Cold

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 us for, and we've set him up with some chapters to read that will give him a background for the Restoration next time we see him. Its important to meet people where they're at but always help them move forward.


We taught Antonio, a recent convert who was just ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood, about priesthood blessings, and he got to anoint our ward mission leader before Elder Harvath blessed him. Recent converts are the best.


While I was on exchanges with Elder Jacobs, a father from our ward and a teenage recent convert helped us give our friend Paula, who's 17, a baptismal date. She's been going to seminary for a while on her own so she's super prepared. The next Sunday, she brought not just her sister, but her parents too! They've been kind of apathetic until now, but like the whole ward has been saying, she's going to be a great example for her family.


We started teaching two super-prepared peopel on Saturday:


Kely is from Brazil and speaks in what's basically portu-ñol which is awesome. She's had bad experiences with other churches but wants to learn about us, likes the way we teach and befriend, and lives like three minutes from the church! She'd asked us for a Bible study but when we improvised and read from the Book of Mormon she loved it!


Nolvia's a Facebook referral (from Honduras) we got ages ago but we finally got to meet with her this week! We were planning to just talk about prayer, scripture study, and church attendance but she asked the million-dollar question: "why are there so many churches?" And there's only one way a missionary can respond to that. She was interested by the story of Joseph Smith and agreed to read the Book of Mormon. Plus she came to church and met some members we know from Honduras. I love how happy people are to find people from their home country here.


Our mission has the goal of 333 baptisms this year. Last year we got 216, and as of now we've got about 260. Already cause for celebration there. But President Eastland likes numbers a lot and has figured out that statistically, everyone who could feasiblly get baptized before the end of the year needs to be found in the next two weeks. So we've upped our weekly finding goal as a mission from three a week to six for the next two weeks so we can find the ~70 people we're missing. This goal was set after a lot of pondering and prayer, so we believe we can hit it, and that the Lord will help us to do it. And that's where I think this awesome week came from. And I'm pumped for the opportunity to be part of this push for the next two weeks, and the Lord's work for the rest of my mission.


Got a ton of pics this week with our friends, enjoy!


Elder Curtis 


Anyone got captions for the handstand pic?
Empanadas in the rain
Metro tunnel
Kebab 
Jorge Luis and Antonio with us at kebab 
Elder Harvath with four Dominicans
Arepa reina pepiada
A tree that knows how to take hold of the iron rod
*deep breath in* left to right: Elder Harvath, Jorge Luis, Harry, Malu, Alessia, Abigail, Angela, Elder Curtis, Leo, Danny










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