"Love my mission president" (Sam)

Group Hug?

Hi there, I think I´m emailing a little early this week.. though I think you are in New York right now so we might not overlap at all today. No problem. We´ve had another good week. Things are pretty cooled down from the transfer and we´re basically caught up here. Its going to be interesting to watch what happens here in the office now that the big ´´wave of missionaries´´ has hit and is integrated into the field and not lingering over our heads so to speak.. :) I for one have definitely felt the impact of soo many more missionaries. One of my main jobs has to do with accounting/´´journaling´´ its called all missionary purchases that are not food basically... haha so missionaries will save all of the receipts they get from things like travel, butane (that some apartments require to heat the water), paper copies they make, or furnishings for the apartments, and they send them all to me and I do ´´a journal´´ or basically account for/declare all the purchases and then I refund them all that money. You can imagine... we´ve hit I think 220 missionaries.. and last week alone I did this process for 108 of them... I counted. :) hah My drawer that I normally keep all of the receipts and the documents in is filling like super fast. Haha

My companion is feeling it too cuz one of his main jobs is keeping each missionary up to date on their residency in Spain. Basically in each city you live in you have to tell the city hall or ´´ayuntamiento´´ where you are living.. Who you are living with.. you have to show them your european residency card that we get for the missionaries, and you have to show them the apartment contract. I´d say about a third of the mission (or more maybe) gets moved each transfer.. so right now, thats about 75 people... and Elder Crapo has to keep up on each of them and help them through that registration process.. and then we get all caught up and the next transfer hits... :D

Anyways, the good (bitter sweet) part is that the growth of the mission is kind of leveling off. The size of the groups going home are more or less the same size of the groups coming in. That eases a lot of stress off of the situation actually. Its going to be really interesting to see the changes made in the near future.

Every monday morning at 12 we have our weekly ´´Staff Meeting´´ with President Deere, Hermana Deere, the APs, Elder Crapo and I, the Castillos, and the other senior sister thats working here in the office named Hernana Chantrill from wyoming. This past monday, we had our normal meeting, we finished with a prayer, etc.. everyone gets up and walks out, and president turns to elder crapo and me and is like, hey can I have a work with you too?.. so we sit down, he´s in his mission president seat, hermana deere stays in the room but kinda moves over to the side and sits in a chair......... and we totally had like a heart to heart with president! :P Hah it was basically just president wanting us to hear some of his thoughts about the future of the office and him wanting some of our input..

It was actually a really great little conversation we had. One thing I love about President Deere is that he really looks into the future and always has high hopes for the future. Not necessarily specific goals.. and not really like ´´you´re doing this and I want you to be doing this´´... but more like.. He recognizes the past.. learns from it.. and then talks about his hopes or vision of the future. And just by giving us that idea.. that vision, we can work together better because we have the same end goal.

He was really appreciative of my work. It really felt good. Don´t mean to be mushy but I felt his appreciation for what I´ve been doing. I´ve known it all along.. but its easy to doubt your success or effectiveness if no outside opinions give you words of thanks or encouragement. He said something that really stuck with me.. he was talking about what Elder Butler and I have done over the last 6 months.. and he turned to me and goes.. ´´I recognize that we as a mission have basically sacrificed you here in the office.´´ Just that. Then he kept talking and went on.. but that really stuck with me. He recognizes that I´ve kind of been here without being able to go to misisonary conferences.. never being about to dedicate all my time, energy, or mind to missionary work on the street.. having to sacrifice study time, language time, meal time sometimes.. sleep time especially. He recognizes it. Anyways, it was like a weight off my shoulders. My mind was saying ´´okay so all this time i´ve felt disobedient for not studying as much as I should or not getting exactly 8 hours of sleep, or not having 20 lessons a week... all that he understands and isn´t disappointed´´. Good feeling. Love my mission president.

P-day we went to the Deere´s house and played volleyball and dodgeball in their backyard, and then went inside and had baked potatoes for lunch and play NERTZ after. :D Reminded me soo much of sitting around our dark stained wooden table playing cards and settlers and ´´the bean game´´. :D I hope you all still play!! or are at least ready to play when Hil and I are home!!

I just saw your email mom. I´m gonna go read it and reply if there´s anything I missed. Love you all! I love seeing pictures and/or videos if you have em. you all have big fancy nice smart phones now so it shouldn´t be too hard to send them ;P don´t worry, i´m gonna want one too when I´m home. Ha!

Love you all!

-Élder Norton

"I will boast of my God" (Sam)

Good to hear from you and great to see those pictures!

Things are really great and I´m doing well. Really, my health is good and we´ve been able to catch up on some sleep that we totally lost during the crazy days of transfers week. Things are great.

The weather here is cooling down a lot but its not quite cold yet. Its perfect. I´ve been wearing long sleeves recently and I´m gonna get rid of my old super used short sleeves shirts. I put them on now and they are like TENTS. They´re huge!! American clothing is so different from european clothing! Plus I think I´ve lost the (little) upper body size that I had from working out with Nate before the mission. Weird... he´s home... AHH!

We have a car here in the office so we listen to CDs all the time. And we usually put the music on the computers in the office so we can listen to music while we work. Thanks for sending a package. I´ll let you know when I get it. And I´m excited for that one CD. If you do send other ones, try to find Christmasy ones from those artists. :)

ALMA 26:12! Exactly! Its been interesting, I´ve spoken with Elder Castillo a couple of times about this exact same concept recently. So so many miracles happen here in the office. To an incredulous person, they would seem like nothing or maybe a really nice coincidence, but we know and we recognize that they happen for a reason a they happen because we have done our part, or as Elder Castillo puts it, we´ve put in the leg work... literally sometimes. :)

Yea, I know that I am ^anothing; as to my strength I am weak; 

therefore I will ^bnot boast of myself, but I will ^cboast of my God, 

for in his ^dstrength I can do all ^ethings; 

yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, 

for which we will praise his name forever.

I had heard how dad broke his arm but I didn´t hear many other details.. mostly just cuz I think it makes him slow at typing so he can´t write much.. :) right dad? No worries, I understand! Thanks for the update. Keep me in the loop.

Today was an eventful P-day. I´ll explain it all in more detail a little later but basically there were five of us living in our apartment (big apartment.. for like 6 or 8 people) before this transfer ended, but as of this transfer, Élder Crapo and I are the only ones that live there. Its been nice to have the place all to ourselves but transfers are always crazy and when the other three left, they didn´t really clean.... anything. haha So Elder Crapo and I cleaned for about 4 and half hours this morning and Mom, you would be proud. :D No, really. It looks good.

 And we did a really deep clean. Hah and then honestly within the 5 minutes between finishing cleaning and me getting in the shower, the water for the entire building got cut...... haha so that was interesting. We went and bought groceries and a new shower head for my shower... (that was left broken by the three that left... :P) and when we got back the water was on again, so I started the laundry back up and showered and we got ready. Right before we left, I pulled the clean laundry out and found that it had pieces of.... who knows what.... speckled through it from when the water was turned off and on.. hah cool! Eventful day.. but not really compared to the past couple of days...(transfers).. :D

I love reading Hilary´s emails. Its so interesting to me how different our emails and our missions are right now. I love hearing about all of her investigators and everything.. and sometimes I feel like my emails need to have that too! We do need to try to get out more but I shouldn´t compare our emails. We have different jobs. So we´ll have different fruits of our labors. I´m really glad she is having the experiences and the success she´s having.

Thanks again for everything. I loved the photos you sent! WOW. So weird to see you all. But you all look so great!

Love you all!

Élder Norton

"Find a problem, teach a principle, extend a direct and clear commitment, testify of the principle, and promise God´s blessings" (Sam)

HELLO!!  ¡Nos queda muy poco tiempo! ¡Ya va a empezar la conferencia!

We´re all in the office right now.. technically its our P-day so we´re here doing emails and whatnot, just waiting for the conference to start. Sorry to interrupt right when its gonna start!!

Things are great! Elder Butler is training his new comp Elder Crapo. He´s from arizona, he´s got about a year in the mission and is really quick to learn and smart. We had a huge problem occur in the office about 3 days ago..... OUR 400 GB EXTERNAL HARD-DRIVE HAD A ELECTRICAL SURGE GO THROUGH IT FROM A LIGHT BULB GOING OUT and ITS FRIED........Everything...... every document that this mission has had or used or sent or saved over the last like 40 years.......... fried! so we´re trying to get that fixed.... we´re thinking a guy here in the ward is gonna be able to save some of it. 

Me in some shoes some awesome members from
my last area sent to me. :D they really love me!

CONFERENCE HAS STARTED. I´ll write more during the break. LOVE YOU!

Élder Norton

WOW fantastic conference! We are watching it here in the office and its amazing what the church has done. You go to LDS.org, click on the first thing you see, and the prophet of the worlds starts speaking to you. You need to change the language?.. right above the screen they have a drop-down bar with tons of languages. We were listening to it in english in the office and I put in one ear phone of spanish just to listen and after about one talk I took it out cuz I didn´t like listening to them both.. your brain tries to hard to process both of them.. hah then I put it one American Sign Language and I remembered how much I love sign language! Honestly, I probably recognized a tenth of the signs that were used but the thing about sign language is that it is literally has to do more with movement, space, and body language than even the real signs, and it actually helped me a ton! I continue to realize that I am a very very visual person, and even someone explaining what I´m hearing in signs and body language helps me to stay focused and understand it more. I would really love to pick that back up when I get home. I feel that it would come back quickly.

My favorite two talks were first, Elder Bednar's! WOW. The last two talks he has given he has started them like this......... today, i want to talk about the importance of The Law of Chastity... or ... today, I´d like to direct my comments about Tithing. He is in all meanings of the word, a great missionary. Its so interesting to watch how the general authorities teach.. because they teach the same things and the same ways we are told to teach. For example if you were to go back and listen to Elder Bednars talk, he is direct and clear. He teaches God´s commandments, commends and supports you when you obey, teaches, supports, and calls to repentance those that don´t, and then right after invites them to make that change and promises blessings. That is the method they teach us and that is taught in preach my gospel. Find a problem, teach a principle, extend a direct and clear commitment, testify of the principle, and promise God´s blessings. BOOM. BAPTISM.

Another reason I really enjoyed his talk was because I am obviously working currently with the church´s money. I see whats happening, why its happening, and what could possible happen in the future. I have seen the $ numbers go uuuup in our mission alone! And by a significant about. We have actually had to make several ´´one-time´´s to our current budgets, and changes to other limits on accounts we have and use.. I will be honest, I have thought on more than one occasion, ´´woah.. I wonder if the church was expecting such big numbers and big changes... I wonder if the church is prepared for what will come... I wonder why that´s why we´ve been hearing more about the law of tithing lately...´´ hah but Elder Bednar´s words were clear... ´´ The church does not spend more than it receives.´´ ´´It sets aside a certain amount for unexpected expenses.´´ ´´The church teaches its members to set aside food, fuel, and money for... The church simply follows the same teachings.´´........... dudas contestadas....... questions answered.

My other favorite was President Uchdorf´s talk right at the end. I think it was just because I have met a lot of people throughout my time here.. and I still have every single face that i´ve met in my mind... and I worry a lot for them! Each and every one of them! Being a member is not easy! Its not! Its actually a lot harder out of utah, and out of the states. Spain is as much catholic as utah is mormon!! Put yourself in the shoes of a member of some other church there in utah.. would it be hard for you to keep your faith?? Or harder yet, change to a different faith!.. so needless to say, we worry about our converts that are new and fragile, our investigators that may not have reached the waters of baptism yet, the active and less active members that we have poured our hearts out to, and the many many others that are currently out on the streets clueless to the fact the God´s prophets are speaking. We are all fighting for the same thing. None of us is perfect. ´´We are all hypocrites´´ as President Uchdort says :). I just love some of his last words, ´´Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.´´ ´´...if ye have faith, ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.´´

Everythings going well here. We are happy and working hard. Elder butler is talking with A and S right now. They do attend the same branch we work in. The APs here in fuengirola and a trio of hermanas here in fuengirola work with the spanish ward. We the office elders and the castillos (the missionary couple ) we work with the enlish international branch. :D We´ve lost contact with M. She is out of resources, out of work, and really worried about her son. Luckily, the members that started to really fellowship her when we started teaching her have offered their apartment here in a close-by city for her to live in. They visit spain from Wales several times a year and while they´re not here they were more than willing to let M stay there. Fantastic members living the law of consecration with members and non members included. M just needs to be a member!! I wish she had just that little be more faith needed instead of holding back wanting to get more knowledge first. The blessings of heaven as we heard to today from elder Bendar would be opened up upon her. Pray for her!

Elder Crapo just figured out that his great great great uncle married Margaret Oldham Crapo... my great great great grandmother. (I think thats right) So yes, we are technically related but by marriage. :)

Mom, your whole paragraph on the whole iPad thing... I´ve had the exact same thoughts. I wonder if it will even get to many countries outside of the states. I know it will reach some but almost all south and central american missions I don´t think it will get to them.. and if it does it will be an ´´apartment only´´ thing.. or maybe a ´´with members only´´ thing.. not sure. I hoped that they would be implemented into this mission while I was here cuz I´m in charge of the mission cell phones so I would be in charge of the mission iPads too.. hah but it doesn´t look like it´ll happen during my time. We´ll see!

I love you all! And I´m really excited for this next time we´ll get to skype cuz there will be one more missing piece i´ll be able to see! HERMANA NORTON. :D I sent her a postcard the other day. Sometimes we exchange emails too. Its fun cuz we understand each others spanish but every once and a while I have to ask Elder Góchez, the AP here from el salvador about some of the terms and stuff she uses. hahahahah :D soooo great! AHH!

I love you all again! See you soon!

Élder Norton

click HERE for enlightenment