Where'd the sun go?

It is currently cloudy, wet, rainy, and a bit colder than what it's been the past few weeks and even months actually. I'm not really complaining about the welcomed colder air. But I would like some dryness and sun :) It kinda makes it hard to talk with people on the street when everyone has an umbrella or they just want to hurry to get out of the rain. But that's what makes it a little fun :) Yesterday we didn't really think it was going to rain even though it was slightly cloudy and overcast so we didn't exactly bring an umbrella. Well, we were in a visit with some members eating with them when it started to rain, haha. And lucky us we got to go out and walk in it! It sorta stopped but then at one point it just came down hard. We got caught in the middle of a street and had to run to find cover for a little to see if the rain would let up. We saw the bishop with his family in their car and we eventually went over to talk to them but after we were all soaked already. But being a former missionary, bishop already understands what just happened, haha.

This week was a lot better than our other weeks. We've been seeing a steady improvement in the work and the number of people we are teaching which is fantastic. We had an incredible visit with a woman named Leanor this past week as well. She called a couple of Sundays ago to ask her friend if she could come to church with her and of course the friend said yes :) We met her at church and set up a visit and the visit was amazing! The Spirit was so strong there and I know that she felt it as well. She said that while she was at church listening to all the talks, testimonies, and classes that she just saw something in everyone there. She said that everyone had something that she wanted; the people were happy and didn't seem like they had any problems. And she said that she wanted that so badly. As we were teaching and bearing testimony about what it was that she noticed and how she could have that, the Spirit flooded the room. It was the most powerful teaching experience I have ever had on my mission! She is an incredible woman who has been prepared by the Lord to receive the Restored Gospel. It's incredible how just one visit like that makes up for months, days, or weeks of rough spots. There is no greater joy than sharing the gospel and seeing it impact and change people's lives.

Another little miracle story this week was also incredible. We have this investigator named Nestor and we've been teaching him foreverrrrr. The only reason why he can't be baptized right now is because he's not married to the member he's living with. So we've been working with them about that, the ward has been working with them, and we've kept teaching him. A while back he couldn't come to church a lot because of work but then he lost his job and hasn't missed a Sunday for the past few months. He used to have a doubt about Joseph Smith but as we talked about everything he knows and all that's happened to him, he realized that everything happened for a reason. He said himself that he lost his job so he could come to church and to learn more and to overcome that doubt that he had. He and his wife-to-be are going to the town hall to set up a date to get married and by this week we'll know when it is :) I'm so excited for him because he said he wants to have his baptism the same day as the wedding. The only sad part is that I most likely won't be here :( After working with him for five months, seeing him progress, getting attached to him like that, and then having to leave is the most heart wrenching thing ever! I'm so happy for him but I'm just going to be so sad if I have to leave before his baptism. But the Lord has His own plans for us so I have to accept His will. The rest of the week has been going well though. My companion is doing good and he's learning slowly but surely how to be exactly obedient. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth though, haha. But he's learning :)

I hope you all at home are doing well and that the summer isn't too hot back home. I love you all so much and I miss you all a ton! It's incredible to see the changes in people back home and even in myself in just a short nine or ten months. I've grown and learned so much and I can never replace this time that I've had to grow and progress. Hopefully I'm not too different by the time I get home. I still want to keep my friends, haha.

Love you all and talk to you soon! :)

Buenos dias:)

It's crazy how fast this summer is already going. It's already about mid July and the time has just been flying. I'm sorta glad the summer is going by quickly because that means the heat will go away:). But at the same time it means I have less and less of my mission :(. I guess that's a good motivation to work even harder though right?

This week was less than amazing, haha. But it was still good. We had a fantastic week set up with lots of visits and we thought it was going to be awesome. And then one by one the visits started to fall through and everything turned upside down, haha. I'm sorta used to that happening once in a while but man it never gets old. We just had a good laugh at the end of the week and just kept going. Since a lot of our visits fell through we had lots of time to do contacts and just talk with people on the street. We had a hilarious one that my new companion, Elder Carroll did. It was so funny. He saw this family at a cross walk and we went up to them and he said, "Hola. Buenos dias...um....yeah...." hahaha and that's all. They walked away and we went our way and I was just dying laughing. He thought it was kinda funny too and it was a good learning experience for him.;) And it's something that made my journal entry I'm pretty sure.

This past weekend we had a ward activity up in a park in Mataró that was soooo fun. We brought some investigators with us and they had a really good time. There was food, games for the little kids, soccer and sports for the youth (and us :)) and then the kids had some water balloons and stuff. Well, they all thought it would be great to gang up on the missionaries and get us all soaking wet, and I got drenched, haha. It felt soooo good though because it was hot out and there was a light breeze. But eventually the little primary activity turned into a ward water activity, haha. The bishopric got into it, we got our water bottles and other people got into it. It was a lot of fun. The only bad part was I didn't have clothes to change into. But the sun eventually dried us off :) My feet are doing a lot better. I had to wrap them up to play soccer though at the activity. And now instead of my feet hurting because of my blisters, my calves, my quads, and whatever else is sore, haha. It's been a longggg time since I've played any kind of sport. But I absolutely loved it at the activity. And yes my team won :)

Well, the work here is still going great. The only bad part is that our investigator who was supposed to get baptized this weekend left for France and won't be coming back for a long time due to residency and legal problems :( So we'll just have to find somebody else to replace him. It was kinda sad though when he told us. But that's just how it is sometimes on the mission. Other than that, things are going so good. I love this work and I know that there are people all over Spain, and all over the world, who are ready to hear the restored gospel. I love you all and I miss you lots. But before you know it I'll be home giving you all hugs :)

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July!!! It's pretty quiet down here mostly because the rest of Spain could care less that it's our Independence Day. We were going to have a Zone BBQ in the Stake Center in Barcelona today but that got cancelled last minute because something happened and we couldn't get the Stake Center. Soooo we sorta just decided to chill here in Mataró which is fine with me. I like to just sit and relax sometimes at home. I even take naps on some Preparation Days when I have time. :) Today might be one of those days, haha. But since I didn't have a lot of time to write last week I'll update a bit about what's been going on. I'm training a brand new Elder, Elder Carroll! He's from outside of Dallas, Texas and he's very excited to be out working. He's got a pretty good foundation for the language already, which is fantastic! But obviously he's still learning and sometimes he doesn't understand what people say and he gets frustrated a bit. I have to keep telling him to be patient because he keeps telling me that he's going to learn the language by this transfer. That's all great and stuff but it doesn't really happen like that. The Gift of Tongues is real and we really do have the help of the Lord learning the language, but it just takes time. It'll take him a few months before he'll be able to understand almost everything and say almost everything so I just gotta keep telling him to be patient and not to beat himself up all the time. So far we've gotten along well.

This past week has also been a week of miracles. One of them was a family we found. A few weeks ago my former companion and I received a reference from a contact we did on the bus. We've been trying to get in contact with this guy but we hadn't for a few weeks. But as we were just doing contacts on this one street, I saw a dad, a mom, and a little boy walking up the street and I had the strongest impression to go talk to them. I first asked if they wanted help with their groceries since they had just gone shopping and they said no but then I just changed it to talking about the church, haha. Tricky huh? ;) But as we were talking they said that we could pass by again and share more about our message and I started writing down their address and everything and then I realized that they were the reference that we had been hunting for for those past few weeks! It was incredible! The Lord put us in their path so that we could find them.:) I know that the Lord's hand is always in this work and that I have the great blessing to see that every day. I would go on and just keep talking about these miracles but I don't think you all want to sit at the computer for about three hours, haha. But this work is amazing. It's so amazing that I put blisters in my feet, lol. I've never had problems my whole mission until this past week when they got pretty bad. On both my feet I got these deep blisters on the balls of my feet and it hurt so bad to walk. One of our members found out and she offered to help me with them and of course I said no. It's my feet! haha. And I didn't wanna gross her out :) But the next day it just hurt too much and I asked for her help although I was a little bit embarrassed. So we went over and she took a little razor blade and some other stuff and went to work. And now they don't hurt nearly as bad. I gotta thank her somehow. I got some great pictures from it as well, haha. But man what a week.

Today we'll be listening to some good ol USA music from MoTab :) So I hope you all have a great and fantastic week. I love you all so much and I know the Lord is watching over us here on the mission and you back home.

Entrenador

Sorry for the delay on the email. Things have been crazy the past few days because it's been transfer week and you know what?...I'm training!!! President called Saturday and told me that I'd be training a brand new Elder in Mataró. To be honest I was a bit nervous and scared because I didn't know how capable I'd be. I still feel that way, haha. But I am so excited to be with my new companion, Elder Carroll. He is such a great missionary and already knows so much about the language and the gospel. It's incredible! He's from the Dallas, Texas area, which is pretty sweet. And since I'm training that means my address stays the same :) Unfortunately, I have to keep this relatively short because we have to get out and work and we have lots to do to get Elder Carroll situated. But I'll have lots more to write on Monday the 4th of July! :)

Love you all!

Happy Father's Day!:)

Well, I hope everyone had a good Father's Day yesterday! :) Even though some of you may have had some little celebrations or whatever, it was just a normal day for me back here, haha. But Happy Father's Day yesterday anyway!

Along with all the crazy things that have gone on here, summer has arrived:P. It's been pretty hot which is not fun to walk in, I must say. It hasn't been hotter than back home to be honest and it's actually about the same as it is back home in the summer, but just add walking around in pants and a shirt and tie all day every day, haha. But it's fun and I love it :) Some people think I'm crazy when I think that getting stuck in the rain or in the heat and sweating my butt off is fun but you know, you never get so much joy in serving others at any other time in your life.:) When you know that you are helping others to come unto Christ through the Restored Gospel, nothing else matters. Now, just because I feel that way definitely does not mean we had the best week ever, haha. In fact, it's quite the opposite. We had a terrrrrible week with visiting people and teaching lessons, haha. But the thing that matters is your attitude and how much you lose yourself in the work of the Lord. Some of the days this past week just crawled by and never seemed to end. But yesterday, as if to bless us for enduring a rough week, the Lord blessed us with some small miracles that just made everything amazing.:) We went down to the train station yesterday to visit a brand new member who moved from Malaga and we went, bought our train ticket, and were waiting when all of a sudden Elder Parry looks at me and says, "I left my agenda at home and it has all his info in it." So we had to turn around and go back home real quickly to grab his agenda. While we were waiting at the light to cross the street I noticed this man next to me staring at my name tag. I was about to turn and start talking to him but then he just came up to me and said, "Where's your church?" It may not sound like anything to you but those types of things are miracles out in the mission field. His wife is apparently a member but we don't have any records of her anywhere. This man, Miguel, is from Mexico and I think has met with missionaries before. He at least knows about the church a little. We got his number and he said we could call and set up a visit anytime. So you better believe we're going to do it, haha. Another little miracle was when we were on the bus going up to visit a less active member. This Dominican lady got on the bus with us with her two little boys and they were standing right next to us. The littlest boy, José, was playing with a cell phone and so it was easy to break the ice with her. We just started talking and we had planned to get off on a certain stop but both Elder Parry and I felt like we should get off at the same stop as her, which meant going a few more minutes on the bus. After getting off we asked her if she'd ever seen missionaries like us before and she actually said yes and that she's wanted to talk to them before but they've always been so serious so she never did! She gave us her address without having to ask her and she told us to come by. It was incredible for us!;) The best things about the mission are finding entire families who want to learn about the Gospel. So I'm sure next week I'll have some fun stories about those visits.:)

To add to all the stuff yesterday, I had to give a talk on the spot in church, haha. About two minutes before starting our Sacrament meeting, the second councilor in the Bishopric came up and asked me if I could talk and of course I had to say yes, haha. And on top of that I had to play piano again.:) So the whole time I was up there I was just praying because I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say. The talk before me was about two minutes which meant we had a longgggg way to go in the meeting still, haha. I grabbed my scriptures and as I walked past Bishop he said, "Ten minutes Elder Mathews." So add on some more pressure right there, haha. I still had no idea what I was going to talk about for ten minutes when I got to the stand. But as soon as I opened my mouth, the words came. I had nothing prepared, nothing really thought out very well, but I know that the Lord fills our mouths with His words. There's a scripture in Doctrine and Covenants that says that we shall be given in the very hour what we should say. I've always just applied that to teaching investigators and non-members and never really thought that it could happen when talking to members before. But it was such a neat experience for me to have my mouth filled with the words that the Lord needed me to say. It goes to show that when we do our part and we study the words of the prophets and the scriptures, our Heavenly Father can bring those things to our remembrance and make us instruments in His hands. It was such a neat spiritual experience for me!:)

But now I guess I can talk a little more about the "less spiritual", haha. This is the last week of transfers so if you send a letter here this week, I may or may not get it if I get transferred. So heads up, haha.

This Friday is also another holiday in all of Catalunya and they have fireworks and everything. So I'm not quite sure what to expect and stuff but I'm sure we'll have a fun experience with it all, haha. A member family invited us to their house with a bunch of members for a little get together Friday for the holiday but we'll see if we go or if we can even go at all.

I love you all and I know that these past 9ish months have gone by so much faster than I could have ever imagined. Another school year is over and summer is here again. I love you all and I know that the Lord is watching over you all :)