Well...HE CAME!

This week was tiring! Haha.

We set some really big goals this week as a companionship and worked
really hard to reach them. In our mission we have Standards of
Excellence which are goals established by the mission that we try to
reach. In concilio we also have to report on how many of the standards
we reached. And we tell the concilio our goals for the next month as a
companionship. So we work pretty hard to hit them haha. And this week
we worked SO HARD! We ended up being one baptismal date away from
reaching them all! It was so crazy! We were SUPER blessed and saw a
ton of miracles in the week. The Lord kept us humble though by letting
us get close :).

Biggest miracle of the week: on our way to a lesson this guy stopped
us in the street and said "hey can I be a missionary?" And I said
"well you can't really be a missionary like us. But you can be a
member!" Because he is an older man. And he said okay! And asked what
he needed to do. So we talked to him for a minute and invited him to
the ward BBQ that we had on Friday. Well....HE CAME! And he is
actually a cousin of several members so he started meeting everyone
and we set up a lesson with him the next morning at the church. He
came to that as well! Haha we gave him a tour and showed hi, the
baptismal font and invited him to be baptized. He said yes and so we
set a date and he came to church the next day! He is awesome! I got up
in Priesthood on Sunday and asked if there were any guys that could
come out with us on splits in the week because we have a lot of work
and the guy raised his hand hahaha. So he's awesome! We are excited
for him :).

We are seeing some great things right now. We are pretty wiped tired
but it's a good tired :). I'm so happy that things are going good and
that I have the energy to work as hard as we are. I want to make up
for time I have lost in the mission now!

I love you guys and hope you have a good week.

10 more P-days!!!

This week was nuts! Haha we traveled everywhere and spent almost no
time in our area!

On Monday and Tuesday we were in Malaga for Missionary Leadership
Council, which was really good. President Andersen is a really awesome
guys.

Wednesday we worked all day and Thursday we went to San Fernando to
have interviews with President Andersen so we lost that day.

Friday we went to Cádiz for Zone Meeting. Zone meeting was awesome. It
was probably the best Zone Meeting I've ever had. It was really
spiritual and really fun. The senior Couple in the Zone made Sloppy
Joes and brought Doctor Pepper from the U.S. Naval base. :) then my
companion went to Gilbratar to do a baptismal interview and I went to
work with another companionship so we missed another day and a half of
working haha. Then we worked Saturday night.

At the end of the week we counted how many hours of proselyting we had
in the week and we only had 16 hours. But we taught 12 lessons in
those 16 hours! So that was really good! We did really good at setting
citas with the time we had and we had several investigators in church.
So it ended up being a really good week!

Really that is all :). We have set some big goals for this week and we
have tons of people to visit that we didn't have time to visit last
week. We are also doing really good at gaining the trust of the
members here and getting them involved in the work with has been
really hard for the last missionaries here. So we are really happy
with the work we are dong right now :).

Anyways, I hope you guys all have a great week and I promise to have a
better email next week!

Love you guys!

Elder Marchant

PS....I finally got Derick to send me some info on his new companion after asking about 5 times.

Okay and my companions name is Elder Martín. It's pronounced like Martínez without the ez. He's from Madrid

The "Run Down"

Alrighty I'm gonna try to give a quick rundown of the last two weeks. :).

So Gilbraltar was super fun. We got there late but Elder Gonzalez
figured it was his last chance to go there and he wanted to see the
monkeys so we basically ran up the rock haha. It is HUGE and we were
so tired! But as soon as we made it up to the monkeys we took pictures
with them and then ran back down. It was a really cool experience
though. And the mountains in the distance in the pictures are from
Africa. So it's cool to say that I went to England and saw Africa in
my mission :).

We also had the Conference in Sevilla to meet the Andersens. It was
really nice. They are really great. I conducted the meeting and got to
spend some time talking to President Andersen. He is a really
spiritual and wise man. You can tell he's been through a lot of stuff
in his leadership in the church and has definitely learned how to
trust In the Savior. It was also really nice to see friends in the
mission. As always :). I got to see Elder Letts and Elder Cowley. I
can't believe Elder Cowley already has a year in the mission! It feels
like just 2 months ago I was training him. And seeing Elder Letts is
always my favorite. He was such a great friend. I feel like he will be
a lifetime friend. Every time we see each other we always say that it
feels like we've just been on exchanges and that we are back together
again.

Last P-day we went to an airsoft course in Jeréz with my district and
the district next to us. We divided into two teams and played games
like King of the Hill and Capture the Flag. My team DOMINATED! Haha.
It was a full American team and America still stands undefeated! :) we
sweat like crazy though! It was exhausting! But super fun.

The transfers were kind of a surprise. We expected Elder Gonzalez to
stay one more transfer with me. But my new companion is great. He's
pretty young but he is a really good teacher and really knows what
he's doing. We are already seeing some big things in the area. We
found a guy last week who we taught twice and invited to baptism. He
accepted a date and came to church the next day. So he's doing really
good right now. And we are really excited for him. We have about 4
other investigators that could get baptized any day now. We just need
to figure out what is keeping them. We are really close to seeing some
great things here. Right now though, we are really trying to get the
ward involved. I think missionaries have lost the trust of the members
here a little while ago and the members are pretty distant from us and
don't really help or have us over. So we are really working hard with
that because it will be SO much easier to get the investigators to
progress when we get the members involved. We spent a lot of time
yesterday talking with the Stake mission leader and the bishop so we
are working to see some changes here.

We are working with a family from Romania also. The parents and the
cousins don't speak much Spanish so we use the translator in the iPads
to teach them when the little kids don't know the words haha :) it's
fun and they are super nice.

Today we are in Malaga for mission leadership council. It'll be
interesting to see what President Andersen does. We are excited :).

Well I think that's everything. :) I'm sure I forgot a few things but
I think I got all the main things down.

I love you guys and hope you have a great week :).

I'll send pictures if I get better wifi later :).

Elder Marchant

PS: my plane tickets arrived this week. That was a really weird
feeling. I can't explain it haha.

So we have like zero time today. I'm really sorry! Lots of stuff has
happened too which makes me even more sorry that I don't have time to
write about it!

Remind me to talk about all my pictures next week!

Also I'm getting a new companion on Wednesday. His name is Elder
Martín and he's Spanish from Madrid. It's his first time as zone
leader so I hope he has just a ton of energy and desire to work SUPER
hard so he can keep me going! Because I am exhausted :) haha. I'll
tell you guys everything next week!

Love you guys! Have a great week!

Pics from The Rock of Gibraltar

4th of July!!!

Today's P-Day!