Week 79: United Nations of Vic, and Bees and Lambs!

Hello from the Osona Valley!

United Nations of Vic. Might sound excessive but it's true. We had a
zone goal Tuesday to find as many countries in our contacts that day
as possible. Within a few hours we met people from 15 countries. And
some new ones too, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Gambia, El Salvador,
you've got them all here. We found this one man, pretty old too, from
Morocco. He then went off telling us how the Koran teaches of how to
live well, honey and a few other things. While the things he was
telling us were strange, it was made both stranger and more funny when
he kept mixing up the words Oveja y abeja (lamb and bee), when talking
about the way bees have babies. We didn’t get it for a while so I was
thinking "I guess lambs in Morocco are different than in Spain...".
When you talk to everyone you see, you find your characters.

On Thursday I had an intercambio with my hijo Elder Perry. Good times
in Granollers, running through the streets with a guitar on Elder
Perry’s back and me chugging alongside him. Lots of people, but super
flojo so they gave us some fake numbers. People let me down some days.

Not much to report this week other than that. We've been able to find
two investigators that are beginning to progress. Steven, from Ghana,
has been very receptive, accepted a fecha for the 18th of March, and
is coming to church this next week. He met with the Ghanaian first
counselor here too and they get along pretty well. We've also begun to
teach the younger cousin of Jamileth, a recent convert named
Annabelle (she moved here from Nicaragua 4 weeks ago). She didn't
accept a baptismal date, but she's still open to learning more, and
was very receptive to the restoration. She's come to church 3 times
now, and she’s open in the classes. More or less she's been the miracle
this week. After finding a lot of flojo people, we've been able to
become friends with Annabelle, and we're hoping to find some fruits
because of it! Our follow up call with Geraldo is today so we'll see
how he is with coming back to church after this conference he was at
all last month.

Today for preparation day we cleaned, rested and ate kebab. And I
tabbed my scriptures. After a few weeks of crazy hikes we needed the
break.

Also fun fact, there's an Indian bread called Chopati. Don't know much
about it so if you could send me a pic of it that'd be great!

Love and miss you all.

"There is no such thing as falling off the straight and narrow path in
the life to come, and the reason is that this life is the time that is
given to men to prepare for eternity.  Now is the time and the day of
your salvation, so if you're working zealously in this life -- though
you haven't fully overcome the world and you haven't done all you
hoped you might do -- you're still going to be saved." Bruce R.
McConkie

🇪🇸🌴Elder Taylor Moulton🌲🇪🇸

 Haircut time!

Only on the mission would tabbing your scriptures make you excited!  haha!

Week 78: Ni Hao, Badalona, News in the Hills of Cataluna, and Locked Out!

Hello family!

Somewhat of an interesting week, flew by, just hit 18 months yesterday, and we've had to drop about half of our investigators. Not much progress with those ones, even Julio our Ecuadorian friends from the "yellow building"(the second tallest building in Vic). Thanks to the help of some goals and new ideas for contacting from Zone enfoque(sort of a district meeting, except with the whole zone that we have every month), we've been able to find a good number of new investigators this week. That reference from the week before and Raul both fired on us this week, so we weren't able to go back, but we'll try to go this week to see if there are anyone else there in Tona. Here in Vic, we were also fired upon by a few visits this week, but a miracle came to make things better. Well one was finding this really good Ecuadorian lady in Ripoll, the town of the Rama mission leader to teach this week. Another was arriving at the Rama Activity on Saturday and finding Geraldo and his family. We haven't talked to them for over two weeks now, so we were surprised to see that the Elders Quórum President sent them a text inviting them. They also came with their cousins, Edgar, Yolanda and their daughter, who have interest now in hearing our message, along with the niece of Jamileth, a recent convert. With these new references, we have some hope to start the week, and are planning on scheduling some baptismal dates this week too with them.

First back story. The keys in the church buildings in the three stakes of Barcelona are German. Meaning they're plastic, have an electronic chip inside, and only work for a certain amount of time until it expires. That day turned out to be February 18th, Saturday, so when we arrived with some friends (Magdalena, one of them is from El Salvador and is amazing(her mother in law's Mormon and lives in Salt Lake), except she can't get to church until here job schedule changes. Why???!!), all our keys wouldn't work. So the building maintenance crew (my old stake President from Manresa, he's so good!) came in the nick of time at 7 to open up the chapel to allow us to have our rama activity! Hopefully the missionaryies who had baptisms could have their baptisms this week, Saturday's a terrible day for that reason. But hey, lesson learned, always design a chapel with a secret entrance!

I went on another intercambio with Elder Tyson, except this time in Badalona. I'd love to serve in the city again, Badalona is packed with people and interesting ones at that. If you want an idea of what it looks like, look at the city of Tangier, and imagine it now filled with Spaniard and gypsies and Moroccans. Learned a lot as usual, still growing in my ability to invite people to be baptized there on the street. It's tough, you've got to get them to stop first!

Fun story, we were knocking doors in Vic 2 (the sketchy part of Vic, that's why it's the elder’s area) and someone let us up. Thinking it was just another Moroccan who didn't understand us, we were surprised to find a family of Chinese people, who’re Christian and we're super almost Christ likely nice to us. They gave us a whole platter of fruit, and then at a later visit Chinese hamburgers. Sort of a potsticker, but wider and bigger. And bifruta. I love bifruta. They accepted a Book of Mormon in Chinese, and we hope they'll be able to come to church this next week! Please!

Other than that, an interesting, multi-cultural week in Vic. Spent preparation day hiking to Castillo de Gurb. Great view, and some funny pictures too.

I love and miss you all. Here's a quote from a talk I shared in my lesson about "what is a successful missionary" in Zone Enfoque. "Please, my beloved brothers and sisters, we must stop comparing ourselves to others. We torture ourselves needlessly by competing and comparing. We falsely judge our self-worth by the ​things​ we do or don’t have and by the ​opinions of others.​ If we must compare, let us compare how we were in the past to how we are today—and even to how we want to be in the future. The only opinion of us that matters is what our Heavenly Father thinks of us. Please, sincerely ask Him what He thinks of you. He will love and correct but never discourage us; that is Satan’s trick." Oct. 2016 Elder J Devin Cornish. 

Adeu!

🇪🇸🌴Elder Taylor Moulton🌲🇪🇸

 This star shined all through Christmas time, it looks almost like a real one when you're in Vic!

 He finally got one of his Christmas packages - they other just arrived back here in the states!  GRRRR!

 Climbed to Castillo de Gurb for preparation day!

 Super random, but we found an angelically nice Chinese family to teach!

 Built in 1373!

Week 77: African Logic, Password!!, and Evangelicals!

Hola familia y amigos!!

Vic's the best. From the title you can tell it's anything but boring at least.

With a blank slate to start with, we've had some miracles in our
finding. We've tried out some different parts of our area, one of
which is a town next to Vic called Tona. The missionaries have never
visited the town, and a few members told us to visit, so we gave it a
shot. We knocked the first door we came to after getting off the bus,
and we found and taught a Ecuadorian man (named Raul) and his niece.
We had an interesting lesson with him on Sunday, and he's going to
read the Book of Mormon (but he's evangelical so we're going to focus
on his doubts in the next lesson). We also found several other people,
including a lady from Bulgaria and we received a text message from a
Spanish man named Jose we had in the area book as a reference from
months ago who found our card in his mailbox, and wants to meet with
us tomorrow! He already has a Book of Mormon and can get to church!
All of this from visiting Tona this week. We're praying for even more
success this week as we head back!

Also fun story, we went to visit a former investigators house, and we
found this old Spanish lady named Valentina in a bathrobe out in front
of the building, coming to see the same person. Being quite old, she
had to waddle on up the stairs behind us while we knocked. No answer.
But the t.v. was on so we knew they were there. When Valentina finally
came up, short of breath, she said, "Well you need to talk to them".
So she went to the door, beat her fists into it and bellowed "Rosa
open up!!!!". Within 5 seconds the door was opened, they both were
inside, and it was made quite clear by them that they didn't want to
see us. Party in Vic 2.

Also people in small towns are strange. One man finished the contact
by hissing "diablo" and then closing the door. Another said she's an
apostate from the Christian church. One time a Spanish man got angry
at us and tried to kick us out of the building as we taught a Ghanaian
friend named Richard on the steps (do you own the building? Actually
it'd be pretty funny if he was but he wasn't). But the messages true
so it's worth the opposition!

I wish I had more time to tell more stories, but I don't so I'll leave
you with a quote. President Uchtdorf April 2015: "The greatest, most
capable, most accomplished man who ever walked this earth was also the
most humble. He performed some of His most impressive service in
private moments, with only a few observers, whom He asked to “tell no
man” what He had done. When someone called Him “good,” He quickly
deflected the compliment, insisting that only God is truly good.
Clearly the praise of the world meant nothing to Him; His single
purpose was to serve His Father and “do always those things that
please him.” We would do well to follow the example of our Master." Be
genuine, be you, always, and it will all work out!

Love and miss you all!

🇪🇸🌴Elder Taylor Moulton🌲🇪🇸

 Eating Arepas as a district

 Iglesia de San Andreas - built in the year 800!  The town of Vic was probably around when Paul came through in the first century!

 Rama activity

 The Vic Cathedral - built in the 10th Century!

Week 76: Weed, British Spirit, party in sacrament meeting, and Punjab!

Hola family y amigos!

The title’s a bit strange I know but that basically sums up the week
here in Vic. In case you haven't heard from the other emails, this is
a very diverse place. Normally, we meet people from Spain, most
countries in South America, Morraco, India, the Philippines, it's
kinda like the United Nations. We've learned how to say hello in a few
languages now. In Twi it's etisank, in Punjabi it's sachrical, in
Arabic is Saleem, and I'll add more to the list this week. To add to
our colorful contacts, there's a general smell of drogas to the town,
which makes it's more fun in my book (we like to challenge smokers to
follow the word of wisdom, that's fun). We've had some miracles come
from those contacts though!

With all of our investigators falling to the back burner this week, we
didn't expect the surprise that we had in sacrament meeting. All of our
friends came! Geraldo and his family came for the first time in a
month ( he went to the baptism of Odik though, he got teary during it.
The spirit was strong there). Since he wasn't able to meet last weekwe're giving him a lesson z tonight. We also brought two friends from
Ghana, Peter and Martin (street contacts, they don't know much Spanish
but we can help them out with that), who got really into the
priesthood and the Book of Mormon in the first lesson. A lady from next
door to the chapel came also after we invited her in her doorway a few
weeks ago, and a former investigator of ours came also. It was a
blessing to see some fruits of our calls and invitations to attend
church come about. Now it's all about inviting them to take the next
step.

Another highlight of the week was having Elder Kearon, the area
president, come visit the mission! We had a big zone conference with
five zones (so many people and pizzas), and our heads left bulging with
new ideas for the work. Here are some highlights from my journal:
-"Don't worry, work hard"
-" lets go out and get persecuted!" Elder Ballard
-"Become free knowing that you are a son/daughter of God"(mind blown)
-you have to trust Him in Him saying that you did ok. You're good enough.
-be amazed at the doctrine we're teaching! Get excited!
" we are at the level of this message" it's worth the opposition and sacrifice
-repentance is the "doctrine of Human development" president Dayton
" this is the church of fresh starts".
I had four pages of notes so that's just the highlights. He focused a
lot on what goes inside our minds and hearts as we teach more than
what we teach. It's true though. We are the vessel. If the vessel
doubts itself, it'll have a hard time reaching its potential.

While the work is still tough, the people are stubborn, the Lord is at
the head. We've got some good visits coming up so it'll be a good
week! Thanks for all the love and support! Adieu!

🇪🇸🌴Elder Taylor Moulton🌲🇪🇸

 The Vic veteran group

 Hot air balloons on the way to Mercadona

 Five zone conference with Elder Kearon, the area president

 Derek!

 Elder Morley!

Baptism in Granollers