Curtis, Alex

"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...

Santander B... more like Santander BEASTS! Things are picking up out here!  Opening the new companionship here in Santander has been a steep climb but we're starting to see some success: -a member named Lily has a lot of free time lately and has agreed to help us out in our video call lessons. She's a fast-talking faith-building Colombian woman who makes friends with everyone we meet with! It's annoying when people won't meet in person but we get to sic Lily on them and extend powerful invitations. At least three people are starting to warm up to us and progress this way, and it's only a matter of time before we can get in-person lessons and church attendance. -we got our first church visitor! We were making calls to all our potentials Saturday night, trying to set lessons for Tuesday more than anything, when Miguel picked up the phone. He was in a hurry but went out of his way to ask when church started. He pulled up to sacrament meeting out of nowhere and we got t...

Quick email today- since the last email, we've had zone conference, and then we drove back to Santander! I'm ready to get back to work, and we're hoping to find some new people to teach in the coming week. We had an awesome focus during zone conference about carefully and diligently seeking out less-active members, and helping them be reached and reconnected to Christ's church. So that's going to be part of our focus too! Enjoy the week! Elder Curtis Really no pics this week, sorry No better week to join the Google Photos album! por su comentario!

It's been a good week!  Work-wise, starting an area from scratch has been hard, but we've been doing what we can and trying to have fun while we do it! It helps that we've been getting to know the city really well, since we spend a lot of time talking to people on the way in between member passbys. Since we're new we can just knock on any member's door and either introduce ourselves or work on getting them back to church. And we have the chance to talk to a lot of people in between. Besides the usual people who don't want anything to do with us, we've had some interesting conversations.  -One guy told us he was baptized years ago while his friend was a Mason and had a mixed opinion on Jesus. The second guy wanted us to come to his church but wouldn't give us any contact info. -An old Spaniard guy told us he got thrown in jail for not going to mass back during the dictatorship, so he didn't want to know anything about God. Screw Franco. -We asked two ...

Happy 2024! It really feels like a new year because EVERYTHING is different now. I have a new area, new comp, new living situation... my life is unrecognizable from last week, but that's missionary work! I left Alcorcón last Thursday morning, and on Saturday got my trainee, Elder Madsen! He's from Las Vegas and is ready to hit the ground running out here. Which is good, because after the six-hour bus ride and getting picked up by the other Santander companionship, we had the huge task of starting Santander B from scratch. We have a brand new phone number, area book, email account, and contacts list. Everything is blank. If anything going to happen here, it's up to us! But I'm excited for what the new year is going to bring. I spent all of 2023 as a missionary and learned a lot, and I'm excited to apply it to bless the lives of the people of Santander!  Slice of life We're living in a quad now and it's awesome! The other two missionaries are Elder Simmons, wh...