Molina de Seguro week 2

October 30, 2017

Hey fam

This week happened. True story. Anyway not too much happened pero pasó. Sabéis. (but it happened. You know).

Israel is doing super good still. After one of our lessons. We played a game os gospel hangman and he loved it.

I just asked Elder Moffat what happened that was exciting and he made a joke about how we may have gotten rejected nicely this week. It makes the day a lot better. Keeps us going. Contacting life.

We played soccer again this week. My 6 month rust is beginning to wear off and I can actually play again. 

Sabéis pero he escrito demasiado weeklies. Y no quiero escribir más. Pero seguimos.  (You know but I've written too many weeklies. And I do not know what to write any more. But we continue).

Pero de verdad estoy comiendo otra vez. Citas de comer. Las eché de menos un montón. We ate with an ecuatoriano and his clan of family. Todos son eternigators.

(But I'm really eating again. Eating out dates. I missed them a lot. We ate with an Ecuadorian and his clan of family. All are investigators)

But they love the missionaries. We had a super Machacante (crushing??) with one of them this week. But there was about 20 scrambling around the kitchen and we’re just sitting there watching everything.

The trio life is amazing. Me encanta ( I love it). It’s a ton of fun and we’ve just been roasting each other all day everyday.

Until next week

🇺🇸  Élder Pearce 🇪🇸

Trio Life

Hey fam,

Monday we went up to Granada and wandered central. A good final bang for my life in Motril. That night we said goodbye to Salvador and the family.

Tuesday. I spent the day saying goodbye to everybody else, Alba and also the Izquierdos.

Wednesday I safely made it to Molina. It was a nice bus ride. A 3 hour bus ride to Malaga. After that a 2 hour bus ride to Granada. (There’s a 1 hour bus to Granada from Motril). Anyway after it was another 4 hour bus ride to Murcia. Good stuff. Long bus ride. Oh well. Right after I got picked up and we got going. We met up with the ward mission leader (yeah I have once again).

But anyway my comps are Elder Moffat from Las Vegas and Elder Cazier from Horseshoe Bend, Idaho. And the trio life is a fun life. And Molina has a lot of stuff to do. I walked into a pretty good situation. We have kid named Israel that’s 13 and is a beast. He has been meeting with the missionaries for 2 weeks and we invited him to get baptized on Wednesday and on Friday after thinking about it he decided yes. So he will get baptized the 18 of November. But he’s already in. Jacob and his cousin’s mom (who’s a member) told us he went from not believing in god to having a desire to know more and be around the missionaries.

On Saturday we played futbol with Israel. And other people. A bunch of kids ended up playing with us and they were super annoying. But they were pretty good. Also I’m super rusty after no playing for 6 months. I suck.

That was my week. Things are looking good.

Until next week

🇺🇸  Élder Pearce 🇪🇸

Adios to Motril

Hola to Molina de Segura

Off to Molina de Segura

October 16, 2017

Hey fam

Transfers are in. I’m going off to Huelva. At least that’s what they told me on Sunday. But then president called this morning and sent me off to Molina de segura. And I’ll be in a trio.

What else happened this week. I ate snails. Not bad. But it took too much effort to eat, and just not worth it.

We also had residency. I finally have a card proving I’m legal, also got to catch up with the MTC gang a bit.

We also celebrated a birthday of Celia a less active and Alba was there as well.

Nothing happened this week. It’s fine. But it’s time to go on a trio adventure.

🇺🇸  Élder Pearce 🇪🇸

Baptism of Alba

Hey family,

This has been quite the week. Overall we didn’t really do many things. But the things we did do were pretty good.

Monday nothing special happened. Tuesday also nothing special. We had district meeting. We met with an atheist kid who is usually super cool but got chewed out the day before by an old super catholic grandma for not believing in God so wasn’t too open to learn.

Wednesday: we had the baptismal interview with Alba. Elder Pack came down and while he was walking to church he passed a less active member and an old investigator and talked with them a bit. Both of them we’ve been trying to get in contact with the past month. But Axxx passed her interview. After we introduced genealogy to S and fam. They also came out with a new area book app, let’s just say it’s a bit rough. They took out all the good features and left all the not good features.

Thursday: we spent the morning putting up the baptismal font. As it was filling up the branch president saw a little black thing inside so he took a dirty mop and put it in to take it out. But he ended up putting a ton a gunk in the water. So he sent me in to go fishing. Fun stuff. 

Friday: since our chapel is still without power we didn’t have any hot water to fill up the font. So the morning we heated up pots of water and dumped it in the font. We gave up after 3 hours because there was still no difference in temperature. Then we had the baptism. She was golden from the start. And only a month later she’s white instead of gold. And the ward loves her. Everybody’s super sad she’s moving back to Colombia at the end of November. Also all the South/Latin American missionaries have life made for them once she goes back. Anyway. The baptism went super good and she bore a super guay testimony at the end of it.

Saturday we went and ate lunch with F and ML. My first eating cita in soo long. We ate some seafood paella and gazpacho which is pretty much a tomato, onion, cucumber smoothie with a ton a vinegar, garlic, oil, and pepper. It’s so bad. But the paella was pretty good. After we had a nice lesson on forgiveness because Mari Luz thinks she needs to forgive a lot of people. We left her with a commitment of writing down all the people who have hurt her in the past, pray to tell god to help her forgive them and then burning the paper. 

Sunday I had the chance to confirm Alba. Cool stuff. One of the members during testimony meeting took Alba by the hand and pretty much forced her to bear her testimony. It was kind of funny. After we broke the fast by eating Mexican food with V and S.

The end

Until next week

🇺🇸  Élder Pearce 🇪🇸

General Conference

10/2/17

Hey fam.

Hope everything’s all fine and dandy and general conference went well. I must say in Spanish my ability to pay attention drops significantly. Not that I didn’t understand it. But from zoning out about 40% of the time in English... but it was good. The member of the 70s who talked about miracles was good also the apostles that talked about coincidences. Good stuff.

We went over to the branch president’s house a lot this week. We spent a good amount of time figuring out how we were going to watch conference (the church is still san wifi) but our part member family S and V came through and offered their house to the branch. So we watched Saturday morning session there. We went and picked Jose up to go over to the house and his friend was like, I got nothing to do. I’ll come watch too, but he left part way through. But we ended up with 10 people watching the first session. All of the other sessions we just watched with the Izquierdos In their house just the 4 of us. But Axxx came and watched Sunday morning too. 

We met with Axxx several times this week and we're pushing for this Friday for her baptism. After general conference we helped her find her church in Colombia so she can be a little more excited to go to church when she gets home. And plus it’s an actual building there. Not just a disorganized half painted mess with no ac.

We had a birthday party for Axxxxxx this week. And we also had intercambios in Granada. After S and fam were in Granada too, so we gave them a tour of the Granada stake center and then they gave us a ride home. They stopped at Corte Inglés (a chain grocery/clothes store) on the way home and we’re flipping out because they finally found real Mexican corn flour not the fake stuff in regular stores. 

But that’s about it.

Until next week

Cancelled Baptism and Overcoming Bad Habits

Hey fam.

Marriage. It is what doesn't bring us together today. So in Spain, there's a civil marriage and there's a different marriage called casamiento de hecho (marriage in fact). The branch president was pretty sure it was recognized by the church, so we went forward planning the baptism of S. But we called President Anderson last week to get the full go ahead. And it's not recognized by the church. So we ended up having to cancel the baptism this Saturday. It was a little rough breaking the news to S. He was quite sad. But now he's ready to keep pushing ahead until they get married.

In other news Elder Bates had residency this week so we got to go down to Fuengirola for the day. And lo and behold 3 of my other comps were there as well. Elder Stewart, Romano, and Tabilo. It was sweet to catch up with them. We also went to a super good American restaurant called taxi burger.

Alba got another job this week so we were only able to meet with her once. But she's moving along nice and well. Then we have ML and F a Mexican and a Motrileño couple. They love the Book the Mormon. We taught them repentance this week and talked about how they need to quit smoking. Then we come back two days later and ML tells us the following story. Actually she told us it about 5 times in the hour we were there.

She smoked a lot the day before and was feeling really bad, so she prayed and asked god forgiveness and help quitting smoking. Then she went to bed. When she woke up she went to the park with F and went to have a smoke then she got really nauseous and wanted to puke. And now whenever she smells smoke she wants to puke. So she was able to quit smoking overnight. Those 2 both want to be baptized but aren't married so we will also have to wait until they get married as well.

Until next week, 

🇺🇸  Élder Pearce 🇪🇸

The entire mission

Fun catching up with former companions -  Elders Romano, Tabilo and Stewart

Someone tore the picture of Jesus that they had on their outer door.

Visit from Elder Holland

Hey fam

Well to start things off. Elder Holland came to the mission. 5 busses were chartered and brought in all of the missionaries. For us we woke up at 5 and took a bus into Malaga. Elder Holland was just as good if not better than you would think. The first thing that he did was to shake each one of our hands. Later when he talked he explained that he was giving each of us a personal interview by looking into our souls. And he also said he was proud of what he saw in the missionaries. He talked a lot about how the mission doesn't end when we go home and that this is real life. Then he went on to talk about the Book of Mormon and show how the story of Lehi in 1 Nephi 1 and the story of Joseph Smith are the same. Mind blowing. And how the Book of Mormon is revelation about revelation.

After we finished the meeting we waited around. All the missionaries on the chartered busses got sent out almost immediately and had some crazy bus adventures.  Elder Bates and I went to a conference center for a meeting with Elder Holland and the stake. We were allowed to go because we had an investigator there and they were also available to give us a ride home (we weren’t allowed to stay if we had to rely on public transportation to take us home).  In that meeting he talked about how special prayers are and said that god will give you what you ask, if he can (as in if it fits into his plan). And if he can't he'll give you something even better. He also talked about Jesus' visit to the Nephites and how much he taught them before. And then he said he was leaving and Nephites were sad so he stayed and gave them so much more than they even hoped for. Then Elder Holland talked about how mercy overcomes justice because he had to visit other tribes but he stayed and blessed the Nephites.

This week we met with S a lot to get him ready for a baptism this Saturday (if everything goes well). V has a habanero tree on her balcony and to make them like me more I ate a whole one. It was hot. Even though I would have died back home. I’m a year of eating hardly anything hot. But it was fun. They and the branch president and his wife came to see Elder Holland and took us back home after the conference.

We also met with the couple that came to church last week. We gave them the Book of Mormon on Monday and when we went back Thursday they were really excited to tell us about what they read. They've also gone through a lot of tough stuff and finally are overcoming it. They're working on getting married right now and are already really
good friends with S and V.

We also were able to meet with Axxx again this week. She's has asked us about all the things she can or can't do in order to become a member of the church. We also had a mini English class with her as well.

It’s been a very full week.

Until next week

🇺🇸  Élder Pearce 🇪🇸