Elder Jonathan Keith: Week 29 Email

Only 13 more transfers everyone, which is a long time hahaha. Sorry this last week I was a little lazy with keeping up on writing so this week is a little shorter but it's ok it has all the important details.

Tuesday: I'm writing this on Wednesday so I don't remember everything that happened, but what I do remember was teaching Maria. She's a friend we're teaching English and it's been going well with her but she basically told us she doesn't want anything to do with our church which is fine. Later that night we taught Vanessa the Plan of Salvation and she really liked it. It was the first time someone explained to her the plan God has for us, why we're here on earth, and why there is so much evil in the world. She really liked it.

Wednesday: Today we had nothing this morning and so we went contacting and we ran into a friend from the beginning of my time in Gandia named Nieve. She is Cuban and we met her in the street and invited her to church and she came but after that she never came back or met with us. We sat down and talked to her and she told us that the day we met her she was having a rough time and we found her. She said it and like God sent us to her. She loved it as well as the church and we invited her to come back to church. Also, we gave her a Book of Mormon and wrote our testimonies in the front for her. Later we met with a member Amalia who is the first person baptized in the Valencia area. She gave us a lot of council on things. She's very wise in gospel topics, and she thanked us for meeting with her. She says that we have to love and show charity to others. That is the best thing we can do on the mission, which is true. The gospel is all about love and service and that's what we try to represent as missionaries. We then met with Vanessa and some members and taught them English and then shared a small gospel message. We focused on prayer and the story of Enos. Our goal with Vanessa is to have her make her prayers very spiritual. With all we teach the most important thing she can have is a spiritual witness that it is all true.

Thursday-Saturday: Sorry I did really bad at writing this week. I'm just gonna sum it all up real quick. Thursday we met with Vanessa and taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ. She's progressing well and she's feeling recently that she's meant to be here with us. She never received the lessons before and now with us she feels like it might be the time to get baptized and join the Church. She's doing super well also. That night we met with Alberto. Alberto is progressing super well. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and law of chastity and he took it all super well and accepted them. We're going to change his baptismal date to a week later because he's progressing but not as fast as we thought which is ok. Friday I did an intercambio in Valencia with Elder Murillo. He is from Ecuador and it was my first time being with a native Spanish speaker as a companion but I really liked it. I never thought having a native companion would be fun, I have always thought I would go crazy not being able to speak Spanish but I actually enjoyed it. It helps me better my Spanish a lot. Anyways we didn't do much Friday but Saturday we went and taught an English class to a Columbian family. This was a weird lesson, so first off I was with Elder Murillo who doesn't speak English so I had to teach the whole hour lesson myself. Also mostly we teach basic English and they all were kind of intermediate so I was so lost as what to teach and so I threw something out of the air and taught how to ask questions and they didn't know it and they loved the lesson which was totally great. I was kind of freaking out inside but it all turned out well. We then finished the day with stake conference. Sunday we continued with stake conference and all the missionaries sang in the conference which was super fun. It was kind of improv as in we practiced it like an hour before starting the conference but it all turned out well. After that we came back to Gandia and visited a member named Maria Flores and then met with our friend Maria to teach her English.

That was all I'm feeling super great and loving the mission. Thanks for the emails and I hope to hear from some of you I haven't heard from in a while.

Elder Keith

1. Community of Valencia Flag I bought the other day. Every region in Spain has it's own flag.

2. Biggest marathon in Spain happened this last Saturday in valencia

3. Went to the beach for preparation day

4. Weird chino store finds.

5. Public transportation in Spain gets a little busy.

6. Christmas decorations up in Spain!