"Don´t have as much time … but its for a great reason! (Sam)

Hey!!

Don´t have as much time as I wish.. :\ but its for a great reason!

A year ago when I was serving in Málaga with Elder Núñez, we taught and baptized D and R (you might remember the names) from Ecuador and Uruguay. In their apartment there was another ecuatorian lady named M that started listening and was almost baptized the same day that D and R were. She ended up backing out and the area was split right then and Elder Núñez and his companion continued teaching her. Well she never got baptized and ended up moving back to Ecuador. A little while back, the Elders in my old area told me she was back (in Spain) and they were teaching her again. Then like 4 or 5 days ago they called and said. She´s getting baptized this saturday and I get to perform the baptism!  :O............ WOOO! So today's the baptism and it starts at 6 in Málaga.

Now, I wouldn´t be in so much of a hurry cuz theoretically we could just drive in quick....... buuuut..... we can´t get into the parking garage where our car is cuz we locked the clicker in the car. The castillos have a clicker but their traveling right now so we have to wait till tonight late late when they get back before we can get it out...... SOOOO... we have to take the subway train thing into malaga and we have to catch it at 5. Innnnnnn and hour and 7 minutes.

Quick update. The castillos are bringing my replacement in tonight! Elder Flint! COULD NOT BE MORE HAPPY WITH ELDER FLINT. I´ll tell you more about him later but I am really really excited and actually relieved to be passing my position over to Elder Flint. Great guy.

Mmmmmmmm can´t think of the other things.. Oh it was soo great to see those pictures of you with Hilary! Tell her that I love her and that she should write me an email. :)

Love you!

Élder Norton

ps. Dad and Adam, I watched the video you sent me of Adam shooting hoops probably a hundred times. Ask my comp. I just put in on repeat. YOU´RE LIKE A LITTLE BALLER. I´m starting to get a little worried about that in´n´out bet we made over skype when we talked for mothers day. Adam, ¿¿¿recuerdas??? Love you guys!

What are YOU thankful for? 
Did your blessings made this list?

Well Done, good and faithful servant ...

Sunday November 17, 2013

(Hilary's last email below)

"Saturday seven of our investigators were baptized and Sunday confirmed!! Here are pictures. 

Also, C's son just turned eight and he was baptized too. 

Love you!!!! See you soon!

Hermana Norton"

--------------------------------------------------

Tuesday November 19, 2013

At the airport …. Ready and Waiting ….!

…. and she's BACK!

"…last thing she said was 'I'm so excited for my baptism!' " (Sam)

Hello! Good to hear from you. Thanks for always trying to send me the emails before I get on. I know its weird with my P-day on saturday but fyi I´ve received them in time every week so we´re good.

I cut my hear like right after I sent the last SD card.. hah so all the pictures you saw were before my hair cut. Its nice and short now.

After I emailed last week I remembered other things that I hadn´t told you about.. so this week you´re gonna a two week mix. :D

This week has been good. The normal people that we visit have been gone or busy this week so the few lessons that we usually teach are even fewer this week. Its alright. We have found (and preach my gospel says) that daily contact, even a phone call, text, or a little note will help maintain trust and a good relationship with investigators and members. We have very little time to proselyte but if (and when) we use it right, we see the fruits. For example, S and A  that were baptized. ALSO, an incredible woman from Iran that the Elders here in Fuengirola found. She´s from Iran, speaks persian and a little bit of english, has been studying Christianity for 12 years, moved to spain like 2 months ago, found the elders and immediately started coming to church and IS BEING BAPTIZED TOMORROW. Incredible. 

She is soo couragous and so so ready. I KNOW she has been prepared and desired to follow God´s plan before she came to earth. She just believes! Her name is G and president Deere is baptizing her. We started working with her a few  weeks ago because she doesn´t speak spanish and has been attending our branch for the last while. Plus she just knows people in our english branch and the members have really brought her in. She´s unreal. 

We´re excited and yesterday we met with her and the last thing she said was

 "I´m so excited for my baptism!" WOW

We got a new car this week. Like.. new new. Like, I-drove-it-off-the-lot new. Like it had 13 kilometers and basically zero gas cuz IT HAD NEVER BEEN USED..... I guess ever like 5 or 8 years each car is switched out and we were just lucky that we had the car when they switched it! Its an automatic too. Suuper weird change from driving stick for the last 9 months of my life.. I swung in, sat down, put my right foot on the brake, and my left foot on the............ nothing. :) hah also weird when it starts moving forward without you having to do anything! Woah! Technology...!

Last week basically all of these months of brainbusting overwhelming office work came to fruition when I found a huge mistake in the financial archives of the mission´s payment system... (if you don´t know anything about accounting like I didn´t before I came to the office this probably won´t make much sense to you... sorry). My job here is basically declare or ´´journal´´ (the term used to declare or report) all of the expenses (and ALL means ALL)(down to every penny that every missionary uses) of our mission. To shorten the story a little bit, we have a program in the office, made by the church, that allows me to make all 90 (or so) monthly rent payments for all the apartments in the mission just by clicks basically.. instead of going to the bank in person with written bank transfers or writing checks to each landlord. It makes my job a lot easier and a lot more effective time-wise. Turns out, these monthly payments have a programmed account code ("chart of accounts" accounting stuffs) attached to each payment that will in turn automatically "journal" or declare the money payed to its corresponding account. (those of you that just reread that last sentence to try to understand it better, don´t worry, just continue reading and pretend to understand.... :D) Well a huge chunk of these automatic payments had an incorrectly assigned account code... and month after month after month the payments were made to the landlord, but the money was declared in a wrong account. SSSOOoooo I went back month by month through every monthly payment from this year (cuz last year has already been closed out and you can´t really get back into it) and fixed (correction journals) anywhere between 6 and 18 payments, for each month, to their correct accounts.  It ended up being this huuge project that took the entire afternoon and evening and when I finished I turned around to my companion and was like.. Look! Look what i just did! And tried to explain the whole thing to him... and he gave me the same kind of confused face you guys had when you read about all the accounting stuff. Haha It was like he wanted to be proud of me but didn´t reeeeally get the whole picture... so I just said NVM and texted elder castillo who knows a lot about accounting. :) Elder Castillo is awesome. He has called himself to be the organizer and planner of celebrations. :P so he invited us over a couple nights later for dinner and made me an apple pie to celebrate my good work. :) Don´t worry mom! They´re taking good care of me!

One last thing before I gotta go. Today we went with the Castillos, the three fuengirola hermanas, and the other single office sister that got to our mission at the beginning of october to a city down the coast from malaga called Nerja. Elder Núñez is there right now with an Elder named Elder Allen who´s birthday is on monday. We went to some cool caverns at about 10 and then went to a brazilian meat place for lunch with the Nerja Elders for Elder Allens birthday. I´ll attach pictures of these caverns. Incredible!! You can look up "cueva de nerja".

Anyways, I think thats all I we gotta go. Transfers are in a week and a half and my replacement will get transfered here! We´re excited for him to come! I´m still really torn about leaving. I feel like I´m finally really in a groove and now their booting me! :S hah Ehh! Thats the mish!

Love you all! Give Hilary a huge hug for me!

Élder Norton

"I know it without a doubt" (Hilary)

Hi all! Hope everyone is doing well! So fun to hear from everyone!! Also I love seeing pictures! Thanks for keeping me in mind! Lots of missionaries mention that there is a time during the mission that people forget to write them, but luckily I have been blessed with the greatest family and friends that never forget to write.

The week went well. We did a lot for the assignment, which is cool. It is always neat to know that when something is going wrong, people turn to us for help. Also that President trusts us. I really feel grateful to have this assignment. My companions are doing well. They have been such a huge blessing to me at this time. I really love them with all my heart and I am seriously going to miss them.

I just finished the Book of Mormon and, as I do every time I read it, kneeled in prayer afterward to confirm my testimony of the truthfulness of the book. It was a really special experience for me that I will never forget and I am very grateful for the challenge we were given to read the Book of Mormon in less than 90 days. It helps us to grow closer to Christ, strengthens us to understand our purpose in life and our duties, and motivates personal repentance. It definitely builds my testimony that this is the true church. 

I know it without a doubt. 

I have always loved verses 32 and 33 of Moroni 10 :

32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him,

and deny yourselves of all ungodliness;

and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness,

and love God with all your might, mind and strength,

then is his grace sufficient for you,

hat by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ;

and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ,

ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ,

and deny not his power,

then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God,

through the shedding of the blood of Christ,

which is in the covenant of the Father

unto the remission of your sins,

that ye become holy, without spot.

And I always love the phrase that says that if we serve Him with all of our might, mind and strength, THEN is His grace sufficient for us. I have a firm testimony that even after doing ALL we possibly can, the only thing that could save us is His grace and mercy (2 Nephi 25:23 is one of my all time favorite scriptures).

23 For we labor diligently to write,

to persuade our children, and also our brethren,

to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God;

for we know that it is by grace that we are saved,

after all we can do.

It is a humbling acknowledgment and it makes my gratitude grow everytime I ponder on His saving Atonement. I know I am very weak. But I also know that when I do my part, my Heavenly Father is willing to give me strength and save me.

Got a letter from Sam this week! TE QUIERO. Te voy a escribir muy pronto. Cuando yo ya esté en casita.

Dad, I got your email last week. Thank you so much. It was really encouraging and motivating for me. Thank you so much. I think with the housing, I will just ask for your help when I get back. Is that okay?? I have a feeling there will still be opportunities.

Okay, I think that is all for now. Write me if there is something else! I am on for another half hour.

Love you all! Hermana Norton.

P.s. Mitch mentioned that finishing the mission "should be like Olympic runners... As they approach the finish line they SPEED UP instead of slowing down. Not only that but the LEAN FORWARD dedicating themselves even more to winning. My philosophy is if you don't finish your mission EXHAUSTED you probably did something wrong haha." I love that and I am speeding up right now.

 Love you!

Are you curious about the Book of Mormon? Click HERE for a free copy

"Blessings from The Lord for wanting to attend church!!" (Sam)

Hey hey!

This week was really great. We´ve seen some cool blessings lately and the more I think about them I keep feeling like they were just that little-cherry-on-top-tender-mercy-right-in-the-moment-I-needed-it kind of a thing. Funny how that seems to keep happening... :)

We´ve been teaching more this week. Feels good to be out and about among the people. Relationships between members and investigators and people are getting tighter and closer. I really have seen a difference now that i´ve been in this area for a long time. That´s one thing that President tries to do so that the missionaries can really create trust and a good relationship with the members. Once that´s established, they feel more comfortable presenting their friends to the missionaries. My first......... well every area but here.. I was in for basically 2 transfers or less... (down to 3 weeks in one of them)... and its been kinda rough trying to really connect and gain the confidence of the members. I´ve been here since the end of may.. so I´ve already passed 4 transfers here.. and so people are starting to come out of the wood works.. a chilean family has called my companion and me over several times and just a day or two ago she called me and said.. "I want my son to be baptized but I want it to come from him.. can you come over and teach about the priesthood and how baptism is a prerequisite to having the priesthood??" :) So she´s reactivating, pulling her husband back too and encouraging her 10 year old son to learn and have those desires. I think there were some others that were really pushy with them before but we´ve been able to connect and just be a support (we helped them move) and they´re really progressing now.

The situation here in Spain is really hard.. There is zero work. The two sisters from the philipeans that were baptized several weeks ago had a huge upset at their work and haven´t been able to come since their confirmation... :\\\\ They are now living about 40 minutes from each other in separate houses basically as cleaning maids.. and S, the mom, just has terrible terrible hours. Literally like 7 am to 2:30 am... straight.. no breaks.. no days off, not saturday not sunday, not holidays.... and the scary thing is that can´t say or do anything cuz there are hundres of other people looking and searching for work. S´s work is a good hour drive from the church building and from where we live and we´ve only been able to communicate through texts and calls. We spoke with Elder Castillo the other day and we all decided that it had just been too long. Someone that new to the gospel can not go that long without having some kind of priesthood presence shake her hand or give her a smile or a church magazine or whatever! So elder Crapo and I just got in the car thursday evening and went on a little road trip... we called her on our way and said... "we´re coming to see you!!"  and she goes.. "well you won´t be able to come in! They´re very strict!.."  and we just said.." don´t worry! when we get there, just decide to take out the trash or something and we´ll be waiting by the trash bin!." :) So she told us what the place was called.. we put it in the GPS which ended up taking us 15 minutes further than we even needed to go.  We asked someone and they sent us somewhere else...  we asked again for directions and they sent us somewhere else...... in total we asked 6 times and got to her work around 9 at night! She was able to sneak out and basically just cried (out of gratitude) the whole five minutes we were with her.... It really was great! We left the october Liahona with her and she was happy to receive it. She told us she had a really hopeful interview this sunday at a different work with some other people. Pray for her! And that these people are way nicer and give her time off and sundays off and whatnot. Blessings from The Lord for wanting to attend church!!

Anyways, my comp is ansy now so we gotta head. I love you all!

What day does Hil get home????

We can´t go to the temple.. its in the madrid mission. We went weekly in madrid in the mtc but we can´t now. I will go weekly if not more with you guys! I´m excited for that!

Love you!

Élder Norton

 Show message history

"I hear roaring laughter and run back in to see that she has sat on the cake!" (Hilary)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HILARY!

Hi everyone! Hope you have all had a great week! Thanks for writing!

We have had a really great  week and I am feeling much better than I was last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I mentioned to Sister Berrett (the new mission nurse) that I had been struggling a little emotionally for all that had been going on with my health. There have only been little problems, but I have felt sad and frustrated at times. But I have seen a few little miracles this week and I feel that the Savior is aware of my small problem and helping in my situation. I have really felt that He is lifting the load and that He is also making me stronger to be able to bare. I recognize that my problems are so small. I know there are others that are working through SO much more. I am just grateful that Heavenly Father knows me and is willing to provide me with the challenges and the solutions that I need to grow.

I have always felt very strongly that Heavenly Father puts certain people in our paths so that we can grow and learn. I love the quote by President Kimball that  says, "God does notice us and He watches over us. But it is usually through another person that He meets our needs." I have felt that Sister Irepan has been an answer to a silent prayer. I am so grateful to have this time with her and I know I will be able to finish strong and happy. She is an excellent missionary. She knows what she is doing and she is thoughtful and obedient. I am grateful to have her as my companion. Each one of my current companions has been a huge blessing for me at this time. The other day an elder mentioned that if I were still in the other mission I would be getting home this week. Later Sister Irepan mentioned that and was like, "These two extra weeks of your mission are like a gift to me! I know there is so much I need to learn from you." It was really cute.

We had a stake activity this week for our investigators and it turned out really well. A lot of people showed up (many more than we were expecting) and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We are working hard as a zone to be able to have a "Noche Blanca" this month and have been seeing the fruits of our labors.

Friday Sister Bastidas and I did divisions with Sister Ortiz and Sister Palau. It went really well. We had very little time because of their mini-conference, but we were able to accomplish so many things and it was a real testimony to me that when we do things the Lord's way He helps to accomplish much more than we could ever do on our own.

This week we have a family of investigators that are progressing which is a blessing to be able to see. The Pillajo family has a baptismal date for the 16th of this month. We have been fasting and praying sincerely for this family and I know we will see miracles.

Okay, my birthday was so great!! I received three cakes, so I think Ecuador likes me. I will send pictures. So much fun. One of my companions had a birthday last month and we did a lot for her so I think there is now this mentality that we have to do bigger and better every time. My sweet companions did so much for me this week. On my birthday at midnight they woke up and got out of bed and  brought in a cake and balloons and a little gift and were singing happy birthday. It was so hilarious because I was so tired and confused at first then just felt really grateful. We were all laughing when I set the cake down on my bed to grab my camera in the other room. As I am searching for my camera I hear roaring laughter and run back to see that Sister Irepan had sat on the cake as she was trying to set up her camera. Hahahaha it was soo funny. She was just so tired. Anyway, that day we had our District Meeting/Mini Zone Conference and after the meeting the zone leaders came in with a giant cake and a card that everyone from the zone (of like 30 missionaries) had signed. The tradition here is to "bite" the cake and people always shove your face into it as you are biting it. We enjoyed that as well. I know if I have skin problems this week it is because of all the icing and sugar that had been smothered all over my face again and again. Then we had lunch with a super great family (last name Ocarez) that is from Chile. Sister Ocarez cooks really really well and had invited a few people over that shared the same birthday. So we had an awesome lunch and it was so fun. That day was the stake activity for our investigators from the whole stake and it turned out really well. A lot of people showed up and we had a lot of fun. I will attach pictures with explanations.

Sounds like you are having a lot of fun with "Yasu." I laughed out loud when I read the story about what he and his friend said to Adam. Haha Adam is a good sport. I am glad he has a brother/friend for a week. Tell Adam I can't wait to see him in a couple weeks! I hope he and I can hang out a lot. He is the greatest.

Sister Maza got the packages and she loves everything. She is so grateful. 

Okay, I have a good amount of time left. Respond if you can! Love you all!

Sister Norton