Miracles

Hola!!

Well this past week was amazing. Elder Hatch and I got to see so many miracles. First, I will just explain a little bit of what happened. First, on Monday we got our haircuts from the Branch President's wife. They are so extremely caring and charitable! They even sent us home with a huge box of potatoes.... Looks like I will have to learn some potato recipes. For our preparation day we traveled to "hang out" with the Elders in Valdepeñas. We had a good time together. We pretty much just did the exact same stuff we do in Puertollano but just with two more elders, it adds to the fun. 

Elder Hatch was gone at a District Leader Training in Málaga, well technically Fuengirola, on Tuesday and Wednesday so he left me in charge to run the District Meeting. It brought me back to the good ole days at the MTC where I had to prepare a little lesson haha. It went amazing though. We are starting a new zone focus. We are focusing on how to become more consecrated missionaries. We will work with all of our heart might mind and strength. Each week for the next month we will look more cloesly on each of those four aspects, so for the district meeting, I took the opportunity to do a brief overview of all four. I felt it went really well. My inspiration for it was the Consecration talk by Elder D. Todd Christofferson from two conferences ago. I have found myself just inmersing myself in conference talks. I have been reading them all I can. There is a great talk I read from October 2008 for the first time (SInce I wasn't a member back then) called finding Joy in the Journey (or algo así) by Thomas S. Monson. It is a must read. I am sure all of you have heard it before, but it is a good one to go over if you haven't read it in awhile. One more thing before moving on: I am so blessed to be in the area I am in. In my district there is a Senior couple missionary. They are Calvin and Gayle Clegg (Clavin Clegg is cousins with President Richard Clegg of my mission). They are amazing. He used to be a mission president in Portugal and she used to be second counselor in the General Primary Board. Basically..... they know their stuff. They are filled with just a lot of great information and they help all of us here a lot.

Now for the investigators! Elder Hatch and I have been working extremely hard these past few weeks, and the fruits are finally starting to show. That, and God has been blessing us with the most miraculous of contacts. First off, we are teaching this 28 year old less-active member who is a little depressed. She was a missionary in London and she can speak really good English, but just over time she just stopped going to church. We had the Cleggs come with us to teach her and it went amazing. Hermna. Clegg had a "heart to heart" with her, and afterwards she basically committed her to reread the Book of Mormon and start coming to church again. She was at church yesterday and had already read all of first Nephi!! Miracle!

Another lady we met was named Matilde. There was pretty much no one in the street when we were contacting, so we just said, "Okay, we are going to contact whoever is on this next street." Well, there was no one except this lady sitting outside of her store. Usually, we don't contact people who are working, but we said, why not, no one else is around. Turns out this lady was an old investigator from two years ago and been waiting for missionaries again to talk with her. She still had her Book of Mormon and we committed her to read it and pray. We came back the next day and she read everything we assigned and she was ready to learn more!! We will see what happens with her, but I am excited! The reason we never found her before was because Puertollano used to be part of the Madrid mission, and when it got switched to the Málaga mission, the area book somehow got lost in the process. Point is, missionaries have been here for at least 20 years, but we only have a record of the area from December 2010. That is a little frustrating.

We then had our number one investigator from Nicaragua really wanting to go to church but she wasn't sure how it could be done. We then taught her about the power of fasting and we told her that we would fast for her this coming Sunday so she could get to church. Well we started our fast and called her to let her know, and then she said, "Oh... I thought you meant I should fast, so I am fasting." We were shocked! That is so awesome, we replied. Just keep fasting and praying! Well, not only did she find a way to church for the first time, it was the most people I have ever seen in our branch since I have been here!! What a great church meeting for her first one. And! I had to give a talk haha. A little nerve-wracking, but it was great. 

Well, I know if we have faith we can do so much. I have learned that over the past few weeks. Elder Hatch and I are loving life right now. Now, we are going to go to Mercadona and buy some ingredients and make some lasagna to celebrate our week ha. Well, thanks again for all the love and support! I will write you again all next week! 

Love
Elder Steven Card