The work and the weather: Hot, hot, hot!

Dear Everyone,

My companion, Elder Bartschi went home yesterday. I´m still here in Gandía. My new companion is Elder Stratton. I´ve never met him, but I´ve seen him and he´s really tall. Also, I know he´s from Utah. We´re going up to Valencia today to go pick him up. We´re working a lot here with the youth and young single adults and we´re constantly finding people to bring to teach. All the young people here are really involved in missionary work, always inviting and introducing their friends to us. The other day we had a BBQ with the young men and women in the ward and they invited about 10 people in total. We reinvited them again to come play basketball with us the next day and a few showed up. Now one is progessing towards baptism. It´s so much more effective when members invite their friends. It´s super warm here in Gandía, but the work is just taking off. I think next week we´re going to organize a big hike for investigators and recent converts. It should be fun. Well that´s it for this week.

Élder Coleman 

What's hot and cold and busy all over?

Dear Everyone,

This week we had a baptism! Erika got baptized Saturday at 10am in freezing cold water. I thought I was going to die when I got into the water. She is probably one of the biggest miracle stories that I´ve seen in my mission. Just how she changed so drastically was shocking for me. Also Antonio and Gloria, the man who just got baptized a few weeks ago and his wife, are doing missionary work in their isolated town. They have the vision that one day they can have a branch there. My companion is a little sad because this is his last week in the mission. It´s not very likely that they change me from Gandía because someone needs to stay and show someone else the area, but you never know. I hope to stay and work with the friends of our converts. For example, Erika has been inviting friends to church and activities. It was super hot this last week. For example, at one point on Thursday is was so hot that the wind felt like someone was blowing a heater in your face. I heard from members that it got up to 47º C. Thankfully it´s cooled down a little bit.

Élder Coleman

More than one miracle....

Dear Everyone,

This week we´re having a miracle baptism. There´s been this girl that we´ve been working with for a while. When she first came to church, she was interested but didn´t want to change anything. She loved parties and the wild life. Everyone who knew her said she wasn´t going to change. When she started keeping small commitments like reading the Book of Mormon and praying, she really felt something which gave her the push to give up her bad habits and has really flipped her life around. But believe me, it was not an easy process. We´ve been at it since February. At one point she said she would be baptized in a river, but the mission president said no to that. Finally this week she said that she wants to be baptized this Saturday and doesn´t even care that it´s not going to be in a river. She did request that the water be ice cold, so I guess we´ll have to honour that request since I feel bad saying no to the river. Besides that, our week´s been pretty quiet. The iPad conference in Barcelona was not what I expected it to be at all. First of all, they don´t have the iPads yet. They´ll give them to us as soon as they get them in the mail. The just gave us training on the iPads. But they also talked about becoming different missionaries and the kind of people that we want to be in the future. They mentioned that specifically with electronic devices that many of us before the mission would spend hours and hours sucked into devices and not really accomplish anything. He mentioned that when we get the iPads, but also after our missions, that we should have a clear purpose everytime we pick up an electronic device, and that if we don´t have a clear purpose, then we should put it down until we have one. I found it really enlightening even though it´s very likely that I won´t get an iPad seeing as I´m going home soon.

Well, Love you all

Élder Coleman

How do you say iPads in Spanish?

Dear Everyone,

This week I don´t really have any time at all. We are going to Barcelona today. The whole mission is going to a special conferece. That means we need to cut our preparation day short in order to catch the train to Valencia and then another train to Barcelona, thus the rush. In this conference, the area presidency will be there and the purpose is to train us to use iPads. They offically approved the 3 missions in Spain as the first Spanish-speaking missions in the world to use iPads. We won´t be getting them today, but they will be given out as soon as they arrive in the mail. I´m sure this conference is going to be exciting, but I´m not too happy about losing 2 whole days to travel all the way up to Barcelona and back. I´ll try to take pictures for you all.

Love, Élder Coleman