Haga La Vaina!

Title translation- do the thingy. The most effective way for companions to motivate each other.


Forget Valentines' Day, we talking about Carnaval!


Basically, Easter (Pascua) is important here because of the country's Catholic background, so important that they preceed it with a period of "fasting" (not from food, but just giving up a small luxury) that's called Lent. (Cuaresma) That's important, so logically they prepare for that by throwing massive constume parties and binging everything during Carnaval. We saw a lot of cross-dressers, carnivals, and concerts around Arrecife this week which was cool.


At the beginning of the week in Fuerteventura we ran into Luca on the street again, and he had great questions about the Book of Mormon and the history it describes. He says it's sometimes tough to understand but he's working on 1 Nephi so we're hopeful. That same night we went and played basketball with my dad's old friend José who kept calling me my dad's name. Then we had to leave for Lanzarote but we'll see him when we get back.


The work on Lanzarote goes on... the greatest member missionary to ever live, Efigenia, left this morning for the temple in Madrid and tried to spend the whole week in her house so she wouldn't have to risk getting sick. We did get to see her at church though. 


Also at church was our solid on-date, José. His wife is going be at the temple with Efigenia all week but we set up an appointment in the church and he'll get his baptismal interview. 


I also finally got to meet Amparo at church. When I arrived here in the islands, a big piece of news was that she'd canceled her baptism because her friends talked her out of it. Well Elder Nelson and I got a text from her son in Peru saying that it was time to try again, and sure enough she pulled up to church! We have an appointment to start teaching her again.


The Lanzarote members are used to saying hi to us at church, asking how long we'll be here, and learning that we're bouncing in two days. That's the tough thing about traveling midweek. However, this week we got to tell them that we'll be here until next Sunday, a whole week. Suddenly we had like three meal appointments, an invitation to ward council, and an offer to attend someone's family home evening. This ward deserves its very own missionaries.


We dropped by Efigenia's friend Margarita unannounced on Thursday,  who let us in, so we taught a quick lesson and tried to involve her son Dixon who usually doesn't participate. It's not always easy, especially since their first language is Portuguese and I think Margarita in particular is exaggerating her ability to understand our Spanish. But her daughter Marima asked us a few weeks ago if the fact that she's a baptized Jehovah's Witness would be a problem if she wanted to join our church. So there's lots of potential. We'll keep going.


Biggest disappointment is that at the beginning of this week, while we were on the other island, Isa blocked us on WhatsApp. Efigenia mentioned she kept pushing back the day when she'd start coming to church, and really didn't want to hear from us so much. We left her a note inviting her to church on Saturday, and her husband rejected us at the door when we passed by on Sunday. It's tough because she was a great friend of ours who was preparing for baptism. We're not 100% sure what happened, and haven't lost hope yet because she's got some great fellowshippers. The work goes on I guess.


In the past few weeks Elder Nelson and I have been talking about the miracle of the Restoration. Yesterday whike we were doing some finding work, I looked over to him and said something to the effect of:


"Why are we talking to strangers in Spain instead of taking a Sunday nap back home?


...


Because a boy had a question"


We testify of Jesus Christ and know the way to follow him because God has spoken to His children, and restored His truth. We know what the truth is because God called a prophet and restored His authority. We have the fullness of truth and a fullness of divine backing because this church was not founded by any man, but by the Savior of the world.


Now go turn on "Praise to the Man" full blast and read that again^^^^


Hasta la próxima, haga la vaina,
Elder Curtis 



Pictures:
I'll throw in a few from last week too since I really didn't before jaja.
The best ones are here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/RBSnbomskWKZ7pUXA
Cool old building, exploration vlog on Google Photos. Turned out to be a lime kiln.
P-day breakfast 
Carnaval witches?
Dog found on WhatsApp
Basketball squad
Gate thing by a castle









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Called A Guagua

Image
Buenos días a todos, cerca o lejos, en tierra o mar Another week in Fuerteventura, although strictly speaking we weren't in Fuerteventura all that much, because we had an exchange in Vecindario on the island of Gran Canaria. More details to follow but immediately after that exchange I had to fly to Madrid for a residency appointment and was there for a night. A lot of travel but we got a lot of good stuff done. While we were here we've started meeting with a good chunk of the people we met street contacting, and those who want to meet with us are really fun to get to know and to talk to.  Our first appointment with this guy named Jorge was really cool, he mentioned he was in a park near the center of town and invited us to come join him, and he had his two kids with him as well. It's just awesome to sit down and teach people who want to learn. Running out of time for pday so the rest will be bullet points  Busses are called guaguas here, it's pronounced wawa but luckily...
Read more

I Feel Like This Shouldn't Be Such A Hard Question...

Image
"Que te hace feliz?"  "What makes you happy?" It's a street approach that my comp came up with. The idea is that since God's plan is a plan of happiness, and He doesn't do anything without the ultimate goal being our happiness, the best way to connect conversations to God's plan is to talk about what makes people happy. We tried walking around with a whiteboard the other day, and in general we found that it helps get people talking if nothing else! Some conversations from this week: -Que te hace feliz? -Nothing -... -Que te hace feliz? -Money and a different woman every day -Que te hace feliz? -I'm deaf -*points to whiteboard* -Okay, I'm not deaf. Nothing. -Que te hace feliz? -*points to boyfriend* He's a Muslim... -Great! Que te hace feliz? These are obviously the more extreme examples, but it's pretty sad that so many people wouldn't (or worse, couldn't) answer this question. Something I've learned on my mission is the i...
Read more

Nefi Got Me Trippin

Image
^^ Mildly edited actual text message from someone who just sat down and started reading the Book of Mormon. We love it when people actually do that because surprisingly few people are really willing but everyone who does learns a lot. This week was NUTS. Like I talked about last week, we learned a really cool trick to involve members in missionary work: don't run away to another island like two days after they notice you're at church. We stayed this whole week in Lanzarote and saw miracles. Where do I even start? Amparo, who tried several months ago to get baptized but backed off, is BACK. We had a few great lessons, talked to her son in Miami, and watched her connect with her friends in the ward again. She's taking her time but has baptism as her goal. José passed his baptismal interview! He's all set to get baptized in March. His wife Lely also just got back from the temple for the first time so they're ridiculously happy. We also had time to organize a Family Hom...
Read more