Glad you all made it back from your trips safely, dang that must have
been crazy fitting two whole trips into one break, well at least you
can all get back on track this week! The week here has been anything
but relaxing as you can see by me falling asleep today, but it was a
week of progression, we have a man named Jesus(see miracle story) on
for a baptismal date, we found a few new investigators through the
ones we already had, which was sorta miraculous in itself, and overall
we taught a lot more lessons in people's homes then we did last week!
One miraculous find was knocking on this older ladies door in the
evening on Tuesday while Elder Olaso was on an exchange, and finding
out that her daughter of about 48 years died of cancer recently, so we
were able to come back later and teach her and her son the plan of
salvation(we hope it stuck!!). We were just more excited to be invited
back again so small victories there!
Elder Olaso and I have been working pretty well together, we've been
steadily improving in numbers and success since I got here, and now
that we've seen some change we've been more motivated to keep going!
It helped too that President and Hermana Dayton made a surprise visit
to our humble branch on Sunday(the pic of us is on the mission blog),
miraculously the topic was on missionary work! He didn't even
know that so it was cool to see the branch president cry as he bore
his testimony on missionary work and seeing His hand in our lives
because of them being here. On top of that, I was assigned a talk the
night before so president and Hermana Dayton witnessed my iffy Spanish
too..., they said it was great though - it must have made some sense!
The miracle that really stood out to me this week was another timbre
contact, which we've been having a lot of lately. We were knocking
this building's timbres when a man named Jose Manuel answered and
invited us up. Walking though the building we passed this younger man
in his door along the hallway named Jesus who was this man's brother,
and wanted to hear about the church, so we told him that we’d come
down and teach him after we met with this other man. Jose Manuel ended
up being a great new, so we headed down to teach Jesus. These men were
both evangelical Hutanos(gypsies), so it was even more miraculous that
they were listening in the first place. The real miracle happened here
with Jesus, who told us of his troubled life of drugs(he was like 21
too), alcohol, smoking, basically he listed off the Word of Wisdom as
his trial in his life. As he told us of his desire to change, we both
felt the spirit guide us to ask him if he'd work towards being
baptized and being clean of these things in his life. Tears in his
eyes, he accepted, and we made it a goal for him to be baptized on the
12th of March! I don't know how we ended up contacting that specific
building or how Jose Manuel's brother was outside his door when we
passed by, but I know that we were there that Friday morning for a
reason! The Lord puts people that are ready to hear the gospel in our
lives!
Along with strange things that happened this week, we taught some
investigators named Augustine and Bonny in their home last night while
they were both on some form of painkillers. He was recovering from
something in his back and she was just smoking and saying weird
things. Mummies came up in the conversion about God being our Heavenly
Father, so yea. Kinda was an odd lesson, but he read the Book of Mormon
so we're getting somewhere!
With Ninfa, our progressing investigator from last week, we found out
that she's not married to her, what we thought was her husband, and
with no intentions to do so... Apparently this is why the Jehovah's
witnesses stopped teaching her(they apparently stood up and left after
she said that, dang), but we still have hope for her. She understands
that marriage is very important to God’s plan, and her boyfriend
really wants to get married so it'll take a bit of praying and a
miracle for them to do that!
For some reason, I've found myself studying scriptures and talks this
week about trusting in the lord and the spirit to help us out of tough
situations, which we encountered a few of this week. The best talk I
found on the subject was called, ironically, " Trust in the Lord", by
Richard G Scott from the October 1995 conference(dang that's old).
Basically the takeaway from the talk could be summarized in one fairly
awesome quote: "To get you from where you are to where He wants you to
be requires a lot of stretching, and that generally entails discomfort
and pain". Boom!, We all have trials, big and small, but we need to
remember that they are placed there by the lord to help us become the
people he wants us to be! So while it’s sometimes hard to do some things
in life, always know that the Lord knew you could get through it,
since no trial given to us is too hard for us to accomplish!
Overall a great week, and with specialized training this week and
lessons planned it should be even better!
Thank you for your letters and everything! Love and miss you all!
Elder Taylor Moulton
Meat Locker, brought to you by Foot Locker
The view from the park where we played soccer with the branch on Saturday
When Ninfa isn't married, you might need a longer baptismal calendar haha!
There were candles everywhere as part of the Festival d la Llum (medieval/Catalunyan Independence festival)
The moment when you make calls and there's absolutely no one out, but we did have a great 2nd lesson after this so it all worked out!
Pics of us on top of Parque Puigiterra during our morning run
Sweaty and slow, but we ran to the top of Manresa!
I passed out before emails, the alarm was going off for 5 minutes before Elder Olaso finally woke up and turned it off!
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