Monday, July 25, 2011

¡SUPER-BIEN!

¡Hola!

As far as numbers, this was the best week of my mission. There is so much work here in Cornellá!!!! Unfortunately there are not enough missionaries in the mission to split the area. However next transfer there is an odd number of missionaries coming in. So I am hoping maybe we could have a tripanionship and constantly go on splits. We´ll see though.

We had interviews with President this week. As always I learned so much from talking to him. He told me that he has noticed a big change in me. During the interviews, the zone leaders gave an amazing training. Again, I learned so much. I really love being a missionary. I look forward each Monday to starting another great week!

This week we met Morelia, a member of the church. She had plans to visit her son and the temple. However, she missed her flight. Thus, she is stuck here in the Barcelona area, staying with some friends who are nonmembers. Sunday morning we visited her to arrange a way for her to come to church. While we were talking she mentioned to us that she is close friends with the family she is staying with and that she has been praying for them. We invited the family members who were present to join us for a spiritual thought. They enjoyed our message and invited us back to eat some food and have another charla! We learned two things from this experience. First, the Lord does answer our prayers for loved ones. Second, the Lord will do whatever it takes to introduce the elect to the missionaries, even if it means someone has to miss a flight!

We had another great experience involving an ice cream man. One of the member families gave the ice cream man a Book of Mormon. We wanted to pass by him this week but we weren´t sure which ice cream man he was. The members were never home to take us to him. Finally on Saturday we were passing by various investigators wiht our word mission leader. We passed by a small ice cream stand and noticed the man inside was reading. Then we noticed what he was reading....a small blue book (the book of mormon). I couldn´t believe it! We went over to talk ot him. Antonio, the ward mission leader thought we were going to buy ice cream and yelled, "¡Elderes no! ¡Estamos en ayuno!" (We had been fasting for a few investigators.) We talked to the ice cream man, German, and invited him to church. He already had plans to come with the member family. He came! He is going to come to a Noche de Hogar with the same family and us tonight.

I love missionary work!

¡Hasta luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich

Monday, July 18, 2011

Discurso

¡Hola!

Not too much exciting happened this week. Just a normal week in the mission field. Oh wait....we were talking to the ayudantes the other day and Elder Allphin told me great news from Tarragona! Natalie and her brother Luis have baptismal fechas!!!! We were working so hard with Natalie and her dad Manual. Luis sat in on a few visits. I am so excited that they have fechas!!! This means that Natalie has already read half the Book of Mormon. And from what Elder Allphin said, Manual will set a fecha soon. I am so excited. They are such a great, humble Ecuatorian family!

We are working hard here. We have a fecha with a girl named Maria JosĂ©. She is the cousin of a member family. She wants to get baptized on the 31st of July, but her mom is not too happy about it. So, we have lots of work ahead of us. however we are also teaching her sister and she is progressing a lot too. It won´t be long before the mom softens her heart.

I gave a talk during sacrament meeting yesterday. It was a train wreck. I really do HATE public speaking. My mind always gets all jumbled up. In English I can usually manage to get through making at least a little sense. But in a different language....oh man. And I ran out of time super quickly. I only got to give about a third of my talk!

The ward council gave us a list of menos activos to pass by. Wednesday morning we decided to pass by the houses of these menos activos. Before leaving, we looked up the addresses in the ward directory. Elder Manotas read them out loud and I wrote them down in my planner. We passed by what we thought was the piso of one of these menos activos, only to find out he does not live there. So we tried the piso below. And, the lady who answered the door was very interested. She invited us back to visit her and meet the four other people she lives with! We later realized that when Elder Manotas read me the address I did not hear the building number. Thus instead of going to C/Bonestar 66, 10, 2, we went to C/Bonestar 10, 2. It´s amazing how the Lord leads us to the elect!

Well I suppose that is all for this week. ¡Hasa luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich