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,