Terrific Week in Castellon!!

This week has been one of my favorites because we worked really hard.  The past few days we´ll get home and we´ll be just super tired and somehow we´ll have the energy we need to make it through another day of walking (because the bus system here is not very good and the streets are crazy) like 8 or 10 miles.  I´m out of shape to do all those miles.  It´s the power of God that allows us to do what we do because we are just 19-year-old boys in a different country teaching people a thing called the book of mormon.

On tuesday was our preparation day because it was transfers last week.  We just had lunch at our piso and then went to this big mall on the other side of town because Elder Westfall needed some clothes.  I ran out of money on my card and had to use cash!  I need to manage money better here. We taught Victor that night though.  He´s such a super awesome guy.  His family was there too and we read the intro to the book of mormon with him and his family and half of 3 nephi 11.  They just loved it.  The wife had to leave half way through, but the family was so involved and loved every minute of it.  We have another visit with them tomorrow.  That night though we went to Bishop Vergada´s house and got 5000 flyers to hand out for the open house of the chapel here in castellon.  We got hot chocolate and grilled cheese though.

On wednesday we did a lot of passbys handing out these flyer for the open house.  We gave some to the hermanas and over the next few days we handed the flyers to people, placed them in mail boxes, and ward members to hand out.  We had noche de barrio (ward night) and we talked about revelation and played a tie game where everyone sat in a circle and with one tie you had to tie one knot and the other tie you had to tie two knots, and you don´t get stuck with both ties.  My nice yellow tie took a beating though.  We also had lunch with bishop and his wife too that day and boy they know how to feed the missionaries.

Thursday was district meeting and so we traveled down to Valencia again and had a nice district meeting.  I love our district.  We got two new people because the other two were transferred.  We had lunch that consisted of pan and spanish tortillas.  (the pan here is long skinny bread that´s super cheap and good!)  We passed more flyers out again and went to English class too.

Friday we had a long weekly planning and we made sure that this week was super packed.  We had lunch with the Rojas and they always make good food.  We passed more flyers and had correlation with the mission president and then after that we went over to the church because a sister missionary from the ward was coming home and the people here throw a big party with talks, slide shows and videos when a missionary leaves or comes home.

Saturday was the longest day of my life.  We got to the church at 9:30am and helped set up for the open house and we spent all day there because we had different stations that the people would go through and the members were just fantastic at it.  When members and missionaries come together, miracles happen.  The only downside of all this was that hardly anyone came.  We did go contacting during the day and met an english man who was bananas and he just won´t understand anything we were trying to tell him because he was proud, stiff necked, and very learned.  We did meet Santiago who is this investigator we met at the open house and he was just amazing and cried when he was in the baptismal room because the spirit was super strong there.  We met with emilio that night and had a super spiritual night/lesson.  I was so tired when we got back to piso!!!!!

On sunday we had a ton of our investigators come to church.  The classes were great and the testimony meeting was super powerful.   I wasn´t able to say my testimony because there were so many people. We had a nice lunch with some members, went back to church and sang in the choir, went to the Roja´s house for Noche de Hogar. I felt sooo sick, ran to the bathroom and almost threw up, but said a quick prayer and was good for the rest of the night.  Went to emilio´s house and had a super spiritual lesson, asked if he wanted to be baptized, but he said no.  We´ll just work with him really hard over the next few weeks.

Well I need to go.  I hope you all have a great week and I´m praying for you all always.  I know that the church is true and that the commandments are not restrictions but they protect us so we can have freedom.   Read your scriptures every day for at least 10 or 15 minutes and have them feed your soul with peace and joy.  see ya next week.

Love,

Elder Gonzalez