Curtis, Alex

This week we spent 3 days in Madrid for zone conference and a devotional with Elder Christofferson. Before we left though, here's some stuff we managed to get done: We had a lesson to finish prepping Ashley for her baptism, which went really well. It's hard for a kid to keep all the little details of the gospel straight but she has a firm testimony and two awesome parents who've been teaching her since she was little. She was baptized on Saturday while we were in Madrid but we got to see the confirmation on Sunday. We have a follow-up lesson this Tuesday and I'm excited to share this scripture from Joseph Smith- History, where Joseph reflects on one of the blessings after his baptism: "Our minds being now enlightened, we began to have the scriptures laid open to our understandings, and the true meaning and intention of their more mysterious passages revealed unto us in a manner which we never could attain to previously, nor ever before had thought of." (JS-H 1...

February 13th and 14th we hopped a quick trip to Madrid for Elder Madsen's residency appointment. On the way home I bought a kebab. That was our 14th, Happy Valentine's Day everybody. Here's the work this week: We decided to strengthen our invitations to someone who's not keeping them by reading Mosiah 18, establishing the goal of baptism, and linking church attendance to that goal. I was really happy with it, and our friend committed to come to church. Then he didn't, but it's an approach I'm going to try more. And he does seem sincere so I'm excited to keep working with him this week. We've been having FHE's with the la familia Chacón since our first week here, especially since their 9-year-old daughter Ashley will get baptized soon. The ward set the baptism for this Saturday, which is kinda rough for us since we wont be there but we're working on preparing her as well as we can. They also have another family who aren't members who live...

It's been a long week but we got to testify of Christ and His gospel so no complaints here! We met with two moms and their kids after English class and taught them about the Restoration, which was awesome. We had our bishop there helping out and invited them both to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. We'll see how it goes. Both oldest kids (like 14 and 10) were spitting Jesus stories when we got to talking about Christ's earthly ministry. It makes me happy when kids have been taught about God and are willing to talk about him instead of just smiling and laughing awkwardly when we ask them a question. Everyone seemed interested in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon so we'll see how they do! They both wanted to come to church but didn't, there's always next week. We talked to Richard, the guy from the cool Plan of Salvation lesson, again this week. Before we got started, a lady walked up to us, added if we were JWs, then Mormons, and told Richard not to list...

Transfer news- the entire quad is running it back! Viva Santander! It's been a busy week, lot of highs and lows. We've had some really cool lessons and run into some frustrating situations but it all evens out and it's great to be a missionary! We taught a guy named Richard the Plan of Salvation, it went probably the smoothest I've ever seen it go. Normally people have sidetracking questions that make it hard to keep the focus on the plan of a loving God, but Richard wanted to talk about the implications of agency and the miracle of the Resurrection in ways that made the restored gospel a perfect fit. It was awesome! Elder Madsen led out a lesson on the Gospel of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, endure to the end) with a recent convert that went really great! It made me think of a quote from Hyrum Smith: “Preach the first principles of the Gospel—preach them over again: you will find that day after day new ideas and additional light concernin...