Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before...

December 03, 2017

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before...

November 20, 2017

So a Catholic priest and two Mormon missionaries walk into an elevator.

After seconds of awkward silence, one missionary asks, "How are you?"

The priest curtly says, "I'm busy with this." motioning to his inactive phone with nothing of importance on-screen, and the silence continues.

The elevator stops at the priest's floor and the missionaries say goodbye.

The priest grumbles "Adiós" as the door shuts.

.....Get it? Neither do I.

It's always fun getting to know the people in your building.

ANYwho, this week was pretty good. We had two exchanges, so that was exciting. On Tuesday, we had district meeting, then began our exchanges with Elder Wilson and Elder Castillo. Elder Wilson is in my group, and we've become pretty good friends, so it's always fun to interact with him. Elder Castillo is from Costa Rica and his English is practically perfect. He's very sassy and patriotic. They're a fun combo.

My evening was with Elder Wilson and it consisted of contacting and a correlation meeting. My morning with Elder Castillo was really cool. We were constantly switching back and forth between English and Spanish the whole time pretty seamlessly. I tried to push the Spanish a little more for my own practice. We were able to find a less-active member that I hadn't had contact with for a couple months, and honestly, I didn't expect to find him where we did: At home. But he was home for once! He has a bit of a depressing life at the moment, but he also doesn't want any help, so we do what we can.

On Thursday we were able to meet with Borja and Ytala and our branch president tagged along. We had the intention of discussing the importance of a testimony of The Book of Mormon and inviting him to be baptized again. We ended up only talking about the the first part, but it was a really good conversation. He recognizes that if he's going to gain a testimony, it's going to have to come from his own personal efforts to read The Book of Mormon. I hope something clicks for him soon.

On Friday we boarded a bus Seville-bound at 9:00 in the morning and arrived around 11:30. The Seville missionaries had been arranging a "Predicación" of the Restored Gospel and had a looot of flyers to hand out (six companionships, biggest city in the mission, why not?). This "preaching" was essentially a more in-depth lesson on the Restoration, led by Elder Walker and Elder Ramirez at the pulpit in the chapel. The zone leaders spent 85€ and 70€ to cover the ten thousand sheets that they had printed and cut. When we got there, only 1,500 flyers remained in their apartment and we passed them all out on Friday. It was kind of fun. You just walk around the city, smiling and greeting people, handing out sheets of paper that people are more than willing to accept. People would actually request one if I passed by without giving them one. Others would just expectantly have their hand stretched out for the paper as I walked toward them. These people are used to taking flyers.

I was with Elder Walker the whole time again, and Elder Van Moos was with Elder Wilkins, the new zone leader this transfer. As I said, we got all the flyers passed out among the four of us on Friday, and all of our plans fell through on Saturday morning, so we contacted with very little visible success. We ran into a guy from Tampa, FL. It was kind of awkward since we both tried speaking to each other in Spanish in the beginning. He's already back in the States, but it was nice being able to speak regular, unrestricted English with someone who isn't a missionary. Believe it or not, you don't get that too often in Spain. One guy we met thought that Mormons don't practice polygamy any more, except for the Mormons in Utah, they still do. That was a new one. Our bus left at 6:00 that evening, so after lunch, packing, and getting to the bus station, that was our Saturday.

Sunday was the branch's Primary Program. It was cute and very well put together. All the kids had their parts down. The youngest kid just walked up to the pulpit with his part written on a sign that he held over his head for a couple seconds, then sat back down. Adorable. The missionaries helped them sing "El Valor de Nefi". Borja's parents came with Borja to watch their granddaughter. They were very nice. They have the mindset of "Hey, we're in different religions, but it's all worshipping the same big guy upstairs, so it's all good!" which isn't the greatest opinion with the whole "One faith, one baptism" thing, but at least they weren't critical or anything like that. We had a noche misional that was pretty well attended as well.

The Predicación in Seville was Saturday night, and we learned from Elder Walker that 20 people showed up and 5 people were interested. Sooo, it's not the "hundreds" they were expecting, but I'll take that as a win! Those people now have the opportunity to witness the glory and spirit of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

One bad result of two exchanges in one week: Both Elder Walker and Elder Castillo were sick in one way or another, and now I can feel my throat slipping back into the crud condition it had just a couple weeks ago. Yay. We'll see how that goes.

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the excessive amounts of food, football playing, football watching, family gatherings, rushed shopping, and incessant Christmas music that will undoubtedly follow the day after!

Elder Jensen :)

(P.S.Happy slightly belated birthday, Chelsea and Carly!)