"And thy days shall be spent in the service of thy God" (Hilary) and photos!

Hi everyone! Love you all! 

Although I LOVE missionary work, 

I have to admit, I LOVE Mondays as well because I LOVE hearing from 

my family and friends. 

You are all the greatest!

Okay, last week was LOCA! We worked so hard and it was so rewarding. The divisions went really really well. I had a lot of fun with these sisters. I am learning from them and I hope I am helping them.

So, today/yesterday are "transfers" and Hermana Galdame is going to head back to her area now when she receives her new companion. Guess who else is going to be receiving a nuevita.... YO. Finally I am going to have an HIJA. I have finished the training of a couple missionaries, but never started the training, so I hope it turns out okay. I am excited. We'll see how it turns out with our assignment as sister leaders as well. It will be a lot of balancing and everything, but it should be cool. I am excited. I'll let you all know what happens this week.

Okay, usually I write down a list of all of the things I need to write about, but I forgot to this week. I apologize!

Dad, I love you and hope you are doing well!   Mom, I couldn't read all of your email yet, but how cool that you ran into that couple! Please ask her from what part of Quito!!! Maybe I can visit her family (the daughter that is still here...). Please send me a copy of your notes from all those classes! They all sound soooo good!!

I don't know what to do about BYU yet. I will probably talk to President next month... Don't want him to think I am trunky yet. And about housing. When Sam Harris was here we always said we were going to live together. But she might be getting engaged soon and from there who knows what will happen. Kenz said that there is a girl in her ward moving out for winter semester and she asked if I wanted her to save the spot for me. I know you are soo sooooo busy, but if there is a day you find yourself in Provo, can you go see what the apartment complex THE COLONY is like. I asked her what the girl's roommates are like. I might just want to choose a place when I get home, you know? It seems like there are always people rushing to get out in November/December when they get engaged/get a job/get an internship, etc. What do you think?

Sam, I have an investigator here that has lived in "las isla canarias" for ten years. I don't remember how to say that in English. What is the latest? I miss you. I didn't get any email this week. Hope you are doing well.

Okay, everything is great! I love being a missionary and I love MY mission. The most random things make me reflect and remember how happy I am and how grateful I am. SERIOUSLY SO BLESSED, ¿sí o qué?

Okay, love you all! Thanks again for everything! I am sending photos!

Sister Norton

          

"I can´t believe i´m saying this but I would love to be baptized..." (Sam)

Hey family and friends! Oh how I wish we could catch up face to face! :D

A 3year old Elder Norton

Things are great here. The missions going fast and its not slowing down. My last summer in the mission is phasing out... O.O... and with this new group of 37 missionaries coming into to missing next week 2/3 of the mission will have 3 transfers or less of field experience............. WOAH. Sooo many new missionaries, its incredible. We gotta go back to the basics and build a good base of good simple proven principles. We teach simple doctrine. The investigator feels the Spirit's simple promptings. Then once investigators take the simple step of entering into God´s path they become a changed person.

It sounds like things are going well back home. Busy busy people!! A HUGE part of me does not want to get thrown back into the busy stressful world.... and now that I think about it.. its not really the busy or stressful part of it that matter.. in fact, our work here in the office is busy and stressful.... haha but the thing that sets it apart is that its for a more important purpose than what I see myself doing after the mission. SALVATION.. hah thats why we can just go and go and go here. That´s why young talented people with huge potential devote priceless time of their lives to do something that to the world seems pointless. WE KNOW BETTER. :D

I never did get last weeks emails.. and it did seem weird to me but you don´t have to worry so much! :P hah Hermana Deere did call me and told me what was up. She told me about her dream too.. haha did she give you guys a detailed version? I can fill you in if not, it was funny.

Our week was good. Actually got a lot of stuff done.. that our numbers obviously don´t show.. we had a good week. We have been really blessed. Like REALLY blessed with good, prepared investigators that want to learn and attend church and make covenants with God. Heavenly Father knows our situation.. but he also knows our desires to teach and find and baptize. He´s got us in the back of his mind.. ;) The two philipino ladies are doing well. Working a ton.. and the daughter had to move into Málaga for work and we don´t think she´s going to be able to come to church on sundays..... :\ we don´t know how long she´ll have the job either. Maybe when summer ends she´ll move back this way. We don´t know. Last week they didn´t come to church cuz they were talking with their boss about not having to work on sundays. COOL. See how prepared these people are?????? :D We just waiting now since we can´t meet with them during the work cuz of work... >:\ We visited M and her family yesterday with the branch president´s son S thats the same age as M's oldest son. They´re doing well and have been able to receive a little bit of funding from the church to travel to church this sunday. I guess the branch president has tried it before but there were problems with catching the 6:45 am bus with 4 kids........ understandable. We committed her to coming this sunday, tomorrow, and she said she would leave her two young daughters with her mother and come with the boys. We´re calling tonight to confirm and tomorrow morning at SIX AM to help wake them up. We´ll see! Pray with us please!! :) The Lord blessed us with an incredible miracle about a week ago! A fantastic woman that is friends with one of the english members that spends half the year in england and half in spain starting meeting with the missionaries and attending church in england when she was visiting home (she lives in spain). Her name is Ma. and she came back to spain ready and searching for the missionaries so that she could continue with what she had started there in england. She is soooo prepared! She met a LOT with the missionaries in england and they basically prepared her like a birthday cake; measured, mixed, poured, baked, frosted, and ready with a cherry on top. :D We received this ´´cake´´ in the form of an email to our branch mission leader. He printed it off and handed it over to us. I called her the day after she got to spain and we met with her the next night at a members house that lives close by. She was ecstatic to meet again and we felt the spirit and the love that the members had for her so strongly that night. My companion and I both felt strongly to invite her to baptism in this lesson and she accepted like this... ´´I would love to be baptized. I can´t believe i´m saying that but I would love to be baptized...´´ ................O.O.......... :D So she has a baptismal date for the 15th of september, the same day as the two philipinos. We´re really excited for her. She´s coming to church this sunday and trying to bring her mom who is ´´interested´´ in her words. hmmmm we´ll see! :) So anyways, we´re seeing miracles!!

The apartment hunt is moving along. We´ve been having some struggles with two or three cities but I think we´ll figure it out. Its all coming together. Don´t worry about the money thing with the realtors agencies. I basically can never do that cuz I´m never really in the cities that we rent apartments in. I did for that one cuz it was in Málaga, 25 minutes away. It was actually a really cool experience. Something I won´t forget. The missionaries are all coming a week from this tuesday. the 3rd and 4th of september. The BIG TRANSFER WEEK! We´re excited.

Oh! One other thing real quick before I end.. This week has been FINDING WEEK in our mission. Its been so interesting to see how President Clegg did things as mission president and now how President Deere does things as mission president.. cuz the way they do things is soo different.  ...... President Deere has organized, with the help of the APs and the Zone Leaders,  three huge goals. 555 new investigators in one week. 250 baptismal dates the next week, and 100 baptisms in September. A ´´new investigator´´ is someone you pray with, teach something, and set up a return appointment with. This week is the week we are shooting for that goal and right now we are at 436 new investigators.... as of yesterday actually.. :) so we´re ahead by a little... (and to put things into perspective.... we normally find between 160 and 200 investigators every week. Our record is... like 230.. or something.) And out of the news from this week we´re gonna set 250 baptismal dates in the next two weeks and then in september we´ll baptize 100! Anyways, thought I´d fill you in on our goals.

I gotta run! Love you guys!

Élder Norton

PS   I did receive the two packages you sent recently by the way. I´m sending an SD card back soon. Thanks!

"I was expecting someone ...older ..." (Sam)

I´m finally finding apartments!!

Prayer works! I´ve been praying non stop about the huge load of apartments that I have to rent for the transfer that starts in a week and a half and yesterday and the day before I saw like 5 miracle apartments just fall into our laps. SO THANKFUL.

My FOR SURE HIGHLIGHT of the time I´ve spent in the office was one of those MILAGROS. 

We´d been looking for an apartment in the 3rd ward of Málaga for a while and we found one that the missionaries liked. I started working with the real estate company and they had several complaints and things they wanted to change in the contract. And I thought.. "awesome, another one thats gonna take weeks of email battles and 50 changes to the contract", which btw is made by the church that they ask us not to change. Then the next night the missionaries called me again and said.." hey! we found a different, newer apartment for almost the same price and the realtor lady wants to talk with you right now!" So I started talking with her, she was really pushy about the ´´reservation $´´ or the ´´sign´´ that is paid to say that we wanted to reserve the apartment... and I was calm and direct.. like...
 ´´ok well I´d like to make it clear the we won´t be able to make any payments until
the owner understands and accepts the contract.´´
And she tried to like blow it off and convince me it wouldn´t matter... but I made it clear that i wouldn´t even go into Málaga to sit down until I had sent them the contract for the owner to read. :) So she finally gave in a little and realized that I knew what i was doing. hah. She got the owner's information and sent it to me, I made the contract really quick, and sent it to her so she could start reading it with the owner, and we headed into Málaga. Not to mention that its like 8 pm, and this real estate agency was about to close. We get there and both of the women that were working there AND the owner all turn to my companion (tall, wide kid from idaho) and started presenting themselves like.. "hello, elder Norton right??" hahaha and my comp just kind of steps aside... and I was like
"hi... uhh Yeah i´m elder Norton." And the lady goes.... "I was just talking with you on the phone?? You just made this contract??" haha, and then they were like... "I was expecting someone... older.... :D (not the first time thats been said to me.. its hilarious to watch people's reactions) So we sit down and they start asking a couple simple questions, just to kind of test me and whatnot. Then the head lady kind of just dives in for the kill... she´s like.. ´´ok well great. Now that your here, I´ll have you sign here ... Then the owner will take the contract home to be able to read it nice and tranquilamente (tranquilly???)
and then next week we´ll come together and iron out the contract details.´´
hoping I would be like..´´OKAY HERES YOUR MONEY. BYE!!´´
 (its funny cuz the realtors just want the contract to get signed cuz they´re not committing to anything)
 and I was like...
´´woah woah, I told you on the phone, I can´t sign till the owner reads the contract.´´
and then I explained that is our policy and we can't budge from it. AND that we had another (haha, leverage)

apartment in the city that we were already looking at that.
The two ladies in the agency wanted to leave and close the store but they weren´t gonna get their cabbage till the owner was in agreement with the contract, hah! ...
 and we had alllll the time in the world. :D haha so everytime the owner had even a small question or doubt, I didn´t even have to say anything.. :)   I just basically sat there waiting... while the realtor lady explained OUR contract... and the guy ended up agreeing with EVERYTHING. :P :P :P haha So I paid the reserve, we signed a couple papers, we shook their hands, and we were outta there. :)  It was honestly the most fulfilling thing! And plus it was reeeally nice to get an apartment basically rented in one night.
BLESSINGS FROM HEAVENLY FATHER.

   Long story but I hope you liked it. Yesterday, I got information for another FOUR apartments too. Other HUGE miracle. Everythings coming together and its exciting.

Anyways, now I don´t have much time. Things are good! The Lord blesses those who ask. Lets see His hand more. I love you all! We´ll talk soon enough. We´re already halfway through august! we´ll be skyping again before we know it! :D ADIOS

Élder Norton