¡Hola!
This week was Zone Conference. As usual it was amazing! We focused on leveraging the power of members in missionary work. THIS WAS SUPER HELPFUL! The members in Lleida do not help out very much. Thus the work has not been progressing much; it is statistically proven that more member references are baptized and remain active members than street contacts. We learned a ton that will hopefully help us increase the animo of the members here and help the work catch fire. At one point during the conference, Hermana Hinckley took the sisters out for a special lesson and President Hinckley taught the elders a special lesson. I´m not sure if the sisters actually got a lesson or if they just helped Hna Hinckley prepare for lunch. But on the other hand President Hinckley gave us a warning lesson on what happens in Spain during the summer. He started out by saying, "In a few days this rain will stop and the sun will come out." He turned to one of our zone leaders, Elder Jimenez, who is a native to Spain and asked,"What happens after that?" Elder Jimenez responded, saying, "The girls go crazy!!" Then President spent 15 or so minutes giving us advice on how to keep virtuous and chaste thoughts while there are so many "distractions" around.
Back in February Elder Plaskett and I worked with the Bishopric to plan a special Sunday where all the talks and lessons are simple doctrine aimed at investigators. This way members could feel more comfortable bringing friends and us missionaries could bring more people to church by using the Special Sunday as an excuse for people to come. The Bishopric at the time didn´t give us a specific date. We only knew that it would be the 20 or 28th of March. To be honest I kind of forgot about it until last Sunday. The Bishopric nor us advertised it. Last Sunday (the 13th) a lot of the talks seemed focused on the Restoration and the nature of God- simple doctrinal topics. This reminded me of the special Sunday. I was too embarrassed to ask the Bishopric if that was it so I just assumed that we had forgotten and it was too late. Well Saturday evening the Second Councilor came up to us to see if we were planning on during anything during Sacrament Meeting for the Special Sunday. Elder Hughes on the spot offered to do a special musical number. This was bad for two reasons. A. I can´t sing and we had no time to prepare. B. This means that we hadn´t already had the special sunday. It was the next day and we had not advertised it at all. Needless to say we made a lot of phone calls that night trying to get people to come to church and to bring people to church. We actually had quite a few nonmembers come, but not near as many as I would have hoped. Also the musical number turned out well. Josh accompanied us on the piano as we sang the first two verses of "Llamados a Servir" and we invited the congregation to sing the 4th verse with us. It was really nice. Unfortunately all of our adult investigators had to leave after sacrament meeting. The remaining nonmembers and investigators were youth and primary age. Thus we had nobody for gospel principles class. One member didn´t approve of this. He assumed that since nobody was at class that nobody had come to sacrament. And he chewed us out. It was really annoying because if he wants fijo investigators, he should help us out with references!!!!! At the end of his scolding of us he did offer to help us in citas on weekends, so that made it a little less annoying and discouraging. We ended up going to Gospel Doctrines class, which was a nice change.
Currently Elder Shields and I are teaching several part member families. We feel pretty good about them and hope to have some baptisms soon. We are still teaching a couple Africans. One of them is a nice lady named Charlotte. She is nice, but a bit loca! Elder Parrish came on intercambios with me. During the lesson his lips got dry so he licked them a tiny bit. Charlotte freaked out and grabbed his tongue, telling him that we are not animals. It was hilarious!!! When we got home for medio dia he immediately brushed his teeth. haha!
Well I suppose that is all for today. ¡Hasta luego! Happy Belated St. Patrick´s Day!
Love,
Elder Buchkovich
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