Sant Jordi in Catalunya

4/27  So the 23 of April here in Catalunya is a holiday called Sant Jordi. There is a pretty cool myth behind the whole thing, but in the interest of saving time, I will let you look it up if you are interested. But there is a really cool tradition that all of the women give the men books, and the men give women roses. Every year the center of town here in Vilafranca fills up with tons of stands selling books and roses. One of the members of the bishopric in our ward figured what better opportunity to set up a few tables and give out Books of Mormon? So that's exactly what we did. We put up a couple of tables, draped a few Catalunya flags over them, and gave out Books of Mormon.

We planned to have at least one companionship of missionaries at the stand, and we got a lot of members to come and help as well. We came with two boxes full of books (more than 40) and a huge pile of pamphlets and pass along cards. We put a pamphlet in each book and a card with our number on it marking Moroni 10:3-5. We stood out in front of the stand contacting anybody that looked interested, and it worked! We got so many solid contacts! We saw a ton of the kids we play basketball with and gave them all a book. We had several people tell us they would love to learn more, and a few told us they might even come to church. By the end of the day, we had given out every single book we brought. Not just given out, but we did our best to teach each person a little about what we were doing, and what the book was. It turned out to be a super successful activity, and I feel like it will bless many lives!

Other than Sant Jordi, not much happened this week. Our investigators Lana and Monika are doing very well, and we saw them both at church yesterday. Monika's little kids love going to primary, and we were told after church that Esteban, her son, was answering all of the questions about the restoration. That made me really happy!

La Diada de Sant Jordi in Vilafranca

A fantastic future missionary!

4/20  So we had a pretty great adventure this week with a member named Manel. It was his birthday, but he still decided to come help us with a visit out in a little pueblo. When we got there, we were waiting outside for a little bit, and a guy walked up and contacted us. He asked us who we were and what we were doing. Manel jumped at the opportunity and told him all about who we were and what we do as missionaries. He ripped the Book of Mormon out of Elder Jonson's hands and gave it to this guy, explaining what it was. He seemed very interested and gave us his number so we could set a visit up. It amazed me how quickly Manel got all of that done! The lesson with our investigator right after that went really well. We were going to talk about the plan of salvation, and all of her questions led us right to the next point in the lesson. Even before we started she shared her beliefs on life after death, which sounded exactly like what we believe about the spirit world. It was a great lesson! 

We caught a bus to get back to Vilafranca, and while on the bus, Manel contacted a lady sitting next to him. She was really nice, and we gave her our card that we thought had our number on it just before she got off. When the bus started to drive away, she saw that our number wasn't on it, and tried to get our attention. We promptly jumped off the bus as soon as it was stopped at a stoplight to give her our number. We spoke with her for a little while longer and learned that she lives in Barcelona, so we will have to pass that reference to the office. We later found that there was no easy way to get back to Vilafranca from where we were. Needless to say, we spent a lot of travel time on the train to get back. We had to go to the furthest stop south, then get on another train to take us up north to Vilafranca. It was quite a fun adventure, and I had a great time with Manel.

This weekend we had stake conference. We had an area 70 come speak, and he was by far the best speaker I have heard since I have been in Spain. His name is Elder Reina, and he speaks so naturally it's almost like a conversation. He spoke a lot about getting members to help the missionaries and do missionary work. I learned a lot about how I can help the work progress as a member when I get home.

A new investigator

6/14  So we found a really good new investigator this week. Her name is Monika. Kind of a long story, so I'll just give you the whole thing. It started about two months ago before I even got here. Elder Jonson got a referral from someone in another ward. They called her, but she told them she was busy, and told them to call her in a month. So exactly one month later, while I was here, we gave her a call. She told us that she still doesn't have time, and that she wasn't really interested. She said that she had our number and that she would call us if she was ever interested. We figured it was just another flaky reference, but lo and behold, last week she gave us a call and apologized for being so cold on the phone. She said that her boyfriend was around when we called, and he really doesn't like anything religious. We talked for a little bit and set up a visit. It's a little complicated, because we can only call her and visit her when her boyfriend isn't around, but we got a visit in this week. She is such a great lady, and she has two really cute kids. Even though they live really far away and it is really hard to get them to church, she came to church this week! Our ward mission leader did everything he could to make sure things worked out, and they loved it. The kids said they were excited to come again! I'm so excited to keep teaching them!

Sorry emails are a day late today, I forgot to tell you that today was transfer day. No big changes, just that Elder Jonson is District leader now, and we got a new sister missionary here in Vilafranca. Everything is going well here, except for the fact that it is super hot. We still haven't been told we can take off our jackets and sweaters, so we are practically melting alive, but we are still happy!

Easter time in Spain

4/6  So just yesterday, we had another amazing lesson with Lana! She showed up to the chapel an hour before Priesthood session, so we decided just to talk to her, and answer any questions she had. Turns out she had questions about literally every point we needed to teach her. We talked about temples, eternal marriage, and pretty much all of the commandments including tithing and fasting. At the end we asked her a question. We asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She told us she really did, but it would probably have to wait until she is 18. She then told us that she had already asked her parents, and they told her that she had already been baptized, and they won´t let her. We decided to pray about it, and we had to use Pres. Pace´s technique of having everyone give a short prayer to make her comfortable saying one. She gave the most incredible prayer I have ever heard an investigator give. Afterwards, we all felt like the 23 of May was a good date to set, so we set it. That will hopefully give us enough time to talk to her parents, and figure something out. Maybe even set baptismal dates with them too!

Also, this Friday, we had a culture night activity in the chapel. Despite all of the planning that never happened, it actually turned out really good! We had a very large turnout. We had a lot of people bring food from their country, and explain a little about what they brought. We, being Americans, made jello with bananas in it. Super American, right? Well, it was as American as we could go considering the food they sell here... There was a lot of good food, especially from Colombia, and all of the members started dancing half way through, and that’s always fun to watch. All in all, it was a great activity, and I had a lot of fun!

A little info on the culture here during Easter time. The week is called Semana Santa, and practically everyone is off work and school for the entire weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday all of the stores and shops are closed, and the streets are completely empty. It’s like the whole city just dies. Kind of strange, but that’s just how fiestas are here in Spain. I have heard of the Pascua processions, but I didn't get to see one this year. Apparently they are like a super crazy parade with people in red hoods. The pictures look really creepy because the hoods look exactly like the KKK, but I still want to see one.

Love you all so much, and I hope you all had a Happy Easter!

A golden new investigator & a trip to Montserrat

3/31   Just a little bit about this new investigator we found. Her name is Lana, she is 17 years old, and she is from Ukraine. She just showed up to English class last week, and stayed for a missionary night activity that we are trying to get started in the ward. She loved the short lesson we shared, and had a great time making friends with everyone who was there. We later found out that after the activity, she ran into Manel, one of the youth of the ward, in the streets. They were apparently already friends, and Manel invited her to come to church the next day.

The next day, she came to sacrament meeting, and she told us that she really enjoyed it. She also stayed for the other two hours, and all of the members in the ward took her in like she had been there her whole life. She made a ton of friends that day, and she let us know how good it made her feel. When she left the chapel after church, she had already downloaded the Gospel Library app, and she had a young women's personal progress booklet. She had the biggest smile on her face. She told us that she was going to come to a wedding activity on Friday, English class on Saturday, and church on Sunday the next week.

She came to the wedding, and had a great time. The next day, she came to English class, which sort of just turned into a full-blown gospel discussion. We talked about pretty much everything from the restoration to the Word of Wisdom. Right after Elder Jonson quoted the first vision to her she told us it gave her goosebumps. We helped her realize that this was the spirit testifying that it was true. At the end, she asked us if she could have a hard copy of the Book of Mormon. When we saw her the next day, she told us that she had been reading all night, and couldn’t stop crying while reading it. She read 16 chapters that first night.

This experience has helped me notice the hand of the Lord in His work. There is no doubt that this girl has been prepared to receive the gospel, and I know that the Lord has a plan for each one of his children, and I am so thankful for the opportunity I have as a missionary to play a role in helping some of His children return to Him.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to hike all the way up Montserrat for Preparation day. It was so cool, and really great to get a chance to do something outdoorsy. I learned a lot of cool things about that mountain as well. Apparently there is a huge underground lake underneath it, and hundreds of caves and tunnels. A member told us last night that there is a tunnel that leads to Barcelona, and one that leads all the way to France! Of course all of these tunnels and caves and stuff are blocked off, so nobody can enter. On top of that, there is a huge cathedral and monastery on top of the mountain, lots of little shops as well. It’s like a full-blown city on top of one of the coolest looking mountains I have ever seen. I took lots of pictures.

At the top of Montserrat 

 The Montserrat Monastery

A weekend full of miracles

3/23   This weekend we saw so many miracles! At first the week was going really rough. Every visit we had set was failing on us, and all of our backup plans too. It was getting really discouraging, but then Friday came. The first thing we planned to do was go hard contacting for the first hour of the day. At first, it seemed like nobody was going to listen, but we decided to turn around at one point and contact a lady sitting on a bench. She turned out to be an old investigator, and we were able to set up a visit with her. Her name is Exaltación (Exaltation), so we have no doubts that she will be baptized some day with that name.

Later that same day, we were on a hurry to get to an appointment, and we saw someone across the street that looked like someone we knew. Turns out, we had no clue who he was, but he must have known the missionaries before, because he knew who we were. We set a visit with him as well. 5 minutes later, we were on a corner waiting for Pres. Pace to come join us for a lesson, and ran into/contacted another guy on the street. He was interested, and we set up a visit with him. Those three experiences strengthened my testimony so much! I know that when things are hard, if we endure with faith, we will be blessed, and we will see success.

To add on to that, the lesson we had with Pres. Pace went so good! The investigators name is Olga, and she has been investigating the church for about 2 years now. She has a 17 year old son who is a member, and he goes out to contact and teach with us all the time. The lesson was little bit shaky until Pres. Pace picked everything up. When he teaches and testifies, there is always an undeniable spirit present. Hermana Pace was able to set a baptismal date with Olga, which has never been done before. This weekend was literally full of miracles! This was just all I have time to write about.

Baptism day complications

3/16  So this week wasn't very eventful, but the hermanas here got two baptisms on Saturday, and there are a couple of stories to tell about that. First of all, we were put in charge of filling the font, which is just a portable tarp pool thing. No big deal right? Wrong! The water in the entire building shut off when the font wasn't even knee deep. We ran around in a panic for about an hour trying everything possible to fix it, but nothing worked. We decided to say a prayer, and then call bishop. When bishop showed up, he made a couple of calls, then left the building. He came back 30 minutes later, and the water worked perfectly. I don’t want to know what he had to do to make that work, but he had his serious cop face on when he left... Everything from then on went perfectly. The next day on Sunday, we had the confirmation of both of the baptisms, but only one of them showed up. During the confirmation of the first one, I was praying so hard for the other one to show up. Right when the confirmation was finished, he walked in. Such a huge miracle.

So today for Preparation Day we took the train into Barcelona and rented bikes. We rode around Plaza Cataluña and all around that part of the city. It was super fun, and we will probably do it again sometime soon. It was really fun to spend a little time with the other elders in our district, Elder Ward and Elder Cox. They are super funny, and the 4 of us get along like best friends.

When we got back from Barcelona, we saw a huge miracle! We decided to walk down a different way than we usually do, and by doing so, we ran into our long lost recent convert. We have a recent convert named Alberto, but when I got here he had just disappeared. We have been trying to call him every day, but had not seen nor heard anything from him, or even about him. He told us that he is living and working in Sitges, which is still in our area, and that he got a new phone. We were so happy to find out that he is still alive, and still really happy. We will definitely be visiting him now that we know where he lives. He seemed like a really cool, very nice kid, and I am excited to get to know him.

Somewhere in Barcelona

Boys will be boys ...

Justin got punked!

3/9  So I got totally punked this week. We were walking through a little plaza in the center of town, and we got stopped by a policeman. He asked us for our residency cards and documents and stuff, and was really giving us a hard time. He was mostly picking on me, and at the time, I couldn't figure out why. He asked us what we were doing here, and so I told him we were missionaries for our church. He asked us if we had any sort of permission to be doing what we were doing, but when we showed him the paper signed by the prophet, he said that that didn't have authority here. It came to the point where my companion told me to call the bishop of our ward, whom I still hadn't met. Turns out the policeman is the bishop! Such a punk, but it was really funny looking back at it. He told me that he does that prank with every new missionary that comes through. I got to know bishop a little bit better on Sunday, and he is one of the funniest guys I have ever met! He is also really, really good at working with the missionaries, so I am really excited to serve with him here.

Vilafranca is actually a pretty tiny city, but our area is huge!! It covers about 6 cities, and they are all pretty far apart. Right now everything is pretty dead because of winter, but when spring comes along, things will be so beautiful around here. The members here are super helpful, and invite us over for eating visits and family home evenings with investigators all the time! I am so pumped to get to know everyone. Another funny thing, because the city is so small, the missionaries are pretty well known in most of the stores and we run into a ton of people that already know us on the streets.

One day this last week, we tried contacting a black man, but he told us he was in a hurry, but told us we could talk to his friend that just happened to walk by right then. So we spoke to him, and he turned out to be really interested, and accepted a Book of Mormon and set a visiting appointment. When we came by another day to visit with him, he had 4 other friends over, and they all sat in on our lesson about the Book of Mormon. We gave them all a book, and they all said they would read the introduction before our next visit. That was a really big miracle, because it helped us reach our goal to have 6 new investigators in the week.