Elder Taylor Moulton: Week 19: The Lazarus Hole, Dominicanismos, "I burned my soul!", and my first Christmas in the Mission!

Hola family!

Thank you so much for the FaceTime call! It was so cool to be able to

talk and be with all of you on Christmas, even if it was weird calls

at 10 pm our time and 1 pm yours! This week has been what you'd call a

successful unsuccessful week, since there were a lot of great visits

with investigators and members, because we Caroled and had Christmas

meals with people, but at the same time we had barely any new

investigators, since no one would be out on the street Christmas

morning. But it was a great week being able to skype and to celebrate

Christ's birth!

One of the amazing experiences we had to bring the Christmas spirit to

our members and investigators was to sing Christmas carols to them

with the other 4 missionaries in our ward, which we spent our Tuesday

night doing. We had visited at least 6 investigators and members

before we headed out to our final stop, which was in a pueblo a few

minutes away from Valencia called Alequas(ok more like 30 to 40

minutes)to a menos activa couple from Ecuador named Fernando and Elsa.

We had been welcomed very warmly by the others we visited that night,

but it couldn't compare to their response. During the singing of

Silent Night, I remember looking up from my hymn book to see her and

Fernando crying quietly, feeling just as we did the Holy Ghost in

their home as we sang about Christ's birth. While not the most

memorable or crazy of experiences that I had this Christmas, I felt

like I was touched the most by seeing how much of an impact Christ's

birth has on people, and I felt honored to have made the 30 minute

journey to their home to bring that to them, even if it meant we

missed the last bus and had to walk 1.5 miles to the metro station(we

were a little sore).

On Christmas Eve we had dinner at Sonia's, a recent convert of the

hermanas. There we played Egyptian rat screw, Spoons, ate some

intensely hot sauce with chips, and we learned the rule of drinking

alcohol(from a less active British lady named Beth, we only drank

apple cider don't worry, but she was very proud to tell us about the

rule of which hand to drink with haha). We finished the night with confetti

cannons at the piso, and spraying each other with apple cider on the

patio, messy but fun!

On Christmas Day we made a delicious breakfast of Kneaders syrup and

French toast, strawberries, bacon, hash browns, and a bunch of juice,

where we ate way more food then we should have, because we followed

that up with a Christmas lunch with a member named Maria and

delivering a fish to a less active(long story). We ate a bunch of

Brazilian chicken, pork, rice and pasta, still full from breakfast so

we almost died. After that we walked across downtown Valencia to the

house of an American couple names Shane and Morgan, who had a super

cool 5 story piso with a spiral staircase, a roof top patio, and some

intense front doors, so big that there was a smaller door inside the

door to get in. It was a super fun night there eating a huge leg of

pulled pork wrapped with bacon, green bean casserole, and having some

of the funniest dinner conversations. One was after I burned my

hand on the green bean casserole and exclaiming "I burned my soul", for

some reason. We laughed for like 5 minutes after that, and when we

figured that there fireplace looked like Lazerous tomb door(the

lazerous hole!). We then facetiming our families before crashing on

our beds at home.

The rest of the week was pretty normal, we had a few great lessons

with some investigators, and went out teaching with our ward mission

leader victor from Nigeria(he's pretty cool as most Africans are!).

One of them being, Rafeal and Blessing, a Nigerian couple that had been

taught by the hermanas a few months back, but had lost contact. We

taught them the restoration, and I've never felt the spirit as

strongly as we spoke of the Book of Mormon and of the first vision,

especially as we all three, including our ward mission leader, gave

our testimonies to them about why we’re here, and why we know that the

church has been restored. Victor our mission leader also gave a very

powerful testimony about his son serving a mission in Argentina, and

how he knows from his conversion the power that missionaries have to

teach the truth, which was very humbling to hear as we sat listening

to him. We also visited other investigators and now we have some

progressing ones, which is a huge improvement after our difficult

experience two weeks ago with our three sisters firing on us(still

hurt inside from that).

We also ate Dominican food at a Dominican families house yesterday,

which was quite interesting, emenadas, yucca(super dry potato thingy) fish and a

bunch of rice! We also are learning dominicanismos from them just for

fun, which are the weird things that Dominicans say.

Overall, a super great first Christmas in the mission, and now we're

planning for a great week as we head into New Years and Three Kings

Day(a weird echo of Christmas with more gifts!).

Love and miss you all!

Elder Taylor Moulton