WOW
IT’S HOT! I think yesterday the high temperature was 101
degrees Fahrenheit, and this is supposedly still spring weather! I
also found out this week that our house does not have air conditioning...but at
least we have a car that does! I learned that if you want to cool down the
house, you open the windows and put ice cubes in the window sills. I don´t know
if that's just a Spain thing, or if my companion just knows that
because he is from Arizona, but just know that four guys, in a house with
no air conditioning, who are forced to work out every morning does not make a
very nice smell...
As far as my culture
experience this week, I finally was able to try this dish that all the
missionaries have been talking about. It’s called encebollada...I think. It’s
an Ecuadorian dish made by taking a meat broth, mashed yucca plant (it’s a root
that's poisonous until you cook it) and white tuna and then topping it with a
BUNCH of red onion, popcorn, fried plantains, and really whatever else you want
to put on it. All the other elders have been RAVING about it...let’s just say
it was a little different, BUT I ATE IT. For those of you who don´t know, Elder
Jenkins has been pretty picky for the last 19 years, eating practically nothing
but chicken nuggets and bread, but these members said to me, and i quote ¨Elder
Jenkins, we could put whatever we wanted in front of you and you would make
disgusted faces and take a TON of time to do it, but you would eat it!¨ I never
thought those words would be said about me haha
This week was such an
amazing experience. As a mission, we set some pretty high finding goals that
really stretched us and forced us to give everything we had to this work, and
doing so brought about some awesome miracles. There is one in specific that I
would like to share with you all. So the beginning of the week was pretty
rough, and I remember writing in my journal ¨When are the consecration week
miracles going to start??¨ Really the cherry on the top was that one of our
number one investigators and her family told us that because of a bunch of
different things happening right now she didn´t really see how we could help
and doesn't really want to visit with us anymore. I would compare the feeling
to being dumped...but worse! I was pretty bummed out, but decided to just keep
pushing forward and find the miracles that were awaiting us...
Rewind about a month
and a half. We were looking for this guy who and old missionary told us to try
and visit, but the missionary didn´t tell us his house number. We went the
street and looked around but couldn´t find him. We went home and did some
searching and found the number of his house, 66. We went back the street,
excited to visit this guy, and as we were driving and counting the houses...64,
65, 66A, 66B, 66C...We realized there were 26 different houses with the number
66! I felt like I was being punked by Satan or something. So as we were
knocking these houses, we came across an old Spanish man who was not really in
the mood to talk with us. He had been going through a hard divorce and his wife
was pretty much taking everything, but he told us maybe another day we could
have a little chat or something. We didn´t really think a lot of it and went on
our way.
Now fast forward to
this past Friday. We were planning for
our day, and we just kind of been throwing down his name in our plans for if we
had time, but for some reason we really felt like we needed to make an effort
to find him today. We passed by his house, right as he was getting into the car
and he remembered us and we talked for a couple minutes and left him with a
prayer. He told us we could pass by whenever, that he was pretty much always
home, so of course being missionaries, we passed by the next day. The lesson we
had with him was so amazing. This man has been humbled so much over the past
couple months and has been prepared personally by the Lord. He took most of the
time just talking to us about his life, his divorce, I think he threw in
something about colon problems in there.....and then we shared with him the
message of the restoration and invited him to be baptized and he accepted the
invitation. He then told us how the night we came by him, a month ago, he could
not stop thinking about us and was just laying in bed all night wondering if
this was the little spark of hope that he had been looking for. The day we
found him this past week, he had been contemplating taking his life, and only
didn´t because he couldn´t remember where he put his gun, but then we showed up
to talk to him and those thoughts just instantly left his mind. I was
awestruck, and my companion couldn´t even help but cry. How humbling it was to
know that I had been used by the Lord to comfort one of His children.
My testimony is this:
So many people that we talk to ask us how there can be a God if so much bad
happens in this world, But when I look at a story, of two 20 year old boys
having a random idea to pass by the house of a man who prior to that visit was
contemplating suicide, I can’t help but ask How can there NOT be a God? And not
just an omnipotent, all powerful, perfect being, but a loving Father who knows
and cares for each one of His children personally, How can there not be? I know
that there is, and not just because of this experience, but because of what I
feel and see everyday as one of His servants, called to preach his message to
those who are humbled and willing to listen. There are so many miracles
awaiting if we are willing to let God lead us through the bumpy roads and the
hard trails to get to where He needs us to be.
I hope you all have a
great week, and don´t forget mother’s day is coming up! I had a little reminder
because mother’s day here was yesterday...
Until Next Week,
Elder Jenkins
Things I learned
1. Whom the Lord
loves, he chastises
2. Bananas are good
for colon health...a lesson learned from our little miracle
3. If you get in a fender
bender as a missionary in Spain, you have a LOT of paper work to fill out....
4. Be forward with
commitments, the worst they can say is no
5. Speaking in English is
no longer safe because there are so many foreigners here now for vacations
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