Next Week is Transfers…

This week really flew by! It started and the next thing I knew, it was sunday night. Our investigator Roberto was baptized this past friday and it was a very nice and spiritual experience.  It is amazing to see how the gospel changes the lives of people. Roberto used to be an alcoholic and with the Lord´s help and our support, he has cleaned up and he has a very strong testimony. It has been such a blessing to have worked with him.  Manuel, a convert from last month actually did the baptizing! It was a great feeling to see a convert baptizing another convert. As Roberto bore his testimony after the baptism, I couldn´t help but shed a few tears. I always thought that the mission would help me get over that, getting emotional in spiritual situations, but the spirit hits me right in the tear glands, so there´s nothing I can do.

Preach my Gospel says we should, like Christ, "Go about doing good" and this past week we had some good service opportunities. We have a member in our ward who has 14 family members living close and we know it will be a GOLD MINE once she lets us teach them. So we visit her every week to try to gain a confidence with her and come to find out, she has an apartment that she has been trying to fix. She was renting it out, and when the renters couldn´t pay, the bank kicked them out and so they destroyed everything on their way out. So we told this Sister that we are two strong backs and we went and did all sorts of house fixing up chores with her this past thursday. It was nice to do some service.

Another service opportunity came at an investigators house. We finished up the lesson and she said, hey you´re American, will you fix my computer? I said I would try (the computer´s settings were in Bulgarian) and after looking at it for awhile I found the problem! It wasn´t a huge service project, but service is service!
I hope you enjoy the pictures, I can´t remember which ones I attached....But I think there is one of Roberto´s baptism. We went to a giant palm tree garden here in Elche for Pday so I think I added some pictures from that. OH! Now I remember the other, one is of me under a blanket drinking some hot chocolate. I LOVE those tables. They are little circular tables that have a huge blanket attached and a heater underneath. They are way nice and someday in my house I will have one!

well, I look forward to another week, this week is transfers, but I think I´ll be here for another one, but we never really know.

Os quiero mucho,
Jason

Angel Wings

So this will have to be a little quick but I wrote down some points from the past week that I would like to share
My companion got written off this past Tuesday (Valentines day) by his girlfriend and I was sensitive at the start of the week, but I´m really sick of hearing about Camilla at this point. It was funny though, since I´ve been with him, he points out every red mini cooper that drives by. Camilla drives a red mini. And this past Saturday, a red mini cooper drove by and I said "Elder! look! a red mini cooper!" then I started busting up laughing. Writing it down it seems pretty heartless, but he´s been talking about it all week. Finally his talk about Camilla has slowed down.

This past week (was super long...ugh) we went to seminary in attempts to reactivate a less active girl in our ward. I do not miss early morning seminary at all. We had to get up at 5:30, when we got back, we both just died on our beds. again, I do not miss early morning seminary at all.
We have been teaching Roberto and he will get baptized this Friday! I´m stoked.
(Elder Triana y Yo)

But speaking on baptisms, this Sunday, my heart just about broke. I have had 7 baptisms here in Elche and this past Sunday, not a single one of those 7 was there at church. There really isn´t anything harder to experience then to work so hard with someone, then see them lose activity. I also found out on Sunday that the family we baptized in Malaga is in active now. I really can´t find other words that heart breaking to experience it.

But lets get back to a happy note,
so the, English class is still REALLY slow. We passed out 2000 more cards this past weekend and tomorrow we´ll see if there will be any fruits!

I´ve got some pictures to send!
We went up to Alicante today for Pday and visited the giant castle. It was a lot of fun. An African was selling 1 euro fake ray-bands. I couldn't´t say no, it was really bright.

Carnival is this week so we see lots of people dressed up.
I saw this guy and couldn't miss the chance.

So the angel wings.
The other elders in Elche have another investigator. He is a super great guy, really intelligent, however, work here is so bad that he has resorted to lesser means of obtaining money. Because of his profession (ahem), he has lots of fun costume stuff, like angel wings. Haha. So we all took pictures a couple weeks ago with the angel wings on. It was a lot of fun!


Well I hope you all have a great week!

Os quiero mucho!
Jason

English Class

This week went by REALLY fast. Hmm. I don´t even remember where I left off.

Oh! I got sick on Saturday and Sunday. I had a really bad cough. Its been way cold lately. I still have from back home a bottle of Robitussin (spelling?) and I basically drank the bottle, i lost the little cup, and my cough has mostly gone away.

This week we had a good amount of lessons and got a good amount of "Contacting" time in. We knocked all the doors on a huge apartment complex. The only person that said we could come back was this girl that opened the door, without saying anything, gave my companion a glass jar and asked him to open it. For our niceness she said we could come back...but we´ll see.

I´ve been doing great, other than being a little sick lately.

I´m really liking Elche. I think I will be here for another transfer, at least I hope so, but we still have 2 weeks until transfer calls. But I hope to stay here!

I don´t have too much else to say, the past 5 weeks we have been trying to get an English class set up, so every Saturday morning we pass out 2000 cards with the English class information. We started this past week. so do the math 5 weeks times 2000. 10,000 (I think :s) cards passed out. and guess how many people showed up....ONE! we really thought we would have a bit more success. I mean...2000 cards every week...

Well I hope you all have a wonderful week and a happy valentine´s day. You should send me a card or something :p

Bueno, pues Os quiero mucho eh
Jason

Poor Piggy #239…

Ok, my last emails for a long time have been pretty vague, so this email i will try to let you in a little bit into the mind of "Elder Hunt" and explain a little bit of how I´ve been doing as a missionary.

Well, I love Elche. This place is the best. I have been able to experience 7 miracles (baptisms rather) since I´ve been here. I have a great ward that loves to help the missionaries out. They always want to feed us but more importantly, they give us lots of references. Its been a great place to work.

My companion Elder Triana is hilarious and we have been working well together. I didn´t even realize it today, but it´s been a long time since I´ve had a real conversation in English. Its been all Spanish for a long time now. It´s been great and I am so grateful that I can advance my speaking skills.

Lets see..what else...haha. I really feel that I´ve become so "naturalized" or something to the mission that I don´t know what you would want to hear about!

Food is always good right?! the other day we had some weird dish from Ecuador. It was basically grilled popcorn kernels with potatoes. It was REALLY dry. But the "best" part was the fried pig skins. I  dunno, It´s not too weird, like, we´ve got pork rinds or whatever they are called back home, but one, I wonder where they got these pig skins, and two, my piece had the number of pig on it. He was number 239. Poor piggy number 239. The weirdest food I´ve ever eaten has been from Ecuador.

This past week we found an excommunicated member that we didn´t know was X´d. but we are teaching her family, and the daughter brought a friend to hear the lessons so now we are teaching the friend. She is from France, but raised in Spain. We ended up finding out that back in France a friend gave her dad a book of Mormon but he never did anything with it. But we have a lesson planned with her tonight, she´s gonna have a baptismal date for sure. She is super ready!

Yesterday, we talked to the boy-friend of Sandra (recent convert from a few weeks ago) and he accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 25 of this month. He smokes a lot so that will be our biggest obstacle to overcome. He has already been to the church a few times and told us yesterday that he wants in, like, now. It´s been very exciting!

So as you can see, I´m just going along I guess. Doing the missionary thing and loving it.

¿¡Os quiero mucho eh!?
Jason