"Besitos"

This past week was pretty slow as we try to find someone new to teach. I actually had to go back to Malagá to pick up some residency papers so that was a lot of fun. I got to eat lunch with the Martinez family (the family I baptized back in Malagá) and it was great to see them! They have really progressed in the gospel and are doing really well. It was such a blessing to see them again!

I ate something pretty weird this week, but thankfully, it wasn´t NEARLY as bad as last time. A member made us Duck and Fish soup. Who thinks of this stuff? For some reason, people tend to think that Europe has good food. They are gravely mistaken. But as mentioned sometime before, I can do fish filets and fish stuff, but fish soup is the bane of my existence. However, tests and trials are placed in our lives to help us become stronger! What doesn´t kill you makes you stronger right?! As I looked at my duck and fish soup I literally had this thought "I´ve basically eaten the end of the digestive system of a pig, I can eat anything!" and I took a spoon full of my soup and finished strong. Food has stopped scaring me. I can eat anything. Onions (ashley and mom) don´t even phase me anymore.

We were leaving a less active´s house this week and the grandma was there as we left. In spain, they do their salutations through the little kisses on the cheeks. They are called "Besitos" But as we were leaving the older lady, said to me, "come here young man and let me kiss you" I said "as missionaries, it is better that we just shake hands" She didn´t like that answer and said "nonsense, I want to kiss you" Thankfully, by then, the less active member intervened and explained that missionaries can´t go around kissing people! Looking back it is a pretty funny experience!

This past week we saw some divine intervention. It was pretty incredible. Elder Barney and I have been thinking of how we can help our ward. It is a pretty sad ward. There are a TON of less actives and no body is doing their callings. It´s bad. This past sunday, my companion and I had to teach priesthood lesson, give talks, and do the sacrament because the people who were supposed to do have the lesson and talks either didn´t come, or came un prepared and refused to get up. But I actually really enjoyed it. We just taught the importance of home teaching for the lesson and the talks. A HUGE problem we have is that no one is visiting each other. We truely believe that if we could just get these people to do their home and visiting teachings, things would improve x10.

But to back track a bit, Elder Barney and I were at a members house and we wanted to show a video. this video was brand new, didn´t have any problems and should have worked, but for some reason, it didn´t. We though, hm, that´s weird, alright we´ll watch the other video on this disc. The second video was just what we needed. It was the new "Only a stonecutter" video and it hit the member pretty hard. Afterwards, we asked, "whats your calling?" She said she was a visiting teacher and she felt so bad that she hadn´t been doing it after watching this video. We´ve been showing it to lots of members ever since and it has all had the same effect, it be-littles them and they feel dumb for making excuses for not doing their callings. But it was so cool to see that the direction we needed to go, came from the brand new video not working. We tried out the video later on in the DVD player in the church, and it worked just fine! It was incredible! But we have been praying and studying so hard as to what we can do to help out this ward and the answer came. It was pretty cool.

Well that´s just about it for this week! I hope you are all doing well!

os quiro

Jason