Saturday, November 9, 2013

"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
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1 comment:

  1. Joanna,
    I sent an email to your email address, I'm not sure if it is one you use anymore.
    If you could email me your new or recent one I would appreciate it. Alex just got
    his call to Ecuador. So of course we have more questions for you. Jade is serving in Malaga near Sam, I think they have been able to see one another a few times.
    I hope your family is well.
    Heather Warburton
    Hwarburton@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete