"…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 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

"I'm thinking... 'I'm a failure!' ... And then the Lord stepped in" (Sam)

THE WEEK IS OVER!!!! Wooooooooooh!!   

Hello world on the other side of the world!

Things are great here! This morning we had rain and its the first sign we've seen that summer is cooling down. The bummer is that we had an awesome p-day that got pushed back a couple hours cuz of the rain.. It didn't end up causing problems though, we just took advantage of the waiting time to go over and talk about this CRAZY TRANSFER WEEK that we just had!

Monday, about half the trainers came into Malaga for a trainers training, and then left that evening back to their areas. We planned the travel in and the travel out and had a lunch prepped for them.

Tuesday, 36 new missionaries came in. 30 on a train from Madrid that arrived in Malaga at 10 am and the other 6 on a plane directly from the states. Those were 6 of the 7 that were visa waiting.. (the last just got her visa last night and will be coming next week). Before I go any further think with me for a second.. :) I'm sure you've all thought more or less of a group of 35 or 36 people... and how big it might be... well now make all those people 18 and 19 year olds.... and now imagine them after hours and hours of travel time/jet lag... and nooooww... imagine them with enough luggage to last them for 2 years....................... your image has changed a little bit hasn't it?? :D That last group that you have in your mind is the group we have been losing sleep over for the last transfer and its also the group that almost brought us to tears (good ones) waiting in the train station... Yes, they brought quite a few challenges and hurdles... but seeing 30 18-19 year olds get off that train and walk out into the world just reminds you of Helaman and his stripling warriors. It was a sight I will never forget. So anyways, while President starts on a rigorous 12 minute max interview schedule of 36 missionaries, us, the office staff and Hermana Deere, give the missionaries some orientation, some mission norms and rules games/skits, some roll play situations, some question and answer time, and so on.. At this point, counting president and his wife and the office staff with the group, we're 47 people in total. So we had lunch for 47, and then 47 at dinner time, at which point the Malaga church had an out-of-the-blue fire alarm from a random leak dripping onto open wires.... long story..... haha and we had to evacuate the chapel...... So anyways, during the orientation and lunch and dinner and fire in the Malaga church elder Butler and I were preparing residency papers and passports for the new missionaries, and that basically ended Tuesday. President finished all interviews and made decisions to be able to make assignments wednesday.

Wednesday, 16 new missionaries traveled from Fuengirola (where they slept) to Malaga by the subway while 12 missionaries were with my companion doing residency stuff in the city hall and police station.. and 8 others were at the mission home helping prepare food for huge quantity of people that we've been having to house and feed... and during this time the Malaga zone leaders elder Peters and elder Bird and I went to that same realtors agency as before and basically rented another apartment. Total from start to finish on the rent time was about 15 hours flat. MIRACLES FROM THE LORD... other long story that you'll have to ask me about one day... short version is I had two apartments left to rent out of the 20ish I started with to be able to house all of these new missionaries... and it was Tuesday of transfers... so I basically gave up and said, "dang, I wasn't able to get them all rented! I'm a failure!" And then the Lord stepped in and two awesome, new, apartments were rented in TWO DAYS.......... WOW... so anyways, that's what I was up to during that whole morning basically. We all went to the Fuengirola church where we ate lunch and had another workshop/Spanish practice thing with all the new missionaries and some youth from the Fuengirola ward... :D SO FUN! I played as a Spaniard as well and we'd have these little practices where I'd pretend I was an investigator or someone on the street and the new missionaries had to contact me or teach me... :) and I was playing as a spanish person. It was fun cuz I could watch them look back and forth at each other and speak english and say to each other " how do you say that?" ... or whatever, and then they'd turn to me and teach. haha Or I'd speak really really fast to see how they would react and then go back and help them understand the "whats whys and hows" of the Spanish or how to teach a concept or how to get a person's information when you talk to them on the street. :) Super fun stuff. Then elder butler and I went down to the subway station where, in theory, all 21 trainers (that were coming from different place) were supposed to get off the subway to be able to walk with us to the church building.. We were stressing a lot that they were going to miss the stop.. or catch an earlier or later subway and that we'd not catch them or be able to walk them to the church but ALL 21 WERE ON THE RIGHT SUBWAY!! Huge relief! So once again, we had a huge dinner with now about a group of 50 and then a training started with all the trainers and trainees.. and elder peters and a member and I left again and went to IKEA and bought two bunk beds and mattresses for the apartment we had rented (my first time in IKEA btw...) and then they didn't it fit in the van........ so we played tetris for like 30 minutes in the IKEA parking lot... haha and then we took it into Malaga right up to the apartment and elder peters realized he didn't have the key............. hahah so we left it all in the hallway outside the apartment front door. :D and they took care of it later that night.. aaaand that basically ended Wednesday.

Thursday, we were all up and going around 6:30 and we transported the 40 missionaries into Malgaga so they could catch their trains and buses out to their areas. We finished everything about noon. We came back to the office...... and SLEPT.............. :D We were alllll exhausted! and then about 8 hours later a group of missionaries came in to Fuengirola to sleep at the mission home to be able to take care of some residency stuff with elder Butler Friday morning. IT REALLY NEVER DOES END... :P

Since then we've basically been recuperating. Yesterday President invited us all to a restaurant here in Fuengirola to thank us for all of our work. Its been soo interesting to see a whole different side of President Deere being able to work so closely to him. I sat next to him at the restaurant and we all had a really good SIGH and some good conversations. Today's P-day was really nice. Lots of relaxing, we had waffles this morning at the Castillo's house (the same Elder Castillo) that called you, Adam).. and then he took us out to mini golf. Tonight he's taking us to a big meat restaurant... I think it'll be something like a Tucanos kind of a thing... and then its back to normal (as-normal-as-office-life-can-be). We've been trying really hard to stay in contact with our investigators and we're being soo blessed! The English lady, M, has been super super sick recently and I talked to her on the phone the other day and she goes, "I don't even care (if on not feeling well)  I'm going to be at church on Sunday. O.o.... Elder Butler spoke with S, the Filipino lady and she's as excited as ever for her baptism on the 15th. Her daughter just got work! Blessing from the Lord... drawback is that she'll probably have to work Sundays....... :S We'll see how the Lord provides!!

Anyways, I'm happy! I'm healthy! Elder Keller, one of the APs, just hit his 18 month mark so we've had some increased desires to really work out...

Things in the office are going to be changing soon. I've got 2 and a half transfers here already.. and elder Butler has 3 and a half..... which means that the last three weeks of this transfer we"ll probably have another missionaries come into our companionship and elder Butler will be leaving in six weeks.... which also would mean that i'll be leaving the office in two transfers........ WEIRD. I just started here and I'm more than halfway done with my time here!

I hope all is well your part of ZION. Strengthen Zion's stakes. Strengthen Zion's wards. Strengthen Zion's families. Strengthen Zion's members.

I love you ALL!

Elder Norton!

Learn more about Heleman and his 2000 warriors HERE

´´minor side affects may include, drowsiness, minor headaches, loss of sleep, minor back pains from sitting at a desk all day, reduced morning study time, accelerated hearing degeneration from constant phone calls, little to no lessons taught weekly due to ´TO DO LISTS´ the size of spain, etc.....´´ (Sam)

Hi Blog followers! Because of family vacations, etc I got behind a week with Sam's emails as well.  Below I'm posting one from last week and then this week's.

Jon bought this t-shirt for Sam...
Elder Samuel Parker Norton

July  6, 2013

What a week!!

   I hope you´re all doing as well as I am! Its been a craazy week but things are great. The older AP thats here right now goes home at the end of this transfer aka in 2 and a half weeks and I had forgotten how different it is living with missionaries that are so close to going home.... haha he´s a great elder and his not slowing down or anything, (he actually teaches TONS of lessons especially for being AP) but today we ended up going to a mall and to a bunch of clothes stores cuz he´s buying all of his clothes for home here...... super weird! 

   You guys remember how a couple of weeks ago I had the ´´busiest week of my mission´´?? That was transfers week...... Aaaaaaand, we´re already closer to THE NEXT TRANSFERS WEEK than we are to the last one. ITS COMING BACK TO HAUNT US! :) The truth is though, that´s what we´re here for... I´ve been having a little inner lucha against myself about what is required of us here in the office/how we´re supposed to work here in the office. The truth is that we may never know exactly, and I don´t think we´ll never completely agree as an office staff either, but my take on it is that we have been called to... how would you say it?... save or protect... the rest of the mission´s time. WE (the office missionaries) have to do the not-so-fun, too-hard-to-do-so-i´ll-forget-about-it-for-now kind of things that missionaries don´t want to think about... for example..... residency, looking up/buying travel stuff, apartment finding, paying rent and bills, phone bills and problems, money refunds for cost of living, scheduling and daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly planning for the mission......... are all things that any normal person in the world would have to think about. THE REASON office missionaries exist, is so that street missionaries DON´T have to worry about that stuff, and so that they can ONLY focus on the people.... Cool right? Yes. ´´minor side affects may include, drowsiness, minor headaches, loss of sleep, minor back pains from sitting at a desk all day, reduced morning study time, accelerated hearing degeneration from constant phone calls, little to no lessons taught weekly due to ´TO DO LISTS´ the size of spain, etc.....´´ :D haha but THAT is why I´m here right now.

   I´m out of time but thank you so much for your emails and support. I´ll be fasting with you! Those of you out there that have written me letters, I WILL WRITE BACK! Mama, I got my international drivers permit and the spanish songs cd. That was the one I was looking for! Thank you! I´ll let you know next week if anything else comes. Thanks! Love you!

Élder Norton

Financiero

La Misión España Málaga

La Iglesia de Jesucristo S.U.D.

(^ what I put on each of my emails that I send out from the office..... :D)

July 13, 2013

Heey! Great to hear from you! We had an awesome week here. Its starting to get pretty hot here too!

Well the week was actually quite eventful, so i´m gonna go in chronological order...

Our car broke down exactly two weeks ago and last week I think I mentioned that we took a taxi out to the dealership to pick it up and it was closed so we had to walk all the way back.. hah so this monday morning we went and picked it up. Monday mornings are probably the busiest day for us cuz we have a meeting with president in the morning that we have to get everything ready for, its the rest of the mission's pday and we have to get the mission bulletin and message and stuff ready and just for being the first ´work day´ after the weekend everything just starts back up on monday.. So anyways, we got a ton of work done on monday and I got a bunch of huge pieces of apartment rents done too. It felt really good.

Tuesday morning was normal office work and tuesday night and wednesday morning was district leader training. I´m district leader her so elder butler and I were able to go attend that meeting. It was really fun to go see a bunch of people again too.. elder núñez was there, a buddy named elder hooper, a bunch of people, so that was fun. We learned in the conference about why and how we should use the Book of Mormon in our teaching. and then that night we were actually able to put it into practice with one of our less actives thats struggling. Really cool to help him feel the spirit again.

Thursday we drove out to a morning cita about 45 minutes from the office and the family wasn´t there. :\ ...... It was family of one of our Filipino members and we were going to meet up at a spot to then go to there house but when we got there they were already gone... :( huge let down. That afternoon the hermanas here in fuengirola had a baptismal interview set up with one of their investigators. They met with him at about 5:45 and the interview was going to start at 6:45. My comp and I got there at about 6:35, and waited outside the room for them to finish. A man walked up to the church about 6:55 for the english classes the hermanas were gonna do at 7 and when he presented himself I recognized his name as another one of the hermanas investigators. It was nice to meet him and we talked for about 15 minutes outside and then we realized he didn´t really know how a baptism would happen so we showed him the baptismal font. We walked in the room and you could just feel his interest.. and that he was intrigued. :) The spirit was really strong there and my companion and I were very pleased to be able to show that to him. The hermanas walked out of their cita and started their class and my comp and I walked outside to our car. The hermanas investigator left the building the same way and we got another really good chance to just stop and talk with their investigator. Great guy with a really hard life. Trying to get things figured out and I think a simple conversation with some simple Q and A´s with us really helped him. Its interesting how the work is changing with so many new sister missionaries. Almost ALL the areas that are open now either have or will have at least one set of elders and at least one set of sisters by october. It is a huuuge blessing. What president is doing (he is so inspired) is encourage teamwork... meaning, the elders come and visit once with the hermanas so that the investigator meets more members/missionaries. Or things like doing a contacting activity all together in one of the areas to help specifically that area and all the contacts from both companionships go to that companionship. Anyways, things that build unity and friendship. Things that help us remember we are all a team. And for the most part, its working! I love meeting the hermanas investigators... and the hermanas know that we aren´t gonna try to take their investigators or anything and so they actually want us to meet their investigators too! So its fun. The work is moving well.

Friday morning we had a short, sweet, and powerful district meeting. I have the best district! (Elder Castillo, Hermana Castillo, Hermana Ramsay, Hermana Theobald, Elder Butler, Elder Norton, Elder Estrada, and Elder Góchez) Friday evening we went out to a town about an hour from fuengirola to visit the family from estonia. Its been soo hard to visit them for 

1) cuz they are so far from the office and 2) just because of the sheer demand of the office work. But we finally got to visit them and Elder Castillo came! He´s soo awesome! He´s actually really funny too! I don´t know if you could get that over the phone but he is hilarious. Ex-drama teacher btw. We talk drama and shows all the time. Anyways, the family is doing great. The mother, oldest son, and second oldest all accepted the baptismal invitation. The youngest two are not 8 yet.. but the only problem is the distance... and money. They have no way to get to church.. cuz its basically 14 euros a person to and from church... and if all 5 go.. 70 euros a sunday..... imposible. So we´re praying... and they´re praying... pray with us please! After that cita, Elder Castillo took us out to dinner....... :D and we went to a cool restaurant that had everything in english, spanish, and german... just cuz there are so many different types of people that come through. I think we had Russians on our left, English in front of us, and Scandanavians to our right.. the waiters were Spanish and we were Americans. 5 nationalities at one restaurant. :) fun night.

Saturday! P-DAY. The AP´s went with my comp and a member this morning to malaga to play soccer with the missionaries there and I went with the Spainhowers (the missionary couple that let us use their skype at christmas time) to go golfing! :D They finish their mission in a week and a half and I mentioned that i wanted to go golfing and they said well lets go before we go home cuz we haven´t golfed yet!.. I invited president too cuz I think he´s been itchin to go but he couldn´t make it so I said, ´´we´ll go another time´´ and he goes ´´good cuz I want to go!´´ :) I mentioned it to justin, presidents son and he said, if you guys go i´ll go! So I´m gonna go golfin with my mission president and his son!! :P I´ll attach you some pictures from today. It was suuuunny! We had fun. The course was really small, basically a chip and putt course.. (I used a 52º and a putter the whole time........ and the one time I used a 7 iron a overshot the green and hit it into the street... hahah :) but I played all right for so long without playing.

Elder Spainhower and Elder Norton

A couple of interesting things going on in the mish! just to finish up...

- Khaki pants are now allowed.... as well as sweater vests, tie pins, and a couple other random things...

-They are starting to ask that we don´t use backpacks... interesting...

-They are suuper downgrading the phones we buy for missionaries to use....

hmmmmmm the work is changing! I think the last one is cuz one day iPads will be used here.. and the only thing the iPad won´t do is call so they just want the cheapest gadgit that can do the job.. (might as well just go back to smoke signals though.. they suuuper downgraded the phones.. look up the nokia 100 if you wanna see what we have to use now.. haha)

Anyways! Thats it for now! That was a really long email! Sorry.. Love you!

Élder Norton

ps. Elder Castillo relayed your message back to me and I couldn´t wipe the smile off my face. :) Love you.