The Moustached Missionaries

"Fear not for the enemy deride. Courage for the Lord is on our side!"

Hello family!!

Ok concilio was really good for us, our whole mission leadership was super confused ha ha but we are all good now.  President told us not to “get ahead of the brethren” and not assume anything. He told us to keep talking to people because they are approved methods of finding and just try to talk to people as nice as possible.  The whole point of that concilio was just for him to tell us that we really are doing a great job and that we shouldn’t feel bad for anything and we will just make adjustments and that is all.  He is such an incredible man and you can feel the Pace’s love so much for us. He felt so bad that some of his missionaries felt bad and were shaken up and what not. He really helped us out a lot. And now all is well!! He shared with us the video of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing “Let Us All Press On.” We all felt the spirit so strong!! I love him so much.  We just talked about our ideas of the conference and picked a few to focus on in zone enfoque and then in later trainings he will take care of the rest.  So really overall everything is fine and we learned a lot from the conference. Elder Evans just wants us to have the most success possible with the best outcomes aka recent converts in the temple thanks to the members. So all is well in Zion!! (España)

Our miracle form the week was with our friend of the church Edgar. He wants to get baptized and has had numerous fechas but they always drop because he never comes to church. but on Sunday we went by to pick him up and he was there and changed his clothes and then came to church and his 10 year old cousin came who was baptized about a year ago that doesn’t come as often. So having those two in church was such a miracle and now Edgar can progress towards his baptismal date better.

We are seeing our Spanish investigator today. He said that he wanted to pray and think about it. So we are hoping for a miracle through his prayers!! Because we know God answers.  So if he did it right, God will have told him to obey the commandments so we are crossing our fingers!!!

Now it’s back to the grind, we have zone enfoque tomorrow and hopefully we can build their faith back up.  Then we still have a ton of interocmbios to do...ha ha gotta love it!

Love you all!

 

President Pace took the zone out to lunch for breaking the baptism record for the month!

What a Week....

Ok this week was absolutely crazy!!! First off we saw tons of miracles this week, it was pretty ridiculous. The Lord really does just put you through trials and expects you to keep working hard and that is what we did and we got super blessed. The biggest miracle was a Spanish guy who we contacted on the street who is now getting baptized on May 3rd. And he went to the district conference yesterday and loved it. And we need Spanish priesthood holders to build up the church here. We have a visit with him on Tuesday. Miracle!!

On Thursday we had a meeting with the Area Seventy and it was good. He talked all about the Book of Mormon and gave real facts on why it is true. It was really good and we had about 70 people there combined throughout the district. The goal was 100 so we fell short but did pretty decent.

Friday we had interviews with president and he is pleased with our zone and took us all out to lunch!!! It was really fun and the main thing he told me is to build up the new leadership in the zone and to make sure that I am recognized as the priesthood leader out here with my companion.

So all was good up until that point and then I got slammed with a huge fever Friday night and it was probably the worst night to get it because we had 10 elders in our piso for the conference Saturday morning and we had to get up at 6:00 a.m. to get everything figured out. I was running on fumes Saturday morning and just getting worked by the fever ha ha.

We had the conference with Elder Evans. Then I crashed back in my piso Saturday with my fever and had to get up early again Sunday to set up for the big district conference. Since we are not a stake, we had to take care of a lot of things but the conference went good and we enjoyed it. Then I went back home Sunday and am finally better today.

Easter was a crazy one; being sick and having all of these great meetings. But I survived and it is back to the grind this week!! So happy for my brother, watched the video of him opening his call and might have she da tear or two just like he did :)

Love you all!!

Elder Farah

Chile!!!

So excited for the little broha!! He is going to be a Spanish speaker and baptize so many people in the Chile Santiago West Mission! I am so happy for him and so excited.  Shout out to little Farah!!

But all is well here in Palma, had 4 baptisms as a zone.  We had a little bit of a rougher week and the ball didn’t bounce our way with anything but you gotta have a few of those every now and then right?? It did give us a lot of time to talk with a lot of people so we have a lot to work with this week so it should be good. And we have a lot of conferences coming up; Thursday a recent convert meeting with an Area Seventy from here, Friday interviews with President Pace and he is taking us out to lunch to celebrate breaking the record as a zone :). Then Saturday morning Elder Evans will be here from the Seventy!! And we have a conference with him from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Saturday morning. We are really excited for it. It will just be our zone, and the zone leaders from the rest of the mission. We got lucky ha ha and then Sunday morning we are having a district conference with him. So lots of authority will be here and we will learn lots!!

There is this family from Ecuador that is huge (12 family members I think) and we have been working with them a lot lately because they are all members and we could use them back in the church here. And the 16 year old son is doing really good and trying to help his family out. And yesterday his mom came to church, he came, his niece came (yeah he is an uncle) and then the sister of his niece who is 9, who is not baptized!! We had been trying to get with her for a while but we haven’t been able to and now she is living with that family! So we have another visit with them Tuesday to try and set the little girl on fecha. The Lord really does bless you when you continue to work with less actives and be patient.

And that’s about it for the week, oh and zone enfoque went really good.  The zone said they liked it and learned alto. We focused on talking with everyone, seeing as that was the focus in coniclio.  Well back to the grind this week.

CONGRATS MY LITTLE BROTHER!!!! VIVA CHILE (y españa)  :) 

Love you all!!

Elder Farah

La Conferencia General!!!

What a great conference!! (For the two out of five sessions that I saw - ha ha).  They had it streaming live so we watched a session Saturday at 6:00 p.m. but the one at 10:00 p.m. was too late. Then we watched priesthood at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning but the connection was super bad and so we only watched like half of it and we watched it in Spanish.  Then we had another session at 6:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon but we could only watch half of it because we had to catch the plane to Barcelona for concilio ayer; hence why I am writing today ha ha. But I am excited to get the talks in the Liahona to read them, or watch them online in the near future.  Yeah I only saw a few talks, but they were really good!!

I really liked President Uchtdorf’s talk about not sleeping through the restoration and Elder Holland’s talk about defending your faith, but with courtesy.  And that made me really think because as a missionary people always attack us and tell us the meanest things (but nobody has thrown potatoes at me yet ha ha) so it was a good reminder to really defend our faith as much as we can but to do it in a courteous way, which can be just as hard sometimes.  When someone yells at you, you just want to yell something back!! But obviously the Savior wouldn’t do that.  So thanks Elder Holland!! And I think we all love how intense he is, the most passionate speaker we have.

Concilio was really good, Hermana Pace made us homemade Cafe Rio!! I ate way too much....but in the meeting they focused on us talking to everyone. De hecho, they made us leave the meeting and go outside and contact and find people for an hour and a half.  That is how much President Pace feels about talking to people. So hopefully we can get that across to our zone tomorrow in zone enfoque.  He is going to be here next week for interviews and is going to take our whole zone out to lunch that day for breaking the record, he called us to ask if it was Ok and we said of course!! He is such a funny guy.

We are teaching a lot of people and inviting a lot of them to be baptized, and we are trying to get them all to church, not a lot of people came last week.  And we are working with a lady who called us from our card, but neither of us remembers talking to her at all....such a miracle!! She said she is looking for the light in her life and so we told her baptism was the way! And she is on track to do it, but she has been smoking for FORTY YEARS.  So we are going with the Word of Wisdom lesson today.

Well that’s about it, love you all so much!! Que os vayáis bien!!

  

Elder Farah

Samuel - The 11th Baptism!

WE DID IT!!!

WE DID IT!!!! We broke the record!!! With exactly 11, what a coincidence right?? We barely squeaked out 11 thanks to our baptism of Samuel.  It actually was pretty intense, and it was one of “them” stories how it happened.  Everyone got baptized Saturday but as we all know it doesn’t count until the confirmation on Sunday, so the new members have to come to sacrament meeting.  There were baptisms in Menorca and in Ibiza and their sacrament meetings are in the morning. Our sacrament meeting is at 4 in the afternoon.  So at 2 o clock when we were eating lunch I called to make sure that the confirmations happened in Menorca and Ibiza.  And they both did, so we were officially sitting at 10 baptisms and it all came down to Samuel coming to church to get confirmed. He said he had to work in the morning and that he was going to be a little late and I told him as long as he was there before 5 it would be ok. So it gets to like 4:35 and he still hasn’t showed up and we are stressing at this point, so much was on the line!!!! And so my comp and I walked out to call him and as we walked up he had just ridden up on his bike.  And then I confirmed him a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  And then it was official. WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

President called us this morning to congratulate us and told us keep up the good work.  I am staying in Palma, only 2 transfers left :( so I think I will finish here, I would like to.  Being in Barc with Elder Perkis was the greatest, it was fun to work with him again just like old times and he has turned out to be an incredible missionary, he is a beast now.  We are going back to Barc this Sunday for concilio.  Lots of changes in the zone, we are losing 4 of the 5 district leaders we got and 2 of them are going to be zone leaders.  That’s why the zone was doing so good, we had good DLs and now we have 4 new ones.

Elder Kearon said a phrase in the conference that I really like.  

“We are happy but not satisfied.”

We are super stoked that we got the record, but now it is time to get it again!!! Ha ha love you all thanks for the birthday wishes, really appreciate it.  

Elder Farah