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

Miracles

Again, this week has just been CRAZY!

I like it and I don´t. It makes the week go by quick, but hey, everything is just so CRAZY!

Well anyway, like last time, Monday started things off to a wild start.

I had a huge miracle with the residency for the Deere family. I will use vocabulary that might not make sense to you, but here it goes, so Salt Lake sent the "transmites" to Madrid instead of Málaga, so what this means is that they could only apply for residency in Madrid. However, we didn´t have time to send him and his family up to Madrid. There is also a deadline, you have 30 days to do it once entering the country. At the start, it wasn´t looking like it would work out, but thanks to a small miracle (i mean, really it was a HUGE miracle to me) everything worked out. I don´t think I can express the drama that was going on all this. If they weren´t able to do the residency in Malaga, they could have been kicked out of the country. I had nightmares about it! It stressed me out SOOO much, but, with A LOT of prayers and moments to stop and breathe, I got it taken care of. I felt like I was in a boxing match with the people at the residency place trying to get them to allow the Deere´s to apply for residency in Málaga they were only accepted in Madrid. Seriously, my hands were shaking I was so nervous.

On Monday we also got 6 new elders! It was so exciting! They are all super solid and will make great missionaries!

It didn´t hit me until these new guys were talking with me that I realized I am pretty old in the mission. they were like "you only have a fourth of your mission left!" I still feel like I just got here.

Tuesday: We finished the "Trainer Training" and I had a nice time given to me to teach and it was great, we talked about expectations of the next few transfers with the new elders. The trainers were so exciting and expected nothing but the best from themselves and their new companions.

This past week we had something very special happen in the mission. In April, we did an experiment to leave a day only for contacting people in the street. We got 1400 future investigators is what they are called (people that give us their information to contact them later) as a mission. We did this with the means of baptizing 50 people for the month of May. We BARELY got the goal in may and 50 baptisms is the most baptisms in one month that the Spain Málaga mission has ever had. We were all pretty excited.  We obviously wanted to do it again, but this time it wasn´t so much of an experiment because we knew better of what we were doing.

We set the goals as this: July 13, get 3000 futures, 200 baptismal dates for the month of August and SEVENTY baptisms for the month of August.

We went out to work yesterday with the faith to get as many futures as we could.

My comp and I got 40 in the first three hours. It was incredible. People were everywhere and so I went up the right side of the street and my comp elder Nally went up the left side of the street so we could cover more ground.

Our afternoon took a dramatic change and we only got 9 more for the day. But 9 is still way good for an afternoon. We ended the day with 49 and that is definitely a new high for me. 49 futures in ONE day. It was such a miracle.

As a mission we got 2627 futures. WOW! 2627 people in the south of Spain gave us their information to contact them later. We are so excited to get teaching these people and get 70 baptisms in august!

Things are going great!
Os quiero!
Jason

Monkeys!

Wow what a week!
SUNDAY:
So I guess this week really started with Spain winning the Eurocup. It...was...INSANE! Oh my gosh, it was like the world was ending and everyone was going into the streets to party and get their last bit of sinning in! My camera battery was actually dead so I didn´t get any pictures. But my companions did so I will have to snag some pictures from them. There is a big round-a-bout with a giant fountain in the middle and the ENTIRE city of Fuengirola walked out to this rotunda and piled into the fountain. They were shooting off fireworks, screaming, taking their clothes off. Again, insane. We watched this all from our balcony, part of me really wanted to be down there in all the festivities, but it was just INSANE! I can´t even begin to explain how crazy it was! So it was better that we were safe in our apartment. 

MONDAY:
We had zone "concilio" (council) where all the zone leaders come to the mission home and we talk about the mission and the goals for the next month. It is always a nice experience and very spiritual.
President Deere is amazing. He is so cool and such a humble guy. At the zone concilio he opened up the discussion for questions and someone asked if he could see this (being a mission president) coming. He said "you don´t receive a premonition that you´re going to the moon if you´re not an astronaut." He talked about how it was such a huge shock being called as a mission president. I love that he is not your typical "Utah Mormon", his family converted to the gospel when he was 10 and his wife´s family was inactive in Ohio for most of her upbringing. Their testimonies are so strong and I love that they just seem so much more normal. Pres.Clegg was bishop, stake president and all the typical stuff leading up to mission president, but Pres. Deere went primary teacher, young mens / scouts, then bishop for 5 years, back to primary, then mission president. I love them both, but pres.Deere has a sense of "realate-able-ness".
He brought his 16 year old daughter and 12 year old son. But they are such a great family and it is just crazy because I am so used to president Clegg who was more grandpa age and I had to use Pres. Deere´s passport and he was born a year before dad. They are still a way young family. But he is incredible and I just love the guy.

TUESDAY:
We finished the concilio and then elder Nally and I had to go to the office for the rest of the afternoon to catch up on the office work.

WEDNESDAY:
FOURTH OF JULY!
We were still catching up with stuff in the office but in the afternoon we had a really good lesson with a reference from a member. It was nice to finally get out and do some regular missionary work. We walked into the house and it was the reference and her friend, and she told us to wait a second because her husband and the husband of her friend were on their way. The husbands got there and they brought another couple with them! It was such a miracle. We had a good lesson and they were all very interested. The only bummer is that there were a tons of couples, but none of them were married. So at least we know where our work is.
After the really good miracle lesson we went home and we had a BBQ. It was great! we have a little grill on our patio and so we made burgers. I was on the grill with the spatula in one hand and a tall glass of cold coke in the other hand while we blasted MOTAB singing the nation anthem. It felt so right.

THURSDAY:
We had zone conference and it was really nice. Elder Nally and I got there late because the Deere´s are having some small residency issues and so I had to go take care of those in the morning. All is well now. After the ZC I went on splits with Elder Triana (actually one of my old companions) in Málaga and it was really weird to be back there. It has been over a year! But we visited my converts the Martinez family and it was really good that we did. Elder Triana is serving in Málaga and didn´t even know where they lived. They are going through a rough patch on their spiritual progression so it was good that we could make a connection again.

FRIDAY:
Transfer plans!
Transfers are this next week so President Deere finalized the transfers and I have been working on the travel plans for all these missionaries since. This is the first time I have had to do so and it is a pain. The Spain Málaga Mission covers 40% of the land of Spain so when people travel, they take cross country trips. Last night we found out the at the CCM (the Spain MTC) forgot to tell us that another elder was entering the mission, so we didn´t have any plans for him. So we were up till 2330 trying to figure some things out. We left the office at 2330 and then went over to a bar (Bars are different in Spain, they are outdoor restaurants) and got dinner because none of us had eaten anything all day and then we went to bed at midnight-ish.

SATURDAY:
We woke up normal time at 0730 and then we had a special Pday planned with the Deere family. We drove down to Gibraltar and I finally got to see the monkeys! Yay! It was a HUGE hike but I really enjoyed it and I think it was nice for the Deere family to get away from a bunch of meetings. It was also really fun to talk to the Deere family about non-missionary things. It was a good time to get to know them.

Today was a really clear day so the 2nd picture I attached is of a landmass off in the distance. That is Africa.

We hiked all the way down the mtn. and drove home. I was zonked on the way back. We ate some food, showered, changed, and here I am writing you now.

It has been a full week. Really, every week since getting here to the office has been typically crazy, but I finally have a chance to fill you in a little bit on the craziness of mission-office life.

Well, I hope you all have a great week! I love hearing about all your fun activities!

Jason
(PS. I realized this morning when I looked at my agenda that today is 7 months left, or 6 months and 30 days, however you want to look at it. Man time is flying!)

Futbol!!!!!!!!!!

I can´t believe that June is over. I don´t even remember when it started. I remember the end of may and now tomorrow starts July. Where is all the time going.

Oh yea, we got the new mission president yesterday! It was way cool! Things in the office have been crazy. We have 2 lessons so far this week (starting on Monday) because all our time has been dedicated to getting things ready for the big switch. We´ve had to change contracts for apartments (all these things had Pres. Clegg´s name on them) we are going through some residency issues that need to be cleaned up, and missionaries, well, they´re just being missionaries and getting themselves into all kinds of silly problems.  Oh, this past week, I think it was Wednesday, President Clegg calls me at 2230 and tells me to go back to the office, we were on our way home, and figure out some way of sending a missionary home the next day. (she had been sick for a long time and finally decided to go home, probably for the best) so I was in there working on it until I think 2330 trying to figure out how to get her home, how to get the other missionary another companion the next day as well. It was a mess. But since it was already so late and well past bed time, my companions and I decided to go get some food at an outdoor bar and watch the soccer match. It was incredible.

Am I  aware that Spain and Italy were going to the Eurocup? Is the Pope Catholic!?

Man it has been CRAZY here. Every apartment window has a Spanish flag hanging out of it!

Ok, so here is the story.
Well...a little bit of reader discretion. I do not condone being disobedient to the mission rules and what they say about being in on time.

But anyways, it was a BLAST and I will probably always remember it. We are planning on doing the same thing for the actually final. Haha. Ahem...

Ok so it was really late, and this night it was the office elders (me and elder nally) and the Ap´s(elder Manning and elder Hall) in the office trying to figure out all these changes that we had to make for this sister missionary going home. So we are all just beat and hungry and tired. Portugal and Spain had been playing and this is a pretty heated rivalry, I mean, same landmass, this match is blood. Our apartment is right above two outdoor bars and in order to get into the front door, we basically had to walk in front of the outdoor big screen TV. so EVERYBODY sees us go inside. The four of us sit down in our chairs and we are just quiet and elder manning says, "what the heck are we doing up here?!" We had all been thinking the same thing, so without any more words, we all jump up, run into our rooms, change into our Spain jerseys and Spain gear and head down and join the crowd.

Just 2 minutes earlier, the huge crowd saw us all go into the apartment in our missionary get up and then we run out the door decked out in Spain gear. People pointed at us and were like "hey! its those American guys!" and the front row applauded us and so we gave the front row high fives. It was at the 85 minute mark when we got down there and so we were cheering and singing spanish fight songs and it was just a blast. After the penalties the whole city just went crazy! I have videos. They are too big to send, but someday I´ll show you! After the match these old ladies wanted to buy us drinks, so we figured that was our cue to go inside and get to bed.

It was a blast, and I probably shouldn´t tell you, but we are going to do the same thing for the final. I mean, this is as big as the world cup for these people, there is NOBODY that isn´t watching the game.

I sent a picture with me and elder manning in front of one of the bars we were watching the game at. i had to borrow a barcalona jearsy, I don´t have a spain one, YET, all i have is Real Madrid, and Chritiano Ronaldo plays for them, so I couldn´t be seen supporting a portugal player.


I can´t remember what the other pictures I attached are, but I hope you enjoy them!


I sure do love you all!

Os quiero,
Jason

It’s JUNE!

I am still a little in shock that I am here in the office, it has been pretty crazy. The old secretary is training me for the next week and a half on how to do the stuff. My biggest responsibility is residency. It is a pretty big deal because it´s my job now to keep everyone inside the country legally! Lots of Spanish. Lots of government and headaches. But so far I have enjoyed myself with this new challenge. I am learning lots and I have to become a Microsoft excel pro so that will be a nice little skill to have around! We only have proselyting  time for about 3-4 hours each night but my comp and I set the goal to catch up all the office work so we can get the full 5 hours of proselyting time every night.

My first call in the office went like this (Random elder) "hey elder hunt, I left the training booklet back in the mission home" then I responded "Well what do you want me to do about it?"  then I proceeded to figure out how he could get the booklet back to him in a timely fashion. I asked the last office elder if he got calls like that a lot and he nodded his head and said "all the time" So basically my job is just solving everyone´s problems. But we´ll see how things go! For Pday we went out to a little Spanish city and had a picnic with President and Sister Clegg. Being in the office definitely has its benefits! It was a lot of fun.  I´ve had two Pdays in one week so I feel like this upcoming week will be a little long. But there is lots to do as we prepare the mission for a new president and we just got about 6 new missionaries so I have to figure out how to do their residency stuff.

But anyways, I can´t believe it is already June. I mean seriously. I remember the day I hit a year and all of the sudden it´s June now. These past 4 months have just FLOWN by. It is crazy, in just 4 days I´ll have 8 months left, that is the last 1/3 of the mission! Crazy!

Oh, one more fun thing I´ll get to do is teach Sunday school in the British branch here in Fuengirola. The missionaries are the teachers for basically all the classes in the little branches here. I am excited for all these new responsibilities because I know they will be great experiences.
I love you all so much and I hope you have a great week!

Os quiero
Jason