And Another Two Go Down!!!

Hello family and friends!!

Yes this past week was Thanksgiving. And it was a normal day for us ha ha. We tried to make it fun and celebrate a little bit for as much as we can for Thanksgiving. We have a football in our piso so I slept with the football in honor of the turkey bowl. Now we might buy some cheap decorations for our piso for Christmas, I am not sure yet. We are still in our old piso, and are still trying to move out. But there of course is a bunch of problems so we are just waiting for them to be taken care of. And we still have to shower with buckets of water, and it can be really cold in the mornings!! But it is all part of the adventure of the mission.

Our two baptisms this week were amazing; it was another family that we brought into the gospel. And the best part was is that eddy’s brother baptized him and his wife and he is a recent convert of only 3 months. It is just amazing to see how much people can grow and how much they change through this gospel. They were confirmed yesterday and looked so happy. They are very excited to be in this church and to learn more. And he asked to have my gold tie. So now I have to give it to him next week h aha because I love him and can´t deny any member or convert of mine anything. It kind of gets me in trouble sometimes, I say yes to everyone in the ward and then can’t do everything they ask but I try and they just laugh at me because I am also so crazy at church trying to do 100 things at once. I just love church so much. I love seeing everyone in one place so happy and learning about the gospel.

We had a conference all the way up in Bilbao this week with Elder Richards from the Second Quorum on the Seventy, a general authority. It was amazing and I know that he is a man called of God. He talked to us for 4 hours with videos and practices and the whole nine yards. It was so great to meet a general authority like him. And I got to see President Pace again, and I love seeing him if course. It was so good. Bilbao is so pretty! I want to serve up there one day really bad. It did take us 5 hours to get up there on a train and 5 hours back but is was worth it!! And we even got to stay in a hotel!!!  And it had carpet!! I have never been so grateful for carpet and a working shower. It is funny the things you really become grateful for out here.

Alright I love you all so much :) hope to hear from you soon!!

Elder Farah

Turkey Week!

Hello family!!!

Well...Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home. I hope that Josh catches a
touchdown for me in the Turkey Bowl. This week was also a bad week for
sports, BYU and the Ducks lost to some sub-par teams...Especially the
Ducks! Ha but oh well.

My companion is a stud and well, let’s just say, that President Pace is his
Uncle!! And not only that, it gets better; his dad is THE Elder Pearson in
the First Quorum of the Seventy. Yes, I am companions with a General
Authority’s son. It is crazy; he told me all of this yesterday. He is such
a hard worker and very, very obedient. I know that we will do great things
together. Of course I still miss my father of the mission Elder Tirado,
but I love Elder Pearson, he is a such a nice soul.

This week we kind of re-set the area so to speak, cleared out the phone, area
book, and went through a bunch of old investigators and passed by a bunch
of members to get references and are trying to find new investigators really bad!! We
have our 2 baptisms still lined up for this Saturday, and it is a husband
and wife!! We love bringing families into the Gospel, this Gospel truly
blesses families. I just know it does. I am so excited for them to be
baptized this Saturday. There is still a lot of work to do, but it is all good. And
this week was pretty crazy. Technically Elder Pearson is the senior
companion but since I am the one who knows the area I was making all the
calls, getting around our area in Spain (which can be difficult by bus and
everything in Spanish) so it was a different experience!! But I think we
did all right. I was a little nervous at first because I had to do all
that but I prayed really hard to be comforted and I know that the Lord
helped me more than anything. PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED. I just know they are.
Prayer is so powerful. We have a lot of new visits with new people this
coming week and I am very excited to set some baptism dates and teach
people the Gospel!! I get excited for visits with new people these days,
it is funny how excited I get.

My favorite miracle from the week was a recent convert who is already less
active showed up to church for the first time in a while. I had never seen
him or knew who he was. So we jumped on him, set a visit, and he has a wife
and a family that haven´t been baptized yet. We are very excited to
encounter this family this week and start teaching them. There is nothing
more rewarding then bringing families into the Gospel. We have high hopes to
teach this family this week. What a miracle it was to have him randomly
show up to church this week. The Lord really does place people in your
path; you just need to work for it.

So well as always I have a favor to ask of all of you through prayer. One
of our recent converts, Mike, his brother who was 22 died on Saturday. He
came up to me on Sunday and I gave him a big hug and he looked at me with
tears in his eyes and said my brother died. We are visiting him tonight; I
feel so badly for him. I love this man so much. He changed his life to be
baptized, got rid of drugs, alcohol, and sex. His life is changed. I am
glad he has the Gospel in his life now to help him through but please
pray for his comfort.

I love you all so much! Keep the faith!! Do work!!!

Love,

Elder Farah

Transfers!

HOLA!

So the life of Elder Tirado and Elder Farah is over here in Zaragoza. He was called to be a zone leader in Hospitalet. He is an amazing missionary and a great leader, and will do amazing things up there. I hope to be an amazing missionary like him one day. So now I am sitting here with my new companion Elder Pearson. He is from Salt Lake City and only has one more transfer then I do, but his Spanish is incredible!! He is really smart and a very nice elder. I am excited to be with him. We just need to get to work so that we can get 600 baptisms this year! We are super young out here, but just call us the Oklahoma City thunder. Young but we do work!

Alright my favorite miracle from the week has to be the stake conference that we attended. We did have to get up at 2:30 a.m. in the morning and take a 4 hour bus ride there and a 4 hour bus ride back, but it was worth it. The church really is growing; we have another stake here in Spain. We have another ward. And that recent convert room before the stake conference was filled; we had a special meeting for them before the conference. I couldn´t help but to sit there and smile and just want to get more converts into the church. Because every single one of those people had smile on their faces and looked so happy and you could just see the light shining through them. The members and converts here are so dedicated to travel to things like that and their faith is incredible. It is a miracle to have another stake, and I know the church will only grow some more. And Elder Richards from the Quorum of the Seventy was there presiding and spoke. It was incredible!!

So we have not moved pisos quite yet, but hopefully by the end of this week we will be in!! We will still be picking up mail from our old piso, but I will get the address out as soon as I can. If you have doubts, just send the stuff to the mission home but then I only get mail from there like once a month.

This work is incredible and I love it so much, I am in charge for the next couple of weeks since Elder Pearson came to my area. But I have no fear!! I was trained well and I have the Lord on my side, so everything is great. The Spanish is the same, slowly but surely with faith and patience. Remember that faith is the first principle in the gospel, and everything we do relies on how strong our faith is. Always have faith and trust in the lord. I love you all so much!! I hope to hear from you!!

Love,


Elder Farah

And TWO More Go Down!!!

Hello people back in good ol´America

Alright so many miracles to pick from but remember how we had the miracle with Sophia last Saturday? Well her sister was just as big!!! We had to go teach Sophia on our preparation day last week and while we were teaching her, her sister was there as well. We started going over the baptism calendar we had given to Sophia, and we were just about to invite her sister to be baptized when her sister just asked can I be baptized too? Of course we said yes and put the fecha for her for next week. But she said no I am ready to be baptized this week!! And she had already been to church a few times. So me and Elder Tirado looked at each other and said alright let’s do it!! So we had the blessing of having 2 people baptized this week. This truly is the second harvest, those miracles prove it. It was incredible, but we are always looking for more!! We need 600 this year!!

And we are going to need a lot of help to get it, we are around 415 I think and only have two months left! But I know with the help of the Lord we can do it. And not only that, but they are making a new stake in Spain!! And our branch is included!! Because our branch has grown so much, I think we will become a ward. We are excited for Zaragoza to be part of a stake!! Next weekend is the historic day, and we get the opportunity to be there. And President Pace is calling the new stake president, we are very excited.

I think this past week was as normal as it gets in Spain; we didn’t have anything lite on fire and soaked this week so I think we managed pretty well. And we even get to go and buy food today!! WOOO!! The whole month of October, we hardly had anything but we made it through and are very happy that we get to stock our cuboarda and shelves today with food and not have to pay with it with personal money. Halloween is kinda celebrated here, not a lot. Some people dressed up and went tricking treating, but just little kids. A member invited us over for some food on Halloween night so we celebrated it there. Other than that we heard drunk people outside our piso all night breaking bottles but that is normal for here ha ha. I did miss seeing carved pumpkins and scary stuff. It is starting to get cold here, but as long as it doesn’t rain and we don’t get wet, we stay pretty warm.

Alright just know that I am having the time of my life!! Ya it is the hardest thing ever and nothing ever goes right, my Spanish frustrates me, but all you can do is laugh and smile. As long as we just keep a good attitude out here, everything goes great. I love you all!!

Love,

Elder Farah

What Other Crazy Things Can Happen...

Hello the great world of normal lives!!

So first of all I am glad to hear that BYU finally figured out how to put
the ball into the end zone this week, good win. And the ducks hanging 70
points on the Buffaloes....typical game. We love getting our updates on
football every preparation day!!

Ok so our crazy adventure for the week. We were all cooking lunch the
other day in our tiny kitchen. I was making cheese and ham quesadillas,
Elder Tirado was making shrimp wrapped in bacon and the other elder in our
piso was making mac and cheese (typical man meal right?). So we were all
super focused on our pans on the stove. We had a bar of bread that was a
little stale, so Elder Tirado decides to throw it in the microwave to warm
it up and make it soft. But you need to know that we have an old school
microwave and once you turn the knob, it will just go for up to ten minutes,
it doesn’t stop automatically. So he threw it in, and well let’s just say
that we forgot about it. We smelled something burning and saw smoke and we
just though it was our food. Then Elder Spencer points at the microwave and
yells ¨Oh my goodness!!¨Our bread and microwave were on fire and there was
black smoke fuming. We hurried and turned it off, grabbed the smoke alarms
and ran outside because we were all coughing so much. Ha ha we were laughing
so hard and needless to say now, we don’t have a microwave, we warm
everything up on the stove. And we had to have everything open for the next
3 days to air out our piso and we froze a little bit. It is all good now.
Just another crazy adventure in the life of the Zaragoza elders.

We have another baptism this week!!! It was such a miracle. I was going
through the area book calling a bunch of former investigators because we are
starting our area fresh and wanted to clear out our pool of people and get
more progressing investigators. So I called this woman named Sophia and she
didn’t answer. But later that day she called us and said I want to be
baptized. WHAT?!?! Me and Elder Tirado were in shock. That never
happens!! So she is getting baptized this week :) such a miracle, it was
definitely the Lord blessing us with someone who is ready. It was
incredible, one of the biggest miracle of the mission. I can’t believe it
still.

Yes it is getting pretty cold here. I never thought I would wear a v neck
sweater vest, leather gloves, and a scarf. But they keep you so warm!!! And
it is fashionable here in Spain I guess...so we are trying to stay warm and
it is only the end of October ha ha. But I am so happy and am having so
much fun. We are working super hard, but can always work harder. I love
this gospel and I know it is true.

Love,

Elder Farah

And Another One Goes Down!!!

Hola Familia y Amigos :)

All I really have to say is, we are being so blessed down here in Zaragoza. We had 4 people between our District go down. And there are only 3 companionships in our district. But the investigator that we baptized is from Nigeria and his name is Mike. We had to work really hard with him to get him baptized. He always had the desire to be baptized but had a problem with his coffee and morality. But it was truly a miracle that we experienced with him the other week. We went to go teach him and he had told us that he had gotten rid of his girl and was completely done with coffee and wants to follow Christ because he knows it is the right thing to do. Me and Elder Tirado were shocked!!! Mike has so much faith, we made sure to keep a close eye on him every day before the baptism and he is staying strong. Mike is our brother, and he loves us and we love him. I can’t believe that we have had 4 investigators get baptized in the last 9 weeks when we white washed the area. Such a miracle!! And I have a companion who just knows why he is here and how to work efficiently. I am learning everything I can from him because after this transfer he is probably leaving, so our area will be left to me.

But we are working so incredibly hard, especially to get 600 in 2012. I would like to invite all of you who read this to pray for the mission of Barcelona to get 600 people baptized this year. We need about 200 in the last month. It is going to take a miracle to get this, but we can do it. I have the faith, and I know our mission does as well. But the power of prayer is incredibly strong; I would like to invite you all to help us please :) We hope to set another baptism date with a family this week, they are so good. We are very excited about them. This week we just need to find new people.

So as you know our piso is super tiny and super old. And we have been showering with buckets of water all week....let’s just say it is really cold in the mornings ha ha. When we were at interviews with President Pace and his wife, word had gotten out about our piso so Hermana Pace gave us every green light to find a new piso. So that is what we did, I think we found one today!! It is so nice....and so pijo...ha ha. But we are sending everything to the office so hopefully we can move out next week and get our hot water back!!

But my favorite part about last week was my interview with President Pace. I love that man and his wife so much. I know that they were mission presidents called specially for me and who I am. The interviews are only about 15 minutes long and it is the fastest time of my life. But I love him so much. He could be an apostle one day, I’m sure he will be!!

Alright I love you all very much. Thank you for all the support!!!

Love,

Elder Farah

LMFAO, party rock, water, and train and more partying

Hello family and friends from the great city of Zaragoza!!

Another week down here in the mission. This week was crazy and we had lots of funny things happen to us. Let’s start with water. Something is wrong with our hot water and it hasn’t been warming up. And even when it does, it is not that hot and it is just a drizzle with not that much pressure. In the summer we could bear it but now it is getting colder and the last thing we want to do is take a cold shower when our piso is freezing in the morning. So we went old school a few days this week and would warm up a pot of water and use a cup. Ha ha it was more work but better then a cold shower. And then we had a baptism last Saturday and we had to have it at 12. So the other elders went to the church at like 8 to fill up the font then came back. So then me and Elder Tirado went over at 10 just to check on things and get ready for it. We get there and there is no water in the font. The other elders had forgotten to put the plug in!!! So for the next 2 hours we were filling up buckets from the sink in the kitchen and just going as fast as we could to fill it. It normally takes 5 or 6 hours to fill and we had 2 hours. But somehow we filled it and we were able to do the baptism. It was a miracle to get that thing filled. But we had to do it. And my third investigator was baptized ;) and I was able to baptize her too!! And my companion did the confirmation. I was so happy, and you can see the change in her. It is so great, and we have another one of our investigators being baptized next week!! So many miracles down here in Zaragoza. And it started raining a ton this week, and we get soaked. So there is my water for the week ha ha.

So with the trains...well we had to go to Lleida for a zone conference and we had to go in the night before to stay with more elders, because we wouldn’t have had time to travel in the morning. So we get to the station and try to scan our tickets and the train worker gave us the wrong time...so then we had to buy more tickets and barely made the train and now we are broke for that.  Then 2 days later I had to go to Barcelona to get my card that proves that I live here and the office sent us a number on our phone to use at the station to print our tickets. And of course we forgot the phone with the number. So we were scrambling to use the pay phone to call the other elders in our piso to give us the number and barely made the train again. It was crazy.

And with the fiestas. Well the festival of the pialr was last week. Apparently it is world know and it is just a party for a week and everyone goes to it. It is so crazy, and the buses are packed to the brim which makes it difficult for us to travel. It was just annoying, everyone was just drunk. But the pialr looked really neat and pretty. We saw it a couple times. But we are glad the party is over. And LMFAO had a concert in Zaragoza....a few of our investigators went. It sounded way fun!! And I hear that Carrie Underwood has a concert back in Utah....hope my girl did good!!

Anyway everything is going great in the mission; it is just getting a lot colder here. But we are seeing so many miracles. And we also have interviews this week with president; I can’t wait to see him again. I love him so so much. Please pray for the mission goal of 600! I know that prayer works and it is real. So we could use the help. I love you all.

Love,

Elder Farah

P.S....write me!!