatic lady and so something happened in the video which made her jump back very fast so me and elder Llavina just began laughing really lightly and I had to put a Book of Mormon in front of my mouth because I was laughing so much. Then we saw each other and we were laughing and just couldn't stop laughing (luckily she never noticed) and our member present was laughing too. Then at the end of the video, the member just burst out laughing and said her friend sent her something really funny, but yea, it was just bad because we were all laughing uncontrollably. But Alisia is doing alright... Still word of wisdom issues and she just doesn't seem to ever understand what we teach and isn't willing to make steps to baptized so we aren't sure where she'll go. We'll keep trying though, we don't feel we should give up. That was the most exciting thing that night.
Wednesday- in the morning we helped all the missionaries with transfers get transferred and all the New missionaries coming here and stuff. Then that evening we went contacting. No one we talked to wanted anything but this guy contacted us and said he's trying to learn more about the purpose of life but he didn't have time then so he gave us his information so that's awesome. Then we had English classes and something awesome happened (but it kind of made me feel bad). Toni the Chinese teenager who's amazing at football came and we showed him at the end a video that explains the purpose of missionaries. At the end he asked "why don't you guys do that?" and we're like "we do!!" And he replied "why haven't you taught me then" and we said "well we tried but you weren't taking us seriously" and he said "well I didn't know you were trying to teach me!" Then he asked "so if I were to get baptized, I could be missionaries like you guys and do that?" And we replied "YES!" So he told us he wants to be taught more and come to church. Kind of made me feel bad though because clearly we didn't clarify our purpose in the beginning with him so our bad... Yea I'm not a perfect missionary at all... I'll work on that one though. Working with lots of teenagers my whole mission I've never been able to figure them out with teaching super well. But so yea, we're excited, he just doesn't have that solid Christian background like most people so we'll need to really teach basically in the beginning. He's incredibly smart though so he'll figure it out.
Thursday- weekly planning in the morning. We've got to find some New people to teach (catch phrase of my mission). Then we went to Daniel and Nancy's in their little pueblo or Fernana Caballero so we took the bus there. We got their and helped them do some stuff to their house. Last time was a chain saw, this time was a drill. Then we taught them... A ton. The most important part came when we went over the baptismal questions because they're still timid about setting a set date of baptism so we did that and had a fantastic lesson. One problem they've been having is that they are searching too much for physical signs of evidence or things like that. Unfortunately, true conversion doesn't come like that, it comes from the spirit and the desire to want it. We read one of my favorite scriptures Matthew 7:20- Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Simple yet powerful, because if you're feeling good in church (which they are) if you feel good when you read the Book of Mormon ( which they are, although Daniel admitted that he feels he is studying it more intelligently than spiritually) and most importantly if you feel it could be true, then it's time to start doubting your doubts before doubting your faith. It's like being blind and lead to an apple tree. The second you partake of the fruit, you will know it's and apple tree, but before you have to have faith that it's an apple tree maybe because the person guiding you told you so, but you aren't going to know for sure until you eat the fruit yourself. God has the ability of making us see and putting a giant sign on the apple tree saying "apple tree" but that would mean we lose the initial faith part of it. In the same manner, if God wanted, he could give us tons of physical evidences of the Book of Mormon or whatever, but if he did, we'd lose the trial of our faith in reading it and feeling it's true by the spirit. Honestly, it was one of the most powerful lessons I've ever had in my mission. And in the end, we set a date of baptism!!! For June 1 so wooooo!!! I'll be here but elder Llavina won't so...I don't know we're just happy we got that step out of the way
Friday- pretty regular day, with some contacting in the morning. We met a cool Dominican lady and she seemed pretty promising. Talked to plenty of people too, so it was good. Then that evening we had a family home evening with a family of the branch and president Carlos and it went well. But then me and elder Llavina were in short sleeves because it was warm earlier but it just started pouring completely down on us!!! Buckets of rain, and we had no umbrellas and we were kind of on the frontier of the city so we got soaked.
Saturday- we decided to go in the morning and buy some stuff for Mother's Day and give each mom in the branch a little Mother's Day treat in church Sunday (because Mother's Day in Spain is the first Sunday of May) so we did that and also went to buy a cake and flowers for Nancy because it was her birthday Friday. Then Daniel came and picked us and the family of Kriss so we could pass the day in their house our in Fernan Caballero. When I say Daniel and Nancy live in the middle of nowhere, I mean the middle of nowhere, their property is gigantic, and there are hardly any people near. The tiny city itself is only 1,000 inhabitants and their house is pretty far from it. But we had a really good day and were able to talk a lot about the gospel and Kriss was there to help them solve a lot of their doubts so that's good. We took a big hike too, and I don't know why, but I've come to develop a love of olive trees in my mission. It all started in the MTC when my district did a service project one day and we did a lot for the olive tree that stands outside the Madrid temple to make it more beautiful and I just thought it was way cool. But anyway, we got to walk through a grove of just acres upon acres of gigantic olive trees and I felt very much in Jacob 5 of the BOM. Never ending olive trees, I loved it. The day was great though.
Sunday- Happy Mother's Day in Spain! Church was good and it was testimony meeting and Nancy and Daniel loved the testimony meeting, and I could tell they wanted to go up and talk but they've told us they fear public speaking a lot. But they were crying the whole time and so happy. Nancy announced to everyone about her baptism but Daniel admitted to us he doesn't quite feel ready yet and is fine that his wife gets baptized then but wants to wait himself. I think the problem has been is Nancy usually takes over the lessons and we are able to resolve her doubts but Daniel is a little more quiet and timid so he hasn't really asked us too many things in reference to his doubts. Nancy is going back to Argentina for two weeks and we feel we'll be able to work with Daniel a lot then and maybe even help him out a lot with his fields to gain more trust and relationship with him. But I'm saying, these converts will be some of the best converts in the world, they are just so incredibly devoted, and their hesitation about baptism is good because they understand just how serious they need to be in order to make this change in their life. It's not just do it, and when it's not as pleasing anymore to you, you can just leave, they understand it's a covenant with God so that makes me happy. Then after church we helped with branch finances, then ate in the house of Ana's with practically half the branch and did some numbers stuff and Llavina did district leader stuff. And that's my week! Good week!
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