Elder Taylor Moulton: Week 24: The Miracle of Prayer, It was the Picante, and I'm being tranferred to Manresa!

Hola family!

This was a crazy last week in Valencia! We had our baptismal fecha
with Rafeal fire(he hasn't read or prayed about the Book of Mormon yet
so yea...), we had some funny visits with some less actives(one
referred to one of the hermanas as the fat one...we made sure not to
mention that one to her haha), and we had transfers! I'm going to
Manresa, a pueblo outside of Barcelona(like 40 miles away), where
it'll just be Elder Olaso and I, boom small towns! So that should be
cool, but dang I'm really going to miss Valencia. It was kind of
depressing going around yesterday and saying goodbye to the members
and investigators that we have, but I've felt that I've done some good
here(Jeannine, who I baptized in October called to bear her testimony
and thank me for baptizing her...seriously didn't help with leaving
haha). But the train ride’s cool, I'm with Elder Hemeyer from our piso
who's heading to Bibao.

The miracle of the week this week for us that stood out to me happened
on Sunday night after church. I had just met this 18 year old American
member named Noah from Illinois, who's living here for a few months to
be a nanny for a family near Valencia. His mom/ him got in contact
with me through email last week, because they talked with my mom on the
Spain FB page for Moms of missionaries here. Anyways we helped him
through church, and since he knows a bit of Spanish he understood some
of what was taught. Anyways, we got a call after wards in the metro
from him that he couldn't find his car, when all of the sudden, the
line dropped because his phone was out of battery. Luckily, he had
showed me the general area of his car at the church so Elder Turner
and I took the metro to where he was, and after 10 minutes couldn't
find him in the dark streets. Being missionaries, we immediately
thought to pray, which we did, to find him and help him find the car.
Elder Turner jumped onto the bench next to us, where he was just
before the prayer, and got the faintest glimpse of him down the
street, and we immediately found him. I've never seen a prayer
answered so fast, and thankfully because of that we were able to help
him find his car(which took some praying also), and he was able to
make it home. I know now that prayers can be answered in many ways,
even super fast like for us, and that we were able to serve someone in
need, since he was brand new to the country.

Funny story because we knew that Elder Hemeyer and I and Hermana
Storer were leaving this week, a member from the other ward made this
huge meal for us on Thursday. It was a pile of fatty pork, rice and
this gold drink from Central America which tasted like the bubblegum
fluoride at the dentist, strangely good though! Mama Africa was also
there and brought this African picante, aka hot salsa to put on our
food. Not knowing any better, I put some on my plate, dipped some
bread in, and boom! My face literally blew up with the heat of African
picante. Next to me, Elder Turner was struggling because his lips were
swelling up because he put some salt on what was tainted with
something. The funny part was that one of the members kept insisting
and talking about how the picante does things like this, Elder Turner’s
lips, and wouldn't back down even though he never even touched the
picante(thank goodness too, I couldn't taste anything afterwards!) She
kept going for so long, that we left joking that if there's any
problem, "it was the picante" haha.

So this week for personal study, the talk that stood out to me the
most was "Consider the Blessings" by Thomas S Monson from the October
2012 General Conference. The main idea of this talk is that we have
countless experiences in our lives, many of which seem super small and
unimportant at the time. But looking back, it's good to consider the
blessings that we had, and the miracles that we didn't notice the
first time around. I found, especially in the mission as I write in my
journal each night, that there are so many tender mercies and miracles
that we don't see, and that if we pray to see them, we can all see
the hand of God in our lives if we just "Consider the Blessings". So
yea, I invite you all to read that talk and try out looking for those
things/experiences in your lives!

Overall, a bittersweet week! I'm going to miss Elder Turner, our piso
group, and the members for sure, but I'm also excited to see more of
Spain and work in the Manresa Branch!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Taylor Moulton