Bueno' Dia'

Not sure how long this has been going on but I've started cutting the "s" off the ends of words in Spanish. It's basically the Canary Islands accent. That's probably a good thing, right? At least until I get sent back to the mainland.


We get transfer news next week, stay tuned.


This week was pretty great, we spent last P-day and also Tuesday on Gran Canaria for an exchange with the ZLs. Their area on the south of the island has some really cool beaches and sand dunes. It was fire. 


The exchange was great, the zone leaders had set up like 9 teaching appointments for the four of us and 1 actually happened. Elder Richards and I talked to a lot of really cool people on the street though, and walked away with like 3 Peruvian families who wanted to hear a message sometime. Fire.


When we got back, things got interesting.


We had our weekly appointment with Graciela and Ulises. As a refresher, Graciela got baptized during my second transfer here, about four months ago, and her husband Ulises has been listening in on her lessons and coming to church with her ever since. He's got a lot of his own ideas, and can work aliens, archangels, and DNA into almost any spiritual thought we bring. He has, however, read the entire Book of Mormon, and when he got to the end of Moroni, just kept going and read the index. At the beginning of our last lesson, we said the opening prayer and he immediately led out with "Well... I've decided that I am going to get baptized." It's going to take some prep work but we think he's ready. It's pretty cool.


Right after that, we were walking to the church for a lesson with Elisa. We'd invited Efigenia so we could have a member in the lesson. As we got close to the building we saw Efigenia outside, chatting someone up. She likes to street contact people to share the gospel but then we noticed it was Elisa. Turns out they knew each other before the pandemic, before Elisa lost touch with the missionaries. We had no idea! They were soooo happy to see each other, it blew us away. Our lesson went great, and Elisa was planning to go to church Sunday.


Unfortunately both she and Midalys, our Cuban friend from last week, got sick and couldn't come. But we got our Zoom link working and Midalys was able to watch yesterday.


Also on Saturday we had a barbecue with our ward mission leader and these two guys we're teaching. One other guy was going to bring a grill but he couldn't come, so Elder Romrell fried up some burgers in the church kitchen and we lived it up. Good times. Friendlly people like Jhonathan (not a typo) and Fran generally want to know what these two gringos are doing here, and that leads to questions about the mission, which leads to questions about the gospel. So, mid-hamburger, Fran asks us what happens when you die. BOOM plan of salvation lesson. They had lots of random side questions, some reluctance when we brought up the Word of Wisdom, and tried to get us to say that going to the discoteca isn't a sin (we told them dancing isn't a sin) but in general were down to learn. And we played a bunch of ping-pong later and we'll probably see them at football today.


The lesson went pretty well, but when we supported what we were saying by pointing out that we know it because of living prophets in Christ's restored Church, they were more hesitant. That showed me just how key modern revelation is. Without it, you get confusion, a thousand churches pulling the same Bible every which way. You get the people I've met who believe in God but not in religions, with their own niche interpretation of things because no church has the fullness, they all fall short. The gospel isn't just true because in makes sense, or because it sounds nice or makes people happy. The gospel makes sense, brings joy, and is spreading through the world because it is revealed from our Father in heaven through his servants in these days.


Slice of life
Spent three hours on Thursday morning in Zoom meetings... why me. They were good though, we had a training from the APs, district council, and my first class as a mission Spanish teacher.


9-year-old Colombian kid introduced himself as Mini PEKKA


Elder Romrell made more video edits, check out the Google Photos 


No' vemo'
Elder Curtis


Pics: 
Time to show these Spanish Latinos some a real American barbecue
Exchange grub
Where are you serving again?
Hey look, I'm home in Arizona
More pretzel bites
Statue in Vecindario 






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