Week 81 - References are Great

7/27/15

This week was a little bit rough for us just because we are in the finding process again, by the end of the week a lot of our investigators decided to stop progressing. But that's ok because we found a great lady from a member reference. This lady named Carmen works in the train station and the old bishop's wife would go and talk to her about the gospel. She gave us the reference when she came to visit Santander about a month ago, and we just couldn't go out to the pueblo where she worked because we had so many things happening at once. But with a slower week we got out there and she was superb. We taught her the restoration and answered some questions about the plan of salvation and she told us that she wanted to come to church this next week!! She's so great.

Overall we're improving here in Santander and my companion Elder González is great!!

Foto we went to the Magdalena palace again for preparation day.

Week 80 - BAPTISM!!!

7/20/15

This week Melannie got baptized! Melannie is a perfect example of how missionary work should be done.  Melannie's aunt is a member and about two to three months ago, she started bringing Melannie to church on Sunday.

We began teaching her in the house of another member who is one of her friends. As we progressed, we began teaching in her in her own house with that same member friend and others. We also brought another member to the visits named Luis.  At the beginning we brought him just to be able to teach in a house with only women, (there has to be a man in a house before we can go in as missionaries) but he was able to answer many of the questions that she had. It got to the point where in almost every lesson we had one of Melannie's member friends (often invited by Melannie) AND Luis.

We helped Melannie grow spiritually and helped her testimony gain strength and although she doesn't like talking in front of a bunch of people she got up and bore an incredible testimony. I've gotten to see her progress from day one thanks to transfers and got to see the blessings of working with the members.  Baptism is the best!!

Tikal & Elder Gonzales at Melannie's Baptism

 

Celebrating with the sister missionaries, Melannie and her cousin

at Burger King after the baptism

 

 

 View looking back at Camello and Sardinero beaches in Santander

With a 7 year old girl from the ward

With some members on P-Day

 

Tikal and Elder Gonzalez from Lima, Peru

 



 

At the groundbreaking ceremony for the new

chapel being built in Santander

Week 79 - Lima, Peru

7/13/15

On Monday night we went to Bilbao so my companion could catch his train at 6:30 AM with the other missionaries who were being transferred or going home. I then caught a train at 3:20 PM and got into Barcelona at 10:10 PM.  I spent 3 hours alone in the train.  After a couple of stops, two more missionaries who were training as well got on and went the next 4 hours with me into Barçelona.  When we got into Barçelona, we were supposed to go straight to the Assistants and Office Elders piso, but the assistants weren't home and the office elders had to go pick an elder up from the airport whose flight got delayed coming in. So we bought McDonald's and waited outside their apartment until about 12:15 am, when they finally got home. The next day the assistants and office elders got up early to go do stuff with transfers and Elder Sedgwick (one of the missionaries who got on the train after 3 hours) and I had to take the other elder who's flight got delayed to meet up with his companion at 9. His name was Elder Johnson ironically. Anyway we got him off and then went to the mission home and had a training-the-trainers meeting. We then got to meet all the new missionaries, and have lunch in the mission home.

My new companion is Elder González, he's from Lima, Peru.  He is the only member of the church in his family, he is 24 years old, and he plays the piano super well and speaks English. We try to speak Spanish in the street and English in piso.  We're getting along well and he's a good missionary. Fun fact, I've been a missionary for more time than he's been a member. He was baptized three days AFTER I entered the MTC.  We have two baptisms planned for this weekend. I am so excited! It should be a great week.

Lately, I've started saying y'all. It's what happens when the only other Utahan in our district is Elder Vickery from St George who says it all the time. Overall really good week.

A home/castle of the Spanish King and Queen in Santander

Week 78 - Training!

7/7/15

This last week I had a super bad headache and fever but I survived and we got to meet our new mission president.  President and Hermana Dayton are awesome! President Dayton is the brother-in-law of the late Elder Perry and Hermana Dayton is such an incredible lady she got talked about by Elder Anderson in general conference.  They are the best!!! So transfer news is that my companion is going to my first area of Palma de Mallorca!!!!! And I don't know who my new companion is going to be because I'm picking him up in Barcelona tomorrow!!! I'm training!!!!! So it should be a great week!!!!

Picture of the Mini MTC that the missionaries have started for their ward in Santander.  It is every Sunday for a month.

Week 77 - New Mission President

6/29/15

This week our miracle was with Eloi. He had a fecha for a couple weeks ago, but he fell through because of issues with the word of Wisdom and being busy with work.  So it kind of seemed as though he was losing interest but we invited him to church anyway and Sunday morning he showed up! All by himself! It was so great to see that he still had interest in becoming a member of the church and progressing. He is such a great guy!

This week I learned a little more about the meaning of the multiple resurrections and the plan of salvation, how that people have to wait in spirit prison until they are resurrected so that is what one of the concepts of hell is and we as members of the church can save people from that hell by helping them find the truth and taking part in ordinances

Life's good here in Santander and we're getting closer and closer.  We get a new Mission President this week so we'll see how that goes! Hope you all have a great week!

Tikal at a dinner appointment

Week 76 - Nuevos!!!

6/22/15

This week we saw a fantastic miracle. As a district we were struggling on finding new amigos to teach, so in district meeting we set a goal to find 16 new investigators as a district this last week. We worked hard all week and found 16 new people to teach before sending numbers.  Three of which were not found until Sunday evening. It was incredible to see faith turn into action and to see the results. I promised the district three baptisms in the month of July if we got the goal so we're going to keep working hard and see that miracle too! I'm loving how much the work is progressing here in Santander!

We didn't have a baptism this week because our investigator has been working so we are going to see if we can't get him baptized in one of the coming weeks.  However, we have another investigator who is still progressing like a champ. I think she's from Ecuador but has lived in Europe for awhile (Italy and Spain). She lives with her grandma and her aunt is a member so she comes with her every week. Her mom was working in Italy but just got here for vacation. Her dad is living in the United States, in New York. She's super great though.

The work here in Santander is fantastic and we are getting closer and closer to white (aka baptism) so I can't wait to send more pictures, but for now this picture of my new haircut that I received from a member here in Santander will have to do.

Have a great week!

 

 

 

Week 75 - Closer to white

6/15/15

This week in Santander has been wonderful. We're looking at a baptism this weekend if everything works out.  We have this friend investigating the church named Eloi and when we were teaching him we realized that he had a problem with smoking. We taught the Word of Wisdom and he told us that he's wanted to quit smoking for a long time but he wanted more of a reason to. So we invited him to stop smoking by smoking two less cigarettes a day. I called him a day or so later to see how he was doing and he said that he wanted to stop smoking still so we set a visit for that Saturday. When we got to the visit we asked him how many cigarettes he was smoking now and he told us, "well I haven't smoked AT ALL in 3 days." We kind of sat there for a second mouths open, and then congratulated him for his efforts! He is such a great guy! 

We're getting closer and closer to a baptism, the weather even wants us to baptize. It's been raining off and on for the last couple days, but I take it as a sign. 

Another investigator that we are teaching is a South American girl named Melannie. She is progressing well. She's more active than some members.

This week we had our last conference with the Pace's and it was very nice. We talked about the importance of the sacrament.  It actually doesn't renew our covenants but reminds us of the convents we have made. The covenants we make are eternal so the don't really need renewing but they need remembering otherwise it doesn't work. I thought that was interesting.

I hope you're all doing well and have a
fantastic week!