Monday, February 27, 2017

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!


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