"Ha! I need a good humility slap right now ..." (Sam)

HERE COMES THE SUN!

   Hello! We´ve got some cool news this week!

   The transfer ended yesterday and president told us we are getting another elder in our ward. Elder Vergara. He is colombian, has about 6ish months in the mission I think, and he is coming from the ward in Huércal-Overa! My first area! It´ll be super fun to be able to catch up on everything going on there.

Other news.............. Three people in Alcoy that Elder Pascua and I taught FINALLY got baptized! :D Sooooo good to hear! A girl named J from Ecuador ... her mom wouldn´t let her get baptized for a loooong time... but because of her diligence and prayers and a fast that she did, her mom finally said yes. :)  And a father and son from Bolivia. The mom was less active and she got reactivated when her husband and son were baptized. :) YAAY.

   It hit 95º the other day here in the pueblos of Sevilla. Sevilla is by far the hottest part of the mission. I don´t know about the rest of Spain but I wouldn´t be surprised if it was the hottest place in the country. It gets up to 50º celcius. Go look that up for some clean internet fun..... :)

Hmmm, I'm not sure I'm as proud of this photo as he is

Oh haha, that picture of the car? YEAH. Welcome to spain. In three weeks, I learned to drive stick, in a busy european country, and parallel park like that. :) Ha! I need a good humility slap right now....... put that picture on the blog though, I wanna see it again. :) Thanks!

   I´m gonna get the passport pictures, the photocopy of the front and back of the drivers licence and the mission office address today, and send it all to you in a letter. Elder Larios has learned how to drive and has his own permit and stuff so its not urgent urgent. When you get the letter just get it done when you can and then send it to me. Thanks mama!

  Thats funny that Ryan Fonseca got his call to Madrid! he´s gonna have the true spanish zeta!! :)

   Hey i´m running out of time. We had a good week. We have three very solid investigators ... Each has their own situation ... working towards baptism. They will all be baptized... just with time. We´re just trying to balance our work between supporting them and keeping them excited about being baptized one day and finding new stable investigators. Pray for them please! :)

   I love you all! Write me letters! My new address is

c/ Convento #42, 3ªA

41950, Castilleja Cuesta (Sevilla)

ESPAÑA

   we are living in the same building complex.. just a different apartment. We already moved........ hah they gave us like 4 days of notice... ITS A GOOD THING WE´RE MISSIONARIES OF JESUS CHRIST AND WE´VE BEEN DEVELOPING THE CHRISTLIKE ATTRIBUTES OF PATIENCE AND LONG SUFFERING........ :) just kidding... hahah

Love you all! SEE you soon! MOTHER´S DAY IS THE BEST.

-Elder Norton

"I love my mission. I love being here. Its hard but there are many days that I don´t want it to ever end." (Sam)

Hello and welcome to a brand new week! 

Learn something new this week. Change something you´ve been wanting to change this week. Be a little more obedient this week.

Hey, it's Elder Warburton! One of Sam's friends from Pleasant Grove!

       Things are going as faaaaast as ever here in the mission. WOW. This is the last week of my first transfer with Elder Larios. An entire transfer has flown by! He´s super surprised as well but we´re happy and working hard.

Our dueño....... landlord?..... came by this morning and told us he is thinking about selling our apartment and that he´s willing to offer us another apartment in our same building for the same price. I think its a little bit smaller but its a little nicer as well with a lot greater view than our apartment right now. We´ve talked with the office and we´re going to go through with it... So we will be changing addresses within the next week probably..... haha sorry for CONSTANTLY changing addresses. If you don´t send anything else until I get the new address, nothing will get lost in the change. Thanks for everything you send to me. I love getting letters and packages. :)

   My comp and I are getting along really well. Its amazing the things i´ve experienced and the time i´ve already been out here. Along with the spiritual side of the mission, it really helps you mature and kind of have a better focus. I love my mission. I love being here. Its hard but there are many days that I don´t want it to ever end. I do also look forward to the adventures that the new chapter of my life holds. The plan of salvation is so perfect. Life is great.

   The ward is doing well. Elder Blanch was an amazing missionary. He did great things for this ward. He basically visited every single person on the entire ward list... 11 pages or people.... active member, less active, not active.... whoever it was. And because of that he ended up rescuing/reactivating quite a few people... the hard part falls on the missionaries that follow him........ :) The rest of the people left on the list are the ´´never knock my door again´´ people. :) We´re just trying to work with the recently baptized people and the recently activated people to find new stable investigators. If there is something you could do for us it would be pray fervently that we find consistent, stable investigators.

   I AM learning how to cook! You should see the awesome breakfasts i´ve made for my comp. :) You'd be proud mom! I stay away from fish. I´ve never been a fish guy... and the Spanish members give us enough of it anyways. :)

   Mama, the keyboards here in Spain are super different. All of the letters are in the same order but all of the punctuation and whatnot are in all different places. The Ñ for example is just to the right of the L... and the key that makes an A to an Á is just to the right of the Ñ. Its just a different keyboard.. I don´t know how to do it on other keyboards.

   The baptism we had programed didn´t end up happening. F, his name is, has a lot going on in his life right now.. including his father´s death and his mother not wanting him to be baptized.... so he decided not to go through with the baptism for now but told us he is praying that his life calms down a little so he can better focus on the gospel and be baptized. He will be baptized. When, I don´t know... :\

   As for the man on the crutches and his daughter.. We have passed by his place several times with no success. We called him the other day and he answered very groggy sounding and told us he was living in his mother home and taking a lot of medication for his back problems and recent surgery. :( because of the medication and the long period of time that we weren´t able to visit him he has basically forgotten about what we talked about and what he felt. :\ Satan works in interesting ways. Alma 47. We are still working with the Dominican Republic people. They speak spanish as well. They are here in Spain for the same reason many other south americans are here. about 10 or 15 years ago, spain opened its borders more and let in quite a few more people. Since then the economy has fallen and now its hard to find work. Due to all that, right now, we are seeing a LOT of south americans go back to their countries. Lots of wards are loosing valiant members just cuz they are moving home. :\ 

The two Spanish cds we bought had a bunch of hymns sung in spanish. A recent convert here in this ward wants to learn the hymns better and I told her that I have some cd´s... anyways.. I don´t know where they´d be. Maybe take a look through my stuff in my room. There will be a big stack of cd´s that I left. It should be one of them. If you can´t find them, take a look around some church stores for me. :) thanks!

   Mom! Good work on the stake activity. You are amazing... I don´t know how you do it sometimes.... YOU DO EVERYTHING. :)

   Love you all! See you soon for MOTHER´S DAY.

-Elder Norton

  

"THANK YOU to every single one of you supporting the missionaries" (Sam)

Helllooo!

   Wow! What an amazing conference!!! I was SOAKING in every second of it! I filled like a thousand pages of notes in my notebook. The bummer is that with the time change, they don´t aire the Sunday afternoon session here in the capilla cuz it would start at 10 pm and end at 12-midnight....... :/// so we missed ELDER HOLLANDS TALK. Please please please send me a copy! Or even better, a copy of it on a CD. POR FAVOR.

   :) thanks mom. You always find the good things about me and my emails and teach me from my own letters. Thanks for what you said about me choosing to try the hard things. Often times I don´t really realize, but you always point out the good attributes in me and help me learn. I really enjoy translating. I love languages as well. I really really would like to learn at least one other language when I get home... and I don´t know how plausable this is but i would love to go live in france or germany or somewhere where they speak a language I don´t speak, just to go learn the langauge. I would love to learn french.

   I do play piano in the ward. Well I did. Elder Larios is basically mozart............ so when he got here we started switching off between the second counselor (the american that was out of town), elder Larios, and myself. I am little by little forgetting ALLL the other music I used to play. I´m gonna spend more time on the piano when I get home.

   FINALLY I HEAR SOMETHING ABOUT WILL MONTGOMERY. I have been wondering!! I wrote him a letter a while ago but I sent it to his house in georgia. They may not even live there anymore. Anyways, good for him. He´s so awesome. I spoke with him like one day for I went into the MTC. I was walking around some... like.. ´´Staples´´ I think it was.. buying pens and my backpack... and we talked on the phone. If you read this Will, WRITE ME A LETTER. :D....... plus will you teach me french when I get home???? :)

   Well, things are good here. I can get around fine in our area... but its tough cuz I don´t know PEOPLE..... Elder Blanch knew how to get around and he also could just be driving along and name 10 houses in any different town where less actives lived... or old investigators.. or members..... and I´m still kinda lost. We teach a lot of the same people as before but we are needing to branch out a little more to find more people and its difficult to do when you don´t know where anyone lives.. You can actually waste a lot more time than you think and a lot more GAS than you want looking for one family. :) We had a slower week.. we have been trying newer, different techniques for finding and they haven´t given fruit yet.. we´ll see!!

   I´m a little behind on writing people so I´m gonna close there. Sorry its been short, its whats on my mind. :)

   A couple things...... THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to every single one of you supporting me/us as missionaries. This is a difficult thing. The words of support. The prayer every night, the letter in the mail, the faithful tithing for our materials, IT IS MUCH APPRECIATED. Thank you.

   Thats all! Love you!
-Elder Norton

Monday morning traffic jam...?

Sometimes here in Utah we see this: 

Or this:

But I've never seen this:

"Don't let His suffering and death go in vain" (Sam)

HELLO FAMILIA,

   Woooah! Whole new look at the mission. Loving having my "child" or trainee and enjoying DL so far. I love working with people and being able to work with people and serve people and although no one has to wait till you have a calling to serve someone, I feel almost like a greater desire or a right or something to be able to serve the district. :) I´m excited.

   My new companion is awesome! His name´s Elder Larios and he´s from California. His mom´s from Mexico and his dad is from El Salvador so they speak spanish in their home. Its great to have a companion that speaks BOTH languages PERFECTLY. :) It takes a little load off your back. We are teaching well together and actually finding a lot of great people to work with. We are helping the Gospel to become part of these people´s lives and that is what I love. We were working with two investigators the other day, E and F, with a member there as well. They (investigators) said.. "We feel weird now when we don´t pray before bed or when we´re not in church on Sunday. I often find myself just reading the Book of Mormon now."  :D Soo great! F has a fecha for the 21 of april. He´s rreeeeeally looking for his answer. Pray for him. and E please.

   I sent the memory card home. Sorry it took so long.

   We are loving the area and the car! We were playing basketball and soccer today in the stake center in Sevilla with a bunch of elders and when we finished up we all walked outside and everyone started walking away and we got in our car......... O.o :D so great! We sat down and my comp was like... "We´re so blessed to have a car"  :) and then we high fived. Hahah  and Aljarafe actually has very little south americans or people from other countries. Its almost aaaaall Spanish and I love it. You just have live their culture. You have to live it and eat it and speak it. :) Its fun.

   Thanks everyone for your emails and whatnot. Love hearing from you all. I will write you all back!

   ADAM. Keep tearin it up on the court or on the field or whereever you are. :).. but don´t tear it up when you read the scriptures..... you´d really regret that later. :)

   I´m good on camera cards mom. The camera I have only takes the little ´´mini´´ cards and I have a converter thing so I'm good. For example, I moved all the photos and videos from the little mini card to the card that I sent home to you guys no problem so we´re good.

   Anyways, its been short and swe...... not even that sweet. :) Love you all!

   Don´t forget, this week especially, that Jesus Christ, 

your older brother, died for you. 

Don´t let His suffering and death go in vain. 

Spend a little more time on your knees tonight to demonstrate your gratitude and to ponder on the things the Atonement can change for you. 
Repentance is Change. Change every day.

-Elder Norton

Watch this beautiful EASTER message