Rock, Water, And Spirit
1. New Stuff
New time zone, continent, area, and comp. I'm not ruling out the possibility that my favorite color changed this week either.
Greetings from Fuerteventura!
Travel was a lot but I finally landed here in the Canaries on Wednesday. My new comp is Elder Quintana from Majorca. He's a legend and we're working pretty well together.
Our area covers two islands, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, which makes it big enough that we have two apartments and switch back and forth on a weekly basis. We haven't switched yet since we just got here and we won't next week because we have a bunch of stuff to do on Gran Canaria (the central one that has the other 6 missionaries in our district) but we'll get there eventually.
Fuerteventura is a giant rock in the middle of the sea. Flying over it, it looks like a Mars colony basically. Just rocks, hills, and small clusters of organized buildings. Everyone keeps telling me that the little lines and specks of green are only here because it rained a lot last week. I kind of love it, it's so simple and natural. Forget lush forests, real nature is rocks, dirt, and water.
The work is pretty different here, I haven't been around long enough to get to know a lot of people but we're teaching one guy on the other island over video call who is on date for baptism which is cool. For the most part the focus of the area is finding more people to teach, so we do a lot of street contacting and cold calls. It's a different but important part of missionary work.
Miracles are happening already, we met this Columbian woman named Carmen who told us that she felt prompted to take a certain street to find people who would talk to her about God. We almost didn't stop her but I'm sure glad we did. I'm excited to see how it goes with her.
2. Slice of Life
To get to our grocery store, we cross a section of literal desert, and if you take photos at the right angle, you can't see any civilization. Like Nephi, we cross the wilderness looking for food.
Following my comp's lead, I opened a ham sandwich this morning and poured olive oil on one slice of the bread like I was adding mayo. They turned me into a Spaniard guys.
Absolutely WON district get to know you videos. Check the Google photos for the videos with the really dark lighting.
3. Spiritual Thought
Found a copy of Saints: The Standard of Truth in the new apartment, so I've been readung that a lot. (I kind of thought/hoped it would take a whole transfer and a half the way Jesus the Christ did, but it's written in really big letters so it's deceptively quick to read and I'm already more than halfway. Whoops) Anyway, it talks a lot about the first missionaries and first converts to the church. There are stories that make being a missionary in those days look much much easier and also much much harder than it is today. Something that stuck out to me is that people who took the time to think about and ponder what early missionaries preached* and pray to know the truth sincerely gained testimonies powerful enough to drive them to move to new lands and follow the commandments of God. Missionary work isn't about convincing people, it's just about sharing the gospel in a positive way, helping people to see that it's true and good, and guiding them as they learn more and seek answers from heaven.
*Hear me out
Teach- taught :-)
Preach- praught :-P
Don't overthink anything,
Elder Curtis
4. Photos
Forgot to drop the link last week
Join with your Google account if you want notifications when photos are added. This is also where all the videos are going because they're too big to add to emails. There's some good ones.
Out of order again
Comp selfie in the wilderness
And in the branch president's van after soccer
Not enough photos of the Canarias
Ham sandwich with olive oil
Really tasty non-Spaniard dinner
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