Day 426

first off its weird that abby is babyistting hahaha and second even more that she sends kids to their room haha i remember the kind of fits that she threw when the bedroom was even mentioned hahaha ... thats funny though good story.
Elder Mendoza is from Ecuador but has lived in madrid the last 10 years. He is older than me which goes to say .. since dec 1 of 2010 when i started this adventure i have been the younger in age companion of all of my companions that i have been with in the mission. my goal is that the next ones stay older than me in age still haha so i have hope i think its funny but it works. anyways just a fun fact.
he doesnt say much his spanish is phenomenal haha we have tried to enjoy our time together every moment so far. last night we dicided to play Risk haha i beat him in 30 minutes PLUS i had my guys on every single country and continent haha it was funny. we have a lot of high hopes for the coming weeks and all but you never know. next week i have to go to malaga for a concilio de los lideres de distrito que tengan de vez en cuando. creo que es cada 3 meses pero es mi primero y tengo la oportunidad para ir a mi primer lugar otra vez!!! haha im kind of excited for that just a little bit i know i wont see anyone but thats ok. ive almost been out here a year in the mission field thats crazy to think about. ... im getting distracted. mendoza he is a tall kid for ecuador. most of the people dont believe him when they ask haha but he is funny and he is really positive about everything . we just leave and look to have a great time enjoying ourselves in everything that we do. ummm. lets see life is good. im happy. we dont have much going on right now here in cartagena so it feels like the craziest thing is that we had transfers. right now we are still just trying to get someone to teach but we have a lot of hope with some people this week thats coming. anyways we will talk to you all the next week and i hope that you ahve the best weeks ever! haha love you!

Day 419

so i guess ill just start with the news. Anderson is leaving Cartagena... he is going to Granada. thats cool. i am getting a new companion.. obviously. his name is Elder Mendoza .. i dont really know where he is from President said that he is from chile or argentina or ecuador or something haha he didnt really know when he called which is fine the only thing that he really told me is that he doesnt speak english. that will be fun i wonder what missionaries have taught him already he doesnt have that much time in the mission but hopefully my spanish will get better haha. i have a lot of improving to do still. its nicer when you are forced into it its just so much easier with americans to just speak english its more sane haha.
this last week has been a good week just a lot of the normal stuff. but we have a plan for when mendoza gets here called operacion fenix. haha i wrote that in spanish. operation pheonix. i guess its still pretty similar but we are just going to go crazy haha now dont think that im going insame mentally out here im jsut excited to have fun. we are going to enjoy ourselves the next 6 to 12 weeks together haha. ummmm
lets see something crazy that happened this last week. we got offered wine more than normal. that was funny. kind of haha . we got along pretty well as a companionship.... thats good. and transfers thats about it really. things have been going alright its just hard to keep contacting and having that fire and animo when your comp just complains haha so with mendoza we will just change that right off. time is going by really well haha anyways i dont have much else to say we will have detes on the homie next week!! love you all!

Day 412

this week was a hard week. it was a lot of learning about patience and long suffering haha enduring to the end i guess. this week was just a long long week. we got failed so many times be people and it was just like one thing hard after another walking around everywhere haha hoping that we could get in somewhere but i guess the Lord has had other plans. i dont know. buttttt even though it was a really hard week it ended pretty well, we went to church and one of the speakers got up and was talking about how there is a silversmith person and he is purifying the silver and he needs to heat it up too much so that the bad stuff gets out of it. well he is asked the question when he knows when it is done too well and he was saying that when he can see his reflection its perfect and wont get ruined when he takes it out and just applying it to our lives how when we go through trials and have our problems and its not fun being purified even though its going to make us look like a beautiful ¨silver¨ plate or whatever we are just getting the things out of us that we need to be taken out to make us better people and how the lord knows us so well that when we go through our trials he just knows exactly when to take us out so that his image and his countenance is upon us and we look and act and are more christlike. it was kind of a really cool way of looking at it. so i guess we go through trials to help us become more like christ.
there is a quote the president clegg just gave us and i have kind of thought about it as far as my mission so far and how we are always setting goals and trying to be more perfect and become more like christ and what not, . . . im not what i wanna be, but a thank God im not what i used to be. i mean they have always said that the mission is for us because of all the things we are doing and learning and stuff and the change that happens and how hard it is and everything and stuff haha i guess its true and we have to have the hard weeks to have the good weeks and appreciate them more and everything like that so even though this was a rough week time is still just going by so fast! haha its incredible i was reading my journal the other day from a year ago and stuff haha its jsut funny im such a funny man i was just laughing so many good memories and so many good things that i have done here and just my mission already means a lot to me im excited for these last 10 months just to hit it off and end it right. i hope you ahve a great week this week!! love you all!

Day 405

So the confirmation passed by with out many problems! haha we got it done so we are good no need to stress more right now just as long as he keeps coming ha so life is good. for now we are happy but it just goes back to the eternal perspective of the week. knocking doors and street contacts. haha we are starting t o get sick of them BUT since the baptism members have been setting up more family nights with non members so hopefully something sparks out of this stuff. haha. we are praying. haha but transfers are coming up. pretty soon. haha the 25th so we are cutting down our time together with anderson. it started off rough i think but we have grown so much together that its incredible. ive honesly learned that really the only way to get through anything no matter the differences that there are is through talking it out. haha and then just forgetting it. once its taken care of just dont go back to it. haha we are just gettng along really well right now . but we are so different haha its so crazy . he is totally the nerd kid and im totally not . i guess you could say but we figured it out . we have conquered cartagena I and we are still conquering it. things are opening up and we are just making the time cruise by like none other like right now it doesnt feel like its p day haha but it still feels like it was so long ago that i wrote you guys haha. the parties are finally over. for this month next month they have another one and then semana santa haha i hope im not here in cartagena for that butttt. its ok because we will see, its just so hard and stuff in semana santa and then after that as far as the parties go its somewhat free sailing. life is good. we are happy. we are chugging still trying to get some solid investigators but it is what it is they will come as we go. anyways life is good. haha i just dont feel like i have a whole lot to say this week. i hope that everyone feels better, that the sickness gets over with soon. ive had the sniffles too but today im in short sleeve pros shirt haha so its starting to get warmer again haha suckas!!!! enjoy the cold im sure right when i get off the plane in salt lake ill just be so sick for like the first month beecause it will be so cold haha. anyways i hope this week is good! talk to you all later!!!!

Day 398

Abby figured out in church that Brad has approximately 333 days left. I'm not sure about her math but it is on the down slope. Sister Colling talked in her testimony on Sunday about how the whole ward is blessed from having a missionary in the field. We know that we have been blessed by the the year plus service that Brad has down. Happy New Year to all!

__________


Feliz fiestas. haha while all of you start getting back into a routine we still have more parties here in spain. we still have los reyes. or the kings which come by this friday. crazy crazy. anyways lets move on . manuel got baptized. but not confirmed. there were some problems and he wasnt able to make it but he didnt let us know and we had no idea what was going on until he texted us this morning saying he had to drive to barcelona yesterday. which made for quite a stressful day to say the least. but he still wants to finish the process so we just need to wait until the end of this week to finish it up. but as you know we got 325 baptisms for this last year. manuel was that last one!! haha so that was kind of cool to get the ap´s and president were calling us after to make sure it happened haha and now we have a big big goal for this coming year. we will see how it goes. everyone is pretty excited.

New years was awesome and its so funny every one just says feliz año or happy year haha. not happy new years just happy year. and they eat a grape with every chime of the big bell in madrid. we just watch a ball drop in new york but either way its pretty fun and everyone goes crazy. haha so the big 2012 its kind of weird. there is a lot to get done this next couple of months and then hey check it out ill get home right before the world ends .. haha we have talked about this a lot in our companionship and we see so many signs saying how are you going to end? and then they try to sell all of their stuff. its pretty funny. but we will see what happens i guess. i saw that japon had another earthquake. thats pretty crazy. i wonder if they will start listening to the gospel more over there or how much more of a beating they will take until that happens. hopefully it doesnt get to the point they just have to get destroyed. my comp asked me yesterday, after we saw that. how much will it take to get spaniards to start believing in God again? well i dont know ... lately president clegg has been making a big deal about having our own food storage so i guess we will see .. preparedness ha. its a beauty if you are. but he told us that its just to caution us and not to get too carried away with anything. but this week was pretty good we are happy and things are going onward and upward.

the stake president talked on sunday about how we are writing our books by our actions and how the angels are recording everything that we do. and how we will be judged out of these books and so on. he ended his talk by saying something that i think is a good theme for this year. . he said. write the best pages of your lives this year. so just remember the lord knows what he is doing and he sees everything. life is going really good. it feels good to have 2011 over and all the accomplishments that happened. we are excited here. the time is just flying by its so insane! but dont forget we are writing our books make it count! love you all have a great week!