Elder Taylor Moulton: Week 42: Cow Tongues, Throwing Down the Table, A Visit to Ireland, and a Guatemalan Party!

Hola Family!

What a nuts week here in Bilbao! My language skills are coming along(yay!!!), I hit 10 months this week, and I ate a cow tongue! Very stringy and tender, but not my favorite meat haha! The member who made it made sure it was super spicy(I don't do well with spicy), so I had to cool that down with some potatoes and other things haha. But hey, bucket list. Other thing I crossed off that list, taking a selfie with a herd of cattle in the middle of nowhere in Basque Country in the rain and wind, see the picture below for evidence haha! That was part of our preparation day activity to head to a light house by a little town in our area called Plentzia, the light house looked more like a battery or a blender than un faro, but hey it was worth it(we were in a rush so we ended up jogging through the middle of these fields that made it feel as if we were in Ireland, it was crazy!). I love this part of Spain, the people, the food(maybe...), and the weather all feel like home!

We had planned to focus on boosting our investigator pool with new investigators, and after fervent prayer and just jumping out there, we found 16 new investigators! All of them were miraculous too, some even contacted us to meet with us, it was crazy! One of the most miraculous happened after having a lesson fire on us in Algorta. I felt prompted to pray, and a few seconds after the prayer I felt to head down some steps near where we were standing. At the bottom were 2 homeless men, Jose and Cristian, who were eating some sandwiches and wanted to talk with us! So we sat on the ground and taught them for about 20 minutes on faith and a bit of the plan of salvation, and they want to meet with us this Tuesday! It so amazing to feel how Christ felt talking to all people, even homeless and beggars! We also had a recent convert bring 5 Guatemalans to church that she found, who are going to meet with us tonight with our ward mission leader! They've been super prepared, they just arrived from Guatemala, and they got super excited talking about service and the Book of Mormon in gospel principles! There are so many miracles here it's ridiculous! We find less actives that have just moved from South America about every other day too so that is also ridiculous!

We had some fun lessons this week too! Elder Morely and I taught a super fuerte lesson to an internagator(eternal investigator) named Gabby about the word of wisdom. He didn't catch on but him and his member girlfriend(who are living together gosh dang it!) are still come to church! He's super good in every other aspect, he just doesn't want to be humble enough to receive the rest of the blessing that church has to offer! At our noche de Rama this week too, Elder Rhode taught us and some investigators the restoration, which at one point involved him picking up the table and dropping it very hard to make a point. That man is intense on the gospel, his wife's an angel though from Peru who has a harder time speaking Spanish then he does haha! So fun having a senior couple in the Rama!

“Examine ourselves"(2 Corint. 13:5). A pretty bold statement from a pretty bold apostle almost 2000 years ago. But a statement that should be put into better practice today. This week during our "Zone Enfoque"(monthly two hour zone meeting, we have a tiny zone of 14 so it's super different here in Bilbao), the topic given by President Dayton for our zone leaders was about being agents of our lives, and not objects. We talked about our excuses we make daily to make ourselves objects in our lives(self pity, I forgot, self denial, blaming, procrastination, denying ourselves blessings for things that don't really matter, it was fun too since we all took turns writing one of those things on a water balloon to toss across the alley behind the chapel haha), there are a lot of ways to take away our blessed gift of responsibility and agency. I quoted Paul at the beginning, not just because he's awesome, but because in order to take the step towards responsibility, we need to look at our faults and ourselves. "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." It's pretty simple! Just make the changes, and be accountable and responsible for your life(it reminds me of one of my dad’s famous quotes, "it doesn't matter what he/she does to me, I can only control what I do to him!"). So I invite all of you today, to take the advice of Paul, examine yourselves, pray to know what to improve('What Lack I Yet?' Oct. 2015), and I promise you that the Lord will provide a way for you to improve and be happier! Boom life rocks right?!

So yes, crazy week, a bunch of funny moments with people staring and asking funny questions to my 7 foot tall companion(he gets asked about basketball like 5 times a day), and miracles! I love this area and I'm pumped for the week to come!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Taylor Moulton