Elder Taylor Moulton: Week 30: Smoky the Bear, We went to Jawwed, and the blessings of Faith!

Hola Family!!!

First week as a companionship, and dang we killed it! Elder
Woodmansee, with only 8 weeks in the field (president didn't realize
when he was doing transfers that he was still in training haha so
that's what happened), he has a pile of faith, and since we both want
this area to become better, we found a pool of new investigators(like
15), which is amazing for a small town like Manresa! The good news of
it is that this week we have a bunch of citas for people to meet with,
and that we have people to invite to be baptized! The area of Manresa
has been improving since I got here, and now Elder Woodmansee and I
want to make it even better!

For something miraculous that happened this week, Elder Woodmansee and
I saw many examples of the Lord guiding us to where we needed to be,
at just the right time. One of the prime examples of that happened on
Thursday night as we passed by one of our investigators(haha, his name
was Jawwed so we went to Jawwed get it?)towards the edge of town,
where there's a big pedestrian bridge that connects the old part of
Manresa to the newer section. After talking with that man, we headed
to cross that bridge when we found Ingrid, a friend of one of the
members here that has been at church for two weeks now, and we were
able to talk to her about an appointment to teach her with that
member, and to invite her again to church! Knowing/feeling that
couldn't have been a coincidence, we kept walking across the bridge
towards the passby we were heading to, when Elder Woodmansee contacted
the father of the family that we were going to pass by! He wasn't that
interested before in the discussions, but he had a Book of Mormon, and
we found out from him there that he had been reading it to his family,
and that his cousin in Valencia had been contacted by the missionaries
there also, and had told them all about us! His wife we were teaching
was in the hospital so we were able to include her in our prayer with
him. We were able to testify to that man that we can see God’s hand in
our lives every day, and that finding him on that bridge after finding
Ingrid too. From this and many other experiences this week, I can
testify with boldness that if we have faith and let ourselves be
guided by the spirit, the Lord can lead us to the people that need our
help, or those who are ready for the gospel!

Smoky the Bear might as well have contacted with us this week since we
ended up finding several new investigators that smoked like
chimneys(one was an old Catalan man named Jose who argued for twenty
minutes on why we should be teaching in Catalan haha, we had to nicely
explain that we were called to teach in spanish, but being a true
Catalunyan he wouldn't have it haha), leaving us smelling like
ashtrays and with headaches. Not the most desirable way to
teach, but the good news is that it's worth the sacrifice of smelling
like a Spanish bar at the beginning to have them be free from that
addiction in the end.

We also found this super cool man named Moosa on the street on
Wednesday, who's from Nigeria, and during our lesson with him on
Saturday we invited him to be baptized, and he accepted!!! He wants to
come to church this next week so we're pumped for that! There are
people ready to be baptized in every city!

In the conference Liahona this week, one of the talks that I studied
was "Choose the Light" by Vern P Stanfill. Basically it talked about
how important it is to have the light and example of Christ, the
church, the scriptures, and everything good in this world always in
our sight. In order to have this light, we also need to know how to
avoid the darkness also, which he tells us how in three steps. My
favorite was the first, which states " No matter how intense the
darkness of doubt, we choose how long and to what extent we allow it
to influence us". Boom! Isn't it so true and amazing that we are the
ones that are in control of our happiness and spirituality in this
life? With agency, we have the ability to have happiness, but in order
to do that we need to "choose the light" like the title says, and live
within the commandments and standards that our loving Heavenly Father
has given us. After being in the field for 7 months now, I can say
that there is so much joy in having a consecrated Christlike life, and
that there should be no reason to give your happiness over to the
devil! So choose the light(by scripture reading daily, praying with
real intent, following promptings immediately, putting our phones away
to talk/have fun with our families), and feel the true and wholesome
happiness of a Christlike life!

Other funny highlights this week include our new washing machine
walking itself out of the laundry room since it's not anchored yet, a
crazy woman walking alongside us and yelling at the top of her lungs
nonsense in Catalan, and a bunch of funny moments with the people here
staring at us very awkwardly(it's kinda a culture thing to stare at
people, they don't really notice but for Americans like us it's super
odd, it happens the most in the line at the grocery store when we
have a full cart, since everyone here buys there food every day,
instead of every week like us, so it's sorta otherworldly to them to
see that much food haha). So yea funny week with that, and playing
mafia for Noche de Rama(FHE for the branch).

Overall great week, and we're pumped to teach all the people this week
we found the week before!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Taylor Moulton