Dear family,
This past week in Alcoy was without a doubt the best week that Alcoy has ever had. It was an absolutely incredible week. We had great member support, a TON of visits with people, and miracles left and right! We ended the week with 24 visits, which I don´t think has ever happened. We were so busy all week, and as a result I´m very tired, but very happy. We worked so hard this week and the Lord really really blessed us. It´s a great work. Elder Bowers and I both went to bed so happy last night, and so tired. This Chinese kid, named Alex, who is 23, we had a visit with him in the house of a member and we watched the Restoration DVD in Mandarin, and he loved it and said that he is like Joseph Smith, and that he wants to be baptized. We invited him to be baptized on the 9th of April, and he accepted. He was almost crying. He felt the spirit, and we did too. A Chinese person in Spain! The Lord works in mysterious ways. The members house who we were at were a really fun family, and they have two girls, age 9 and 6, and they are just off the wall girls, talking so fast and running and screaming and laughing. Alex loved it, even though he couldn´t really understand them. It was the first time that he went to a Spaniards house. He really did love it, and he is very excited for his baptism. We made him a plan of everything that we are going to teach him, and we wrote that he has to read, pray, and come to church, and we wrote it in Chinese (thanks google translator), and he loved it. We decided that we´re really going to go over the commandments well, so that he understands. The first lesson after he committed to be baptized, we talked about the word of wisdom, because he has a huge smoking problem. Everyday, lots of cigarretes. He told us that his friends wants him to stop smoking, he knows he wastes money and that it´s gross, but he told us that it´s not possible. He said he won´t stop smoking and he doesn´t want to lie. We were kind of bummed, and we prayed about it a lot after the visit. We decided to go ahead and make him a plan, which will permit him to smoke 3 cigarretes a day, then 2, then one, and then none! We bought him a TON of gum, and we prayed a lot about it, and the next time we had a visit, we presented all of this to him, and we really just tryed to show him that we love him and that we know this is what God wants him to do, to quit smoking. He was very touched, and he said, you know what, I can stop smoking. He committed to follow the plan, and so we´re going to see how it goes! We are really just trying to love him. Love can work through the language barrier. It´s a great work.
So on Wednesday, we had a visit with this woman Esmilva, who I have told you about before. She´s from Ecuador and she´s so nice. We have been talking about baptism with her forever, and on Wednesday, she said she would tell us on Thursday if she would get baptized. Thursday comes around, and she told us that on Saturday she would give us her final answer. She has two daughters here in Spain, one that lives here in Alcoy, and one that lives a little farther south and comes to Alcoy on the weekend. They both want her to be baptized. So on Saturday, we went to a members house, and we ate this food that Esmilva prepared us, and it was fish head in a peanut butter sauce. Oh the experiences of the mission! We ate it, and then we talked about repentance and a change of heart, and we showed her a picture of baptism in the gospel art book (incredible book) and her daughter was there and she saw it and she got a little emotional and told us about a dream that she had, and about a baptismal "pool" she called it, and that her mom was in it, but the daughter didn´t enter just yet. She then bore her testimony and said that she knows that all of this is true, and that the church is true, and that she will be baptized, but not yet because she hasn´t been taught enough. She told her mom that she was ready, and then Esmilva accepted to be baptized next week! She said that she´s in this for real and that she´s excited, and received her answer. Miracles! We are very excited for her baptism, and so is she. I´ll let you know how it goes.
Another really fun investigator that we have is Angelina. She was GOING to be baptized next week, but the week after she committed to be baptized, Satan hit her hard with everything that you can imagine. Angelina is an absolutely incredible woman, and she will be an incredible member of the church. She talks SO MUCH, and we could spend HOURS over there listening to her stories and to her talking. She said that she doesn´t feel that she´s ready for baptism next week, even though she already knows everything and knows it´s true. She´s a little overwhelmed with everything that is happening, and so we asked her if she wanted to keep going towards her goal, and she said absolutely, but at the moment she doesn´t want to get baptized next week. She said in the future that she will be. She comes to church and loves it, and she gets her husband to come as well. She´s excited for general conference to come up, and so am I! I´ll let you know more about her when more happens.
So basically, this past week was just a joy. We had great spiritual visits, really loved the missionary work, and worked super hard. We were going to achieve all the "points of excellence" as they´re called, and we were going to get 4 new investigators yesterday at 8 o clock at night, the last visit of the week, but they ended up standing us up, so we sat down on a bench, and were going to call it a night, but instead we called some people to see if we could go over, and we called a few people and they said they´d rather us come over during the week. The last call we made was to this woman named Michelle from Kenya. She´s a great woman, and she´s so nice. She lives here in Spain with her little 4 year old girl that only speaks Spanish to us. Too cute. We called her, and she´s really tough to visit, because she works so much. We had one visit last week with her and we talked to her about the Book of Mormon. So we called her, and she said hey do you have time right now? Of course we have time! I told her that we would be over in 10 minutes, and she told us to hurry. The problem is, we were CLEAR on the other side of our area, and it was easily a 25 minute walk. So what did we do? We speed walked/ran as fast as we could. I loved it, I felt so good getting some excercise in. We made it in about 13 minutes (yes, I timed it), a record time, and when we got there, Elder Bowers was about dead. My poor companion! He was really dead. I felt so good though. We talked with Michelle about the Book of Mormon, answered some of her questions, and said a prayer with her. It was great getting that final lesson in. Working hard right up until the wire! So good.
So yeah, miracles exist everywhere, even in Alcoy! Our Zone leaders couldn´t believe what we did, neither did the Assistants. We get asked, how did you do it? I don´t know, the Lord just blessed us! It was really a joy to be a missionary this past week. I love it.
It sounds like everything is going really well. Alex and marathon dance, Gabbi and Mormon Prom, Annie and Soccer tryouts, Izzy and taking care of Stella I guess. Let me know how soccer tryouts go! And don´t worry if you don´t make it. I didn´t make soccer OR basketball in middle school. Sad stuff. That´s okay though, it all works out for the best!
The mission is great, life is great. Keep on smiling over there in Virginia. The weather was a little warm this last week, and I already started sweating. It´s going to be a sweat fest here in Spain in a few months. Can´t wait!
Much love,
Elder Pericle
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Paradise Revisited
Hola otra vez familia,
Here I am, another week flown by, and I´m sending home my weekly email. This past week, Elder Bowers and I worked really hard. (Dad asked me about Elder Atkin, maybe I confused you in the last email, but I lived with him for 3 transfers in Hospitalet and he was my zone leader there and he´s my zone leader here in the Valencia Zone, but we don´t live together anymore) Elder Bowers is from Vegas, and the middle of 5 children, he likes metal music, he likes computer games, and he is a goof ball. We get along well. This past week, we really decided that we were going to find some new investigators, some new people here in Alcoy that are ready to receive the restored gospel. In my Book of Mormon reading, I´ve been reading a lot about Moroni and the war chapters, and he is always preparing. ALWAYS. So we prepared a lot. We prepared in the morning, what we were going to do, what routes we were going to go on, and all this stuff. We were very obedient, we read our scriptures, we planned and planned and everything. This week, I´ve probably done more walking than in my whole mission combined. Alright, that´s a joke! But we do do a lot of walking here. It´s alright, it´s very healthy and I like to walk! So we went out, and we walked and walked and walked all week. We knocked doors, we talked to people, we preached the restored gospel, we called people to repentance! We did a lot of good hard work. And we ended the week with 0 new investigators. We taught a few lessons, but not that many. We taught 8, and the standard of excellence is 20. The people that we taught were all investigators that have been looking at the church forever. We need new investigators! Every night, we would get home exhausted, freezing cold, because it´s about 0 degrees celcius here, and plan for the next day. At night, I am so tired that I say my prayers, and get into bed and fall asleep. We are working hard here in Alcoy! I know how missionary work is. It´s tough! But it´s so worth it. My testimony has been growing, and I am so thankful for that. My testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and of our living Savior Jesus Christ is my most prized possession. I would not trade it for anything! I love preaching the gospel. In my contacts, I´ve been a little calm, and a little not bold enough. I´ve decided to be bold. When Wilford Woodruff went to England on his missions, he sure was not calm and shy, he was bold and enthusiastic! We´re going to try and really preach this week. Elder Bowers and I know that as we have faith and as we work hard, we are going to see miracles. There´s no doubt. We are going to try and be EXACTLY obedient this week. To everything. It´s going to be tough, because natural men don´t like to be obedient, but we can do it.
So yes, it was cold this week! I have my sweater, my suit, and my jacket, and a scarf and gloves, and I´m still cold! I really feel for Tyler and Chris. That´s crazy. I feel like a baby complaining about the cold! How´s the weather in Virginia?
We really have been loving the members this week. We have been visiting them, and we are really gaining their trust I feel like. We share joyous messages with them, ask about their stories, ask about their families. I´m going to start getting them to write their testimonies down. That´s a great idea. I just love the members here. They are so strong for living here, and rejecting the culture and everything in order to live the commandments of God. I tell them all the time that they are such examples and everything. I love them. I just wish that everyone we talked to, every door we knocked, every person we see, if they could all just know that we as missionaries are here to bring them the greatest message in the world, that all we want to do is serve them and help them and love them! I wish people could know that. Elder Bowers and I were talking about that a lot. We just want to love people and bring them the gospel. That´s all we want! I know in Alcoy that there is a family waiting for us to bring them the Restored Gospel and all of the blessings that that includes. I´m not going to lie, there are times when it´s hopeless, when you´ve been talking to people for five hours in the cold and no one will talk to you, but that thought that there is one family that we can love, help, serve, teach, baptize - that gives me hope. That keeps me going. One family, just like ours, who loves each other and wants to be happy and is thirsting for the truth. We´re going to find them. If it kills us! :)
So one good visit that we had this week, was with two Africans. We actually had two visits with them. The first one, we were just passing by them, because the missionaries had stopped teaching them for a while. We rang their bell, and they stuck their heads out the window to see who it was, and when they saw that it was us, boy were they so happy! They invited us up, and were very very very happy to see us and to talk to us. They speak English and are from Nigeria. They are people of great faith. They really want to follow Christ, it´s just that they aren´t married (like everyone) and so they can´t be baptized. They love the Book of Mormon. I loved teaching them, because I felt like a preacher. They truly love the word of God, and it was an example to me. We visited them one more time in the week, and it was just the guy there, and his name is Frank. He was really down, and he had been drinking a little bit. He confessed that back in Africa he was such a good Christian, and he kept the commandments and everything, but here in Spain, he got caught up in the world (now you have to remember that he speaks in very basic English). He got emotional and told us that he drinks, smokes, breaks the law of chastity, doesn´t read the good word of God as much, doesn´t go to church. He humbly asked us to help get his life back in order. We were very humbled as well, and we truly felt like servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. We´re going to help Frank get closer and closer to God. I love being a missionary and what we can do.
So, the man that typed the whole Book of Mormon on one finger invited us to come over to his house after church and to eat. He´s 91 and super old and super funny. He loves the missionaries, and he´s always telling us new hygiene things that we need to do. He winks a lot and just talks and talks and talks. We had Paella Valencia with them, and then we sang some hymns with them. I love the hymns. They´re the greatest. There is nothing like them. They touch me every time I sing.
So, last night, some Jehovahs witness guy tried to start talking to us, and he wasn´t even a good "testigo de Jehovah." He tried to start bible bashing, and I told him that if he wants to know the truth, to read the Book of Mormon. That´s all it comes down to, is that great Book. I love the Book of Mormon. I love it in English and in Spanish. It´s the greatest book there is. I love it.
So, I´m doing good here in Alcoy. It sounds like you are all doing well at home. Well, we´ll keep working hard here. Keep knocking doors, stopping people on the street, raise a warning voice and bring the restored gospel truth to the world. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Pericle
Here I am, another week flown by, and I´m sending home my weekly email. This past week, Elder Bowers and I worked really hard. (Dad asked me about Elder Atkin, maybe I confused you in the last email, but I lived with him for 3 transfers in Hospitalet and he was my zone leader there and he´s my zone leader here in the Valencia Zone, but we don´t live together anymore) Elder Bowers is from Vegas, and the middle of 5 children, he likes metal music, he likes computer games, and he is a goof ball. We get along well. This past week, we really decided that we were going to find some new investigators, some new people here in Alcoy that are ready to receive the restored gospel. In my Book of Mormon reading, I´ve been reading a lot about Moroni and the war chapters, and he is always preparing. ALWAYS. So we prepared a lot. We prepared in the morning, what we were going to do, what routes we were going to go on, and all this stuff. We were very obedient, we read our scriptures, we planned and planned and everything. This week, I´ve probably done more walking than in my whole mission combined. Alright, that´s a joke! But we do do a lot of walking here. It´s alright, it´s very healthy and I like to walk! So we went out, and we walked and walked and walked all week. We knocked doors, we talked to people, we preached the restored gospel, we called people to repentance! We did a lot of good hard work. And we ended the week with 0 new investigators. We taught a few lessons, but not that many. We taught 8, and the standard of excellence is 20. The people that we taught were all investigators that have been looking at the church forever. We need new investigators! Every night, we would get home exhausted, freezing cold, because it´s about 0 degrees celcius here, and plan for the next day. At night, I am so tired that I say my prayers, and get into bed and fall asleep. We are working hard here in Alcoy! I know how missionary work is. It´s tough! But it´s so worth it. My testimony has been growing, and I am so thankful for that. My testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and of our living Savior Jesus Christ is my most prized possession. I would not trade it for anything! I love preaching the gospel. In my contacts, I´ve been a little calm, and a little not bold enough. I´ve decided to be bold. When Wilford Woodruff went to England on his missions, he sure was not calm and shy, he was bold and enthusiastic! We´re going to try and really preach this week. Elder Bowers and I know that as we have faith and as we work hard, we are going to see miracles. There´s no doubt. We are going to try and be EXACTLY obedient this week. To everything. It´s going to be tough, because natural men don´t like to be obedient, but we can do it.
So yes, it was cold this week! I have my sweater, my suit, and my jacket, and a scarf and gloves, and I´m still cold! I really feel for Tyler and Chris. That´s crazy. I feel like a baby complaining about the cold! How´s the weather in Virginia?
We really have been loving the members this week. We have been visiting them, and we are really gaining their trust I feel like. We share joyous messages with them, ask about their stories, ask about their families. I´m going to start getting them to write their testimonies down. That´s a great idea. I just love the members here. They are so strong for living here, and rejecting the culture and everything in order to live the commandments of God. I tell them all the time that they are such examples and everything. I love them. I just wish that everyone we talked to, every door we knocked, every person we see, if they could all just know that we as missionaries are here to bring them the greatest message in the world, that all we want to do is serve them and help them and love them! I wish people could know that. Elder Bowers and I were talking about that a lot. We just want to love people and bring them the gospel. That´s all we want! I know in Alcoy that there is a family waiting for us to bring them the Restored Gospel and all of the blessings that that includes. I´m not going to lie, there are times when it´s hopeless, when you´ve been talking to people for five hours in the cold and no one will talk to you, but that thought that there is one family that we can love, help, serve, teach, baptize - that gives me hope. That keeps me going. One family, just like ours, who loves each other and wants to be happy and is thirsting for the truth. We´re going to find them. If it kills us! :)
So one good visit that we had this week, was with two Africans. We actually had two visits with them. The first one, we were just passing by them, because the missionaries had stopped teaching them for a while. We rang their bell, and they stuck their heads out the window to see who it was, and when they saw that it was us, boy were they so happy! They invited us up, and were very very very happy to see us and to talk to us. They speak English and are from Nigeria. They are people of great faith. They really want to follow Christ, it´s just that they aren´t married (like everyone) and so they can´t be baptized. They love the Book of Mormon. I loved teaching them, because I felt like a preacher. They truly love the word of God, and it was an example to me. We visited them one more time in the week, and it was just the guy there, and his name is Frank. He was really down, and he had been drinking a little bit. He confessed that back in Africa he was such a good Christian, and he kept the commandments and everything, but here in Spain, he got caught up in the world (now you have to remember that he speaks in very basic English). He got emotional and told us that he drinks, smokes, breaks the law of chastity, doesn´t read the good word of God as much, doesn´t go to church. He humbly asked us to help get his life back in order. We were very humbled as well, and we truly felt like servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. We´re going to help Frank get closer and closer to God. I love being a missionary and what we can do.
So, the man that typed the whole Book of Mormon on one finger invited us to come over to his house after church and to eat. He´s 91 and super old and super funny. He loves the missionaries, and he´s always telling us new hygiene things that we need to do. He winks a lot and just talks and talks and talks. We had Paella Valencia with them, and then we sang some hymns with them. I love the hymns. They´re the greatest. There is nothing like them. They touch me every time I sing.
So, last night, some Jehovahs witness guy tried to start talking to us, and he wasn´t even a good "testigo de Jehovah." He tried to start bible bashing, and I told him that if he wants to know the truth, to read the Book of Mormon. That´s all it comes down to, is that great Book. I love the Book of Mormon. I love it in English and in Spanish. It´s the greatest book there is. I love it.
So, I´m doing good here in Alcoy. It sounds like you are all doing well at home. Well, we´ll keep working hard here. Keep knocking doors, stopping people on the street, raise a warning voice and bring the restored gospel truth to the world. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Pericle
More on Alcoy
Dearrrrrrrr family!
Alcoy is incredible. I loved Hospitalet so much, but I think I might love Alcoy even more. It´s way down south, about two hours down from Valencia, and it´s a tiny little Spanish town. Cobblestone streets, 20,000 people, tons and tons of Spaniards with little to no south americans. I love it. This past week was great. After I emailed you, we got on a train, Elder Atkin and I. He´s like the older brother that I never had. He´s got 4 transfers left, and he speaks great Spanish, and he´s been with me since the beginning of my mission. We were together. Right before we were about to get on the train, I got a call from a member, and she told me that a member, Salva, had passed away. She didn´t know much, but she wanted to let us know before we left, because she knew that we used to visit him all the time. It was a sad moment, because we weren´t going to see him again in Spain, and he wasn´t going to give us a glass of coke like he always did, but we knew that we were going to see him again one day, thanks to the Atonement of Christ. It´s crazy how much love we as missionaries develop for people. So on our way down to Valencia from Barcelona, Elder Atkin and I were together, and it was super stressful carrying all of our luggage, because I have three bigs things and my briefcase, and I´ve heard too many horror stories about stuff getting stolen, so I was super careful, almost paranoid. I take after dad too much. I watched my stuff like a hawk. On the way down to Valencia, the train stopped, and we found out that we had to get off the train, take all of our stuff about a half mile away to a bus, that was going to take us to another train station, where we had to load all of our luggage again. I was sweating, stressing, because I had this heavy lugagge and so much of it. But this nice man from Africa came and helped me out. His name was Francisco. He saw me in my state of need, and he grabbed one of my bags and walked beside me and helped me out. I was so grateful for that. The world needs more people that are willing to help out like that! So we finally got to Valencia, and my companion came up from Alcoy to pick me up. I found out that every Tuesday, we take a two hour train ride to Valencia for district meeting, then we take the bus back at four, and we don´t get back until 6. That´s a ton of traveling! A lot of time to think and to read scriptures!
So first arriving in Alcoy, I find out that the missionaries who had been here in the past had had an absolutely terrible relationship with the members. I found out that there were fights, and it was just bad. Last transfer was pretty slow for the missionaries here, due to illness and disanimation. They have a few investigators here that aren´t really progressing, and are really nice, but don´t want to be baptized. The first thing I said to Elder Bowers was "We´re going to get this work going." Me and him are really excited about what we can do here. This past week, we were passing by a lot of people on the ward list, only to find out that they didn´t live there anymore, and were contacting people and talking to everyone. My spanish is really starting to take off, and let me tell you, it is an absolute joy! I still need to work on the accent, but I can understand pretty well, and I can get my point across. It´s such a joy. Heavenly Father has really blessed me with the gift of tongues.
So let me tell you one experience. We got a reference from this woman that the missionaries have been teaching forever that can´t be baptized because she works on Sunday, and so we went with her to her friends house. We were there with the bishop, and then friend was from Portugal, but she spoke English very well. She was telling us about her "twins" and how they were so sick and how the doctor said that she might as well put them down. She was going on and on, and we were really confused. Elder Bowers and I and the bishop were all looking at each other and wondering what was going on. We were really confused. Then she offered to show us her twins. We go back, and they are two nasty cats that are sick! They were in this baby crib, and had blankets around them and everything. She was very distressed about the state of her cats, and we were sensitive about it and everything, but those weren´t even cute cats! Oh the experiences of the mission.
So, one investigator we have, Abelardo, is a man from Colombia, and he loves the missionaries, and loves the Bible, and doesn´t see the need for the Book of Mormon. He says the Book of Mormon is good and all, but he doesn´t really understand it. We just have to get him to see and to feel by the power of the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon, if it really was written by prophets in the Ancient Americas, and if it really was translated by Joseph Smith by the power of God, it means absolutely everything! My testimony of the Book of Mormon has grown so much, and I don´t let a day get by without reading from it and feeling of the incredible spirit that comes from reading it. I love it.
So yesterday, we had church. I love church. The ward in Hospitalet was about 120, 130 people, and about 10 spaniards. The ward here is about 40 people, and about 3 south americans. It´s incredible! I just had a huge smile on, and Elder Bowers and I went around and shook hands, gave hugs to people, set up visits with people, and met so many people. I love the members here. You can tell that they are a little nervous about the missionaries, due to some things in the past, but we´re going to change that. We are going to get into every members home and read the scriptures with them and show them that we´re serious and we´re here to help the work go along here in Alcoy. The missionary that I replaced here couldn´t eat a lot of things because he was super allergic, and so the members were kind of annoyed at that. They are excited to cook for me, and I´m excited to eat! There are a lot of old people in our ward, and I´m excited to go over and talk to them all and to serve them and just love them to death. Last night, we had a fireside about missionary work, and it went super well. Now that I can communicate alright in Spanish, I just want to talk and talk and talk! We got the ward, or the 25 people that showed up, really excited about missionary work, and we gained their trust a lot. I´ve learned the power of the smile, and how a smile really makes life better. Enthusiasm is so important when it comes to missionary work, and me and Elder Bowers are going to try and be the most enthusiastic missionaries Alcoy has ever seen! I´m so excited to visit a lot of the members and to get to know them and just love them to death. Then, together with the members, the work can really move forward here in Alcoy.
So, dad, you´re a little sick? So am I. I had a cough, and am a little "constipado", which doesn´t mean what you think it means. It means stuffed up or something like that in Spanish. I like to say that a lot, because it makes me laugh a little. I´m still a twenty year old boy! Being sick is the worst, but it makes me realize how grateful I am for health. Oh, so if you write to the address in Barcelona, I´ll get my mail about every 6 weeks. But if you write to the address of our apartment here, I´ll get it right away! My address is
Elder Pericle
c/ Perú 40, 1, 2
03803 Alcoy
España
Feel free to write to that! It´s nice getting mail.
So, because I´ve been studying Spanish so much and really trying to immerse myself, my English has started to struggle. I´´m going to be so weird when I get back. My sisters are going to laugh at me.
Well, I got to get going. I pretty much love Alcoy, I love the small ward here, I love the members, Elder Bowers is great, I love Spanish, I love the Book of Mormon. There´s just a lot of love in my life right now, and it´s great. I´m really enjoying myself, and I´m really enjoying serving the Lord in the mission field.
Mucho Amor,
Elder Pericle
p.s. there´s this old man here that typed the whole Libro de Mormón on a type writer with one finger. Isn´t that neat?
Alcoy is incredible. I loved Hospitalet so much, but I think I might love Alcoy even more. It´s way down south, about two hours down from Valencia, and it´s a tiny little Spanish town. Cobblestone streets, 20,000 people, tons and tons of Spaniards with little to no south americans. I love it. This past week was great. After I emailed you, we got on a train, Elder Atkin and I. He´s like the older brother that I never had. He´s got 4 transfers left, and he speaks great Spanish, and he´s been with me since the beginning of my mission. We were together. Right before we were about to get on the train, I got a call from a member, and she told me that a member, Salva, had passed away. She didn´t know much, but she wanted to let us know before we left, because she knew that we used to visit him all the time. It was a sad moment, because we weren´t going to see him again in Spain, and he wasn´t going to give us a glass of coke like he always did, but we knew that we were going to see him again one day, thanks to the Atonement of Christ. It´s crazy how much love we as missionaries develop for people. So on our way down to Valencia from Barcelona, Elder Atkin and I were together, and it was super stressful carrying all of our luggage, because I have three bigs things and my briefcase, and I´ve heard too many horror stories about stuff getting stolen, so I was super careful, almost paranoid. I take after dad too much. I watched my stuff like a hawk. On the way down to Valencia, the train stopped, and we found out that we had to get off the train, take all of our stuff about a half mile away to a bus, that was going to take us to another train station, where we had to load all of our luggage again. I was sweating, stressing, because I had this heavy lugagge and so much of it. But this nice man from Africa came and helped me out. His name was Francisco. He saw me in my state of need, and he grabbed one of my bags and walked beside me and helped me out. I was so grateful for that. The world needs more people that are willing to help out like that! So we finally got to Valencia, and my companion came up from Alcoy to pick me up. I found out that every Tuesday, we take a two hour train ride to Valencia for district meeting, then we take the bus back at four, and we don´t get back until 6. That´s a ton of traveling! A lot of time to think and to read scriptures!
So first arriving in Alcoy, I find out that the missionaries who had been here in the past had had an absolutely terrible relationship with the members. I found out that there were fights, and it was just bad. Last transfer was pretty slow for the missionaries here, due to illness and disanimation. They have a few investigators here that aren´t really progressing, and are really nice, but don´t want to be baptized. The first thing I said to Elder Bowers was "We´re going to get this work going." Me and him are really excited about what we can do here. This past week, we were passing by a lot of people on the ward list, only to find out that they didn´t live there anymore, and were contacting people and talking to everyone. My spanish is really starting to take off, and let me tell you, it is an absolute joy! I still need to work on the accent, but I can understand pretty well, and I can get my point across. It´s such a joy. Heavenly Father has really blessed me with the gift of tongues.
So let me tell you one experience. We got a reference from this woman that the missionaries have been teaching forever that can´t be baptized because she works on Sunday, and so we went with her to her friends house. We were there with the bishop, and then friend was from Portugal, but she spoke English very well. She was telling us about her "twins" and how they were so sick and how the doctor said that she might as well put them down. She was going on and on, and we were really confused. Elder Bowers and I and the bishop were all looking at each other and wondering what was going on. We were really confused. Then she offered to show us her twins. We go back, and they are two nasty cats that are sick! They were in this baby crib, and had blankets around them and everything. She was very distressed about the state of her cats, and we were sensitive about it and everything, but those weren´t even cute cats! Oh the experiences of the mission.
So, one investigator we have, Abelardo, is a man from Colombia, and he loves the missionaries, and loves the Bible, and doesn´t see the need for the Book of Mormon. He says the Book of Mormon is good and all, but he doesn´t really understand it. We just have to get him to see and to feel by the power of the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon, if it really was written by prophets in the Ancient Americas, and if it really was translated by Joseph Smith by the power of God, it means absolutely everything! My testimony of the Book of Mormon has grown so much, and I don´t let a day get by without reading from it and feeling of the incredible spirit that comes from reading it. I love it.
So yesterday, we had church. I love church. The ward in Hospitalet was about 120, 130 people, and about 10 spaniards. The ward here is about 40 people, and about 3 south americans. It´s incredible! I just had a huge smile on, and Elder Bowers and I went around and shook hands, gave hugs to people, set up visits with people, and met so many people. I love the members here. You can tell that they are a little nervous about the missionaries, due to some things in the past, but we´re going to change that. We are going to get into every members home and read the scriptures with them and show them that we´re serious and we´re here to help the work go along here in Alcoy. The missionary that I replaced here couldn´t eat a lot of things because he was super allergic, and so the members were kind of annoyed at that. They are excited to cook for me, and I´m excited to eat! There are a lot of old people in our ward, and I´m excited to go over and talk to them all and to serve them and just love them to death. Last night, we had a fireside about missionary work, and it went super well. Now that I can communicate alright in Spanish, I just want to talk and talk and talk! We got the ward, or the 25 people that showed up, really excited about missionary work, and we gained their trust a lot. I´ve learned the power of the smile, and how a smile really makes life better. Enthusiasm is so important when it comes to missionary work, and me and Elder Bowers are going to try and be the most enthusiastic missionaries Alcoy has ever seen! I´m so excited to visit a lot of the members and to get to know them and just love them to death. Then, together with the members, the work can really move forward here in Alcoy.
So, dad, you´re a little sick? So am I. I had a cough, and am a little "constipado", which doesn´t mean what you think it means. It means stuffed up or something like that in Spanish. I like to say that a lot, because it makes me laugh a little. I´m still a twenty year old boy! Being sick is the worst, but it makes me realize how grateful I am for health. Oh, so if you write to the address in Barcelona, I´ll get my mail about every 6 weeks. But if you write to the address of our apartment here, I´ll get it right away! My address is
Elder Pericle
c/ Perú 40, 1, 2
03803 Alcoy
España
Feel free to write to that! It´s nice getting mail.
So, because I´ve been studying Spanish so much and really trying to immerse myself, my English has started to struggle. I´´m going to be so weird when I get back. My sisters are going to laugh at me.
Well, I got to get going. I pretty much love Alcoy, I love the small ward here, I love the members, Elder Bowers is great, I love Spanish, I love the Book of Mormon. There´s just a lot of love in my life right now, and it´s great. I´m really enjoying myself, and I´m really enjoying serving the Lord in the mission field.
Mucho Amor,
Elder Pericle
p.s. there´s this old man here that typed the whole Libro de Mormón on a type writer with one finger. Isn´t that neat?
Alcoy!
So the news has arrived. I´ve been transferred as far south in the
mission as we can go. I´m going to Alcoy. It´s south of Valencia,
and it´s right on the border with the Málaga Spain mission.
Supposedly it´s one of the prettiest places in the whole mission. In
the ward down there, it is all Spaniards. It will be a big change
from the ward we have here where it is almost all South Americans.
I´m pretty excited for it. My new companion is named Elder Bowers,
and he is very old in the mission, just like all of my companions have
been. By June, every companion I have had on the mission will be
home. That´s crazy! My former companion Elder Hansen served there,
and he said that he loved it. I´m kind of excited for it! We catch a
train today at 2:30 and go down and will stay the night in Valencia,
and then after that we get to take a two hour bus ride down to Alcoy.
It´s in a province called Alicante.
This past week was kind of a slower week. Elder Bodily was pretty
sick, and as a result slept a lot. He had a bad cough and he didn´t
really have an appetite. I tried my best to take care of him and get
him drinks of water and prepare him food. But between doing that, I
got A LOT of scripture study in. I really did get a lot in. It´s
funny, usually I would be playing video games, but I was reading the
scriptures and I was loving it. I learned so much. We went to the
emergency room with Elder Bodily and Hermana Hinckley, and Elder
Bodily has bronchitis and he got some medication. Prescriptions over
here in Spain are so cheap, it´s incredible. So yeah, Elder Bodily
spent a lot of time laying down and recovering, and I read a lot of
scriptures and a lot of talks from General Conference. But being
inside all day made me realize how much I actually enjoy being out in
the cold all bundled up and talking to people. When we finally got to
go back out and work, I loved it. I loved walking around in the
streets, talking to people, passing by people, getting yelled at by
kids from Marueccos. I love all of that. This past week we didn´t
really teach a lot of lessons, due to my companion's illness, but I
felt like I learned a lot and I grew a lot from the experiences that I
had.
So these past two days we have just been passing by people in the ward
that we have grown close to and also investigators that we have grown
close to. Visiting people and spending time with people and talking
about the gospel of Jesus Christ with them really makes you grow
closer to them. They´re incredible. I´m really going to miss a lot
of people here in Hospitalet. It´s a great place here. It´s my first
area, and I definitely won´t forget it.
It sounds like everything is doing great there on the homefront.
Sounds like Donny is going to have a good time in his tournament in
Charlottesville, sounds like dad had a good time trying on all those
jeans, sounds like it´s pretty chilly there as well! The kids here in
Spain went back to school yesterday, and when we would tell them that
our siblings went back to school a week ago, they were appalled. It
was too funny.
Well, I don´t have too many stories this week, because we didn´t get
out that much. I read a lot in the scriptures, and currently I´m in
Alma, and I´m right in the middle of the Captain Moroni chapters, and
man is it great. I learn so much from Captain Moroni and the way he
handles things. I love the part where they have that huge battle and
the other guy tries to stab him when he´s not looking, and Captain
Moroni´s soldier scalps him, then puts the scalp on the edge of the
sword. I remember that seminary video from a long long time ago, and
I´m excited to see it once again when I get back! I want to be a man
just like Captain Moroni, a man that loves his God, and loves his
land, liberty, and family. I think that´s one of the things that the
mission has done for me, it is shaping me into the man that I want to
become.
So yeah, I´´m all packed up, got all my things ready, and now it´s off
to Alcoy down south. I´m going to miss Hospitalet a lot, all of the
incredible people here, the great things that we´ve seen happen, the
miracles we saw every day, the tender mercies, everything. I´ve grown
a lot here in my first area, and it´s strengthened my testimony a lot.
I know that this is the true church. That God still talks to His
children through prophets, that this is a divine work led by God. I´m
so blessed to be a part of it. I was blessed to be a part of it here
in Hospitalet, but now it´s down to Alcoy to see what the Lord has
prepared down there! I´m very excited to see it. I´ll be sure to
take pictures and to let you know how everything goes!
Keep studying hard, let me know how college related things go with
Gabbi, Alex should be driving soon. Let me know about all of that!
It´s crazy it´s been 6 months on the mission. Time flies so fast. It
seems like yesterday Lisa and I were driving around before she dropped
me off in the MTC. We've got to take advantage of every moment we have!
I love you all so much. I´m very lucky to have such a great family,
it´s a great blessing. Keep being great.
Love,
Elder Pericle
mission as we can go. I´m going to Alcoy. It´s south of Valencia,
and it´s right on the border with the Málaga Spain mission.
Supposedly it´s one of the prettiest places in the whole mission. In
the ward down there, it is all Spaniards. It will be a big change
from the ward we have here where it is almost all South Americans.
I´m pretty excited for it. My new companion is named Elder Bowers,
and he is very old in the mission, just like all of my companions have
been. By June, every companion I have had on the mission will be
home. That´s crazy! My former companion Elder Hansen served there,
and he said that he loved it. I´m kind of excited for it! We catch a
train today at 2:30 and go down and will stay the night in Valencia,
and then after that we get to take a two hour bus ride down to Alcoy.
It´s in a province called Alicante.
This past week was kind of a slower week. Elder Bodily was pretty
sick, and as a result slept a lot. He had a bad cough and he didn´t
really have an appetite. I tried my best to take care of him and get
him drinks of water and prepare him food. But between doing that, I
got A LOT of scripture study in. I really did get a lot in. It´s
funny, usually I would be playing video games, but I was reading the
scriptures and I was loving it. I learned so much. We went to the
emergency room with Elder Bodily and Hermana Hinckley, and Elder
Bodily has bronchitis and he got some medication. Prescriptions over
here in Spain are so cheap, it´s incredible. So yeah, Elder Bodily
spent a lot of time laying down and recovering, and I read a lot of
scriptures and a lot of talks from General Conference. But being
inside all day made me realize how much I actually enjoy being out in
the cold all bundled up and talking to people. When we finally got to
go back out and work, I loved it. I loved walking around in the
streets, talking to people, passing by people, getting yelled at by
kids from Marueccos. I love all of that. This past week we didn´t
really teach a lot of lessons, due to my companion's illness, but I
felt like I learned a lot and I grew a lot from the experiences that I
had.
So these past two days we have just been passing by people in the ward
that we have grown close to and also investigators that we have grown
close to. Visiting people and spending time with people and talking
about the gospel of Jesus Christ with them really makes you grow
closer to them. They´re incredible. I´m really going to miss a lot
of people here in Hospitalet. It´s a great place here. It´s my first
area, and I definitely won´t forget it.
It sounds like everything is doing great there on the homefront.
Sounds like Donny is going to have a good time in his tournament in
Charlottesville, sounds like dad had a good time trying on all those
jeans, sounds like it´s pretty chilly there as well! The kids here in
Spain went back to school yesterday, and when we would tell them that
our siblings went back to school a week ago, they were appalled. It
was too funny.
Well, I don´t have too many stories this week, because we didn´t get
out that much. I read a lot in the scriptures, and currently I´m in
Alma, and I´m right in the middle of the Captain Moroni chapters, and
man is it great. I learn so much from Captain Moroni and the way he
handles things. I love the part where they have that huge battle and
the other guy tries to stab him when he´s not looking, and Captain
Moroni´s soldier scalps him, then puts the scalp on the edge of the
sword. I remember that seminary video from a long long time ago, and
I´m excited to see it once again when I get back! I want to be a man
just like Captain Moroni, a man that loves his God, and loves his
land, liberty, and family. I think that´s one of the things that the
mission has done for me, it is shaping me into the man that I want to
become.
So yeah, I´´m all packed up, got all my things ready, and now it´s off
to Alcoy down south. I´m going to miss Hospitalet a lot, all of the
incredible people here, the great things that we´ve seen happen, the
miracles we saw every day, the tender mercies, everything. I´ve grown
a lot here in my first area, and it´s strengthened my testimony a lot.
I know that this is the true church. That God still talks to His
children through prophets, that this is a divine work led by God. I´m
so blessed to be a part of it. I was blessed to be a part of it here
in Hospitalet, but now it´s down to Alcoy to see what the Lord has
prepared down there! I´m very excited to see it. I´ll be sure to
take pictures and to let you know how everything goes!
Keep studying hard, let me know how college related things go with
Gabbi, Alex should be driving soon. Let me know about all of that!
It´s crazy it´s been 6 months on the mission. Time flies so fast. It
seems like yesterday Lisa and I were driving around before she dropped
me off in the MTC. We've got to take advantage of every moment we have!
I love you all so much. I´m very lucky to have such a great family,
it´s a great blessing. Keep being great.
Love,
Elder Pericle
La Noche Vieja viene ya
Dear family!
It was great to talk on the phone with you. I think next time I will
get you to call a members house phone or something, because the cell
phone just does not cut it. It´s alright though. I was a little
stressed, as you could probably notice, because my companions parents
kept calling, and I didn´t want to be rude and stay on the phone
forever, but it was still really good to talk to you. Everyone seems
like they´re growing up and everything!
So this past week was definitely a slower week for us. My companion
has not been feeling well and as missionaries we do absolutely
everything together, so he´s been resting a lot. We only taught 8
lessons this past week, and we´re supposed to be teaching 20 easily.
It´s alright though, I hope he gets better soon.
One cool story that we just had this past week. We were knocking a
building, and we knocked a door, and this indian kid came and knocked
on the door, and I could tell that he was a little slower. I tried
talking to him really slow in Spanish, but he wasn´t communicating
with me. I asked where his parents were, and he ran back and got his
dad, and his dad was this indian man with a huge beard and mustache
and turban, and he came, and started speaking really broken spanish.
We found out that he speaks english a little better than spanish, so
we talked english with him. We found out that he was Sikh, or however
you spell it. His name is Sing, and he invited us over a little later
on, and we went over, and shared how God is our loving Heavenly Father
and how he has a body of glorified and perfected flesh and bones. It
was hard for him to accept that, or to grasp that concept. He kept
telling us that God can walk without legs and see without eyes and
hear without ears. It was really a waking up moment for my companion.
We realized that there are a lot of people in the world that don´t
realize the true nature of God. We know God as our loving Heavenly
Father, who does everything He does because He loves us. I can´t tell
you how many people we talk to on the street and are quite rude and
ask us what we´re doing here, when we should be in Africa. They say,
"If there is a God, then why does he let those kids starve in Africa?"
My companion and I have come to realize that people do not understand
agency and how it plays into the plan of salvation. What they really
don´t understand is just the plan of salvation. We have agency, and
we can use it for good and for bad. Agency is the ability to act for
ourselves. What we try to teach people is that the agency we have
affects others, and the agency others have affect us. God cannot take
away our agency, that is not part of the plan. So we have these
wicked people who use their agency to do bad, and as a result, people
suffer. The good thing is, is that we know that this life is just a
blink of an eye in our eternal design. I love having Elder Bodily as
a companion, because we like to talk deep doctrine together. He
doesn´t believe much of what I say, because he likes to have sources
for things, so it´s been really good because I learn to find stuff out
for myself in the scriptures and in talks, rather than just take
things as I hear them.
So this past week we also had a Christmas conference with our Mission
President and his wife, and missionaries from Barcelona, Hospitalet,
Lleida, and the Islands. There were about 40 or 50 missionaries
there, and it´s always a thrill to sing Called to Serve when you´re
all together. They showed a slideshow of Christ and Christmas, and
also a slideshow of the mission from the past year. There was a
picture of me contacting a man on there when I first got in the
mission. Too funny. They also showed pictures of missionaries going
home. All of my companions will be home by June of this year. That´s
so weird! I´m still a young missionary, but I feel older. I feel
that I have matured and grown a lot on my mission. It´s really great.
A mission really is the greatest thing. At times, you wonder how in
the world you´re going to make it, but it is all so worth it when you
see someone come a little closer to Christ and feel of His redeeming
love. All the no´s are forgotten, all of the people who chastise, all
of the long hours in the street. All of that is so worth it, and it
actually becomes enjoyable to do all of that because you know that you
are just that much closer to fufilling your puprose and "Inviting
people to come unto Christ by helping them receive the Restored
Gospel."
So I shared all of the little gifts that I had, and kids loved them!
I got hugged by little Gustavo, and a kiss on the cheek by little
Rubí. I got a picture with both of them, and they are too cute. I
understand what Christ said when he said that we need to become like
children. They are so sweet and so pure. It was great sharing the
Christmas spirit with kids. This Christmas was especially wonderful,
because it was in the mission field. The hymns meant more to me,
reading Luke 2 meant more to me, listening to Mo Tab meant more to me,
and eating with members and talking about Christ meant more to me. I
had a splendid time this Christmas here in Hospitalet. It seems like
a dream that we talked two days ago. It really does, like it barely
happened or something. I love the companions that I´m staying with.
We all get along really well, and even though we have our differences,
we´re all united in the trying to fufill our purpose and being the
best missionaries we can be. I told Gabbi that she needs to serve a
mission, and I mean it!
One silly thing we did, is that we took a picture of all four of us in
front of a door covering that someone got in a package that says Merry
Christmas, and we delivered it to all of the members. We wrote notes
on the back, and went by peoples houses and gave it to them and told
them that it was a picture of "cuatro de los hombres más guapos que
hay en todo de España." People would go nuts, especially the sisters
here. It´s too funny.
Well, I gotta get going. Canada sounds like it´s a blast. Thanks for all the Christmas packages, and thanks
to everyone that sent letters and packages! I really appreciate it!
The support is great. Much love, keep being great.
Hasta luego!
Elder Pericle
It was great to talk on the phone with you. I think next time I will
get you to call a members house phone or something, because the cell
phone just does not cut it. It´s alright though. I was a little
stressed, as you could probably notice, because my companions parents
kept calling, and I didn´t want to be rude and stay on the phone
forever, but it was still really good to talk to you. Everyone seems
like they´re growing up and everything!
So this past week was definitely a slower week for us. My companion
has not been feeling well and as missionaries we do absolutely
everything together, so he´s been resting a lot. We only taught 8
lessons this past week, and we´re supposed to be teaching 20 easily.
It´s alright though, I hope he gets better soon.
One cool story that we just had this past week. We were knocking a
building, and we knocked a door, and this indian kid came and knocked
on the door, and I could tell that he was a little slower. I tried
talking to him really slow in Spanish, but he wasn´t communicating
with me. I asked where his parents were, and he ran back and got his
dad, and his dad was this indian man with a huge beard and mustache
and turban, and he came, and started speaking really broken spanish.
We found out that he speaks english a little better than spanish, so
we talked english with him. We found out that he was Sikh, or however
you spell it. His name is Sing, and he invited us over a little later
on, and we went over, and shared how God is our loving Heavenly Father
and how he has a body of glorified and perfected flesh and bones. It
was hard for him to accept that, or to grasp that concept. He kept
telling us that God can walk without legs and see without eyes and
hear without ears. It was really a waking up moment for my companion.
We realized that there are a lot of people in the world that don´t
realize the true nature of God. We know God as our loving Heavenly
Father, who does everything He does because He loves us. I can´t tell
you how many people we talk to on the street and are quite rude and
ask us what we´re doing here, when we should be in Africa. They say,
"If there is a God, then why does he let those kids starve in Africa?"
My companion and I have come to realize that people do not understand
agency and how it plays into the plan of salvation. What they really
don´t understand is just the plan of salvation. We have agency, and
we can use it for good and for bad. Agency is the ability to act for
ourselves. What we try to teach people is that the agency we have
affects others, and the agency others have affect us. God cannot take
away our agency, that is not part of the plan. So we have these
wicked people who use their agency to do bad, and as a result, people
suffer. The good thing is, is that we know that this life is just a
blink of an eye in our eternal design. I love having Elder Bodily as
a companion, because we like to talk deep doctrine together. He
doesn´t believe much of what I say, because he likes to have sources
for things, so it´s been really good because I learn to find stuff out
for myself in the scriptures and in talks, rather than just take
things as I hear them.
So this past week we also had a Christmas conference with our Mission
President and his wife, and missionaries from Barcelona, Hospitalet,
Lleida, and the Islands. There were about 40 or 50 missionaries
there, and it´s always a thrill to sing Called to Serve when you´re
all together. They showed a slideshow of Christ and Christmas, and
also a slideshow of the mission from the past year. There was a
picture of me contacting a man on there when I first got in the
mission. Too funny. They also showed pictures of missionaries going
home. All of my companions will be home by June of this year. That´s
so weird! I´m still a young missionary, but I feel older. I feel
that I have matured and grown a lot on my mission. It´s really great.
A mission really is the greatest thing. At times, you wonder how in
the world you´re going to make it, but it is all so worth it when you
see someone come a little closer to Christ and feel of His redeeming
love. All the no´s are forgotten, all of the people who chastise, all
of the long hours in the street. All of that is so worth it, and it
actually becomes enjoyable to do all of that because you know that you
are just that much closer to fufilling your puprose and "Inviting
people to come unto Christ by helping them receive the Restored
Gospel."
So I shared all of the little gifts that I had, and kids loved them!
I got hugged by little Gustavo, and a kiss on the cheek by little
Rubí. I got a picture with both of them, and they are too cute. I
understand what Christ said when he said that we need to become like
children. They are so sweet and so pure. It was great sharing the
Christmas spirit with kids. This Christmas was especially wonderful,
because it was in the mission field. The hymns meant more to me,
reading Luke 2 meant more to me, listening to Mo Tab meant more to me,
and eating with members and talking about Christ meant more to me. I
had a splendid time this Christmas here in Hospitalet. It seems like
a dream that we talked two days ago. It really does, like it barely
happened or something. I love the companions that I´m staying with.
We all get along really well, and even though we have our differences,
we´re all united in the trying to fufill our purpose and being the
best missionaries we can be. I told Gabbi that she needs to serve a
mission, and I mean it!
One silly thing we did, is that we took a picture of all four of us in
front of a door covering that someone got in a package that says Merry
Christmas, and we delivered it to all of the members. We wrote notes
on the back, and went by peoples houses and gave it to them and told
them that it was a picture of "cuatro de los hombres más guapos que
hay en todo de España." People would go nuts, especially the sisters
here. It´s too funny.
Well, I gotta get going. Canada sounds like it´s a blast. Thanks for all the Christmas packages, and thanks
to everyone that sent letters and packages! I really appreciate it!
The support is great. Much love, keep being great.
Hasta luego!
Elder Pericle
Feliz Navidad
Querido familia,
Estamos muy animados por la navidad esta semana. Vamos a comer en la casa de una familia española que tenemos en nuestro barrio. Espero que ellos cocinen un montón de comida para nosotros.
How is Canada! It sounds freezing. It´s been pretty cold here the past couple of days, but it´s not as bad as -5 degrees farenheit! That´s crazy. My nice spanish jacket is keeping me very warm, and so is the scarf I have. The cold makes it hard to make contacts in the street, because the people don´t really want to stop! It´s okay though, the work will go on! So this past week I bought a pair of sweatpants in the mall here, and they are probably the best. I think being on the mission has made me appreciate things so much more. When we get home at night and it´s been a cold day in the street, I just love putting on sweatpants. The mission has made the small things about life so much more enjoyable. Who would have thought that sweatpants could make a 20 year old boy so happy. The mission really is the greatest. You learn so much and it´s just great. I also bought this ball for 95 centimos, and you can bounce it and it doesn´t make a loud noise. Remember mom when you used to get so mad about me bouncing a ball in the house? This ball is perfect, and I´m always bouncing it in piso. Fun stuff. Well enough about the worldly stuff, now to the stuff that really matters!
This past week we had a lot of people stand us up. We have been meeting with this guy named Nixon, and he continues to progress. We found out that he is married to someone else, and so is the woman he is living with, so in order for them to be baptized, they both need to get divorced from their separate partners, and they both need to get married. That just sounds complicated in words, and actually doing it is pretty much impossible, especially when you aren´t EXACTLY legally allowed to be living in Spain. We are still teaching them, but they have really complicated their lives. They love the reading, and Nixon is getting a lot better with his anger problems. Putting off the natural man and all. His little daughter, who is 3, was so sick the other night, and had a really bad fever, and so we gave her a priesthood blessing. What a blessing it is to have the "Sacerdocio del Melquisedec." That´s way too hard to spell in English! My English skills are slowly degenerating! But really, it´s such a blessing to have priesthood blessings. We gave quite a few this week, and it´s always such a blessing. The priesthood is really there for us to serve our fellow beings.
So another woman that we are teaching is this woman Wanda. She is letting a few members of our ward, Maikel and Jenny live with them. Maikel and Jenny are Dominicanos, and so is Wanda, and boy do I love Dominicanos. They have just another way of living. Maikel told me that it´s in Dominicanos blood to just LOVE women and to LOVE alcohol. He said it was so hard for him to put that stuff off, but once he did, he felt absolutely liberated. And now he has the blessings of it, because he has a beautiful wife and two absolutely adorable children. Maikel is probably my hero, and I will definitely visit him in La Republica Dominicana later on in life. This woman Wanda just had a baby with a man that has 3 other children with 3 other women. It´s a crazy world that we live in. She didn´t do her reading for two visits in a row, and we were kind of strong with her and told her that she needed to do her reading. We told her to read 3 Nephi 11 and imagine herself there. We came back the next time, and she LOVED it. She learned so much and she loved it. She could probably be baptized, but she is not married, and that´s a huge problem. We´re going to continue working with her.
This past week, we did a lot of eating. We had this dish from Ecuador called Encebollada twice, and boy is it so good. It´s a soup with onion and tuna, and it is incredible. José Antonio Luque also told me that he got dad´s email a while ago, and it was Italian or something. Made me laugh. The members are all so good here. Speaking of members, we had our ward party this past week, and it was an absolute blast. If there is time, I´ll put on a picture. All the different auxiliaries did skits and things, and we did a skit, and it was the day in the life of a missionary. We did it with music in Spanish that all the young people here gave us. It was really good. We did waking up, excercising, getting ready, proselyting and getting rejected, falling asleep during studies, fights with the spanish youth, hard moments on the mission (getting transfered, getting stood up, gettting a dear john) and then we did success. It was a hit, and everyone loved it. I have a video of it, but it´s 7 minutes long, so I guess in 2012 I´ll have to show it to you. It was really good, and all the members and non members loved it. We had a blast doing it, and it really made us realize all the different aspects of missonary work, and how it all comes together. All of these different experiences are going to help us later on in life. It´s wonderful.
It´s wonderful being able to serve the Lord in this time of year. Ít´s a special feeling, and some elders get homesick, but we´re all in this together. This week in our lessons we´re really going to focus on Jesus Christ, and exactly what our message to the world is. Our message to the world is not that we´re just a different church with a good message, but we´re the church that Christ recognizes on the earth. Jeffrery R Holland said that in order for people to have a conversion experience, we have to get people to the Sacred Grove first, but ultimately to Gethsemane and Calvary. What Christ did for us is incredible. I know that He suffered for us, He suffered for everyone. Everyone we see, He knows and loves. Everyone knew Christ in the premortal life. Everyone will know Him after. I love that assurance. He´s our Savior, and it´s a joy and a privilege to serve Him. Thanks for that story about the ant dad. Sometimes, I´m not going to lie, I ask myself why we have to be in the street when it´s frigid cold outside, and no one wants to talk to us, and we can´t get in anywhere to teach, and we could probably be back in our apartment, where it´s not too warm but a little warmer, and we could be eating hot chocolate and studying the Book of Mormon. It´s because Heavenly Father wants us to be out in the street, He wants us to do all we can to find the people that will accept our message, and come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him. It´s not easy, not one bit, but it´s so enjoyable, and I´m so thankful for the opportunity I have to serve a mission.
Merry Christmas to the family and to everyone!
Love,
Elder Pericle
P.s. The other day, I went on intercambios with my Dominican friend Miakel, and I met his friend named Spanky, who used to be a boxer and train boxers, and we talked for 2 hours about working out, and he reminded me of Nonno, except he was black and from Africa and only spoke Spanish. He got me on the floor working out and doing push ups and stretching a ton. This morning, Elder Hansen and I went to the park at 7 in the morning, and were the only ones there, and we ran stairs and did pushups and curls, and I thought I was going to throw up. We decided that if our bodies are our temples, we´re going to make them nice temples. It was a great way to start out the preparation day today. It reminded me of the old days, working out with Brett and Will and all my boys at the local YMCA. Tell them I miss them and think about them often!
Estamos muy animados por la navidad esta semana. Vamos a comer en la casa de una familia española que tenemos en nuestro barrio. Espero que ellos cocinen un montón de comida para nosotros.
How is Canada! It sounds freezing. It´s been pretty cold here the past couple of days, but it´s not as bad as -5 degrees farenheit! That´s crazy. My nice spanish jacket is keeping me very warm, and so is the scarf I have. The cold makes it hard to make contacts in the street, because the people don´t really want to stop! It´s okay though, the work will go on! So this past week I bought a pair of sweatpants in the mall here, and they are probably the best. I think being on the mission has made me appreciate things so much more. When we get home at night and it´s been a cold day in the street, I just love putting on sweatpants. The mission has made the small things about life so much more enjoyable. Who would have thought that sweatpants could make a 20 year old boy so happy. The mission really is the greatest. You learn so much and it´s just great. I also bought this ball for 95 centimos, and you can bounce it and it doesn´t make a loud noise. Remember mom when you used to get so mad about me bouncing a ball in the house? This ball is perfect, and I´m always bouncing it in piso. Fun stuff. Well enough about the worldly stuff, now to the stuff that really matters!
This past week we had a lot of people stand us up. We have been meeting with this guy named Nixon, and he continues to progress. We found out that he is married to someone else, and so is the woman he is living with, so in order for them to be baptized, they both need to get divorced from their separate partners, and they both need to get married. That just sounds complicated in words, and actually doing it is pretty much impossible, especially when you aren´t EXACTLY legally allowed to be living in Spain. We are still teaching them, but they have really complicated their lives. They love the reading, and Nixon is getting a lot better with his anger problems. Putting off the natural man and all. His little daughter, who is 3, was so sick the other night, and had a really bad fever, and so we gave her a priesthood blessing. What a blessing it is to have the "Sacerdocio del Melquisedec." That´s way too hard to spell in English! My English skills are slowly degenerating! But really, it´s such a blessing to have priesthood blessings. We gave quite a few this week, and it´s always such a blessing. The priesthood is really there for us to serve our fellow beings.
So another woman that we are teaching is this woman Wanda. She is letting a few members of our ward, Maikel and Jenny live with them. Maikel and Jenny are Dominicanos, and so is Wanda, and boy do I love Dominicanos. They have just another way of living. Maikel told me that it´s in Dominicanos blood to just LOVE women and to LOVE alcohol. He said it was so hard for him to put that stuff off, but once he did, he felt absolutely liberated. And now he has the blessings of it, because he has a beautiful wife and two absolutely adorable children. Maikel is probably my hero, and I will definitely visit him in La Republica Dominicana later on in life. This woman Wanda just had a baby with a man that has 3 other children with 3 other women. It´s a crazy world that we live in. She didn´t do her reading for two visits in a row, and we were kind of strong with her and told her that she needed to do her reading. We told her to read 3 Nephi 11 and imagine herself there. We came back the next time, and she LOVED it. She learned so much and she loved it. She could probably be baptized, but she is not married, and that´s a huge problem. We´re going to continue working with her.
This past week, we did a lot of eating. We had this dish from Ecuador called Encebollada twice, and boy is it so good. It´s a soup with onion and tuna, and it is incredible. José Antonio Luque also told me that he got dad´s email a while ago, and it was Italian or something. Made me laugh. The members are all so good here. Speaking of members, we had our ward party this past week, and it was an absolute blast. If there is time, I´ll put on a picture. All the different auxiliaries did skits and things, and we did a skit, and it was the day in the life of a missionary. We did it with music in Spanish that all the young people here gave us. It was really good. We did waking up, excercising, getting ready, proselyting and getting rejected, falling asleep during studies, fights with the spanish youth, hard moments on the mission (getting transfered, getting stood up, gettting a dear john) and then we did success. It was a hit, and everyone loved it. I have a video of it, but it´s 7 minutes long, so I guess in 2012 I´ll have to show it to you. It was really good, and all the members and non members loved it. We had a blast doing it, and it really made us realize all the different aspects of missonary work, and how it all comes together. All of these different experiences are going to help us later on in life. It´s wonderful.
It´s wonderful being able to serve the Lord in this time of year. Ít´s a special feeling, and some elders get homesick, but we´re all in this together. This week in our lessons we´re really going to focus on Jesus Christ, and exactly what our message to the world is. Our message to the world is not that we´re just a different church with a good message, but we´re the church that Christ recognizes on the earth. Jeffrery R Holland said that in order for people to have a conversion experience, we have to get people to the Sacred Grove first, but ultimately to Gethsemane and Calvary. What Christ did for us is incredible. I know that He suffered for us, He suffered for everyone. Everyone we see, He knows and loves. Everyone knew Christ in the premortal life. Everyone will know Him after. I love that assurance. He´s our Savior, and it´s a joy and a privilege to serve Him. Thanks for that story about the ant dad. Sometimes, I´m not going to lie, I ask myself why we have to be in the street when it´s frigid cold outside, and no one wants to talk to us, and we can´t get in anywhere to teach, and we could probably be back in our apartment, where it´s not too warm but a little warmer, and we could be eating hot chocolate and studying the Book of Mormon. It´s because Heavenly Father wants us to be out in the street, He wants us to do all we can to find the people that will accept our message, and come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him. It´s not easy, not one bit, but it´s so enjoyable, and I´m so thankful for the opportunity I have to serve a mission.
Merry Christmas to the family and to everyone!
Love,
Elder Pericle
P.s. The other day, I went on intercambios with my Dominican friend Miakel, and I met his friend named Spanky, who used to be a boxer and train boxers, and we talked for 2 hours about working out, and he reminded me of Nonno, except he was black and from Africa and only spoke Spanish. He got me on the floor working out and doing push ups and stretching a ton. This morning, Elder Hansen and I went to the park at 7 in the morning, and were the only ones there, and we ran stairs and did pushups and curls, and I thought I was going to throw up. We decided that if our bodies are our temples, we´re going to make them nice temples. It was a great way to start out the preparation day today. It reminded me of the old days, working out with Brett and Will and all my boys at the local YMCA. Tell them I miss them and think about them often!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Cantan Santos Angeles
Dear family,
So once again, in a little Muslim computer shop, where the keyboards
Don’t quite function right. The weeks just fly by! This past week,
Elder Bodily and I had an absolute blast. He is my new companion from
Ogden, Utah. He plays the piano super well, he knows the scriptures,
and he´s a runner. We have way too much fun together. I´m going to
send a picture of us that we took right before we went out to go
proselyting.
So on Tuesday, I met Elder Bodily, and then we did all the stuff that
we needed to do, and then that night we went to Plaza Catalunya in the
heart of Barcelona and did contacts and sang to the missionaries that
were going home. It´s so weird seeing missionaries go home! We had a
good time singing, even though it was freezing! All the missionaries
that will go home in the summer have it so much better because the
nights are way more beautiful. It gets cold here in Spain. Not as
cold as Russia or the Baltics like the Froelich Elders, but pretty
cold.
So on Wednesday, we had a cita with a Dominican lady named Margarita.
She is really, really nice, and we´ve been meeting with her for a long
time. She wants to get baptized, and she knows that it´s something
she has to do, the only problem is that she works on Sunday and says
that she can´t give that up. We´re still working with her. We want
to get her baptized this year, but maybe that´s not the will of the
Lord. She’s really nice, she loves the elders, and she loves all the
members that we´ve introduced her to. Then we had our district
meeting, and one of the Hermanas in our district is from Spain, so we
did the whole meeting in Spanish! That still blows me away, that by
being immersed in Spanish, you just kind of learn it. So then this
night, we met a new investigator named Eddy, who is a sad soul. He´s
from Ecuador, he doesn´t work, he sits at home all day, and he told us
that he doesn´t really have purpose to his life. We hope that we can
help him out a lot, and help him realize his divine potential and his
purpose in the plan of salvation. He live with a member named Angel,
who is this man with one leg and he walks funny and I just love him to
death. He is so humble and sweet and I just give him a big hug
every time I see him. The members here are wonderful. Another cita we
had was with a man and a woman named Mariuxi and Nixon. They are from
Ecuador, she´s really sweet and patient and loves the missionaries and
what we teach, and he´s pretty good, but has anger problems. She´s
really patient with him. Of course, they´re not married, but they are
pretty interested. If we can get them married, the gospel would be
so so so good for them. Then for dinner we went to Los Luque, and we
ate so much. I´m starving right now because we ran out of food from
last week!
On Thursday, we got stood up a lot, but we did a lot of good work. We
talked to a lot of people and set up a lot of good citas for this
week. We had dinner with the Dominican lady named Marienela, and it
just makes me want to baptize lots of people! She takes care of us
like we´re her children. The gospel brings people together like
nothing else. On Friday, I got to go on intercambios with a Spaniard
named Elder Ramirez, and he was SO INTENSE. I was so worn out from
being with him because he had so much energy, talked so much! He is
the best missionary, and my brain was fried from thinking straight in
Spanish. Having a native companion would be so fun but so difficult!
I hope that I get it one day. Today we contacted a lot of people and
had a lot of good visits. One visit was with a man named Pepe, and his
wife is LDS and he isn´t. He thinks he´s too learned to be a member
of the church. We had a good cita with him, and my intercambio
companion told him that he would get baptized one day. The guy said
one day, I will. It was a good cita. The spirit can change hearts.
On Saturday, we had a lot of good things going on. We met with a lot
of good people. We contacted 50 people today, and talked to them
about the gospel. It was so fun. We talked to all different kinds of
people. People who believe, don´t believe, want to believe, don´t
want to believe. Nice people, mean people, swearing people. It was
fun. It was late and we preached to a bunch of people drinking in a
park. We just bore testimony about the happiness that God wants for
us. We had a really good time. Missionary work is the most fun when
you´re working the hardest. That´s absolutely the truth. I love it!
We had a good visit with a girl named Katy who is working to get
baptized in an Evangelical church. We taught the Restoration
beautifully, and we told her to read and pray about the Book of
Mormon. We felt the spirit, she felt the spirit, and she knew that
what we were teaching was true. Her husband came out in the middle of
the lesson and got mad at her for listening to us. We were trying to
be nice and he got mad, and then she got mad at him and told him to go
into his room. He left in a huff. This girl Katy has been prepared.
She´s going to read a part of the Book of Mormon and pray and we´re
meeting with her again this week. The good thing that we know is that
the Book is true, and that God WILL answer her if she prays sincerely.
I just sent my president letter to you, and that has basically everything in it.
Basically, we´re having a blast here in L’Hospitalet. I love my peanut
butter sandwiches. On one worldy note, that´s awesome that Lebron
had 38 points. He´s the man.
So, we´re so excited for Christmas here. It´s a wonderful time. It´s
going to be a white Christmas for us here, because we´re going to help
someone receive the saving ordinance of baptism before the end of the
year. I have faith, and Elder Bodily and I are going to work hard and
do it with the help of the Lord.
I love you fam, keep being great!
Love,
Elder Pericle
P.s. In every cita, Elder Bodily and I sing Christmas songs in
Spanish, and it´s wonderful. The people here love hearing two
American boys sing.
So once again, in a little Muslim computer shop, where the keyboards
Don’t quite function right. The weeks just fly by! This past week,
Elder Bodily and I had an absolute blast. He is my new companion from
Ogden, Utah. He plays the piano super well, he knows the scriptures,
and he´s a runner. We have way too much fun together. I´m going to
send a picture of us that we took right before we went out to go
proselyting.
So on Tuesday, I met Elder Bodily, and then we did all the stuff that
we needed to do, and then that night we went to Plaza Catalunya in the
heart of Barcelona and did contacts and sang to the missionaries that
were going home. It´s so weird seeing missionaries go home! We had a
good time singing, even though it was freezing! All the missionaries
that will go home in the summer have it so much better because the
nights are way more beautiful. It gets cold here in Spain. Not as
cold as Russia or the Baltics like the Froelich Elders, but pretty
cold.
So on Wednesday, we had a cita with a Dominican lady named Margarita.
She is really, really nice, and we´ve been meeting with her for a long
time. She wants to get baptized, and she knows that it´s something
she has to do, the only problem is that she works on Sunday and says
that she can´t give that up. We´re still working with her. We want
to get her baptized this year, but maybe that´s not the will of the
Lord. She’s really nice, she loves the elders, and she loves all the
members that we´ve introduced her to. Then we had our district
meeting, and one of the Hermanas in our district is from Spain, so we
did the whole meeting in Spanish! That still blows me away, that by
being immersed in Spanish, you just kind of learn it. So then this
night, we met a new investigator named Eddy, who is a sad soul. He´s
from Ecuador, he doesn´t work, he sits at home all day, and he told us
that he doesn´t really have purpose to his life. We hope that we can
help him out a lot, and help him realize his divine potential and his
purpose in the plan of salvation. He live with a member named Angel,
who is this man with one leg and he walks funny and I just love him to
death. He is so humble and sweet and I just give him a big hug
every time I see him. The members here are wonderful. Another cita we
had was with a man and a woman named Mariuxi and Nixon. They are from
Ecuador, she´s really sweet and patient and loves the missionaries and
what we teach, and he´s pretty good, but has anger problems. She´s
really patient with him. Of course, they´re not married, but they are
pretty interested. If we can get them married, the gospel would be
so so so good for them. Then for dinner we went to Los Luque, and we
ate so much. I´m starving right now because we ran out of food from
last week!
On Thursday, we got stood up a lot, but we did a lot of good work. We
talked to a lot of people and set up a lot of good citas for this
week. We had dinner with the Dominican lady named Marienela, and it
just makes me want to baptize lots of people! She takes care of us
like we´re her children. The gospel brings people together like
nothing else. On Friday, I got to go on intercambios with a Spaniard
named Elder Ramirez, and he was SO INTENSE. I was so worn out from
being with him because he had so much energy, talked so much! He is
the best missionary, and my brain was fried from thinking straight in
Spanish. Having a native companion would be so fun but so difficult!
I hope that I get it one day. Today we contacted a lot of people and
had a lot of good visits. One visit was with a man named Pepe, and his
wife is LDS and he isn´t. He thinks he´s too learned to be a member
of the church. We had a good cita with him, and my intercambio
companion told him that he would get baptized one day. The guy said
one day, I will. It was a good cita. The spirit can change hearts.
On Saturday, we had a lot of good things going on. We met with a lot
of good people. We contacted 50 people today, and talked to them
about the gospel. It was so fun. We talked to all different kinds of
people. People who believe, don´t believe, want to believe, don´t
want to believe. Nice people, mean people, swearing people. It was
fun. It was late and we preached to a bunch of people drinking in a
park. We just bore testimony about the happiness that God wants for
us. We had a really good time. Missionary work is the most fun when
you´re working the hardest. That´s absolutely the truth. I love it!
We had a good visit with a girl named Katy who is working to get
baptized in an Evangelical church. We taught the Restoration
beautifully, and we told her to read and pray about the Book of
Mormon. We felt the spirit, she felt the spirit, and she knew that
what we were teaching was true. Her husband came out in the middle of
the lesson and got mad at her for listening to us. We were trying to
be nice and he got mad, and then she got mad at him and told him to go
into his room. He left in a huff. This girl Katy has been prepared.
She´s going to read a part of the Book of Mormon and pray and we´re
meeting with her again this week. The good thing that we know is that
the Book is true, and that God WILL answer her if she prays sincerely.
I just sent my president letter to you, and that has basically everything in it.
Basically, we´re having a blast here in L’Hospitalet. I love my peanut
butter sandwiches. On one worldy note, that´s awesome that Lebron
had 38 points. He´s the man.
So, we´re so excited for Christmas here. It´s a wonderful time. It´s
going to be a white Christmas for us here, because we´re going to help
someone receive the saving ordinance of baptism before the end of the
year. I have faith, and Elder Bodily and I are going to work hard and
do it with the help of the Lord.
I love you fam, keep being great!
Love,
Elder Pericle
P.s. In every cita, Elder Bodily and I sing Christmas songs in
Spanish, and it´s wonderful. The people here love hearing two
American boys sing.
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