Peras!

Pears!


Title first- 
Denisa and her family are from Romania, and live in our city, Avilés. Unfortunately the church is in Gijon so its a half hour on a bus every single week. She also has two kids, ages 4 and 2. Needless to say it's a sacrifice to come to church but she does it. The tricky thing is that once we arrive in Gijon, the second bus to get closer to the chapel passes every ten minutes, and usually leaves about thirty seconds after the big one arrives. The quickest members usually catch it and don't have to wait, but with two kids Denisa and her mother in law don't since they need to unload their stroller. We stick with them when this happens, since an extra 10 minutes waiting at a bus stop isn't the end of the world but it's not ideal. This Sunday though, 4-year-old Ronaldo noticed that shade tree next to the bus was filled with pears and we spent the ten minute wait picking free fruit. It was awesome and exactly what we needed that day. Ronaldo was so happy, and kept shouting "peras!"


Anyway I'm writing yall today on a bus to Bilbao, our P-day got moved to today so that everyone in the A Coruña and Vitoria zones (northern Spain) could spend it traveling to combined zone conference. That's tomorrow, should be awesome.


Beacuse of that, I haven't written one of these in like 10 days so there's a lot of catch-up. We were in Madrid for MLC last Tuesday, and broke down a lot of the differences between the editions of Preach My Gospel. Then we headed back to Asturias and got to work. 


We've started teaching so many new people, I'm not even sure where to start. The most crítical thing is that so many of them have come to church before we've taught them much of anything. But they communicate with us because they want to get closer to God, and they come to church because it's an active step they can take to do that.


We've also talked to lots of people about the access to the power of God that comes though covenants.
Sneak peak a training we're giving at zone conference:
The baptismal covenant is the same as it has been for all time, but the new edition of Preach My Gospel explains it in a way I hadn't thought of before. More specifically, it breaks down the commitment into four parts:
1. Be willing to take on the name of Jesus Christ 
2. Keep the commandments of God
3. Serve God and others
4. Endure to the end
Someone is ready for baptism when they understand this commitment and are willing to do these things- when they understand what Christ's name stands for and what God's commandments are, and want to dedicate their lives to serving Him. That is the covenant that many of you have made. We should always look for ways to keep it.


So many people progressed so much this week that I really can't get all the specifics in this email, but things are going great out here! Have a great week!


Elder Curtis 


Pictures
Service project
Sports night
Baleadas from Honduras
Ads for this bug circus are everywhere... I just want it to stop. Just let the nightmare end
On the way back from MLC
A guy gave us his business card so we could hit him up
I wish we could wear this elevator sign as a second name tag.








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