It has been a great week here in Telde!! I´m trying to load photos to Dropbox, so we´ll see what happens. As for mail - the Telde address works just fine, about a 7-day delay, and sending it to the mission home means I´ll get it once a month. No matter when mail gets to the mission home, I wait until Leadership council, when the Zone Leader will go to Madrid and bring everything back. So that´s how mail works here. (which means I haven´t seen Grandma´s package she said she sent, and I won´t see it until Leader meeting in two weeks.)
I think it´s probably cooling down in Utah now, right? It is pretty close to Halloween - Maren´s test is on the Ancient Americas (Aztecs, Mayas, Incas) and it will be printed on orange paper with Halloween jokes. That is how awesome Mr. Felt´s class is - I still remember. But anyways, it´s still hot here. My companion said he hasn´t really felt a temperature change since he got here in June. Which means that this Christmas will be hot and humid - but not rainy, because it NEVER rains here. It started sprinkling after church once and the whole rama lost it, huddling inside waiting for the men to go and get the cars. Those who walked to church just waited out the 30m drizzle.
We just had transfers - my whole district is staying. I´ve been told that you usually stay in the Islands for 6 months (although that rule has definitely been broken) or four transfers. I was my companion´s third transfer here, and we will be staying until the next, which ends on Dec. 7. After that I bet he leaves and I stay to Area-train, which basically just means I´d introduce the new guy to the area. But anyways, for the next six weeks my trainer and I are remaining in Telde.
I had a super cool spiritual experience this week. Elder Bednar gave a talk, (an MTC devotional, not sure if you guys could find it or not) where he talked about spiritual promptings. We watched it in the MTC and his main point was basically that you never know when the Spirit is talking to you - just be a good boy, obey the commandments, honor your covenants, and the spirit will direct you and YOU WON´T KNOW IT.
My companion and I were walking down the street, headed to go and visit a Menos Activo who is never home. Really, we just had 30m to burn (late at night with no lessons that managed to remain planned) and this guy lived 15 minutes away. So we went. We were headed down our usual route, and I said, "Nah, let´s take Castile y Leon" another street that was close by. It didn´t really matter and I have no idea why I said that. But as we were walking, we met an Argentinian man and his cat (whom he had named "kitty," not knowing that meant cat in English). We stopped to say hello, and as we were talking, he said, "Do you guys like Tortilla? I just made some for my kids, they´re coming home right now." So we ate his tortilla, toured his house, talked to the cat, and shared a 2 minute message of the Restoration. He loved it, and said, "So are you guys going to take my number or something?" Turns out, he was an old investigator whom the other missionaries before my companion (other - read: lazy - not my words, but my companion´s) had stopped teaching. How cool is that? In the moment, I would not have said anything about the spirit. But based on what Elder bednar said, I know that I was being led "not knowing beforehand the things which I should do."
We have this pueblo in our sector called Jinámar. It´s a super sketchy government housing district - We´ve met two transvestites, my companion has stepped in poop, and someone threw a rock at him. The people there are very humble and ready for the gospel (due to their Latin-American-esque circumstances) but they´re just hard to find sometimes. When the Canary Islands was its own mission, there were a couple Elders assigned to just Jinámar, and they did work - door knocking, baptizing, etc. There´s a member in almost every of the 50-odd buildings. But one thing led to another, and now there are a boatload of menos activos, all of which are hard to find. We met one man who went inactive because somebody offended him, another who found Anti-Mormon material, another who said that he´s not a member of our church (even though the records say he got the priesthood), etc. But we found one guy who hasn´t been to church in 20 years because he felt like the Branch President wasn´t doing his job. He used to be the Elders Quorum President. When we knocked on his door, he let us in and we started talking. And, unlike every other Menos Activo we´ve taught, he said, "I know now that I never should have left." How cool is that?! He came to church the next week, and he brought his nonmember brother too!
Alright, I gotta write the President now. I love you Mom. Thanks for the pictures.... Sorry I couldn´t be there to help finish the deck. But it looks so awesome!!
Elder Maxfield
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