Elder Taylor Moulton: Week 29: The Washer has Arrived!! Ski Walking, and I'm Kinda Sorta Training!

Hola familia!!!

This will be a shorter letter this week due to the crazy schedule that
we had today and us arriving into Manresa late, but here you go! We
had a very successful, but super hard week this week. Lots of lessons
taught to Spaniard people, and also a bunch of other strange and
spiritual experiences! The miracle above all was the opportunity we
had to find and teach Yadaily, a lady from Cuba that the hermanas
referenced to us during our zone Enfoque this week. We contacted her,
set up a visit, and she seemed super excited to meet with us! So when
the lesson came around, we were surprised to learn that she had been
taught a tiny bit two years ago by the hermanas in Barcelona, went to
church, and received a Book of Mormon which she brought to our lesson.
We taught the restoration to her, and Elder Olaso and I both had the
strong impression to give her a baptismal fecha for the 26th(happy
birthday Katie!), and she accepted!!!!! We have more lessons planned
with her, and we’ll see how it all goes this week!

In other news, Elder Olaso was transferred to Sabadell, which is like
a district away so we'll see each other again later this month during
Zone Conference. But my new companion, who's name is Elder Woodmansee,
fresh out of Murray Utah, and has only 8 weeks in the mission under
his belt. But the funny thing is that even though he isn't done with
training for like another month, I wasn't called as his trainer, so
either President thought I was good enough off without any trainer
training myself, or this should be an interesting experience. I asked
him in my email so we'll see what happens haha!

Also, after 7 weeks of being lost in the rickety shipping system of
Spain, our washer arrived!! As you can see from the picture, it was a
pretty emotional experience, and my hands and I are glad to be done
with washing everything in the tub! Also, ski walking, which I didn't
know existed, was what we witnessed as we were contacting and saw this
Morracan man ski running down the street past us, I guess they do
things differently here in Spain, who knew?

After finding an English Liahona from conference in October on a shelf
in the chapel, I began my goal to read one talk a day from it until
conference in April. Starting with the women's session, I was impacted
by the talk from Dieter F Uchtdorf titled "A Summer With Great-Aunt
Rose". It's basically a giant parable, all about an 11 year old girl
who's forced to spend the summer with this great aunt, and comes out
enjoying it. But at the end of the parable, Great aunt rose is asked
"How are you so happy?" She then tells the girl about how life hasn't
always been perfect, but over time she figured out that "now is part
of eternity(forever is composed of nows)", and that "faith in the
savior taught me that no matter what happens in the past, my story
could have a happy ending!". There's more to her sermon to this girl
then that, but it really impacted me how this short life is part of
eternity, that we shouldn't/can't be unhappy with what is wrong in our
lives, rather we should live now, and push forward. In the mission,
this is key, because each day here could be a drag since it's
basically the same schedule, but in reality, if we live now, each day
is filled with priceless spiritual and life experiences. And it is
only by living now, in the moment, that this can happen! I know
without a doubt that it isn't called the plan of happiness for
nothing, that we can and should be happy in this life, no matter the
circumstances! So yea, go and smell the roses (DC 88:33), live to the
fullest this life, and then your troubles will fall to the wayside!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Taylor Moulton