Adios to the current Mission Presidente!

Dear Everyone,

This week we're going to Valencia for preparation day. President and

Sister Pace are ending their missionary service and going home at the

end of this month. We're getting together as a zone in Valencia and

signing a flag as a gift for the Paces. This week in Gandia we've been

knocking doors. We found a Romanian lady who didn't speak any Spanish

and she was about to shut the door on us when my companion pulled out

a pass along card with a picture of Jesus on it and our number on the

back. She saw the picture and got super excited. She started going off

in Romanian and somehow I understood a fair amount of what she was

saying. We're going to go back later this week, after she has a knee

surgery, with a member who is Romanian and has her mission call. The

other day we also had a very Catholic woman sing to us in a door. She

was probably one of the nicest people I've met in a long time. It's

getting pretty warm here but the thing that kills is the high

humidity. We're having a lot of fun though.

IPads, bloody hands, and a party in the parking lot!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been interesting. We got our iPads this week. They really can't do much right now though. Apparently in the future they will roll out Facebook but as of right now, it's just for teaching and studying. It's useful because we can just go to the church to email instead of a cyber cafe. Also we can share Mormon Messages with people in lessons and our bags weigh a lot less without our whole set of scriptures. I still prefer studying with the paper scriptures though. The other day we had one of the most interesting days of my mission. We started out the day doing planning all morning while people from our apartment's insurance switched out our bathtub which had been leaking. When we could leave, we visited a less active who I had never met. He answered the door in his stained underwear and had slicked over, very greasy, hair. He also had very very large swollen legs that were proportionally impossible and very scabbed over.  We sat down and asked a few things about how he joined the church and then we started to read the Book of Mormon with him. As we were reading, he began to pick at his legs and blood just trickles down his leg. When we got up to leave, I didn't want to shake his blood stained hands but was kind of forced to. We both ran straight to the church and washed ourselves thoroughly. Afterwards there was a young woman in the ward who was setting up a party for a friend who was leaving to her country. We had a lesson with a recent convert and when we came out, there were tons of adolescent kids dancing in the parking lot with a DJ and a laser show and everything. Also just outside the parking lot there were a whole bunch of kids just smoking. We called the bishop and he told us to give the key to the 15 year old young woman, who was the only member there, and that she'd lock up and give us the key the next day. It was a weird day.

Well I'll talk to you all next week. Love you

Elder Coleman

New companion, helpful members, and the case of the missing gumball machine.

Dear Everyone,

I got a new companion. His name is Elder Stratton, he is from Orem Utah and he is really really tall. He is 2 metres tall. He´s really good at golf and has a huge family. So far we haven´t met with a lot of people from the ward yet, so he´s still a little lost. We´re working on knocking doors in our area to find new people to teach. So this week, a member of the ward who had been serving in the Spain Málaga mission just finished his mission and came home this week. He is super keen on helping us all the time. Also speaking of members helping us, we were in a lesson and I got 2 missed calls from Gloria, the wife of recently-baptized Antonio who live out in Ontinyent. Seeing as she doesn´t have a lot of minutes with which to call, I figured it was an emergency and called her right back after the lesson finished. Turns out it wasn´t an emergency, she was just super excited because she had given a Book of Mormon to a friend. When we met with them this Saturday, she said she has always just kind of slid by whenever people talk about missionary work. She said she had always gone to church, to activities, on temple trips, and had done everything she was "supposed to do" in the Church, but she had never felt so happy as when she began to share the Gospel with first her husband and now her friends. Next thing we know, we´re going to have a branch out there. Well, maybe a while down the road. I´m really excited to be here in Gandía with Elder Stratton. Oh, something amusing. We were talking with people in the streets the other day and we see 2 homelss-looking guys come down the street with a gumball machine, you know, the kind that is common in the front of stores. Next thing we know, an undercover police officer comes running around the corner and begins to detain them, even though they were putting up a fuss. It´s not something you see all the time. Well, I love you all.

Élder Coleman

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