June 21 & June 28

~ So we have been having some success over here, it´s been really amazing, there´s been miracle after miracle with the mission work. Before yesterday I hadn´t seen one investigator in church, but yesterday we had 3 come out. One is just about ready for baptism, and one of the others his sister started hearing the lessons here on this island when he started. Then she went to live in Malalga, and got taught by the missionaries there, and she got baptised there. Now she has moved back here, so they all came to church yesterday and it was cool. The kid we teach says that it´s not fair that he started taking the lessons first and she got baptized before him, so we think she´ll be a good influence on him. We are just loving it over here. we had a mini zone conference here where we used the camera in the chapel to watch a zone conference in malaga that they had with an area 70 named Elder Kerr from Scotland, and it was really powerful, and just awesome.
We are going to go to Gran Canaria in 2 weeks to have another zone conference with the new mission president. It won´t be the same but he´ll have the authority for the mission work in these areas. I want to stay here in this area for the whole mission, or at least three two more transfers, I went three transfers with my trainer so I hope we can just stay here for a little while. It really doesn´t matter but I just really love this place, and the people are super awesome. Everything is going good, stay happy and keep working hard.
elder ross


6-28-2010 That´s awesome that Logan´s the branch president, we get the chance to help a lot here too. We had a family home evening for the branch, and just before there was a graduation ceremony for seminary in the chapel. There was some miscommuncation, and everyone who was in the seminary graduation thought that the family home evening was canceled, so they all left including the people who had the lesson so everyone else who had come to the chaple and prepared the game and refreshments for the family home evening were kinda mad. Then someone asked if we had a little lesson prepared that we could give and I told them that we are missionaries, and that we teach for a living, so we were able to teach everyone the message of the restoration, and it turned out all right.
We heard yesterday from just about every one of the young men at least 3 times each that America lost, I was quite sad, but my comp and I concluded that it´s better for our personal safety that we don´t win the world cup while we´re living in Spain. As they say here the match between Spain and Portugal is going to be a "partiraso" (just a really good game). Anyways, thanks for all your prayers and all your support, I miss you all a mountain (spanish expression) don´t worry be happy!

June 2010

~ This week was amazing! But then again every week is amazing in the mission. Everyone here is crazy for futbol, but I´m not going to lie, I´ve resparked my personal love for it also.
So we left on Sunday after church (which was branch conference) to go to the island of Gran Canaria, and we had interviews with President Mellor for the very last time, and it was amazing, he always tells me that he trusts me a lot for some reason, he said that he couldn´t send someone to this island to train if he didn´t trust them. He has given me so much strength. Then on Monday we had zone conference, and it was really motivational, it was super hard to hear president bear his testimony at the end, I don´t know if I´ve ever felt the spirit so strong. I know the spirit was there because I had an overwhelming desire to do good, and to work harder, and the Holy Ghost inspires man to do good continually. I want to do good continually no matter what it takes, and no matter what personal changes I need to make. Elder Anderson (my comp from madrid) and I were able to do contacts in the street together after the conference and it was so much fun seeing just how much we have grown. He´s just a stud and a half. We got up this morning and had p-day together as a zone, and it was great, we played another zone vs zone futbol match and it was awesome, there's no sort of motivation to exercise like sports, we all ran ourselves to exhaustion, and it was great. So now Elder Slack and I are back in Fuerteventura. Elder Slack came to the mission field ready to be a missionary and ready to work, so we´re having a great time. He´s still learning spanish but he´s progressing little by little. Everything is going great, thanks for everything. When the days are tough, search for the Spirit, because He motivates us to do good, and gives us the strength and peace to do it.
elder ross

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May 31, 2010

~ So Elder Slack is here now, and we´re having a blast. He´s really humble, and awesome. He´s actually from Reno, so everyone askes us what the casinos are like. He´s still learning spanish, but he has seriously progressed so much in just 4 days. We had 23 lessons this last week, and the zone leaders said that we broke the sister's record of most lessons in our zone, so that was cool. We had 4 lessons to investigators with a member present, 8 with just investigators and 11 with members and menos activos. It is almost easier being the trainer, because I just decide which way and we go, there´s not so much indecision. But yeah, everything is going good, he likes playing soccer, so we´ll have more fun with the kids here. I forgot to tell you something funny that happened, so I was using rubbing alcohol to clean my face every night, but then they stopped selling it so I bought hydrogen peroxide, and I used it to wash my face for like a month and it turned my eyebrows yellow, so yeah I have yellow eyebrows, but at least I realized so I don´t use hydrogen peroxide anymore for my face. Thanks for everything, and I hope you have a great summer!

May 24, 2010

~ The weeks are going by like days it seems like. For the past weeks they have been making a new sacrament room in the church, and this was the first time we got to use it. In my first area and here also sacrament isn´t as reverant, and some of the members get kinda mad at the others, but there´s a lot of kids, and they ususally don´t take them out. But now they have put a speaker out in the hall so the parents can take their kids out and still listen, so maybe that will help. It´s also hard cause the microphone isn´t as loud, so whenever I talk I try and speak right into it to make it louder. Everythings good, it´s just hard here because there´s so many people from different backgrounds who weren´t raised in the church, and I guess people get offended easily. I haven´t heard or seen anything specific but there are a ton of inactive members. We have activated one lady though who hadn´t been to church for five years, so that´s good I guess. She taught us how to make croquetas, and they´re really good. We also learned how to make mojo (the j makes and h sound in spanish) and alioli. Mojo is a popular sauce from the canary islands and alioli is like homeade garlic mayonaise, and they're both really good.
It´s been good with Elder Wardell, we have learned a lot, and it seems like we´ve both grown stronger as missionaries. Last night a guy told us we were angels and that we couldn´t know how much he needed the messange that we gave him. It was cool because earlier elder wardell was talking to his wife and playing their guitar, and I was talking to him, and he told me how his work is really stressfull because it´s so competetive, and his boss told him that for the same salary he could be replaced by an engineer with a high degree and everything, so his work has been tough. He told that to me, but Elder Wardell didn´t even hear him say that, and then when we were going to share a scripture, Elder Wardell decided to open up to Ether 12 and read where it says that our testimonies are made sure only after the testing of our faith. We didn´t decide on reading that before hand or anything. It was good to see him receive strength from the Lord in that moment.
So we got the tansfer calls saturday night, and my comp is going up to Granada and there´s a new american elder (Elder Slack) coming down from the Madrid MTC this Wednesday. President called me Saturday and told me I would be training, and he sounded pretty confident that I could do it, so I´m just going to trust his judgement and do my best. so I´ll let you know how it goes, it´s going to be an adventure that´s for sure, thanks for everything!

May 17

~ This week was good, we had 17 lessons, so we almost made the 20 lesson goal. We learned in zone conference about what president calls leccion 0, and its the very first thing we teach to people in the first appointment. We basically find out what they want in life, then we give them an overview of the gospel and explain to them our job as missionaries. We then explain baptism, and commit them to read and pray about the things that we are goiing to be teaching them. We taught this lesson twice this week, and when we taught it last night it worked really good. So we give them a direction and show them from the beginning the desired goal which is baptism, and that helps both us and them. We taught him how to pray, and at first he said he didn´t want to in front of us but president said we should be persistent and should wait until they pray. That´s what we did, and he prayed and it was awesome. So yeah everything is going good, I think that my comp will be leaving next week but we won´t know till this Saturday. Everything is going good over here, thanks for everything and tell everyone I miss them!

May 3, 2010

~ My birthday was really good, the night before we ate super good seafood pizza at an investigator´s house, and they are super nice, and on Saturday we played fútbol with the young men, and they had threatened to throw eggs and flour on me because it was my birthday for the entire week before, but they forgot, so I was safe. After fútbol we ate at a members house who takes care of an older man who is hilarious. He´s like 85, and he can´t hear very good, but he´s always making jokes and laughing, I was saying the prayer for the food, and he started laughing and I started laughing and it took me a while to stop. He´s got a good attitude. after that we visted a less active member who´s living in a motor home now in a city at the north end of the island, and we shared a good message with him and left him a chapter in the Book of Mormon to read, he has changed a lot since I´ve been here. The testimony meeting we had the day after was amazing, it was Mother´s day here, and it was powerful. The testimonies of the humble people here are awesome.
That makes me super happy that Jeff really likes the dental field, I still really feel like that is what I want to do, I want to give people good smiles. I´m going to have to work hard in school when I get back but it´ll be worth it. So we are flying to the island of Tenerife this Friday and we´ll fly back Saturday night. I´m excited to visit that island, and see my comp from Madrid Elder Anderson. We are going to have a big fútbol game between the las palmas zone and the tenerife zone, and it´s gunna be epic. So yeah everything is going great, the mission is the best, thanks for letting me experience this, you have always been great examples. It´s a miracle that I´m out here.
elder ross