¡Hola!
This weekend is General Conference! Can you believe it!? The time is just FLYING by. Of the 4 General Conferences taking place during my mission, this weekend is already the 2nd! I honestly cannot believe that 6 months have past since the last General Conference. This means very soon I will have been in Spain for 6 months! Transfers have become a regular unit of time for me. haha. The only problem is that they are too short! I could possibly be leaving Lleida next week! I don´t want to! It still feels like I just got here and I love the people so much. I am not ready to leave. I feel like I have unfinished business here. Also it doesn´t feel like Elder Shields and I have been together long enough. We work so well together; we need more than one transfer together. I am probably just nervous for nothing. The pattern I have noticed about Lleida is that most elders spend 4 transfers here. I have only spent 3. Plus I spent so little time in Valencia, I don´t think president will move me yet. But we´ll see. This transfer will be interesting. There are a TON of missionaries leaving and I believe there aren´t any coming in.
Again I apologize for not sharing more missionary experiences. Miracles and feeling the Spirit have just become an everyday part of life. Thus, I don´t feel the need to share them constantly. But here are a few.
We are working with a Spaniard named Ismael. Various companionships have been in contact off and on with him since 2006. He is super evangelical and likes to argue. Since we started working with him in late January, he has been kind to us, but still likes to argue but in a nice way. Yesterday was the first time he actually just quietly listened to us. The Spirit was so thick you could cut it! Planning for the cita we weren´t sure what to teach him. But that morning I said a prayer asking for inspiration on what to teach. Going into the cita I felt impressed to talk about faith and Alma 32. At the beginning he tried to "catch" us with a Bible verse. But when it supported what Alma was saying, he became quiet. He answered questions when we asked him, but generally he just listened.
One of my favorite things about Valencia was how people contacted us! They would walk up to us and ask for a Book of Mormon or ask to meet with us, etc. That has happened a few times here in Lleida. Now that Elder Shields and I are together, it has been happening more than usual. We must just be easy to approach. Last week we had several people approach us. One in particular was a lady from Brazil, named Lucia. She had a Book of Mormon in Brasil but accidentally left it there, and she also knew a little about the Church. She moved to Spain 6 or 7 years ago and has seen the missionaries several times. Finally last week when she saw us she felt (the Holy Ghost, quizas? sí!) like she should talk to us this time. We had a really good cita with her, but unfortunately we had to hand her over to the other elders. In fact, all of the golden investigators that have contacted us have lived in the other elders´ area. I think God is trying to teach Elder Shields and me a lesson on being self-less. We should be happy for these people´s salvation, not upset that we don´t get to baptize them personally.
Well I´m out of time for today. If I want to get a napolitana today, I need to get off the computer now before my bill gets to high.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE SUPPORT EVERYONE GIVES ME! I love you all!
Love,
Elder Buchkovich
Monday, March 28, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Happy (Belated) St. Patrick's Day
¡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
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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