Awwwww Yeah!

Dear Everyone,

What and awesome week!

Last week we worked super hard to get Rosa and Rebeccó ready for
baptism. A lot of time was spent with them and making the program and
getting them interviewed and getting them clothes and everything. But
it ended up being such a good baptism. Rebeccó finished the Book of
Mormon the day before his baptism and he was so happy and proud haha.
It was so cool working with him and seeing him accept all the
commandments and get super excited about becoming a member so he could
get the priesthood and do home teaching and come out to lesson with us
and everything. He is such a stud and will be such an awesome member
:).

Rosa was so great too. When we started teaching her with Elder
Gonzalez she had almost no faith. Her husband had just died so her
sister, who is a member, invited her to church. It was so amazing to
teach her so much and see her faith grow and to call her and have her
say "guess what?! I'm sitting out on the patio reading the Mormon
book!" Haha. She loves it and always has such good questions.

I gave a talk at their baptism and Rosa cried the whole time haha.
She's so cool. Rosa had to get baptized 3 times because her dress
wouldn't get under the water. And the member who baptized Rebeccó was
a recent convert and was baptizing for the first time and he body
slammed him into the water and fell on top of him hahahaha. But it was
so great and they shared their testimonies with everyone after and did
SO good :). We were so proud of them :).

We confirmed them on Sunday and it was so good :). Rosa always
complains about people who pray really quiet at church because she
sang hear very well and doesn't want to say Amen to anything she
doesn't agree with hahahaha. So she came up to me before church and
said "hey! My sister said that when you give me the Holy Ghost it's
gonna be like God speaking to me, so speak up so I can hear you good!"
:) haha. She is so happy now and jokes around with us and she was not
like that at all when we started teaching her. It's so amazing to see
how fast and how drastically the gospel can change someone's life.

We found out on Saturday about transfers. I'm staying here with Elder
Martín so I will finish the mission here. I'm really happy about that
:). I love my companion and I love this area. It's a hard area but we
are seeing really good things and we are helping the ward a lot as
well. So I'm happy to leave the mission from a place where I feel like
I've made a difference.

Well, that's about it! Today we went to Cádiz for Pday. What a cool
city :). I sent pics.

Love you guys. Keep up in D&C. (Rebeccó is super excited to learn more
about "The Covenants Book" as he calls it haha.)


-Elder Marchant

BAPTISM

Sightseeing at Cadiz

 

It's been a great 2 weeks!

Well it's been a great 2 weeks haha. Sorry I never got around to
emailing last week. Just super busy :).

Well a lot has happened! My companion and I have been working really
hard and we should have 2 baptisms this weekend if everything goes
well :). Haha. I don't know if I told you guys about our friend
Rebecco. He stopped us in the street one day and we invited him to a
ward BBQ and he came and then we taught him in the church and set a
baptismal date then he came to church and when we taught him again 2
days later he had read up to Jacob in the Book of Mormon! We've still
been teaching him. And he's come to church every week since then. He
is in 3 Nephi the last he told us :). He quit smoking and he's excited
to get baptized on Friday with a lady we've been teaching named Rosa
:). So we are praying that everything goes good!

We've just been having a lot of fun lately while we work. This area
really is wearing us out. So we try to have as much fun as we can
while we work. I love my companion :) he is a stud and he's really
fun!

It's so weird to think how much time I have left. Saying goodbye to
Elder Letts was awful. I said goodbye to him at concilio and that was
like the hardest goodbye of the mission. He was such a great comp and
he's an awesome friend. I know we will hang out after the mission.

I saw Inma in Malaga as well. She is good. Not going to church because
she has to work so she's kind of losing the Spirit a little. You can
tell. But she misses me and Elder Wiley and she wants me to come over
and eat with them next concilio.

Well, everything is good! It'll be a great week! I hope you guys have
one just as great! :) love you all! Make dad have a good birthday :)


Elder Marchant

Concilio

 Saying goodbye to Eldter Letts

Yummy Salad! 

 The Sister Missionaries helped Derick do some clothes shopping.

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!