Feb/March Updates

23 de Febrero

Hola buenos días a todos!

So, miscellaneous transfer news: I am training Elder Loaiza. He's from Colombia, but has been in Madrid for 12 years. I always find it interesting though, that even though he moved to Spain at like 7 years old, he still speaks like a Colombian more than a Spaniard. Just the lasting influence on little kids. That, or he only hung out with other Colombians haha I still haven't asked. He's nice, we have fun together. He's starting to warm up a little and get accustomed to mission life haha. He has good desires. He wants to do what is right and he desires the welfare of people we talk to in the streets. He always has nice follow-up questions for them. The other three are a trio so when E. Gleason goes home this next transfer the other two will probably stay. Elder Ballam is related to Michael Ballam, that's his uncle. He's a contacting machine and talks with everyone. Elder Johnston is more quiet, but he always says something funny when he talks, and he's really humble and studious/study-ful.

3 March

Hello everyone!

It has been a good week here. We had Enfoque de Zona, which was a really clever Disney land idea of our zone, Lleida-land/Andorra Adventure/Zaragoza World, and about it being the "happiest zone on Earth". It was inspiring to go out and find, work with members, and just succeed in everything. We also did an intercambio, Elder Roney came to Zaragoza with me. It was probably one of my favorite intercambios. I loved working with Elder Roney. He just finished 5 transfers of being ayudante de Presiedente and he is such a hard worker and is amazing at talking with people. We got tons of phone numbers and even quite a bit 10 min conversations with people who at first tell us "que no quiero nada" that most of us just let go. I learned lots of great things, it's just hard to put into practice some of those things after just a couple days with him...I would have loved to spend more to put into concrete some of the things. I guess I'll just have to really focus this week!

I admire in Elder Loaiza how he tries to put into practice what he learns. He learned a lot from Elder Weiss in the intercambio and he is always talking about things that we could try. The District is doing well. The Elders are working hard, talking to everybody. The Hermanas had a great week reaching 4 of the standards of excellence and had a ton of investigators in church, half of which have fechas! So Zaragoza is about to get drowned in miracles...

From my studies I learned something really neat from a Oct. 2012 Conference Talk by Elder Daniel L. Johnson:
"Our discipleship will be developed and proven not by the type of trials that we are faced with but how we endure them. As we have been taught by President Henry B. Eyring: “So, the great test of life is to see whether we will hearken to and obey God’s commands in the midst of the storms of life. It is not to endure storms, but to choose the right while they rage. And the tragedy of life is to fail in that test and so fail to qualify to return in glory to our heavenly home” (“Spiritual Preparedness: Start Early and Be Steady,” Liahona and Ensign, Nov. 2005, 38)."