Monday, March 26, 2012

Still More

More Pictures




Pictures





Happy General Conference

¡Hola!

I am writing a little late today. We had visits this morning (during preparation day) thus we ran out of time to write earlier. Luckily we had a pocket of free time to write now.

Nothing really new happened this week. We are just working really hard as usual. We had a nice preparation day. We found Dr. Pepper in Burgos!!! Elder Shiflet LOVES dr pepper, thus he is really quite excited. I am too. I havent had any since my last headache before the mission.

I did just remember. We had zone conference this week. It was wonderful, as usual! It was very spiritual. I just love President Hinckley! We played a Book of Mormon game. Both Elder Shiflet and I made it to the final round, but we lost to the zone leaders.

Elder Shiflet and I are still finding blessings from the promise from President Hinckley for March. We found another former fecha! Although he will not be baptized during the month of March, finding him is still quite miraculous. Somehow we had missed his registro earlier this month when we went through the area book looking for fechas. This week we happened to be calling people on an old list of potential investigators that other missionaries left behind. Desmond answered and was quite excited to set up a visit with us. During the lesson zero Desmond was filled with excitement and glady accepted a new fecha for the 14th of April!

Well that is all I have time for this week!

¡Hasta luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich

Monday, March 12, 2012

Milagroso Marzo

¡Hola!

Burgos is wonderfully amazing! I miss Granollers a ton. And I miss Catalunya quite a bit. However, Burgos is great too! The only bad thing is that it is still winter here. However it looks like that is going to change this week. It is already quite a bit warmer today.

It is really hard to choose a miracle for this week. There have been so many! On Friday we were in the capilla making phone calls to antiguo investigators when the timbre rang. At the door was a woman who we had never seen before. The first thing she said to us was, "¡Elderes! ¿Cuando empiezan las reuniónes aqui?" Her name is Valesca. She is a member from Chile who lives about 30 minutes away. She did not know that there was a capilla here. She does not come to down too often. However this day she happened to be here, walking down the main street, when to her great surprise she not only saw the capilla, but it was opened. She is really excited to return to church and better her relationship with God.

On Sunday another man randomly came to church. He had been contacted by missionaries on a bus several months ago. Also on Sunday we set a baptismal fecha with a Portuguese woman who randomly came to church the week before. She is amazing and super prepared for the Gospel!

On Wednesday when we went to Vitoria for district meeting we ran into a member from Valencia. Veronica was a recent convert when I was there. She remembered me! haha. The great thing is that she just moved to Vitoria and was still searching for the capilla (it´s kind of hard to find there). She was so excited to see us.

It is kind of funny. I have become quite acustomed to say several words/phrases in Catalan. It is really hard for me to drop them. Everyone looks at me really weirdly here when I say things in Catalan. Burgos is actually one of the only areas the mission that doesnt have two languages. In the other areas there is Catalan, Valenciano, Mallorqui, Basque, etc. Here there is only Spanish.

Well I suppose that is all for now.

¡Hasta luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich

New Address

Well i got transferred from Granollers. I have left Catalunya completely. I am clear on the other side of the mission. My new address is:

c/San Bruno 6,6,C
09007 Burgos

Adeu Catalunya

¡Hola!

Sadly after 6 months the time came for me to leave Granollers. I will always love that ward! I just love the people there so, so much. It was really sad to leave. I can not even express how much I love Granollers.

Not only have I left Granollers, I have left Catalunya completely. I am now in Burgos. Clear on the other side of Spain! It is the only city in the province of Castilla y Leon that is in our mission. We are right on the border with the Madrid mission. It is weird not seeing everything written in Catalan. I will miss Barcelona/Catalunya a lot!

Elder Arce and I witnessed so many great miracles during our last week together. I wish we had had more than one transfer together. Anyway, recently Presidente Hinckley made us a promise about finding someone in our area book who is ready for baptism. I really love it when he makes specific promises to the mission. Miracles always follow. And we found several great miracles in the area book! I thought I had met every single antiguo investigator in Granollers, but I was wrong. After searching through the area book we found several potential people. On Thursday, after a visit fell through we decided to pass by one of these antiguos. He is a 16 year old boy named Ricky. When he answered the timbre, he was super excited to let us in. We had a powerful lesson, during which he told us how he missed the feelings he had back when he was meeting with the missionaries. He accepted to prepare for baptism on the 17th of March. His mother also has interest in listening to us (also as Presidente promised.) The Lord always complies with promises made by Him/his servants!

¡Hasta luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich

Friday, March 2, 2012

Swimming

Hola!

It appears that spring has already arrived here in Granollers. I hope I dont jynx anything by saying that. But it has warmed up a bit. The weather is just perfect for missionary work!

Well I went "swimming" for the first time this weekend. In missionary jargon that means I performed the baptism. I have a personal rule about members performing the baptism. However, José insisted that I do the baptism. Everything went well with the baptism. It was really nice. I absolutely love his family and so it was quite wonderful to finally see him be baptized. However it was a little sad too, because his little sister backed out at the last minute.

I just love the conversion story of José. And so I am going to tell it again. (I believe i told two weeks ago).

José is a 14 year old joven. His family came as a reference from his uncle who is a menos activo that works as a chef in a restaurant owned by another menos activa. We have been working with José and his family for several months now. However his momento clave finally came only a few weeks ago. José opened up to us and told us that he was unsure about the existence of God. We invited him to pray with all his heart and then stop to listen to his feelings. We also invited him to a youth activity the following weekend. At the activity we pulled him aside to share a message and follow up on his prayer. His answer was incredible! He told us that after praying he felt full of joy and hapiness. And that he knew without a doubt that God exists. Then he told us that the next step for him was baptism! Yes he told us!! He agreed to be baptized the following weekend. Unfortunately his parents were really sick last weekend, thus he waited another week. Finally he was baptized this weekend! Several hundred years later, God still answers the prayers of 14 year old boys named José! haha

¡Hasta luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich