News!

Sorry for the lack of a good blog post in awhile. It has been absolutely insane these past couple weeks. Last week we had a baptism!!!! It was amazing. The 11 year old son had been ready, but we had been waiting on the mom, but now she is going strong, and they are awesome. We don't have a baptismal font in the church so we drove about 15 minutes into the country side, and went to this ranch and they had an indoor pool, and we did it there, since the mom (Maribel) didn't want to be baptized in cold water.

We also had a zone conference in Granada and that was awesome. We got to meet the new senior couple that are working in the mission. They are the Massaros and they will be like the health specialists for the mission. They are both retired nurses and Elder Massaro actually served his mission in Spain a long time ago. He shared a great story. When he was a young elder, he was in his second area, didn't speak Spanish well at all, but he could testify. He bore his testimony in Spanish the best he could to this one investigator and that is all he could do. Fast forward to last week. He arrives in Málaga and this lady walks up to him, and asks if he remembered her. He said no sadly, since he saw many people throughout his mission. She told him what companion he was with, and he slightly remembered her, but barely at all. She then said, that one lesson however many years ago, when you couldn't do anything but bear your testimony, that is when I knew I was going to be a member of the church. Sadly, Elder Massaro got transferred before that happened and never saw her again until last week. She is now the wife of the Stake President in Granada. What a miracle.

It was a great conference. It was a shame that it was in Granada because that is way far away from Puertollano and way expensive by train. We decided to hop with the zone leaders in their car, and we had a nice long 3 or so hour car ride at 5am in a squished car. What didn't help any is that we had to  catch a train that didn't arrive where the zone leaders were til 11;15, so we were all dead tired. Well worth it though.

Apparently, there was an earthquake in Spain. I didn't hear or feel anything. I only know because I saw it on the mission blog and I received emails asking if I was okay. The elders over in that area though apparently lost their apartment and the church building got damaged. 

This past week we also received in our piso two traveling trainers!! They are two missionaries who are at the end of their mission and they go around and travel to every area in the mission with younger missionaries and help them out. Wow, did they help us out big time. Me and one of the elders, Elder Del Molino (From Bilbao) had a day of miracles. It first started out with District Meeting in the morning, nothing irregular there, but when we got back... We started contacting people on the street and people were actually listening to us lol. We went to this one piso to follow up on an appointment but they weren't there. We decided to knock this other door of a future. We were like, meh, they didn't show much interest when we first tried, but we can try again. Well, this time they definitely had interest and invited us in!!! There were three of them all from Romania, and they are way nice and interested in the Gospel. The head of the house, Andres, said he likes to do three things; Be with his family, Play and watch football, and do thing that bring him closer to God." Wow. Pretty much perfect.

After we left the piso we were already content, but we saw this man trying to get into his building but he didn't have a key. We helped him get in by buzzing all the buttons until someone answered (he didn't want to do this himself). But while we were waiting, we talked and he was grateful for the help so he invited us in. It was him, his wife and his 2 month old baby. He was saying as we walk up the stairs, "My wife is of a different religion, idk if she will want to listen." Well, she was way open to listen. And it turns out that, after we asked for references, they gave us their cousin Luis. Well, Luis, we just happened to run into earlier doing contacts, and we already had his information lol. Just a miracle. 

Anyways, so this past week has been insane. I hope that I can continue doing the great work. I hope that everyone in Medford and whoever else is reading this blog knows I love the support!! Until next week!!

Love,

Elder and Sister  Calvin Clegg

 Me on the right with Elder and Sister Clegg. Maribel and her son, Victor, in the front.

Elder Steven Card

Mail Address

Steven's address for letters is:

Elder Steven Card

C/ Cooperacion 5 Nº2

13500 Puertollano

Ciudad Real

España

Mail Address

Steven's address for letters is:

Elder Steven Card

C/ Cooperacion 5 Nº2

13500 Puertollano

Ciudad Real

España

Better Late than Never

Sorry. I know like two weeks without email right? Well the first one I´ll admit was laziness, but now I have an excuse. We had special training this past week and so they made us move our P Day so that is why I havent emailed you til now. But until Monday I will write you this. Remember, for Monday I need to talk the BAPTISM that we had, the training that I had, the Day of Miracles that I had, and the package that I got from the parents.... I think that was all I was going to talk about before they moved my p day. So remind me for Monday when I actually have time. 

But I will address the earthquake thing. The earthquake actually did some damage to the area, and of course since we are the Church of Jesus Christ we had missionaries there. To be honest I am not too sure what happened with them. I do know that the church building and the apartment building the elders were living in had significant damage done to them. The elders had to move for a breif period cuz they cant go back yet. They couldnt even get thier clothes. I am not sure what they specifically did, but the work goes on!!! Sorry I cant email much today but we have a lot of appointments this afternoon so we agreed to only stay here for like 30 mins, so I cant talk much. Monday though!!! Love you guys!! Tell Liz not to freak out about Jonas. And Liz Perry is getting married??!! TOTALLY UNACEPTABLE!!!! I havent even met the guy, and on top of it all you know how many letters I have received from Liz Perry (including Provo MTC time?) the same amount I have received from the Bennions dog Lulu..... ZERO. Ugh.... seriously?? Alright.... well.... til next time. Adios. Love ya!

Mother's Day

his past week has been a bit insane. I'll admit... the whole week I just looked forward to Sunday so I could call home. There were quite the memorable number of events this week....

First, I don't remember who I told this story to so some people might have heard it before but... this happened to someone else as well, and it is pretty much identical to what happened to me and my companion. We were waiting at the bus stop and we see these two Gypsies start walking towards us. My comp starts freaking out and is just uh oh...... I don't even have anything against Gypsies but it was funny to see his paranoia. Then, this guy comes out of nowhere and talks to them and then they just walk the other way. The guy then comes up to us and says, "So you saw those two Gypsies? Yeah.... well.... they were going to kill you." Hahahaha. To me it was more funny than scary. I don't really believe they were going to kill us, but it was still funny.

Another story from this past week..... the day before I got into this area the previous elders baptized this guy named Carlos. Well, he is this professor at a college and is super smart, and was a golden investigator. Whenever we went over to his apartment he would always ask us the "deep Gospel questions" and what not. He pretty much had every piece of literature about the Church and picture and everything. Some of the others thought he was a little strange but he seemed really sincere so we all gave him a shot. Well..... we just got a letter from him last week saying he no longer wishes to be a part of the church anymore. In fact, he never wanted to be a member of the church. He was actually an undercover agent for the Vatican and infiltrated ours, and other churches in the Puertollano area to report to the Holy Pontiff. Right...... Interesting to note that while he pretty much bashed every part of the church in his letter, including saying he doesn't believe anything about "Pepé Smith", he did say he felt bad for deceiving, not the members, but the missionaries. So we did our job fine. We taught with love, but..... he was either a little loopy or..... he really is an undercover agent for the Catholic Church lol.

Well on some happier news we have some baptisms this Thursday!!! Diego and Maribel are getting baptized. Diego wanted to get baptized for a long time, and we finally got his mom to get baptized too. The thing is, Diego also has an uncle whose whole family is already members. But when his family baptized (wife and two daughters) he said he doesn't want to get baptized with a bunch of women. He wants to get baptized with men lol. So when his nephew (Diego) would get baptized, he would. Well guess what? Diego is getting baptized! So we called him up and he said we could come over and talk. He lives on a ranch where he works. The family who owns the ranch puts him up in their own house on the property. So it was about an hour  away, but we drove out there with the Branch President and took a tour. 

The tour was really great. The property is huge and we spent a long time driving around. They had a pickup and so we rode in the bed of the truck and we went offroading and we drove through a river and everything. It was great!! My clothes got pretty much destroyed with mud though haha. Well, afterwards, we talked over some food. They brought out a nice plate of bread and chips, rice and meat. The meat looked all deformed and waht not, but they said it was just pig so I started eating it. I realized that it was all really fatty, but it did taste really good. Only after eating about 4 or 5 pieces did I specifically ask what PART of the pig was it... Well.... it was the head of the pig. I was eating the ear, the snout and the tongue of it. I'll admit though it was really really good. But it was hard to continue eating after I knew what it actually was. Thankfully, there wasn't the eyes or anything like that. But I did look closer and I did see the snout I was eating still had all the hair and everything, ughhhhh.

After our talk I felt we really got through to him but he wouldn't give us an answer there. He would pray about it with his wife and let us know. So we will know about it today sometime. I was hoping he would come to church yesterday but he didn't show up. I had to give a 15 minute talk, so I talked a lot about the importance of baptism but he was a no show. But regardless.... it was a good talk for everyone else to hear lol.

We have zone conference this Wednesday, Baptism this Thursday, transfer calls (if me or Corradi gets transferred) at the end of the week. It looks to be a bit more exciting than usual, especially with a baptism!! It will be great. I will let you know how it goes!! Until next week!! 

Adios!