"And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again..."

January 8, 2018

Well howdy-doo!

This week was the final round of holidays for the next little while. Hopefully things should pick up now because the everything this week was deeeaaad. But we made it work somehow. 

Saturday was Three Kings Day where even more presents get opened and a little more of the holiday spirit is shown. The night before was a little more involved for us. Elda does a cool torch trail on one of the surrounding mountains on Kings' Eve (made that one up) when the sun goes down. Something about the kings arriving from the top of the mtn or something like that. We happened to be visiting a future's house on a hill so we ended up getting a perfect view of it. 

When we got back to town, a full-blown parade was going on in the larger part of the pueblo. There were floats with little dancing troupes, men swinging torches around, little kids with sparklers, there was so much energy in a town that's otherwise pretty quiet. We didn't see the kings because we were on our way to eat with members and had to get going. 

We were at Inma's with Rosana and a couple other members to eat a Roscón de Reyes which is a big ring pastry cake thing with a little game involved. In the cake, there is a little king figurine and a dry bean hidden. The person who bites the piece with the bean has to pay for the cake. The person who bites the king, BECOMES KING. With a crown and everything...I bit the king. 😎 

The parades and everything consisted of a lot of moors...but without the moors. Even Balthazar the king in the big celebration in Alcoy was just a Spaniard in blackface with big red lips painted on. Feel free to look up all of those Alcoy traditions in your spare time if you can because they're fun and things I can't explain at the moment.

We were able to stay a lot busier this week than I thought we'd be with holidays and everything going on. A lot of our time was spent getting in contact with less-active members and we were able to at least have a quick face to face interaction with most of them. We were able to meet with Gabriel in the park and go over what he'd been taught so far. He remembers all of it and is in accord with everything so far. He's from Mexico and was here on vacation when all of his traveling documents were stolen. So now he's stuck here and getting all of that figured out, but it's been a while. It's hard to set up a definite time to meet with him because his efforts to get things in order tend to take him out of town unexpectedly.

We had another lesson with Fabio and we taught lesson 3. I had been bracing for that visit for a couple days due to his devout neutrality of belief known as evangelicalism. It ended up going pretty well but got a little shaky when we talked about receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. He is very firm in believing that he already has it. On top of that, Elder Hansen told him and his wife, rather bluntly due to his limited knowledge of Spanish, that their baptisms weren't complete (this was not part of the plan) which made things a little more passive-aggressive on Fabio's end. This ended up being a good opportunity for me to clarify who holds the priesthood in this church and how we claim to have the authority to do so. When I was explaining Confirmation, Fabio asked us what we thought of the gift of tongues in reference to the saints in the New Testament during Pentecost, so we discussed that for a bit. I explained how we believe in both a more practical usage (using the example of missionaries in foreign countries) and more in speaking through the influence of the Spirit over incoherent babbling. Our visits with him are always helpful to me because it gives me a little more direction in my studies that follow. He's unintentionally helped me feel a desire to look a little more into John the Baptist and his authority, our stance on speaking in tongues and how it relates to scripture, and a few other background topics that don't come up too often. He did really like Persevere to the End though. He and his wife said a simultaneous "Amen" with the title of the topic alone.

In light of President Monson's death, here is what I wrote down in my journal the day I found out: 

"In the morning, we were out and about and ran into Gladis in the street. One of the first things she told us was that Thomas S. Monson had died. My thoughts dwelled on that subject for much of the day. While it was unfortunate to hear, I did not feel a tinge of sadness. If anything, I was glad to know that the pains and limitations of his mortal body have now ceased, and he is again in the presence of his beloved eternal companion. I am grateful for the organization of this church and I know the proper priesthood authority will always be on the earth in this last dispensation. No matter who dies or falls away, there will always be someone worthy and called of God to take their place. The Church is true! and blessed be the name of my God for letting me come into the world at this epoch of its existence."

I hope the Holidays were good to everyone! Have fun adjusting back to regular life and whatnot!

Elder Jensen :)