Curtis, Alex

Can we even call this a week? Last P-day I left the islands with Elder Quintana and I didn't come back until Friday night. I've been working for two days here with my new companion, Elder Nelson, and it's already P-day again. I'm glad Elder Quintana made it home, he was an awesome companion but he also has a year-old nephew he needed to meet. Everything I've heard and seen about his time as a missionary was legendary. It was sad to split up at the airport but I'm pumped for the opportunity to bring someone new to these islands. Tuesday and Wednesday I worked in a trio with our ZLs on Gran Canaria, which was cool. They've got an awesome area and work really well together. Then we went to Madrid for mission conference, which was awesome. Everyone was there, so I got to see all my old companions and district members, and pick up Elder Nelson. He just finished his training in northern Spain, and has the fortune to get to move on to the coolest islands in the Can...

Okay first things first: transfer news came in, but not before President Eastland announced that they're holding a mission conference. I didn't realize how big of a deal this is, but normally they don't pull all of the missionaries out of their areas and gather them to Madrid for any small reason. Usually it's something huge like a change in mission president or a visiting general authority. It doesn't seem like it's either of those, so we'll see what happens. No one saw it coming, and nobody knows what to think. I'm crazy excited. My new companions name is Elder Nelson, I haven't met him yet since he started his mission on the mainland a few days after I got to the islands. He just finished his training and we need some new blood down here. Can't wait to throw him headfirst into our area.  Districts also got realigned, for some reason we got put with the missionaries on the island of Tenerife on the other side of the archipelago. Its going to be...

This turned out really long actually. Was not expecting that. The zone has put a lot of emphasis on finding more people to teach this week. That's tough a lot of the time, because a harsh reality is that we're the only two missionaries on these two islands, and there are so many children of God who need the gospel here. It's also pretty tough that so many of them want nothing to do with it. Finding is a grind, and street contacting is only effective at a few specific hours a day, and even then not many people are interested. When we clean out our contacts list, like half the people who are interested actually live in Vallecas on the mainland, since our sim card used to be there or something. Facebook work is a haystack-needle situation.  But it's okay, because we have at least three people we found in the last three months with methods like these. And that's what matters. Carmen, who we just stopped in the street back in November, has decided that yes, she wants to ...

^^^ Context is coming, don't worry Weekly Highlights: Graciela got baptized! She's an old woman whose son Saul is a member but hasn't been to church in a while. He reached out to us at the beginning of this transfer and told us that his mom wanted to talk to us and get baptized. She can't really move around much, which made setting appointments easy but the baptism hard. We spent a lot of time this week coordinating everything, (nearly had to do it at the beach) but after a million phone calls and a lot of prayers we got it done. In the end a few guys got together and just lifted her into the font. Really couldn't have done it without Saul, who knows his mom and her limitations better than anyone. We're really happy for her. Isa was going to get baptized the same day but got really sick out of nowhere. We did visit her and give her a blessing, and we've been talking about the importance of the scriptures. She loves learning with us and it committed to gettin...

Wasn't a very busy week given the holidays, but the lessons we did have were awesome! We taught Melissa about the Restoration a few days ago. While we talked about prophets, Elder Quintana mentioned President Nelson's background as a heart surgeon, which isn't something we normally bring up (cool as it is) and it totally clicked with her! The idea that a doctor/scientist type, whose job it is to help people and discover truth, was called as a prophet to do the exact same things by the power of God, is a powerful truth that she loved. She's so open to learning more and it's awesome. We had a lesson with Elisa and talked about the Plan of Salvation. Several times we explained a point in the plan, and her immediate response was "I love it". When we understand the plan of happiness in its perfect fairness as the blessing that it is, it's something beautiful to discuss and share. Yesterday Carmen invited us over for cake, which was cool because no one else ...