Wow the weeks are flying by! Its going too fast! I have to slow this down somehow. Its great to hear from each of you - I love the updates and I´m happy to hear you´re all well. I´m doing great here, a little sunburnt from soccer this morning but doing very well!
This past week has been great. Sunday, we had an attendance at our english branch of 30 people! Which is 150% of what we usually have. Being stationed here along the most sunny/vacationy spots in this part of the world, we get quite a few families and people that end up coming to our ward on Sundays because they´re away from their home ward. There is a large, (100 people weekly) Spanish ward here but all of the vacationers come to our branch because English is a more commonly spoken language than Spanish throughout the rest of Europe. This last Sunday we had a visiting family of 4 from Finland and a visiting family of 5 from Sweden. We have several members here from the Philipines and a member here from Egypt as well.. kind of a fun group. :) After church we all went over the missionary couple´s apartment for the ´´munch and mingle´´ that we have once a month.. name chosen by our members from england obviously. :)
On wednesday we went out to visit a family in the Spanish ward that are basically the housekeepers of this reeeally nice house owned by a very wealthy man from eastern europe. They invited us out to the big house to ´help with some cleaning´ (and we honestly thought we were going to clean with them) but then they ended up just purposefully finishing early and just giving us a tour of the house and lunch..... haha SCORE. :) They told us that this guy has houses in about 8 countries in europe so when he´s not in spain they spend a good amount of time in the house......... Haha :D DOUBLE SCORE!
After that we visited a recent convert of the APs (they had planned to visit and ran out of time) . This guy lives (or lived I guess) in the coolest little town. Look it up on google images.. its called Benahavis. I would live there if I came back to live in Spain... so anyways, he used to live there but he has very very little money and he had to leave his house, so he found this torn down old shack of a restaurant... and he´s living in it now.. :) And the man is SO happy and content! I love it! We had decided before hand that we would teach about tithing and when we pulled into the town he flags us down from his car and has us follow him aaaaall the way up the mountain to his little broken down shack... and we just looked at each other and said...... ´´diezmo ¿no?...´´ :) ´´tithing, right?´´.... so we go in and begin teaching--- go in, not really in.... we walked through the front gate where had several old chairs set up.. and we sat there and caught up a bit. We had the first prayer and mentioned our topic and began teaching a little and he cut us off and said, can I go grab something..? and he runs inside and comes back out with this metal can with a slit cut in the top side big enough to fit a coin in... and he says.. ´´whenever I can, I run down to this parking lot down in the city and I traffic the people and cars that are parking and sometimes they give me a little tip. When I come home, I thank the Lord for what he has given me and I always put a tenth of what I earn in this can, feel it.´´.. and he passes it over to me.. It was surprisingly heavy and I passed it over to Elder Butler.. so anyways, I learned a coool lesson that day. Or better said, I was reminded of a cool lesson that day... Having a lot or having a little doesn´t necesarily make you happy or sad, what makes you happy or sad is your outlook on what you have or don´t have. Amazing man. Great little lesson.
Everything else this week has been boring office stuff... :) Paying rent for all the pisos in the mission, ordering new cell phones for the new misisonaries that are coming, paying bills, renting tons of new pisos, car breaking down twice, missionaries cell phones and credit cards getting lost, stolen, or broken... you know, the works. :)
I do get to speak tomorrow in the English branch! I gave my testimony at the start of the month and had only brought my Spanish scriptures, I got up there thinking about a scripture I wanted to share, and thinking I´d just be able to translate it quick or think of the English version of it.. and I looked down at the scripture and said....... basically nothing.... cuz I couldn´t translate it into MY OWN LANGUAGE....... haha so i´m sittin there struggling and a big arm reaches over my shoulder and sets a big english ´´quad´´ down in front of me with the scripture open... :) Thanks branch presidency!... haha so anyways, we´ll see how this talk goes tomorrow. The topic the branch president gave me was ´´The Atonement and Missionary Work´´................................ The most open, broad topic EVER. hahah We´ll see!
Hey I gotta go, Love You! Thanks for everything! Keep the people/marriage/mission updates coming!! I thought the world back home was gonna stop when I left but I was wrong!! :) Keep me informed! BYE!
-Élder Norton
ps: how much time do Sam Johnson and Will Montgomery have in the mission? They´ll totally be serving at the same time right?? I WANT TO ROOM WITH THOSE TO GUYS AFTER THE MISH! THEY ARE THE BEST!
Watch as the Savior teaches about the Widow's Mite
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