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!

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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!

Day 391

Well, I can't seem to download the picture correctly to see the one with his face but you can play --- which Elder is Brad. We had a great time Skyping with him. We had a few technical difficulties but we were able to finally get it going to have a conversation. We could see and hear him, he could see us and not hear us so we called on the phone and we kind of circumvented the problem. We had a great conversation and he was able to see Ryker who was 6 months old when he left and Cache who was not even born. Of course, he saw Abby -- who has changed the most of his siblings. It was just fun to see his face and hear his voice. How thankful we were that the church let their missionaries use the technology of today and we could see our sweet, sweet boy.


merry christmas! i hope that it was just what you expected! haha i was hoping that the presents wouldve been opened at midnight spain time.. we opened them it was great haha i loved it. Sacrament meeting was really good a typical christmas party BUT... we had all 3 wards combined so that was interesting haha they like remixed the christmas songs but it was really really good. our investigator manuel really loved it and the stake president talked about coming and seeing. when the apostles asked him where he was going and stuff he just said come and see. So manuel loved that. he turned to me and was like i want him to baptize me so i turned to him and said after we will ask. so we went up to him and asked if he would be willing to baptize him and he said he´d love to but the problem is that he is going to the temple this week with the jovenes haha to have their temple activity and wont be back in time so he said he would do the confirmation. which was good enough .. then we went to the elders quorum leader and he asked him to do it and he accepted so we are good. ALL good. we just have to get the program together and we have to get through the interview . which wont be a problem he is super prepared. lets see . other than that it was really fun talking with you all. it was kind of weird looking at you because all of you have changed so much. every one is getting so big and stuff i just cant believe it haha. ummm i cant think right now still haha. after we got done talking we went to the other elders piso and just kind of talked the rest of the night. my comp got little rc remote control cars so we raced those around it was pretty fun .. the things you do when you are bored. so today we are just going to kick it the herms wanted to play soccer .. doubt that we will really play cause the other elders are in pros clothes but we wanted to make smores today. thatll happen haha im pretty excited.
so thanks for everything this christmas has been fun we are excited for this week and dont really have much else going on. i hope your new years is going to be fun as well next year we will do some spanish traditions ok? deal. ANyways thanks for everything it was really good to see you all and meet those of you who i still dont know ... aka the nephews haha miss you!

Day 384

Okay so just for your info. we will be talking to Brad while our ward is having Sacrament Meeting but we had already planned to go with Portia and Lance later in the day.

Merry Christmas to all! Thanks for supporting Brad!

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ok so here is the deal. i dont have much time cause i dont have much money to be on here longer i made a skype and i am 90 percent sure i added carson .. aka carseycars. haha it just sounded like here. soooooo next sunday 5 my time??? i dont know what your schedule for church would be butttttt i dont care because you didnt tell me and we have to make decisions. so i will be on here at 5 pm spain time .. which should be about 9 your time if i did my math right ... im hoping so but if not figure it out. im so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!! haha ummm lets see. its cold here now. humid cold which means im sick. cause i dont know what will keep me warm hahahaha. ummm im just trying to get important information out because i dont have much time. im doing good. im excited for christmas! ill be opening presents early!!! haha next year you will all be reminded of how it has been haha anyways life is good im happy we are getting along . nothing is happening here still. so i dont have any cool stories. but the new elder is pretty cool he just loves everyone. we will see how long that lasts haha jk he saw that that is why i put it . so reminders. Carsey cars. aDD ME AS A FRIEND .. or accept it or whatever. and then sunday 5 my time. we will be talking haha love you!! and if there is complications we will be in touch throughout the week . ok love you!!!!! bye!!!!!

Day 377

hola todos.
this week was agood week. we still have nothing going on. no one is really letting us in no one is really accepting anything and plus we are starting to go into the holiday season. and whoever knows anything about the white bible where it says sundays and holidays are the best to go looking for people. welllll... its not even the holidays and we have been contacting every single day. haha no one wants anything from us. yeah the families are more together and they are off of school and what not but that doesnt mean that they want to americans knocking on their door. haha its kind of frustrating but its what it is. i dont know what else we can do. so lets see. why was this week a good week still? well. our only investigator that we have that we were about to drop, accepted baptism for the 30th of this month. haha so there is something to go off of. he is a mexican and he speaks almost perfect english . its actually really hard because he wants us to give him the lessons in english and i cant pray in english anymore. it takes too much brain power. so that is a little hard. i fumble the words more in english than i do in spanish ahha. but its only one investigator so thats not too bad and really there are a lot of people that speak english in the neck of the woods. life is good. i guess. we will see how this transfer goes. my good friend elder phillips is leaving this wednesday. so i wont have my go to buddy haha when we need to talk and stuff but we will see how it goes. life is good though really we are having fun.

they gave us our christmas schedule . it seems pretty good. nothing too crazy. we can skype though. the only problem is we are looking for a place to be able to do it on the 25th . none of the locutorios are going to be open that we know of so we are looking for members that have the stuff the ones that we thought would have it werent at church yesterday so ill let you know more the next week. just so that we can be on the same page. ummmmmmmmm lets see here. if we cant find any place to skype i will give you the code and our number and we can talk about when you guys can call me ok :D haha but im sure we will find something.

this week was good this week that is coming should be alright im happy so dont worry about me hope everything is going well.. love you all!!!!

Day 370

There is a nicer one on the mission blog but I couldn't get it to download to my computer. Spainmalagamission.blogspot.com


hahaha today is going to be a good day. we are going to ride bikes around cartgagena and i guess just not be in proselyting clothes. haha dont worry. i will be taking a break from it when i get home just for a bit im hoping that not having to wear these clothes EVERY DAY will help out with that haha anyways we arent here to talk about this right now i still have a year left. anyways this week was good we lost a lot of investigators haha and then we won some back and we are having our trials but life is life and we are moving forward. haha we have been singing christmas songs since dec. 1st!!! im pretty sure my comp hates me and hates christmas but its ok ... he will learn hahaha its hard not to like christmas around me i mean cmon. opening presents at midnight?!?! im sure you guys cant wait to do that again haha. funny times. anyways life is good. im happy still so that works i guess thats the important thing here in this life. anyways i am trying to think. there was a baptism this last week. ward 3 the other elders baptized a girl. my first baptismal interview and that was crazy. haha then.... lets see pres. came to our district meeting and we talked about the moronis promise. and the importance of all three verses because so many times we just worry about verse 4 but we need to know about verse 3 to lead way to verse four and how it sets the frame of mind to be grateful for the mercies of the lord in our lives and in the world in order to pray and be grateful to recieve an answer whether its the book of mormon or which street to knock or anything really haha and as we ponder what we are learning and what we are meditating in our life is key to recieiving an answer to the book of mormon and that answer only comes through reading while we are reading. but im happy and well and i dont have much to say now .. i hope the preperations for your christmas parties are going great!!!!