Week 69: Snails and sunshine

Well friends and family, I've officially been inaugurated as an
official spaniard. One of the most popular things you will see walking
around in the summer are giant buckets of snails, just crawling over
and under one another, of all different sizes. It makes you wonder,
hmmm what are these for? Until you walk by a bar and here the sweet
slurping sound of a spaniard sucking a sauce-covered snail out of its
shell. Well, this last week I was the snail-sucking spaniard! My
companion and I asked just for small plate "to try" a couple of the
cabrillas (big snails) and got an entire bowl of them, and then made
the mistake of asking to try some of the caracoles (small snails) and
got the same size bowl. But we ate them all! Videos and pictures to
come.

It was a great week. We found out that unfortunately my time of making
mr.bean jokes to the people on the street have come to a close, as my
good friend and companion will be heading out to finish his mission in
a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. My new companion is one
of the elders who has been working in the office for the last couple
months, so hopefully he will have a lot of energy to work! I'll be
staying in Sevilla, and praying to get out before the real heat hits
in August...we shall see.

One cool miracle we had this past week. We were walking down the
street and I quickly glanced over at a side street and saw a girl on
her phone. As we walked past I jokingly said to my companion, "I think
she wants to accept the restored gospel of Jesus Christ" and then the
thought occurred to me...well what if she does? So we turned around
and began to talk with her and after a couple of minutes we found out
that her entire family are members of the church and active back in
her country and she has been inactive since she got here to Spain 12
years ago. Funny enough, her son who is living with his grandma had
just called her a couple of days before to tell her that he wanted to
get baptized and ask permission. We were able to talk about the
decision that she had made and what her son was deciding to do. We
gave her a Book of Mormon and she agreed to meet with the missionaries
to be able to learn more, which is where found out that she was only
visiting that day from northern Spain and happened to be waiting for a
store to open when we found her. I thought of all of the prayers of
her family members who had surely asked that we be guided to be able
to find her daughter, who hadn't seen missionaries in the entire time
she has been here in Spain, and just because of a little joke we had
made, we were driven to talk to her. I guess the question to ask
ourselves instead of why, should be why not? Why talk to her? Better
yet, why NOT talk to her? I think that is the question that will open
our lives to more of the miracles God has in store for us.

I hope that you all have a great week !

Love,

Elder Jenkins

Week 68: The last egg...

Hey everyone!

Well...it's hot. That's all I will say regarding that subject.

This week has been good! Hot!...but good. We found an awesome family
from Columbia who seem to want to hear about the restoration of the
gospel of Jesus Christ so that's great. And even better because
Colombian family means Colombian food😏

One of our investigators is progressing so much. She is reading the
Book of Mormon and told us before one of our appointments that she
read a really important chapter the night before. We asked her why it
was so important and she said, "because it talks about baptism!" SHE
UNDERSTANDS!

I also am getting more daring with my cooking skills. I baked a carrot
cake this week and it came out edible. There were a couple of minor
errors. In the recipe, the first step said put all the dry ingredients
in a bowl...alright check...next step. "I hope you didn't put the
sugar in there with the dry ingredients too because you now need to
mix it slowly in with the eggs...." Whoops. Then I went to the fridge
for the eggs, and I shot a glare at my companion as he put the last
bite of fried egg in his mouth. At first I figured the difference
between 3 and 4 eggs can't be that much. I threw the three eggs in and
then just put some water in there too......then I realized that was
probably going to be a bad idea so we decided to try our neighbors.
Note to self: don't knock doors in your missionary clothes if you want
something other than to teach them the gospel. Three of our neighbors
just told us they "didn't have time" to give us an egg, and one lady
actually answered and before we could say anything told us about how
sick she is and tired and how she could barely get out of bed and so
she just couldn't...I said "you are too tired to give us an egg!?",
she just gave us a blank stare and said "an egg!? That's what you
want? OHHHH....Nope sorry don't have any..." Who would have thought it
would be so difficult to find an egg. And of course, the whole town
was shut down because it was between the hours of 2-5 when everyone
takes the daily nap. Long story shorter, we got the egg and the cake
wasn't too bad!

This week I thought a lot about prayer. I'm convinced it is one of the
biggest tools that we have to increase our faith and overcome trials,
yet is one of the least taken advantage of. For so long, it just
seemed like my nightly prayer was the next thing to do on my to-do
list right after brushing my teeth, and I honestly think brushing my
teeth helped me more than my prayer. I now feel like prayer should be
an honest effort to connect with our father in heaven. And that's what
it requires, effort. I truly believe that when we make that effort,
our prayers can become conversational, and will be in turn more
beneficial.

I hope that you all have a great week! I know that I will, perfecting
my farmer tan. Or should I say, missionary tan! And supposedly, the
heat is just beginning.....

Love,

Elder Jenkins

Week 67: Duh duh duh, duh Du duh, duh Du duh (to The toon of darth Vader walking)

Wow...(get ready for your weekly update of Sevilla weather).. I did
not know that it was possible for it to rain so much! It rained from
Sunday to Saturday only stopping enough every day at 4:55 pm, just
enough to convince us not to bring our umbrellas, before it started
again at 5:05. It was pretty miserable, but at least it will make us
thankful for the heat that is going to hit us this next week.

Highlight of this week was definitely learning how to make Fufu, which
is the flour/water mixture that they use in Africa to eat with. It's a
great substitute for forks and spoons! You can just use your hands,
grab the fufu, dip it in the sauce, and enjoy! Surely my future kids
are going to love weekly "Friday Fufu night" :)

It's so important in missionary work that we are guided by the spirit;
however, I always expected that that guidance would come similar to
gps "turn left here, now take a right, first exit in the roundabout".
I'm slowly learning that we just need to walk by faith and trust that
the guidance is there, and only after will we realize we are being
guided. Last week, we were just walking down the street and we saw a
lady who was throwing stuff away in the garbage (I have a niche for
finding people around trash cans) and we offered our help and then
asked if we could pass by another day. When we finally got to her
home, she told us that she was returning from a trip to her country,
where she arrived just in time to say her last words to her father.
She has been investigating various churches for quite some time now,
but in this special time of need we just happened to "show up" and
were able to testify of God's plan as it has been revealed by prophets
and in the scriptures.  I knew that we had been led to her doorstep,
which give me confidence that even in the moments of rejection and
doubt, we are still being guided by Gods hand.

I hope that you all have a great week!

Love,

elder Jenkins

The key to The heart is in the food

Hello all,

I feel like I am on a train way to much for healthy living. This is
the 10 time in the past month I've gone from Sevilla to Malaga and I
have come to feel a great love for the wright brothers and their
contribution to modern travel. The worst part is that half of the
seats face forward and half of the seats face backwards...so there is
a good 50 percent chance you are going to feel sick. The odds were not
in my favor this time around. I guess I can't really complain about 4
hours touring the beautiful Spanish countryside.

This week has been super awesome, other than the fact that the special
McDonald's deal of 2 burgers, fries, drink, and an ice cream cone for
3.90 ended (don't worry, we took full advantage). We lost contact with
a lot of the people we were teaching, but were able to find some more.
At one point, we knocked on a door and this old little grandma opened
up. Not going to lie, we were not too optimistic about the result of
this encounter, but we talked a little and asked where she was from.
She told us she was actually from Honduras. Luckily, my brother in law
finally sent me an email about where he lived when he served there and
his favorite foods (the key to any Latin American heart is praising
their foods) so I quickly named off like 10 typical dishes and she
invited us in to her home (see!). We found ourselves with her and her
3 grandkids who were all super excited to listen to us. To be
continued....

My companion and I were able to give the class this Sunday in the
gospel principles class and it was a real blessing. During the class,
I began to think about the phrases that have most changed the course
of humanity. If I had to think of the first, it would easily be "He
lives", words which give us the hope of forgiveness and a new life
through Jesus Christ, which tell us that he is in fact our Savior and
the son of God. The second most world changing phrase then would be "
I saw a pillar of light..." Words which tell us that the heavens are
indeed open today, that every single solitary child of God on this
earth can and will receive and answer to his or her prayers if offered
with real intent, and words which testify of prophetic guidance for
the world today. With a testimony of those two phrases, I truly feel
that all other questions, concerns, doubts or hardships can be
resolved or overcome.

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Jenkins