El Fin...

Well, this is it.  My very last email that I'm writing to you all while I'm here on my mission.  It has been an incredible past few days and I can't believe that it's actually here.  I'm honestly not going to write much because I don't have time and I'll just see you all tomorrow/talk to you, ha-ha.  Tomorrow we get up around 5:45 and leave for the airport at 7:00.  So we'll be up nice and early :P.

I love you all so much and I'm so grateful for all your support, letters, prayers, and love that I've felt during the past two years here in Spain.  And don't worry, I've got lots to tell ;), ha-ha. 

Hasta mañana!!!!

El Fin Se Acerca...:(

Hola familia y amigos!  I hope that you've all had a fantastic week.  I know that I sure have :)  This past week we worked a lot but for some reason just didn't exactly see the fruits of those efforts.  But that's happened before so I'm not really that discouraged.  We were really excited going into this week because we had planned on meeting some new families and other people that wanted to listen but for some reason or another things ended up not going through.  But this next week should be a lot better.  We already have some good things set up and some new visits planned and we're excited to see how it goes.  This past week we did exchanges with the elders in the mission office and I got to work with Elder Watkins here in Badalona.  It was great to work with him again.  Especially since I had the opportunity to train him when he first came into the mission.  It was exciting to see the growth and the change in him as a missionary. Overall the exchanges went well.  We worked hard, talked with some good people, and we also had fun remembering the "good days" together in Tarragona, ha-ha.  We also had to go up to another area called Vic to do some baptismal interviews that we found out about on Tuesday, ha-ha. Talk about short notice!  Usually we know a lot more in advance but apparently they had two people whom they had been teaching for a while who finally decided that they were ready.  So we went up there on Thursday afternoon to do that.  It was a really great experience to see these two people and their desires to take this step in their life and to hear them share their testimony.

I think the best part of the week though was Sunday.  Yesterday started out like a normal day.  We got up, got dressed and left for church.  On the way we ran into a lady that we teach and we stopped to say hi and she was with a few friends which was strange because you never see a group of people like that at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, ha-ha.  Well, we soon realized that they had beer in their hands and had been drinking quite a bit. And they were just a little on the tipsy side, ha-ha.  We talked and two of them asked how they could change their lives.  They said that they want to stop drinking and be better and right when they said that one of them just took a big swallow from her can, ha-ha.  We got their info and they said to call us so we'll see how that goes.  It was a pretty interesting start to the day.  At church everything was fine.  I was playing the piano, the meetings started, and right after the sacrament part of the meeting,  the first counselor in the bishopric came over to me and whispered, "You have an 8-10 minute talk today about your missionary service since you're going home soon."  And then he went and sat back down, ha-ha.  So I was left to think real quickly about what to say and then after a few more minutes I had to get up and speak.  And it was honestly one of the most memorable things of my mission!  I will never forget that experience.  I don't remember everything I said.  But I remember the feelings that I had and the overwhelming spirit that filled the room.  As I bore testimony towards the end, I looked over the congregation and it just hit me just how much I love these people.  Over the past 7 months or so I have come to know so many of them in such a personal way and grown to love them so much.  I caught a glimpse of how the Savior feels for us and I will truly miss these people of Spain.  There are not words to describe what I felt during that talk.  But I know that the Spirit of the Lord was there present and that everyone there felt it.

I have one more week.  And honestly I can't believe it.  That just means that I have to work just that much more to make sure that there are no regrets.  I love you all so much and I can't believe that I will be seeing you all within the next week and a half.  Time to go to work though :)

Last Zone Conference

This week we had zone conference and it was my last one ever :( So sad to think about right?, ha-ha. It was really good too and I learned so much and I know that everyone else there did as well. We got there early to help finish setting up the chapel and stuff and to practice the musical number that we were going to sing. I got to sing with four other elders and it turned out pretty good. And I got to sing with Elder Keeler again which was something special since we also sang the same musical number together in the Madrid MTC. We started together and ended together. Not bad, ha-ha.

Elder Call and I also gave a presentation during the conference that went pretty well and then for about half the conference I had to go translate for a sister missionary who doesn't speak any English. I honestly love translating! It's such a neat experience hearing and understanding in English and then having it flow out your mouth in Spanish. It's just a really interesting sensation to have it flow so fluidly and easily and I hope that I don't lose that ability as I get older. I'll just have to keep up studying I guess :).

Overall the week went really, really well. We've been finding a lot of new families to teach and we're really excited for them. One is a family from Bolivia that consists of the mom, dad, and daughter who's probably around 6 years old. They're really nice and we'll see how things continue. Another family whom we are teaching are doing fantastic. I love them so much. The husband is less active and his wife isn't a member but they both want to come to church and go to the temple someday to be sealed as a family. The wife knows what she has to do in order to go to the temple and she said that she wants to do it and so we're helping her prepare for baptism and everything else. They're incredible. We had a Family Home Evening with them last night since they work a lot during the week and they loved it. I also said my first real goodbye to some people that we knew here. We taught them months ago and their daughter was baptized but they all just went back to Peru to live there now. And so they invited us over to say goodbye one last time, which was pretty sad. I hate saying goodbyes. The mom, Lucía, said that I needed to go visit them in Peru, ha-ha. She said, "Don't worry about food or housing. We've got you covered. Just the plane ticket", ha-ha. So I might consider the offer sometime :) Wouldn't be a bad little trip.

Everything is going so well. I'm excited for this week because we have a lot of new people to see and teach and we've got lots to do. Just can't stop moving!, ha-ha. If you do, you miss out on all the things that the Lord has for you to do.

We went to seminary this past week to help out in the class. We were pretty tired the rest of the day but it was great. And we'll probably be having to help out a bit more in the coming weeks. But we'll see...

I love you all and hope that everything is going great now that school is in full swing. Thanks for all your love and prayers. They really do help.

Back to School!

Hello once again! I honestly don't really know what to write, ha-ha. It's not that nothing has happened. I guess it's the fact that so much has been happening that I just can't really think of how to put it into words...The work is going so well and there is never a dull moment. Never. The people we meet on the streets, the families we teach, the ups and downs in the progression of investigators. Everything just contributes to amazing weeks out here.

This past week we had a little block of time and so we decided to go to a part of Badalona that we hadn't really been to before and to work around there. Well, it was a very Catalan area, ha-ha. Everyone had their Cataluña flags hanging out their windows and balconies, everyone was speaking Catalan, and it was funny when we talked with them because you could totally hear their accent when they spoke Spanish, ha-ha. It was a good experience because we got to work out there and find some new people to teach which will be exciting. At one point we started talking to a man who was sitting on a bench and we found out that he was a professor at a university and that he had even been out to BYU-Hawaii! Pretty crazy huh? In the end he wasn't interested but the best thing about that contact was that we spoke to him in Spanish and he only spoke to us in Catalan. And the biggest miracle was that we understood everything he told us! We've never studied the language or even spoken it! But we understood the whole 15 minute conversation. Now, Catalan is somewhat similar to Spanish in some words but also has its differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. And considering the fact that we don't even speak Spanish as our native language, I know that there's no way we could have understood that man without a little help from on high. It was a really neat experience to see the miracles the Lord performs in His work.

The work out here is progressing and we have some new families whom we're really excited to teach this coming week. Some of the other investigators that we had have stopped progressing as much so we're moving on to other ones and letting the previous ones take a break. Their time will come in the future though. We've been doing really well, working hard, loving the people and the members of the ward. This ward is truly such a great ward. I love the members here and the people in this area. I don't want to leave it. But that's why you just have to take advantage of what you have and make the most of it. The members have been treating us incredibly well too. Almost too well I think, ha-ha. They all want to feed us and we've been having an eating visit every day. I try to eat less at breakfast and dinner now since they feed us a ton during lunch, ha-ha. But at least I don't have to cook as much now and we get to eat wayyyyy nice :). Anyways ha-ha.

I love you all lots and hope that everything is great back home, at school and work, etc. I miss you all but before you know it I'll see you all again...too soon if you ask me...

A Break from the Heat

This week has definitely been a lot better and in a few ways too. For one, the weather cooled of a lot, thank goodness. It rained pretty hard this past week one day and after that the temperatures just dropped. So we’ve actually been some good weather to go out and work in and not sweat too much, ha-ha. The downside is that it's been pretty cold in the morning now so I actually have to wear my long pajama pants and close the windows when we sleep so that we don't freeze at night, ha-ha. But it feels great now :).

The week itself went well too. We saw some pretty neat little miracles throughout the week and a lot of the people we are teaching are doing really well. This past week we did exchanges with the Elders in Barcelona and Elder Schwartz came here to Badalona to be with me. He's a brand new missionary who’s only been out for about two weeks now and he's fantastic. He's half Korean so whenever people would ask about him I'd say that he was my cousin and a lot of people believed us, ha-ha. It was great. We later told them that we weren't related at all though but it was still kinda fun, ha-ha.

On a bit of a less happy note I sort of accidentally erased everything on Elder Call's pin drive....yep. Everything. All 16 GB of memory. He had his pictures, little church video clips, and some other stuff on it. We had a little movie night as a ward activity and we brought the movie (Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Restoration) and as we were pulling it up on the laptop, I just sort of accidentally formatted his pin drive and everything disappeared. I felt terrible. And I still do. And the worst thing is that I can't bring any of it back and there's not a whole lot that I can do to replace that. Sooooo that's about it, ha-ha. Luckily he didn't get really mad at me but still. I feel bad. Definitely not gonna do that again. But anyway…

The work has been progressing really well here and we have quite a few investigators who should be getting baptized by the end of this month. We're really excited for them. Especially a man named Carlos who has come to church the past few weeks but we just haven't been able to coordinate our schedules since he works a lot. But this week we're going to visit and we're excited.

I hope all is well back home and that the summer has been going well. I love you all so much and can't wait to tell you all about this coming week. It should be great :)