Week 82 Bon Nadal

Hey everyone it's been a while since I've written to you guys, I'll try my best to sum up what I've done.

The week after I wrote you all I went with my district to a cathedral called Tibidabo which is a cathedral in the hills right outside of Barcelona with a view of the entire of city. It was a beautiful view but I was also extremely impressed with the cathedral because the focus of the cathedral was on Christ and his life and so I enjoyed visiting it more than others cathedrals. It was beautiful and I took many photos I'll try and include in the email. 

The week after we had Thanksgiving as a zone and we all prepared food and made traditional Thanksgiving food. It was awesome and at the end we did something called flan suck. If you don't know what flan is, it's a traditional dessert that is basically an egg or vanilla based custard with a sugar syrup on top. Here they sell them in small cups like jello and we took them out of the cups and had a competition to see who could suck the flan faster. It's so soft you can just suck it instead of chewing jajaja. 

This last preparation day we went to a place called Montserrat which is a small town in the mountains with a very impressive view and an amazing cathedral. Honestly anyone who comes to Barcelona should take the time to go there. It's an incredible visit and the cathedral is ancient but incredibly built architecturally. It was full of stained windows and paintings of the baby Jesus which I loved because we're in the Christmas season.

We have been able to use this Christmas season to talk more about Christ with our friends and people in the streets and its been a huge blessing because people are super open to the message! It's one of my favorite times of the year because of this very reason.

We have been doing super good with our friends, and we have been able to find more people to teach! 

We have about 4 solid friends that were teaching and one of them has a baptismal date for the 28th of this month. Recently we had a few miracles happen to us. Honestly we were struggling a bit finding people to teach but suddenly 3 new people came out of nowhere this last week and it's what we were looking for.

1. We met a man named Carlos from Peru that came into the church building after a district meeting and he told us he had been searching for the church for a long time here. He spent 4 years in his country learning from the elders and was close to being baptized 6 times but never did. His kids did and actually one of them served a mission. He spent 20 years not going to church but finally found the church at the right time! We met with him this last week and he Introduced us to his wife who has a lot of interest in the church as well! They are two amazing people with a ton of potential 

2. The second miracle was a strange coincidence of an exchange I did. I went to Martorell and we met with a man who actually lives in our area! His name is Thony and he's from Venezuela. He had a ton of questions about the Plan of Salvation and on how he can come closer to God. He is a super smart man and speaks perfect English so we spoke in English the entire time. We are going to meet again this week and we hope that we can answer more of his questions that he has. He has great desires that go perfectly with the message that we share as missionaries.

This last week we had a huge zone conference with 6 zones, more than half of the mission because the area 70 came to speak to us: Elder Massimo de Feo. He gave a great talk about our calling as a missionary and the responsibilities and powers that come with our calling and he talked a bit about how we can help our friends to better commit to God and not to just the missionaries. It was super spiritual and I took good notes. One of the things that impressed me from his talked was his understanding of spiritual promptings. The word prompting had the root prompt which means quick. So when we receive spiritual promptings its because we need to act quickly on our feelings. 

Honestly not much more has happened. The rest has been pretty normal and the weeks have passed by fast.  This week on Tuesday we have transfers again! And time in the mission is coming closer and closer to being done!

Love you all! Bon Nadal!

Elder Keith 

Week 76 Kanye Dropped a Gospel Album

Hey everyone! Not gonna be a long email today but I'll share a few things that happened this last week:

-We have been working hard with our friend Cecilia who has been progressing a ton! We finally set a baptismal date with her and it's been a huge step for her! We helped her to realize she's received a lot of help from God and that receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost will help her to progress in her faith like she's looking to do!

-We went to our branch president's house and helped him out on his cow ranch. We did some service and then we ate lunch with him. We were able to strengthen our relationship with him and talk to him about how we can help the branch with its needs.

- We met a man to teach named Adrian in a Kebab restaurant jajaja. Me and my companion were hungry all of a sudden and entered into the kebab and as we waited for our food we talked with him. This week we're going to meet with him and see if he has interest in learning more about the church!

That's about it! I'll add in a few pictures to this email from this last week!

Week 75 - 6 Months Left!

Hey everyone I had a great week, every week is passing by faster than the last! 

This last it has started raining more here in Santiago and so we've spent a few hours out here in the rain. I'm surviving though because I found some waterproofing spray in my apartment and so I've waterproofed everything now hahaha. 

This last was full of ups and downs:

-Last week I told you all we were teaching a man named Jonay who was golden and receiving the lessons with joy and an open heart. Well the last time we met with him we invited him to ask God if the church was true and if he should get baptized. He seemed to be doing well but the other day as we walked around in the rain we received a text from him saying we can't meet anymore because his wife doesn't want us to come over and she doesn't want Jonay to change beliefs or church so we won't be meeting with him anymore:( We believe that he received his answer that he should be baptized and when he told his wife she said she's not in favor of that. We pray that one day the situation will change and that he will be able to meet with the missionaries in the future because is a great man with a lot of potential!

-We had 4 friends in church this last week, and one of them was a reference from a member! That's the first time I've seen so many attending since I've been here!

-This last Sunday I had the best lesson I've ever been in in my whole mission. It was with Cecilia and she decided to finally share with us all of her answers and experiences that she's had as she's met with the missionaries. I could write a huge email on everything she told us but let's just say this whole time she's been receiving answers and help from God in her life and we're so glad that all of a sudden she's decided to share it all and open up to us. Truly it was a super spiritual and amazing lesson and her finally sharing this all with us has been an answer to all of our prayers that she would receive answers from God! God works in beautiful and mysterious ways. 

This last week I found a few lectures from the 1960s from a professor from BYU named Madsen G. Truman and he stated a quote from Joseph Smith that said:

" We are often willing to say what we would like to receive of the Lord, even what we would do for it, but we are not as eager to say what we will do with it once it is given."

Have a great week!

Elder Keith 

I don't have many photos from this week but I finally went into the cathedral here! To be honest it was pretty disappointing because they're doing construction on like half of the cathedral so it wasn't that amazing.... but hey I went there! Lol