Transfer Week!!!

Well.... I'm being transferred. I've come to accept it haha. It's very sad but I feel like it's time for me somewhere else. And I know my president was inspired. I am going to a town outside of Malaga called Torremolinos. I will be serving in one of the wards in Malaga but out of the city in a littler town. It's right on the beach so that will be nice now that the weather is heating up! Sevilla is known to get up to 130 degrees during the summer!!! So I'm glad I'll be down near the coast where the weather is a little more temporal. My new comp looks like Freshie from the pictures I've seen of him haha. So hopefully I'll feel right at home! I leave on Wednesday.

It's been a really long week. Last week we couldn't ever get in to M-. The girl we were going to baptize. Then the day before her baptism we finally did and had her interview and she was super ready! We were all super excited! I got my transfer call that night in a member's home and told them I'd be leaving. It was really hard to say goodbye. I shared one of my favorite scriptures with them and my testimony and the Spirit was about as strong as I had ever felt it. Then I had done the same thing with some investigators that day as well. Saying goodbye. The next day was M-'s baptism. We stopped at her house that morning to make sure she was ready and everything and told her we would see her that night! Me and my companion spent all afternoon getting arrangements all squared away and 20 minutes before the baptism she wasn't there. We called and her uncle told us she didn't feel well and wasn't going to come. We had tried calling and asked if we could give her a blessing or what we could do and her family just said that they don't think she wants to be baptized. She didn't come to church the next Sunday and we called and her Mom said that she had an infection and wouldn't be coming. They haven't answered the phone since then so we don't know what is happening. It was a rough few days.

But a lot of our others are progressing and my companion should be on the mission blog multiple times next month! haha. I left a lot of good here and hope to keep going in Malaga! Today we are enjoying our last P day together as a district. They are really hard to say goodbye to because they have become family to me here. But the work isn't gonna do itself so I gotta git'r'dun! :)

Love you guys! I'll tell you how great Torremolinos is next week! :)

Elder Marchant

pics...

Flamenco dress

Alcazar de Sevilla 

pooping statue....that's the only thing I can see it being haha

more of the Alcazar de Sevilla!

it's a huge palace with these amazing gardens! 

Yes, that is a huge maze of bushes!!! We had a race! 

Zone Conference.

Man, what a great week!

Man, what a great week!

The castle in Alcalá was super cool and I have pictures of that! We just climbed up to the top of the hill and there was just an old castle there so we just climbed all over it and played around and took pictures! It was so fun!

This week has been super busy and nothing crazy has happened. We´ve just been working like crazy. We have a big whiteboard in our piso to plan for our investigators and there is no room on it now because we have so many investigators and so much work! When Antezana left we had 10 investigators and now we have 26! We literally have no time to contact, knock doors, teach less active, or even visit members! We have a baptism this weekend! And are super excited for it! We also have 4 other baptismal dates for April. This is probably my last week in Sevilla. I will get a call this weekend and find out. I am praying to stay here. But if the Lord needs me somewhere else, then I¨m up for it! I´ve definitely done a lot here in Sevilla and made a lot of progress for whoever comes to take my place. But I´m just hoping like crazy I can stay here for 6 more weeks!!! I remember before I left I wanted to get transferred all the time so I could see different parts of Spain but all I wanna do is stay here now and finish with the people that we have! It´s gonna be a sad day when I leave. But there are even greater things coming if I do!

Everyone asks me what kind of food I like and what we eat. Mainly we just eat rice haha. With different things in it. I love Calamari and Octopus actually! I´ve really enjoyed every fish meal that I´ve had. They eat lots of soups. I like lintal (however it is spelled in English) soup. Lots of members make that. Yeah...rice and chicken about sums up the food I've eaten haha. But it's all very good! I really like Bolivian and Peruvian food too! Except this crap called Seviche. It's like onion lime fish craziness. We've eaten it twice and it's just weird but south Americans love it so I just eat it haha. The candy and chocolate here is amazing! They have these things everywhere called Chuches stands. Chuches are gummi candies and are SUPER popular and pretty darn good actually. :)

The language is just coming great now. I can talk with just about anyone. For language study I've just been starting to translate quotes and write them in my book because I can't stand just studying out of the book. You guys know I've never been one for studying :) haha. But It's all great!!! The people are awesome! Our investigators are finally getting the hang of it! My companion is probably gonna have at least 10 baptisms next month! I've really done great work here and will be happy to do it somewhere else if I get transferred :).

Their church building that the meet in each Sunday in Sevilla.

Alrighty!!!

Well, I can´t think of any super crazy stories that happened this week... We have just been working super hard and teaching like crazy! We have quite a few investigators right now! That is super great! We should be having a baptism next week as well!!! We are super excited for that! She is solid! We went over the baptismal questions with her on our last visit and we talked with her to make sure she understood everything. We said ¨What do you understand about keeping the Sabbath Day Holy?¨ and she said ¨Well, we go to church, read our scriptures and stuff. Oh and we can´t listen to music!¨ And we said ¨Woah! You think we can´t listen to music on Sundays and you STILL wanna be baptized!?!¨ hahaha. So she is great! She is 16 years old and her name is M.... Her family has been investigating the church for over a year I think and something changed in her and now she really wants to be baptized! We are praying for her and hope everything goes great! The only thing that will keep her is that her whole family is not being baptized. But we have faith that all will work out! 

We have also had the opportunity to give quite a few Priesthood Blessings this week. All of them have been truly inspired too! I am so grateful for those opportunities. They strengthen my testimony every time!

We had a crazy experience with our family from Peru too. They are the ones who had a baptismal date but fell through. We had a lesson with them and I was just getting so frustrated the whole time. I had felt like I had done everything I could with them and nothing was going right. My companion could tell I was getting frustrated and then he said ¨Do you guys not feel our love for you when we come? Especially from Elder Marchant. We love you guys and wouldn't keep coming back if we didn't! Can't you guys feel the spirit when we are here." and they all just said that they feel our love but don't know what the Spirit is like still. And then my companion said "Right now we are all gonna kneel down and Elder Marchant is gonna pray. When he finishes we are gonna stay down with our eyes closed and stay kneeling until we feel the Spirit." So we all knelt down and I prayed and when I was done, the brothers from the other room came in and just knelt down with us and started praying with us too. It was like the Spirit told them they had to come in and kneel down with the family. 4 minutes later my companion said we could get up. They said they felt it and we challenged them to have family prayer kneeling every night till our next visit. So we have been reminding them every night and we will find out how it went next time we go! HOPEFULLY IT WORKS!! :) haha.

Well that is my week :) Now we're gonna go work crazy hard still and find more people and baptize the people we already have!!! I sent an email to my President today and said "President, I know it's not your decision. It's the Lord's. But....I would REALLY love to stay in our area 1 more transfer if He is okay with that :)." So I am REALLY hoping that I stay here 1 more transfer to help our investigators! They have gone so far and they are all SO close to the baptismal font!! I want to see them in it so bad!!! But I won't complain whatever happens. :)

Well I love you guys! We are going to a castle today! So I'll tell you about that next week! Have a great one!


Ta lo (How they pronounce Hasta Luego in Sevilla) hahaha

Elder Marchant

 Happy St. Patties Day!

I have a good excuse for being a day late!!

First off, I´m sorry you didn´t get an email yesterday haha. We had a member offer to take us to Córdoba! So we spent the day there! It is super pretty! I took tons of pictures mom! But....the Locitorio that we are in doesn´t have slots to put my SD card so...you´ll have to wait! mwahaha! But you WILL get them eventually!


Well we are just so dang busy! We have a baptismal date for that kid, Edward, that I was talking about last week! That was a miracle! It is so amazing to see how just over a week ago he didn´t believe in God at all and now he prays with us and is so sincere! So we are hoping and praying that he continues to progress and that he makes it into the waters of baptism this month!


I had an interview with my Mission President last week and that was just great. He is truly inspired of God! I had started getting to a point where I was saying so many prayers a day that they started to become so routine and meaningless kind of.... I couldn´t figure it out! In my interview, we started off by kneeling down and praying and then my mission president said ¨Well, is there anything you wanna talk to me about?¨ And I thought that there was something but I had forgotten so I just said no. Then he said ¨ ALrighty then, well I wanna talk to you a little about Prayer´ Then I remembered! And he gave me some amazing advice about how to make prayers more meaningful and personal.


On Sunday we went to a members house because we had nothing planned with investigator´s that night. So we just kinda popped in haha. The mom hadn´t been at church so we decided we´d go ask if she needed a blessing. We got up there and a girl that lives with them answered the door. She is less active and has a few things messed up in her life. She lives with this family and works. Well we said asked if sister Jesús needed a blessing and she said ´´I don´t know...but I need one.´´ She wouldn´t tell us why but we gave her a blessing and then gave Sister Jesús one after. Well after all that this girl says to us ¨Before you guys got here I was getting ready to leave. I have been facing a very difficult question in my life right now and have been praying for the answer. I was getting ready to go do something and then I prayed and asked the Lord to answer me PLEASE! And when I finished the prayer the doorbell rang and you guys came up. You said something about a blessing and so I asked for one. One sentence you said in my blessing answered my question perfectly.¨ This girl was trying to keep from crying and was so grateful and it really grew her testimony. It was an amazing experience!


Well I will tell you a little about Córdoba when I send pictures next week! Have a great week everyone! And I love you! Thanks for your support and prayers! They keep me going.


Love,


Elder Marchant

Busiest week of the mission by far!!!

Busiest week of the mission by far!!! Last week we had our schedule's booked all the way up till Saturday! This week we are book until Thursday already! We have made lots of new investigators who are really progressing! My new comp is a stud! We are tearing it up here!!! We have 4 baptismal dates for this month and have a goal to have 5 more by the end of the week. And have names for all of them! So we are gonna work hard, be super obedient, and love the people! I truly am "getting lost in the work". It is going by so fast!! After this transfer I will hit my 6 month mark!! That's a FOURTH done!! I can't believe it! I feel like I'm brand new still. But I have grown so much.
This week I wanna talk about 1 investigator. He is the son of the woman we found crying that one time. He doesn't believe in God at all and the Hermanas have been teaching their family but he never comes in. He doesn't like the Hermanas but I had talked with him before about stuff and we were alright friends. So the Hermanas asked us if we could go teach him. We've been to him 3 times and he has transformed!! Our first lesson, I told my companion I was just gonna pray and follow the spirit and wing the lesson. I get in there and talk with him for a while and then I think of Alma the Younger. He didn't believe in God either. In fact, he was trying to destroy the church. I flipped to Alma 36 which is when Alma tells his son, Helaman, the story of his conversion and we start reading. It was perfect! You guys should go read it! And towards the end there is a verse where Alma says that since that day his trust has been in God and that he has been delivered through everything that he has been and that he will trust in God forever. The Spirit was super strong but the kid was still not willing to do anything. We took him with us to the Plaza De Espana last P day and just tried being his friend because he doesn't have any. Then we went and taught him another lesson and it was guided by the Spirit a ton too! We talked a lot about how God loves us and faith. Then we asked if he would pray tonight to ask God if He really loved him. He promised us and then my comp said "Hey! Will you say the closing prayer?" and the kid said yeah. He said "Heavenly Father, thanks for the missionaries...I promised them that I would pray to you tonight and I promise that tonight I'm gonna talk to you. I want so bad to know if you really do love me or if you're even there. Please help me." And the Spirit was SO STRONG!! I was like DUDE!! Can you not feel it right now!?!?! We called the Hermanas and told them what happened and they were so dang happy! They said that His mom has bee wanting to be baptized but won't do it unless her son understand and approves and stuff. The 3rd visit to him he was like super happy! And this kid never smiles!! But the whole time he was so happy and we taught him the Restoration and he was asking questions and super interested the whole time! We are really really hoping that we can help him! Have another appointment with him tomorrow! :) I'll be sure to keep you guys updated!





Love you guys


Elder Marchant

Pictures: The District :)

My bed :) (made....pretty good)

and PIPAS!!! The best sunflower seed in the world!! We eat them all day long! :)