Monday, July 22, 2013

"Just being in Spain makes you better at soccer... gotta be something about the air I think." (Sam)


The mission is the best! My list in preach my gospel of people my companionship has baptized is about a fourth of the length of the list of people that I´ve taught but that were baptized after I left the area...... Either way, S AND F WERE BAPTIZED! Wooooh! I´m just happy that they finally made it there. :) No importa quien. No importa cuando.

   Well things here are great. Yesterday we drove out an hour to visit the estonian family. They´re doing great! :) the mom is a great example and is encouraging her kids to listen and learn without forcing them. The second oldest son asked me a question when we finished the lesson and were about to walk out... he says, "what can I do so that God gives me a sign? Can I ask him for that?" :D 
YES YES YES... is what I wanted to say... but I just smiled and re explained prayer and what we say and how. Its SO fun helping people that WANT to learn through a learning process:
We explain it ... they think about it
We show them through example ... they may worry that they won´t know how
We explain it through the scriptures ... they think, try to imagine a prayer and what they'd say 
We ask them to finish with a prayer ... they're all nervous
We help them along ... and then we get an awesome investigator that just 'gets it' and says 
"So I can ask God for a sign to know this is true??? 
Haha those are honestly the best moments. Tough situation with this family... but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Its a very complicated long story but basically this family is related one way or another to a member the attends here when he can and the branch president is trying to find a way to help this family come to chruch since they are related to a member. Pray with us!! They will be able to come! We know it.
   
We played soccer this morning in Málaga. Gonna be fun to play back home with all my soccer buddies. Just being in Spain makes you better at soccer... gotta be something about the air I think. :) I was wearing a v neck shirt and now i´ve got a big pink V on my chest... forgot that that skin hadn´t seen sunlight for a while.. haha. Tonight President and Hermana Deere are giving a fireside in the Spanish ward, afterwards I´m going to interview one the Fuengirola hermana´s investigators (I may have mentioned him before... R... great guy that elder butler and I met at the church and showed him the baptismal font..) And then we have our correlation meeting with the ward mission leader and the other missionaries.
.........what you read there is normal missionary life stuff that we´ve been doing... now i´m gonna go over the last couple of days of non normal missionary life stuff we´ve been doing............. hah
   La búsqueda de pisos va bien... In the 9 weeks that i´ve been here I have rented 24 apartments. WOW. And in the next 6 weeks I have 14 more to rent. WOOOW. Wow. Right now with the 24 that i´ve rented, i´m at just over 2 and a half apartments rented a week. At the end of these 6 weeks i´ll have rented 38 apartments in 15 weeks. SIIIighh. :D
   Yesterday 13 missionaries came in from all over the mission came to Fuengirola to finish residency papers, place fingerprints, and pick up their D.N.I. card.. basically their residency cards here in Spain. They´ve been in the field 6 weeks and sometimes it honestly feels like herding sheep............ haha that sounds horrible!... but they are the youngest group in the mission and its funny how much two years can change you. :) Not to mention they were in the Provo and Madrid mtc´s together... they´ll obviously be happy to see each other... but when a group of happy young friends don´t know really what they´re doing or where they´re going, you get to the point where you just start herding them out or in doors and around the city. :) Now with that being said, this Tuesday, a group of 20 come from the madrid mtc... down to the mission office... and their trainers, 20 missionaries from all over the mission, will be coming in as well. So the last week now we´ve been planning every minute of this Monday through Thursday... preparing financial wise, travel wise, and schedule wise. My companion is a beast, he´s been buying the travel for the 20 trainers to come in fuengirola and also the whole rest of the mission considering transfers happen this week. The office is SO different. And we feel so helpful, its the best!
   Oh other side note, just wanna brag a little.. hah its interesting how office elders can really affect productivity of the mission in general. I could take this paragraph a lot of different ways but what I was going to mention is the fact that depending on how thoroughly an office elder does (or can do) his work effects the later office elders a LOT. There is a one page paper that can be easily looked over by the financiero or by the apartment owners that allows me to make ALL the payments to a specific owner through a program the church uses instead of through handwritten bank transfers or online payments systems. I´ve been really pushing the owners I rent from and the owners of the apartments elder Berrett rented to fill it out and get it to me. I´m excited cuz its already paying off! If you are just bold and tell them that the system is changing and they have to fill this paper out so that we can continue pay them they say... ´´oh well.. ok sure. Send it to me.´´ :) I´m excited to get a better hold on the apartment payment situation.
   Anyways, that was a lot of thoughts in my head right now.. I hope you enjoyed this weeks episode of The Office. Tune in next week for more details on how Transfer Week went down. Love you all! I´m proud to be a Norton and I´m proud to wear the Lord´s name on my chest. Don´t forget that we´ve all taken that same name upon us. Be proud of it even if you don´t wear it.

Élder Norton


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