Curtis, Alex

Lots going on this week! Monday and Tuesday we spent on exchanges in Salamanca, on the outskirts of our zone. We didn't know Elders Thayer and Koch very well, and they've got a huge area that's on the process of forming a new branch right now so we decided to check it out. Elder Thayer and I had a few cool lessons, including one where the guy spoke more Arabic than Spanish. It was also super cold and rainy since we were so far north of Madrid. It was a cool exchange though, and Elder Thayer and I talked a lot about a lot about different approaches people take to missionary work and how to teach with clarity. Back in Madrid, we got to work on the mission-wide finding challenge. We set a ton of appointments with people who we've known for a while, and out of nowhere we were able to set a ton of appointments to start teaching them! Pretty soon though, we needed to do exchanges with our DL, Elder Anderson, in a art of Madrid called Parla. I had a great day, and we started t...

More rain. It's been almost 2 years since I've been legitimately cold, but it looks like winter has come to Madrid. I got in the catch-up email for last week, but this week has also been amazing: We had a great lesson with our friends Angela, Cecilia, and Felicia, and taught them about the Sabbath to encourage them to make church a priority and keep the commandment even after church. Felicia's got a complicated schedule on Sunday but the other two came yesterday and definitely seem to be prioritizing the gospel. And my being the Gringo Dominicano doesn't hurt. I throw all the Dominican slang I have at them and they love it.  Example: we never say "hola, buenas", it's always "que lo que" or "dame luz". I guess if I was living in England, I would become very good friends with the first person who was willing to greet me with "what's up bro?". We're teaching our friend Diego out of the Bible since that's what he asked...

Okay yeah... It finally happened, I missed a week. It was a good run. Here's the email I started writing last week, I finished it up to show you wonderful people: Hang on tight, last week hit like a truck, mission conference is not a casual event Tuesday-  We traveled to Pavones for a temple session with the Madrid zones. First throwback moment- the bishop of the Gijon ward from my time in Avilés was officiating and I ran into some of the cool members from up north! Plus we got to see both Madrid zones Wednesday- Zone conference in San Sebastián de los Reyes with Elder and Sister Alliaud, which was fire. We talked a lot about the importance of the work we're doing and the power and authority of our calling as missionaries. Also, how we're here to *baptize*. It was super spiritually motivating, and there's a ton of stuff I'm excited to apply. Later that night we headed to Pavones again for Elder Alliaud to run a YSA devotional. The other 3 zones were there and I got ...

-Recent convert's reaction to learning that the Book of Mormon musical makes fun of the Church From his tone you could almost imagine he was asking us to call down fire from the heavens, but I was thinking about this, and looking at this another way brings up a great, Christlike, conflict resolution strategy: "why do you allow conflict?" To be sure there are things worth fighting for (there's a reason missionaries are often compared to an army, and latter-day Zion to soldiers fighting for the right) but Christ taught that contention is of the devil. We refuse to cede important points like God-given doctrine, righteous living, and our constant efforts to share the truth, but no good will be done by tearing others down and laying waste to anything we don't agree with. In many cases, we can choose to not let conflict start from us getting offended. It's always our choice.  Anyway we saw this ad while we were traveling with some of our awesome members to stake con...

-Ether 12:26 The Book of Mormon musical has arrived to Spain. Several confused members have seen the ads and thought they were real missionaries... I'm almost offended, I've seen the trailer for the musical in Spanish and really hope no one thinks I'm anything like those clowns. We may need to do what they did in London and storm the theater with the restored gospel. I guess it is getting the word out. Maybe we should learn some of their songs and use them in door approaches. It's mostly just hilarious. Lots of interesting stuff this week: -Last P-day we had the Segovia elders over for an exchange and went to Sol, basically the Manhattan of Madrid. They've got some cool statues of apostles there by the royal palace, and Peter's is even holding a big key, representing the priesthood authority and keys that Christ gave him back in the day. If only we knew where that key is today... -On an *entirely unrelated* note, general conference was awesome! I don't want ...