Island Hopping

For those of you who remember the Talavera Blitz, once again, the title of my email is actually not related to WW2. Maybe one day.


This week we went back to Lanzarote. We got to take a ferry which was more time consuming but a lot cheaper and more interesting than a plane. Check out the photos. Having two areas is a lot of fun but it's a balancing act to cover both equally. For a lot of reasons we spend more time in Fuerteventura and always kind of feel like we're neglecting Lanzarote. Fuerteventura is where we keep most of our stuff, taking only the essentials to Lanzarote. Fuerteventura feels like home base and Lanzarote feels like an extended business trip. Luckily, the work is advancing on both islands.


I guess I haven't told you guys about Efigenia yet. Efigenia is a member of the Arrecife Ward on Lanzarote who is very dedicated to missionary work. For this reason, she calls us at least once a day, especially when we're on the other island. I have to admit, it's not always super useful and sometimes she just wants to talk. However, she is constantly passing us referrals of people she knows or has met  who seem open to the gospel. And occasionally, she wants to take us with her to meet with her friends and teach them. 


Yesterday she called us over and decided she wanted to go see her friend Margarita who she hasn't seen in years. She knew where the building was but didn't know what number, so she started calling Margarita's name and asking the neighbors if they knew where she lived. Believe it or not, it worked. The family let us in, Margarita and Efigenia were catching up and swapping stories, Epder Quintana was practicing Portuguese with them, and we had the opportunity to teach them the first lesson. Efigenia sat with her friend and backed up everything we said, and then we left them with a Book of Mormon, the address of the chapel, our phone number, Efigenia's phone number, instructions on how to pray, and the invitation to pray about what we shared. Crazy. Missionaries will always have more success when locals can just point them in the right direction, and the gospel can also come from a friend, not just two incredibly good-looking extranjeros.


We've been finding lots of people on the streets. Of course not everyone is super excited to hear we're sharing a message about Jesus Christ but those who are help us keep up the motivation. And if Efigenia is with us and jumps in and invites them to the ward Christmas party, that doesn't hurt either.


We spend a lot of time cleaning out old lists of people who have been taught by missionaries in the past or gave them a phone number one day. There's always a chance that someone fell through the cracks or might want to start talking to missionaries again. And we found quite a few people that way this week! The only trouble is that almost all of them live on the mainland, so we taught them for a hit over video call and then handed them off. One of them even accepted a baptismal date during our handoff lesson to the Sisters in the Madrid 5th ward. Oh well. We've got our work and they've got theirs.


Been thinking a lot lately about the Book of Mormon. Well, okay that should be obvious but as I've said before, being a missionary means you have to understand the gospel deeply enough that you can help someone form the idea of it in their head from nothing. You need to understand where it all comes from. For example, take a question like this: why is it so important to go to church one day a week? Why is that an eternal truth? Why of all the things that are true or could be true, is that important in the grand scheme of things? Why does that matter to God?


If the Book of Mormon is the word of God, revealed though His prophet by His gift and power, we can find the answer. We can read about Jesus Christ instituting the sacrament, or Alma organizing a branch of the Church of God from scratch, and see the importance that a modern sacrament meeting has. The Book of Mormon is full of truth, stated a lot more clearly than you'd think, and it's a tool for bringing people to the knowledge of their Father in Heaven.


Slice of Life 
We spent last P-day with an old friend of my dad's, José Bolaños. José considers himself a "P-day specialist" and has a long history of helping missionaries not spend P-day in their apartment. He took us around the island to see cool views and old buildings, which was fire. Lots of pictures at the end.


Pictures 
Ferrari/SmartCar
Ate a Kinder Egg. Anyone want to help me hide from the FBI when I get back to the States? (They're illegal there)
Efigenia!
P-day with Jose Bolaños. Old churches and cool views
Lunch with Jose Bolaños


Gmail's acting up so I'll send a follow up with a few more pics. 
And don't forget to join the Google Photos:
Videos and stuff go here^







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