Well this has been quite the week. A lot has happened, and the Spirit has been strong.

Last Monday was my first Pday. Elder Oldroyd (He just happens to be from Mesa, he lives a couple miles away from me, and we graduated together. It is a small, small world) and I went and got haircuts from a Moroccan guy, and we both look like Moroccans, pictures to come next week, I can´t send pics from this computer. I took almost 100 pictures just in the last week, there is so much cool stuff here. Anyway, we got haircuts and went and played soccer for 3ish hours with a bunch of nonmembers and one of them invited us over to his place to talk with his family. The Lord really does work in mysterious ways.

A normal day for me consists of waking up at 7:30, excercise for 30 minutes (usually we go for a jog in Spain), and then we have shower, breakfast, and study time until 11:30. After that it´s time to work. We come back to our apartment at 2pm for Medio Dia, and have more study time, and then head back into the streets at 5:30. Then we work until 10:15-10:45 at night, and then lights out at 11:30. It´s super tough not to take a nap in the middle of the day, especially right after a huge lunch and then we have to study. We don´t get fed too much here, so we are on our own to make food. Basically, grilled cheese sandwiches are where it´s at.

So this past week we have had many adventures. We had Zone Conference, in Murcia which was awesome. There are so many beautiful pictures there, and I´ll be sending those home soon. We also had some super spiritual lessons, and several experiences where we were paying attention to, and listened to promptings. The Spirit is just so wonderful, and the more you listen to it, the more you recognize it. What a wonderful truth.

I am growing more accustomed to talking to random people and trying to talk to them. I invited a random guy on the street to come to church with us on Sunday, but he didn´t want to come. One of these times though, someone´s gonna say yes, and it´ll be awesome!

Here are some of the people that we´re teaching right now:

Mirian: This is our number 1 investigator right now, and we are going to challenge her to baptism this week (possibly tonight). She is from Honduras, and is alone here in Spain looking for work. I don´t know why she came to a country with 27 percent unemployment looking for work, but whatevs, I´m not complaining, cause now we are teaching her. She has a wonderful understanding of The Gospel of Jesucristo, but as soon as we try and apply that to our church she kinda shuts down. We have to figure out how to teach her simply and bodly is what Elder Oldroyd is saying, and so we are going to teach her simply about the Restoration tonight. Wish us luck... (oh yeah, she came to a church activity and church, and read the Intro and testimonies in the front of the BoM, so she was keeping commitments before we even extended them).

Saturday: What a great guy! He is also super knowledgeable about the Gospel and is from Ghana. It is soo fun to speak English with these guys. It is a whole different language. If I come home sounding and praying like a black guy, don´t be too surprised.

Angel: A great guy who knows a lot about the church. He asks question after question about the church, and we can show him the answers in the scriptures, and I think he feels the Spirit. We are going to try to take more control of the lessons in the future and tell him that these lessons will answer a lot of his questions that he has.

Those are all of our really good investigators right now, and I really hope that we can touch all of their lives for the better.

We almost got robbed by gypsies this week. Well, kinda. Elder Oldroyd thinks so. I was oblivious to the fact that we might have been getting robbed, so I´m not exactly sure what happened. But we are gonna go teach the family sometime soon. We just aren´t gonna bring anything that they can steal from us except for some Books of Mormon.

I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting yesterday. It was such a great opportunity for me. I feel like my Spanish was half decent. I´m pretty sure that I sounded the same as I did back home, just talked slowly and thoughtfully, which was really helpful cause it gave me time to think of how to say things. It was a 10 or 15 minute talk, and I didn´t even share half the stuff I wanted to. I led the music again this week, and also helped prepare the Sacrament. There are supposedly 180 members of our Branch, but we have 20-35 show up every week, so there are a lot of people who do double duty in the Branch. It is amazing to see the strong members of the Branch step up and help the work of the Lord move forward.

Scripture of the week is Luke 22:32. This is one reason I am out here. I have felt the Spirit more in my everyday life here than ever before. There´s a spiritual experience to be had behind every corner here in Lorca. And it reminds me of something Elder Holland has said, that the mission is as real as life will ever get. This is Real Life, capital ´R´capital ´L´ and it can be the same for everyone, regardless of whether they are on a full time mission or not. I invite you to look harder for the Spirit in your everyday lives.

Well, that´s about it for this time around. I love you all and wish you a happy week. Know that I am praying for all of you, and working hard.

Love ya!

Elder Garrett B Turley