Sept 15, 2010

~ Elder Kap is pretty much just amazing, it´s so fun to be with him. I really hope I get to watch him go home too, he´s an awesome missionary, and we´re getting along great, and we´re working really efficiently, and using our time the best that we can. Today for p-day we went hiking with the senior couple that is here and the other elders and some members, in the middle of the island there are mountains and pine trees, and it smelled so good. We took pictures and had a picnic after.
elder ross

September 22

~ Everything is going great, I haven´t crashed yet, and now I can parallel park like no other, I swear driving those golf carts around all day helps me drive here. That´s insane they have up to 50 students in a class. So Rachel is a sophmore now? No puede ser... so we still have a baptismal date for the friend of the recent convert, and we started teaching his whole family, so we´ll see if they progress too. It´s kinda hard with such a big area cause we teach people who don´t have a car who live really far away from the church and it´s hard for them to make it on Sunday, or attend consistently, but I guess those who have the faith will come no matter how far they have to travel. So the cactuses get pretty dang big, they grow taller than your head, and branch out from the middle like 3 feet maybe. So the family that gave us those cactuses has three daughters and one son who have families, and the daughter who was our neighbor in fuerteventura just moved to a pueblo on this island where I´m at, and we ate lunch with them yesterday and it was cool to see them again, their kids are hilarious. The church made an instructional dvd called the district that went with one district and video taped them and it helps us learn to be better missionaries, and now they´ve come out with a new one, and it´s really good. They ask a lot of questions and really try to fit the lessons to each individual, and the last three days in the morning all the leaders in the mission with president Watkins, got together and we joined by camara to watch the new videos and learn, and it´s really cool to see how missionaries are coming out more and more prepared to baptize from the beginning. Thanks for the package, I did get it but it was like 2 weeks ago and I forgot to tell you I got it but it is awesome, that beef jerky was amazing! and I still can´t believe that p-nut butter has no hydrogenated oils, what a blessing haha. I gave the stickers to the member and she was super happy, she tried to give me money but I wouldn´t take it so she said we have to eat at her house once a week now, and she´s from Venezuela and she cooks amazing. I miss my old comp but my new one is awesome so it´s all good, we´re having loads of fun. Les echo un monton de menos, y les quiero mucho!
elder ross

Sept, 8 - First Baptism

~ The baptism went great, and we gave him the holy ghost on Sunday and it was awesome, there is a mom and a daughter that we are teaching, and during sacrament meeting I said to her that that was the first baptism that I have had, and she said, don´t worry you´ll have two more before you leave, talking about them two, so i guess we´ll see. It was super sad to see my comp leave. He left me an English futbol jersey which is awesome. I still don´t want to buy rachel a spanish national team jersey just cause it´s really just that insanely expensive, i´m sure online you could find them for half the price, so if you look and you find a good price buy me one too .
My New companion is named Elder Kap, and he is an amazing elder. I really don´t deserve so many just amazing companions. We both drink a liter of milk a day and a bunch of water, and we like exercising. We love talking to people in the streets, we are really similar and i´m going to grow a mountain while i´m with him. He´s from Pleasant View UT. north of Ogden, and he goes home in February. I hope I can stay here for as long as possible. Driving is ridiculous, but i´ve already learned a ton in two days, and I haven´t crashed. A cop was behind me at an intersection and when the light turned green I didn´t pop the clutch but almost, and like 3 seconds later the cop turned it´s lights on and I thought I was done for so I pulled over and he just drove by, it was a big scare. But everything is great, the mission president and his wife visited us to do a piso (apartment) check, and our piso is really old, it used to be the old mission home for the islands and it has so much stuff that we don´t use, so at first president said that we had to get everything fixed and we had to throw away all the broken stuff, but by the end, the list of things to do was so long that he said it would be better if we just moved pisos so we are in the process of looking for a new piso as well, so we got tons to do, and the adventure just get´s better and better, I miss you all, stay happy and i´ll see you later.
elder ross

Sept 1, 2010 - New Companion

~ My new companion is named elder Kap and he´ll be here on sunday right before elder Woodland leaves. It´s sad knowing he´s done and I won´t see him for a long time, but we had some good weeks together. I have to do a bunch of stuff with getting empatronized here in las palmas, but I love you all, thanks for everything, I miss you a ton. Have a good week.
elder ross

oh yeah, we have a baptism this saturday the day before Woodland leaves and it´s an 18 year old kid who is awesome so that will be number 1!

Aug 25, 2010

~ Thanks for everything! You guys are really just amazing parents, and I miss you a ton. I´m sorry about the kidney stone, no offense but I really hope I don´t inheret your digestive system or your kidneys, I heard kidney stones are one of the worst pain a man can go through. Tell Aunt Lynn congratulations too for being called as the Stake Relief Society President, she will do great! All the relief society presidents here in the branches are always so strong and help us so much, they don´t even realize how amazingly important they are in the work of the Lord. Thanks for taking care of the cactuses, I´m stoked for the "tunos", yea I heard that the spaniards brought them back and set them up as borders around there property, and in Jerez in the peninsula I saw the giant cactus borders.
I still highly advise against letting Rachel drive, 1. she´s a girl 2. she´s hardly a child 3. she´ll be driving my car!!!! I just can´t see anything good come from this, but the Lord´s will be done right? no but seriously if you let her drive (cause you don´t have to) you should restrict her driving at night and on the weekends just cause that´s when I got in trouble but anyways...
We are on splits to the island of Tenerife right now and it´s been awesome, I went on splits with my elder Slack and it was so good to see him, we´ve had so much fun. We had a district meeting, and the district leader and I made plans to have the meeting in a different chapel than they usually do because my comp. Elder Woodland started his mission in that chapel, and we had the meeting in the sacrament room where he gave his first testimony in the mission field and the district leader at the end of the meeting asked him to bear his testimony and it was super fuerte. It makes me scared to go home. Thanks for everything, these are the best experiences I´ve ever had. Thanks for helping me get out here.
elder ross

Aug 18. 2010

~ We did a bunch of contacts last week me and my comp. and we did splits with some elders at the south of the island and got them a bunch of contacts too. We were trying to get everyone excited about doing them, and when our numbers came in on Sunday there was a huge difference. Almost every companionship at least doubled and some tripled and some quadrupled their number of contacts, so President Watkins is happy and so am I. It´s gotten to be a bit of a competition, and no one in our zone has beat us yet for the week. The kid I trained and his comp from spain did beat our most contacts in one day record though and now it´s set at 46 so we have to try to beat that now. They are the newest elders in the mission and they are doing as many contacts as anyone so that´s cool. It seems like the friendly competition works for this group, I know it´s what get´s me going at least. We heard that my first comp Elder Solari who stayed in the Málaga mision got put in today as A.P. So that´s cool. In our group of three, Elder Anderson & Elder Solari were put in as Z.L. after 4 transfers, I trained after 5 transfers now elder Anderson is the office elder of Madrid, and I´m Z.L. and Elder Solari is now A.P. So we´ve had a great start to the mission. The experiences of the mission are priceless.
This weeks it´s going to be hard to get our contacts in Las Palmas cause we are on the island of Lanzarote now, which is the desert Island north of Fuerteventura. We got here Monday and worked with them and celebrated my comp Elder Woodland´s 21 birthday, Elder Jensen baked him a cake the day before, and we surprised him with it when they got home for the afternoon, and then we happened to find a giant stuffed giraffe in the street so we took that to the apartment and put a happy birthday sign on it and it was funny. Monday night elder Jensen and I went to the house of a member in a village, and we taught her non member mom who is super nice the plan of salvacion. They had a huge garden, and I said that the plants are so detailed and amazing that they are evidence to me that God created them and put all nature here and gave it all a purpose, a purpose that they all fulfill really well.
You guys are crazy letting Rachel drive you anywhere let alone some place far. I do not support her driving at all. I can´t think of anything more dangerous. For the longest time I didn´t want to ask cause I knew it would distract me, but will my car still be in one piece when I get home??? oh well, at least I´ve learned to love walking so it´s all good, haha. well we´re going to spend this p-day here in Lanzarote with Elders Jensen (utah) and Mater (england). My comp knew elder Mater before the mission in england, but he´s just starting the mission, so my comp is trying to impart his council before he goes home.