Time is Flying By!

Week 1 of this transfer just flew by! Every single day we had something mission related going on.

We got one new sister missionary this week and four missionaries finished their missions this past transfer, so on Thursday we shipped them off. I don´t like taking people to the airport, it makes me think way to much of when it will be my turn! One more elder went home but not because he finished his mission, I guess you could say that he finished his mission, but he apparently just wasn´t into it and decided to go home. So we took him to the airport on Wednesday and sent him off to his home town in Chile. This is the 4th missionary that was gone home early since I have been here in the office. It is unbelievable! I hate it! It makes me feel awful because I can see how much these people are missing out on! and I haven´t even finished my mission! But that was a big bummer for the week. Yesterday on Friday we had a Zone Meeting in Málaga and it was really nice. My companion and I taught a section of the meeting on obedience. I was a little hesitant with this topic because every time a missionary gives a presentation or talk on obedience they open up to preach my gospel chapter 6 and read the paragraph and the 6 scriptures that accompany it. So everyone has heard that talk before, so we took a different approach. We read the story of Balak and Balaam (the talking donkey and the angel from the old testament) and we made missionary connections to the story and how we can learn about obedience from the story. It was a lot of fun because one it is a fun story and two it was a change up of things. We got a good reception and missionaries commented afterwards that they liked it. So that was nice.

We had very little time to go out and work in our area this week but we had one lesson. It was super weird though, I get a call from Benny (one of our investigators)´s mom and she is freaking out and crying to me on the phone telling me that Benny is tripping out and having a huge temper. She said he was being aggressive and yelling at her. I felt terrible and at a complete loss of what to say. I asked her, what do you want us to do? She tried giving the phone to him but he wouldn't´t talk to me. I asked her if we could come over and she said please do. We try to go over there, but the mom says, he has just gone to sleep so come back tomorrow.
We go back the next day and we try to talk about the call I got but they were acting as if nothing had happened. It was super weird. Benny had a baptismal date for the 31st of August but we all decided it would be best to push it into September. It was just a weird situation. We are going over again tonight with a member so hopefully they can help.

I sent some pictures. One is of me in the office.

One is of our new and nice living area, we painted last week.

and the other is of the study desks.

Well family, this week was a quick one and I look forward to another one!
Os quiero,
Jason

Busy Week!

This week was a blur, transfer weeks always seem to go so fast.

We were looking at our upcoming week and we have something large every single day, not including the daily duties that are required of us.

Monday- Office meeting
Tuesday - New missionaries come in
Wednesday - Old Missionaries come into the mission home
Thursday - Old Missionaries go home
Friday - Zone Meeting
Saturday - P-Day
Sunday- Church

It will be a busy week to say the least.

It hit me today, today being the last day of this transfer, that I have 4 transfers left. 4 Transfers is nothing, that goes by so quick! Time sure is flying, but I won´t complain :p

Nothing too crazy happened this week, we finally got around to painting our burnt apartment and we made an IKEA run to get new stuff. I love Ikea. We got some good stuff, I will send pictures when I get a chance.
The mission has been focusing on "El Rescate" (the rescue) by bringing less actives back to church and gospel activity. We had 3 less actives in church today so we were very happy with that. The ward did a great job at making them feel welcomed. It was great to see the ward embrace these less active members and make them feel invited to participate in everything.

Well, I have to run, I love you all and I am so grateful for all of your prayers and support.

Os quiero,
Jason

What a week!

I feel like the weeks are turning into just one long day. This past week just flew by. This week was supposed to be one of our more calm weeks, but of course, it took a change for the crazier side.  I don´t remember which day (again, the week felt like one long day) but President Deere sends Elder Hall and Manning down to a place called Sanlucar to go pick up some missionaries, nobody knew why but they picked them up and brought them to the mission office and President met with them. Turns out, one of them was having some issues and wasn´t making good decisions (Girl related) and had to be sent home. So that took the calmness out of the week. That is the WORST part about being in the office. We know where the problems are, who isn´t getting along with who, who isn´t being obedient, but I just like to think that all the other missionaries are perfect, and then stuff like this happens. Elder Nally and I realized that he is the THIRD missionary that has been sent home since we have been in the office. Last year, only one missionary got sent home (he chose to) for the whole year and that was a big deal, this year, in just 2ish months, 3 have gone home, (2 had to and 1 chose)! It seriously is a bummer.

But on a happier note, we had some great lessons. We get very little time in our area, but once we are there we try to make it count.

The same night the elder got sent home, we were in the office most the afternoon, and we had thirty minutes left before it was time to go in for the night. At this point it would seem to just go in, we could get very little done, but I just didn´t feel good with going in early, so Elder Nally and I decided to go pass by the house of an investigator and see if we could set up another time to teach her. As we walk up to her house a big group of drunk guys yell to us and tell us to come over there and preach to them, I yelled back "Tenemo´ pri-tha!" (we are in a hurry with an andaluz accent) and we entered into the investigator´s building. She wasn´t home so we exited the building and decide to go back using a different street (one that we never use) to go home so we could avoid the drunk crowd. As we were walking, an African lady pops out of a door and says "hey! where is the church?" (she was from Nigeria so she speaks English) and we began talking to her and explaining where the church is located. She is a member and has been living in various places around Europe and has never found the church since she left Nigeria. This kind of stuff doesn´t happen. We had 30 minutes left and we went on a road that we never go on and Chi Chi (her name) found us. It was a blessing for obedience and a testimony that the Lord is at the helm of this work. As Elder Nally and I talked about what happened as we walked home I couldn´t help but feel so grateful for being a missionary. I love it. I love serving the Lord and preaching the gospel.
Today for Pday we went up on these Cable Cars and saw a falcon/Bird show at the top. It was super cool. I had a falcon land on my head. It was kinda freaky. It didn´t hurt until it took off, its talons dug into my head a bit so that hurt a little. But it was way fun and a good Pday activity. We actually took President Deere´s kids with us because he and Sister Deere are in Germany for a mission president seminar. The kids are always bored so we got permission from president to take them to hang out with us for Pday. It was a lot of fun and I think the kids enjoyed it as well.

I will be sure to send some Falcon/Eagle/Hawk/Owl pictures once we get that organized.
Os quiero mucho!
Jason

Oops…

So this week was "one of those weeks".

It all started with Monday. Every Monday morning we have an office staff meeting and we proceeded as normal, but during the meeting, from outside we heard police/fire truck/ambulance sirens. Of course, we didn´t pay any attention to them and we continued discussing the things of the mission. The meeting finished and we still had an hour until our work in the office is over. We worked for that hour, put things away and got ready to go home for lunch. Sounds like a pretty typical Monday, this is where it flips upside down. We open the door to our piso (Spanish for apartment). The smell hits us like a brick wall. There was a FIRE in our piso!
Turns out, my companion forgot to unplug the iron that morning, the ironing board caught fire and it went up in flames.

Luckily, the ironing board fell into the middle of the room and nothing else caught on fire, our balcony door was open because we were letting the room dry because we mopped that morning. So the alarms we heard in the meeting were the firefighters rushing to our house, they went in through our open balcony door and dumped the bucked of mop water onto the iron fire. We are very happy that nothing else got burned, what a blessing.
Ash was EVERYWHERE. It got all over our clothes and beds even though they were in other rooms of the piso.

We spent all day Monday cleaning up the piso, oh yea, here we are with the remains of the iron and ironing board.

But the ash was so bad that we ended up staying the night in the mission home. That part was a lot of fun. It was just like being with the family again. They made us cookies and we talked until bed time, we even had "family" scripture study. Monday night was probably the best part of the week. Elder Hall and I woke up earlier and we went on a run with President Deere. It was way fun.

Tuesday was calm.
Wednesday was calm as well.

Thursday we witnessed an attempted robbery and helped translate because the Spanish police didn´t speak a lick of English. The guy that almost got robbed was Irish.

Friday we found out that the keys to one of the mission cars accidentally got left on the ferry that President Deere took when he and elders Manning and Hall visited the elders in Melilla. So we raced down to Málaga from Fuengirola to catch the Ferry before it took off again. We were pretty lucky that they even found the key.
But on the good side, on friday we found a new investigator that is SUPER prepared. He was a reference from Mormon.org and so I called him and he told me on the phone that he wants to get baptized. I got off the phone and my mouth was hanging open, I couldn´t believe what I was hearing. We met with him and his mom last night and they are two of the most prepared people I have ever met. The interesting thing about it all is that his reference from Mormon.org is old. Somehow or something it got repeated to us. He was asking for a book of mormon and when I called him he told me that the church sent him one a really long time ago. When we met with him he told me that he had actually been praying for the chance to hear the gospel and then that same week we gave him a call. His only issue is that he is a pretty heavy smoker. He has the baptismal date for the 31 of this month and we are actually fasting today with him and his mom so that he can quit smoking by that date. It was a great experience!

Well. 6 months left.

I got my "trunky papers" this week so I guess I am "allowed" to be trunky and think of my plans for the future. ("trunky papers" is a letter you get from the mission when you have 6 months left and it basically just asks you what airport you want to fly home to.)

I am excited for this upcoming week, my pants got a big rip in them this past week (just added to the fun-ness of this week) so I bought a new pair today and I am excited to break those bad boys in! Next week I will send a picture of the damage I have done to my pants and especially my shoes. My shoes are bad. I mean way bad. I might even buy a new pair today.

Well I love you all so much and I hope that you all continue to have lots of fun in Arizona. Be sure to email me (or send) lots of pictures from all your summer fun!
Os quiero,
Jason