We Got 8, Need 3 More

Eating Ice Cream with the Zone on P-Day!

So the zone is sitting at 8, we had some heart-breakers this week.  But we have 3 solid fechas in the zone and 2 more that are up in the air.  We are so close!! Our baptism Samuel has his interview set for Wednesday and he came to church yesterday and looks good, then the other 2 baptisms are 9 year olds from recent converts so they are all set as well.  Then the other elders that we live with have 2 daughters of menos activo parents from Ecuador that I contacted in the street.  I remember stopping them 2 weeks ago.  I had such a strong impression to do it!! So I did it and the mom about freaked out and was so stoked that we were the missionaries because they live about 20 minutes outside of Palma and wanted to come back to church and baptize their 2 daughters that are 16 and 17. The whole family has come to church the last 2 weeks and the daughters should be getting baptized this week if the dad can get work off.  They are so ready and excited to enter the waters of baptism.  Yeah it was really hard to pass them to the other elders because they live in their area because we miss out on the teaching experience of reactivating a whole family with baptisms but rules are rules and the blessings are the same. I am just happy the spirit told me to talk to them and that I did!!!

The miracle I would like to share comes from the pass-by list (passing by people we don’t know) that we have been working on. We already did it with the ward list in our area and turned in a huge list of corrections to the secretary of the branch and they were all so stoked to see the work we had done and that we had worked hard!! So we started doing it with our area book and that has brought so many miracles, in the first place our baptism this week is from that but I already shared that miracle. But we were doing the pass-bys again one night and went to this piso and knocked on the door and asked for a man who we had on our list. A woman from Nicaragua opened the door and said he didn’t live there anymore but I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity not to talk to her. I asked if we could go in and she said yes and we met her husband there as well. They are even married!!!!! So we taught them and have a return visit. The pass-by list works miracles and the Lord blessed us for being diligent and talking to every person in between.

We saw a lot more success this week and found 12 new investigators and set a lot of fechas. It was grinding work building up our area again from being out of it last week but the Lord blessed us big time and now we just need to keep the ball rolling. We want to baptize every week!!! So we just are going to keep being diligent and going hard and talking to everyone.

That is about it.  Transfer calls come this week so our zone will change.  We are also doing intercombios this week with the ayudantes, I will be in Barc working with Elder Perkis, my hijito!! Never worked there.  It is pretty funny I am in the Barc mission but have never even been close to that city, ha ha love you all.

Elder Farah

Elder Kearon is Great!!!

So the conference was way great!!! Elder Kearon is just a genuine, loving man who has a funny English accent.  You could really feel his love.  He was cracking jokes and just kept telling us how great of a job we were doing in our missions and to keep pressing forward with faith and hope.  It was so great. His conference wasn’t like a strict training where he just teaches us and grills us on what we need to do better, it was more of a conversation with everyone and he just had suggestions for us to improve, but we all came up with solutions because it was more of a collaborative thing. I really liked it!! And then the concilio with him and the other zone leaders was super great, we just discussed what we learned and he helped us improve.  More than anything he taught us that we are children of God.  He challenged us to get on our knees and really figure that out so that we can teach it to others.  Because we share this Plan of Happiness and it all starts with us being children of God and we need to get God’s children back to him!!! And it is the first point in the first lesson of the restoration; we are all children of God.  So I have been working on that lately.

We got everyone to Bilbao and back safe and sound.  Yeah it was a little crazy but staying in the hotel was fun and we had a free buffet breakfast!!! It’s funny how the mission makes you grateful for the simple things in life...such as a free buffet and I didn’t have to cook for once ha ha.  We almost missed our connecting flight in Barc because the one from Palma to Barc was late, and so we ran to the flight from Barc to Bilbao and barely got there in time, it was funny because the missionaries took up like a fourth of the plane.

My miracle from this week has to be about a man we pulled out of the area book. We were looking at his registro and he had been taught everything and had been to church and everything went well and they even had the interview set up but then something happened and he was never baptized. So we go by his house Saturday and we found him with his wife and 10 year old daughter. And then he came to church yesterday and came with his Book of Mormon, hymn book, and old baptism calendar!! So we are trying to get him baptized this Saturday since he has already been twice and then he can get the priesthood and baptize his family in 2 weeks because they need to go to church still. But such a miracle!!! The area book is full of good things. 

We now have the whole week to work again, and we are going to go hard and get things going.  We have 7 baptisms as a zone and a lot on date for this week. I have no doubt that we are breaking the record!!! Thanks to a 5 week month in March...ha ha love you all!!

Elder Farah

Fight the Fight!!!

Well this week was a grinder week for sure!!! But it was a good one, and the zone is doing really good.  We have three baptisms under our belts, and have eight on fecha for this week!! And five look super solid.  So we can hear the record breaking already!! The only problem is everything blew up in our face this week in our area ha ha.  We went hard and had many great days set up and so much potential and then it all fell, but no worries we just got to put our noses to the grindstone and keep going.

I even went to Ibiza this last week to do an intercombio and some baptism interviews!!!  Ibiza is a crazy place.  It is like a mini Las Vegas on steroids without rules.  Every billboard had advertisements for the discotheques (night clubs) and here in Spain there really are no rules – not to mention Ibiza is an island and they have beaches. Crazy stuff!! But I liked the small city, it had a Cali feel to it and it was fun to go out there and do the baptism interviews.  Those are always such great experiences.  It was of a 14 and 9 year old girl, and their mom is super less activo.  But through the faith of these two girls, the mom is coming back to church, and now is trying to get married to the guy she is living with to be the example.  It is crazy how a 9 and 14 year old girl can have such faith and be such an example for their mom.  Probably one of the best baptism interviews/experiences I have ever had. The spirit was so strong.

And this week the whole zone is going to Bilbao!!!!! We have a special conference with Elder Kearon from the Seventy who is the First Counselor in the Europe Area Presidency here.  It is going to be crazy. Tomorrow we all leave from Palma, to Barc, to Bilbao, stay in a hotel and then go to the conference Wednesday.  Then the zone flies back to Palma, and me and elder McDermott go to Barc because on Friday Elder Kearon wants to have a special meeting with the zone leaders of the mission. What an opportunity!!! The only problem is we have no time in our area this week because we get back on Friday and then have more interviews to do Friday night...but.  Special meeting with a Seventy, and baptism interviews = SUCCESS!!! 

So this week will be nuts, but I am excited.  2nd Nephi 10: 20-21:

20 And now, my beloved brethren, seeing that our merciful God has given us so great knowledge concerning these things, let us remember him, and lay aside our sins, and not hang down our heads, for we are not cast off; nevertheless, we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea. 

21 But great are the promises of the Lord unto them who are upon the isles of the sea; wherefore as it says isles, there must needs be more than this, and they are inhabited also by our brethren.

Remember the islands!!

Much love, Elder Farah

Studying at Zone Conference and Elder Farah's New Companion, Elder Mcdermott

Rise and Shout!!!

Well first and for most I am super stoked to be in to BYU!!! I have been praying so hard, and the Lord answered my prayers.  I really owe it to the mission; I think that is why I got in!! Man the mission just does everything for me in my life and has changed every aspect of it for the better.  I owe it all to my Heavenly Father, I am so excited!!! 

Well this week we saw a big miracle with a menos activo. We were doing “pass bys” off of a ward list that we have that we made like the ayudantes taught us to do in a conference (Elder Mcdermott is really good with this and taught me a bunch and Elder Perkis, the first missionary I trained is the new assistant to the president now, so happy for him!) and we passed by a house and she wasn’t home. So we had her number and called her right there. She answered and was in shock and said it was a huge miracle. We set a visit for the next day in the church and she came and told us why it was such a miracle. She has been going through hard times and was packing up to move to a different piso when she stumbled across her Book of Mormon. She had the book in her hands about ready to throw it away and get rid of it and in that moment is when we called!!! And she said it was such a miracle. She came to all three hours of church yesterday and called us last night to help her move pisos this morning (we just got finished). But now she is a lot closer to the church and is coming back to activity! Talk about the right phone call at the right time!!! AKA milagro.

My companion is a stud and I love working with him.  He is such a good kid and we are just pushing each other so hard and I come home so dead by the end of the day, but that is how it should be.  The zone is progressing a lot, we had one baptism last week and four lined up for this week in the zone.  On the road to 11!!

Love you all, and I love the mission.  Go Cougars!!

Love Elder Farah