Merry Christmas

First and foremost, Merry Christmas. I love you all, and you´re awesome.

Last Christmas, I talked a little bit about Christ´s birth in Jerusalem. About the sheperds and how they found Christ and then they went out and shared their experiences. This year I would like to share some thoughts on what happened during that Christmas season over 2000 years ago in the Americas. (We´re gonna be in 3rd Nefi 1, for those who want to follow along :D )

It doesn´t go into as much detail as The Bible when describing the night of his birth, but it does give us some interesting insights. First off, the righteous people of this land were waiting, and looking forward to the birth of Christ (vs8). Their lives were on the line for simply believing in the words of the prophets and hoping that Christ would come (vs9). Nefi, went and prayed all day long and the Lord told him to be of good cheer for that night, He would come into the world (12-14).

Then the sign came. There was a day, and a night, and a day as if it were one day. And I love what it says happened after that. First a ton of people fell to the ground because they knew that this was the sign of the birth of their Savior (vs 16). But the scriptures teach us that right after that, they began to understand that the Son of God would soon appear (vs 17). And this didn´t just happen to a few of them, but unto all the inhabitants upon the face of the land (vs17). They all fell the earth and they all began to understand a little better the prophets, and they began to accept the idea that Christ was coming.

Then the new star appeared (vs21), and it says that right after that, Satan began to spread lies through the people but that the majority of the people resisted and converted unto the Lord (vs22). From their Nefi went out, found, taught and baptized lots of people. And it says that as he did so, the people once again begin to have peace in the land (vs23).

This Christmas, I invite all to reflect on the fact that Christ came to the earth, that He was born all those many years ago. Let us begin to understand a little bit better what that means for us, and for those around us. If we fall to the ground cause we get hit with such a strong realization, even better :).  As we reflect on this, let us also understand that coming unto Christ through baptism and repentence is the only way that we can truly have peace in our land and in our lives.

I love you all. I know Christ lives and that he is my Lord and Savior. I hope that this Christmas, we can all come to know and understand that a little bit better.

Love,

Elder Garrett B Turley

Elder Kearon on the 70

Well, well. What a week! Sooooo much travel, yet so much happened. Dad, just so you know, travel in spain is boring. There isn´t any wildlife, and there are no trees besides olive trees, and they get old after about 6 months. The coolest things to see are cities and castles and cathedrals and old Don Quijote windmills here in La Mancha off in the distance, but you don´t usually get much of that in train. The special training on the other had was great! I had the chance to tranlate the message of Elder Kearon for 6 or so native spanish speakers at the conference, and that was a great experience.

Elder Kearon spoke about many things. His main focus was that we have the power to choose. My testimony of the importance of free agency was strengthened as I listened and reiterated the words he spoke. It is our decision whether we let ourselves give into fear. We can choose to be fearless. We can choose to do and be whatever we want. He spoke of the need to learn to discern between the good and evil spirit. The good spirit uplifts, the evil brings down. When we here a negative voice in our head, we´d best not listen to it, rather we should push it out. Does that mean we don´t identify our problems and mistakes? No. It just means that we don´t dwell on them. We identify them, come up with a plan to better ourselves, and then we push forward.

It was a good conference. Afterward, we went on intercambios, and that was a good experience, we had lots of miracles and blessings during those 24 hours.

We also went again to Manzanares this week. The members are excited to work with us, and we are excited to work with them.

Love you all,

Elder Garrett B Turley

He said it is finally getting cold outside!
This is Garrett and Elder Kiffe 

Garrett and Elder Cowley (He's from Mesa, he's in our stake)

6 months to go!!

Well, this weeks been kind of crazy. I´m not sure where to start.

First off my address is:

Elder Turley

C/ 6 de Junio Nº44, 3ºB

Valdepeñas, Ciudad Real 13300

España

I left Cartagena the best I could. It was a surprise for everyone there. I was only there for 3 months and usually misionaries stay in the same area for 4 1/2 to 6 months. It was rather funny because everyone in the ward was talking about how they didn´t want Hermana Birnbaumer or Elder Ellsworth to leave, and then all three of us ended up leaving. It was pretty sad leaving. I had gained a huge love for the members and people there in Cartagena, it was a very spiritual time for me in the mission, and then I left some of my favorite missionaries and probably will not see them again. Some I might not ever see again, and others it will simply be untill after the mission. Sad nonetheless. But the Lord needs me in Valdepeñas and so here I am in Valdepeñas.

How is Valdepeñas you might ask? Well, it´s fairly small, but it´s awesome. Very well known for it´s wine, and it smells like wine all the time. Right now is harvest time, so everyone is working in the vineyards. It´s kind of like Snowflake where everyone works in the papermill.  The weather is great. Aparently it got cool right when I got here. I absolutely love the weather right now. There was a huge thunderstorm the other day (it really wasn´t that big, but it was the biggest thunderstorm I´ve since the last monsoon I was in). It was realy cool. They say that sometimes it snows here in the winter so I´m excited for that and not excited at the same time.

The members here are great. On sunday, all of the men were working so only women came to church. It was an interesting experience, but one that strengthed a lot my testimony of the strength of women and how much they really do keep this work and church moving along. We watched 17 miracles for sunday school and young womens and I noticed how many of those miracles were manifest through women and their faith, and it strengthened my testimony more. It was a very spiritual day. I also gave a talk, and, well, I liked the talk a lot, but it didn´t seem like to many people liked it. Afterward the branch president´s wife came up to me and told me that I speak really well, and that I almost don´t have an accent, so I´m pretty happy about that. I´m going to become a seminary teacher! Ha! I´m so excited. It will only be once a week, but I´m super excited to do so.

We started reading the Book of Mormon as a mission today. The goal is to finish it by Christmas, 100 days. I´m excited to do so, and look forward to the spirit of unity that is brought about by doing things as a mission as we are very spread apart.

Other than that not much to report. We are working with a colombian family (there are a ton of colombians here) named Andres y Karen, and their 2 kids Sofia (5) and Santi (1). They fed us arroz con pollo (rice and chicken) and it was great! Then we talked about why we are here as missionaries and read 2 Nefi 2:8 and talked about eternal families. They want to live together forever, and so we are going to talk to them about how we do that.

We are also working with a less active 17 yr old named Daniel. He´s from Romania and is pretty shy, and I think a little embarresed to share his thoughts on the gospel even with us. We are going to start reading the Book of Mormon with him from the beginning, as he has said he can´t do it by himself. He´s a good guy and hopefully we can start talking with his twin brother Denis (?) who used to come to church a couple years ago.

We are working hard. I have really felt a huge sense of urgency as this might be my last area that I am going to work in. It´s crazy how fast time flies by.

Love you all, and good luck with school and whatnot.

Page, good luck with the prep for the mish. Hermana Ancalle from my district says hi, she´s from Peru (but I don´t think you´ll be anywhere near her pueblo, I don´t remember what it´s called but it´s far away from Lima).

Mom, when Page get´s set apart, you might want to write down some of the blessings and things that are said in that prayer/blessing. It´s something that I notice several people have that I don´t and it would just be nice to have things like that in the mission.

Well, have yourselves a great week!

Love,
Elder Garrett B Turley

Transferred to Cartegena!!

First off, our new address is:

Paseo Alfonso XIII nº64, esc 2, 9ºB

30203 Cartegena (Murcia)

España

The weeks been good. We finished up the move in sanlucar and then I headed out. I had a few days of air conditioning and then I moved. Our new piso is in a sweet location, right next to the train station and the bus station and right across the street from a huge grocery store and right down the street from the chapel.

My new companion is named Elder Lindley. He is from Logan utah, more or less, he lives in a small town called Wellington (i think) that´s like wo minutes from logan, and he´s a champ. He played football and baseball and wrestled in high school and grew up on a dairy farm and is a super hard worker and it´s great working with him.

In our piso, I´m living with Elder Landinez, who was my companion in Malaga. It´s great to be with him again and to see how much he´s grown in the past 4ish months. His comanion is Elder Harman. Elder Harman is from my group (o sea he entered the mission at the same time I did) but we haven´t met each other till now because he went to the mtc in madrid and I was in Provo. He´s from mesa and he swam for mesa high and he also swam rec for taylor jr high and we think we met each other then, but yeah if you could send me pics from rec at taylor or any other pictures with me with punk mesa high swimmers that would be good. Don´t worry, we´ve put his past behind him and have become friends, although I did admit to him that their school colors are way better. But yeah it´s great living with all of them is great.

Anyway, this past week we were focusing a lot on finding a bunch of new people. We taught two people after I got here that were super good. Ones name is Marco and he is either the most inteligent person that I have taught, or he´s faking being an investigator to mess with us. In my first lesson with him, they only taught him once before I got here, we started talking about the restoration, and he had already read the pamphlet and asked us about the apostasy and which of the two priesthoods we held and stuff like that. It was crazy. When he asked us if we had the aaronic or the melchezidek priesthood and I asked him how he knew there were two priesthoods and he said, it´s in the pamphlet. It surprised me because no one ever remembers what they read.

The other person is Maria. she is super humble and from Ecuador and she is so ready for the gospel. She´s super lonely and just looking for somehting to fill that loneliness inside her. We taught her a little bit of lesson one and she is gold. She believes in God but hasn´t really had a whole bunch of time to go to church and stuff like that and just wants someone to teach her about Jesus. So we´re gonna teach her about Jesus.

I´m super excited to be here in Cartegena, it´s pretty humid which is lots of fun, but other than that it´s good an the people are great here.

Have yourselves a great week, and keep having a great summer.

Elder Garrett B Turley

Garrett said snails aren't all that wonderful!!

Interviewed on the radio...

This week´s been good. A transfer week, but it passed by super fast. My new companion is Elder Melgarejo from Lima, Peru. We´ve been laughing a ton, and life´s good.

Not a whole lot to tell. The week, although it´s been good, has been super weird. All of the lessons that we´ve had have been in have been super strange and everyone isn´t normal. Hopefully that´ll change.

One thing that stood out to me as I was reading the lesson for Elder´s Quorum this week was when Pres. Joseph Fielding Smith said that we all have enough time to read the scriptures for 15 minutes a day. He also said that There is no greater truth that we can learn than the fact that Jesus is the Christ.

One fun thing about this week was that Elder Clark and I had the opportunity to be interviewed on the radio. We talked for about 30 minutes and we hope that someone was listening to the program. Lot´s of fun.

Life´s good, It´s great to be speaking nothing but spanish again. It´s so amazing to see how the Lord has blessed me over the past year in my ability to communicate with spanish speaking peoples.

Take care everyone,

Elder Garrett B Turley

Foto is of the interview we had

Easter in Spain!!

What do they do in Spain for Easter? Well, they all dress up in robes and pointy cone hats that make them look like the KKK (but they´re really called penitentes), and follow statues of Christ or the Virgen (not usually Mary, I´m not sure which virgen it is, but not usually Mary) and they do that 1 or 2 times a day. It´s different in every city you go to, but from what I´ve heard it´s basically the same everywhere, depending on the city it might just be bigger or smaller. We ran into 2 processions this past week, and had to detour around them because they take up the whole street, and there is a band that follows them around, and then a huge crowd of normal people follow them around.

What did we do? Well, basically as we were walking in the streets, I reminded Elder Clark over and over what was happening 2000ish years ago in Jerusalem. But other than that nothing super special. I made Biscuits and Gravy this morning and reorganized the house, that was kind of special.

Special training this past week was different. We went to San Fernando and President Deere taught us a way to ask strong members for "references" more or less. Basically, as missionaries, we have the tendency to visit the strong, active members and ask for references, but since they are strong, they have already talked and tried to share the gospel with family and friends on many occasions, so President suggested that we go and ask them if they know any part member families, less actives, and finally people who have investigated the church or come to an activity in the past. We were able to do that twice this week, and it was really a good, spiritual experience.

I finally gave a talk! It was on missionary work, go figure, and yeah... I shared 2 scriptures that I really liked. One is Alma 1:26-29. I love this scripture and how it teaches us that as we do our duty and teach and care for one another, the church will grow and prosper, and those that have left, will return. The second was Alma 4: 3-4. In these versus, it stood out to me, that in response to being chastised by their Heavenly Father, the people remembered their "duty" and they shared the gospel. And then the church grew.

Our area? Well, we do cover Chipiona, but we have yet to go out there. We have plans to go out there tomorrow with our ward mission leader to contact a reference and find some inactive members. Sanlúcar is really strange, the people here are always looking out for each other (I can´t tell you how many times random people have seen us look lost and helped us find our bus, or let us cut in line at the post office or the ayuntamiento because we missed our turn) and yet they don´t want anything to do with the gospel and they yell at each other and make fun of each other always. There are lots of cobblestone, narrow streets so it gives you a truer feeling of what Spain was like. It also is probably one of the hardest areas to understand what the people are saying. The Cadiz region in general is known for it´s horrible Spanish, but Sanlúcar is, from what I´ve heard, the worst. But you get used to it after a month (with the Lord´s help).

We are working with the husbands of lots of the sisters in the church, and 7 less active members one of which was rescued/reactivated yesterday. We are waiting for callings for 2 of them so they can be considered rescued, and more importantly have another anchor in the gospel.

However the main task, as I have seen it, has been to break the habits that have been taking place here in Sanlúcar over the past 15 years. Mostly habits of not following the rules and spending tons of time in the homes of the members. We´ve got it in the heads of the members that we don´t enter houses if there isn´t a man home, so that´s improvement, so yeah...

The Branch Presidency accepted the Branch Mission Plan we drew up, and now we just need to present it to the rama. Mostly, we just need to make sure we are smiling and happy all the time so everyone else can have the chance to choose to be happy too.

Well, that´s the area and a little bit of the week. 

Love you all and have a great week,

Elder Garrett B Turley

Garrett made some paella

This is a picture of Africa from Gibraltar 

Transferred to Sanlucar!!

First things first, new address:

Avenida de Todos los Santos 11

11540 Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cadiz

España

Life is good, this place is soooo beautiful. I honestly haven´t seen so much grass for almost a year. Craziness. The feel of this small town is so different than that of Málaga. It is such a laid back feeling and attitude to life which makes it hard to try and have urgency in the work, and it is much more humid here than it was in Málaga and cold humidity has a tendency to stick to the bone. No me gusta. Pero no pasa nada!

These first couple days here have been good. Elder Clark (went to Mountain View with me) has been taking good care of me, and has made me lunch everyday that we haven´t been fed by our member that we live with. Yup, we live with a member.  We actually have our own little mini house out behind her house, but it´s awesome. This will be the only time in the mission that I will be able to have pets. 4 dogs, a pony, a cow and lots of chickens. I love it!

We have witnessed several miracles just these past few days, but one that I would like to share with you is this: We were able to give a blessing to a non member friend of a member while we were in this member´s home. Her name is Rocio. She has never talked with the missionaries before, and after the blessing, she was crying and we explained what the spirit was and she accepted to hear our message. I am so happy for here and hope that we will be meeting with her often to help her come closer to our heavenly father.

Our ward mission leader also lives with us. He lives in a room above the house that our mamita lives in. He is from france and his nickname in highschool was popeye. He is super strong. We helped a member move last week, and this 71 year old frenchman was lifting more weight than just about anyone else without any problems. He´s awesome and his name is Daniel, but we call him Danny.

Welp, that´s all for the week. The church is true, and life is good.

Love you all,

Elder Garrett B Turley

Needs new shoes after working so hard!!

Thanks for the money, I´ll most likely be getting some shoes that are needed. Just in case anyone asks, Croft and Barrow are garbage shoes. I´ll send some pictures of one of the pairs of shoes that I wore for the first 10 months of the mission. Completely destroyed. I´m actually kind of proud of it. My comp tells me I should only wear them when we go to special confereces with President Deere.

Well this week was a little tough, but our labors and more than anything our desires to do good were blessed yesterday.  First off, yesterday we had stake conference. It was very different for several reasons. First, the last 3 stake conferences I have gone to, I have had to take a 2ish hour bus ride to a different city, but this one was here in Málaga. Second off, it was a broadcast from Salt Lake with the main speaker being Elder Ballard. It was super good, but I still don´t like it when they translate for the Quorum of the 12 or the First Presidency just cause it´s not their voices. But it was good nonetheless.

Then that evening, we went by 2 less actives and they are doing so well. They really have desires to come closer to Christ and we were just so excited walking home and planning last night.

First off Sofia. She is from Bolivia, and has 2 daughters who are both members of the church also. She´s been menos activo for a while, but she has started opening up to us in the past couple weeks. Last night, she prayed so sincerely to our Heavenly Father, it was so beautiful.

Then there is David. We have been visiting him on average 2x a week for my whole time here in Málaga (4ish months). He talked to the Bishop yesterday, and then we went over after their talk, and he was soooooo happy. He had been depressed and sad this whole time and with a little talk with the Bishop, he gained hope and told us that he wants our help. We called the Bishop afterward to thank him, and he told us that David told him that he didn´t understand at first why we, the missionaries, kept coming over, but then he realized that it was because we loved him, that´s when he decided to talk with the Bishop, and that just made me super happy.

The Lord has blessed us so much just in the last 24 hours. And I pray to be the missionary he needs to help these two of his children continue to follow him as well as many more.

Love you all, have a great week!

Elder Garrett B Turley

Garrett's birthday dinner

After 10 months of walking

Another Miracle!!

Well, this week was pretty good. We´ve redoubled our efforts as a companionship, and we have set high goals for this week (at the invitation of Pres. Deere) and will be trying to find lots of people to teach.

One miracle that happened this week, is that we finally talked to this homeless man that I have seen probably everyday since I´ve been here in Málaga. His name is Gospower and he is from Nigeria and he is so ready to hear the gospel. He lives in Italy and comes to Málaga regularly for vacation, usually during the summer, but this past summer, someone stole all his documentation and he is stuck here in Málaga until he can get back to Italy to renew his documents. When we contacted him, he was sitting in the street begging for money, and we just went and sat next to him and talked to him for a bit, and then invited him to come to the church building for a lesson. The Lord blessed us with a very cold and windy day the day of that lesson, and I think that was part of what helped him come. Apparently, 2 of the sisters in our ward have invited him to church and to listen to the lessons a ton, but he never accepted. He said that because  we sat down by him (Elder Landinez more so than I) and just talked to him and got to know his story, that helped him feel like he had friends. We gave him the Restoration pamphlet and saw him later the same night, and he said he had read 6 lines and had felt "something" in him. We are excited for him, and I hope that he will choose to let God bless him in this time in his life.

That´s been the biggest miracle this week. One thing that´s kind of weird for me, is that I am focusing on my goals that I have set for this year. As I´ve been reading the Bible (I´m in Leviticus!!!!) It´s been interesting to see how things connect to the New Testament, to the Book of Mormon, to the story of the Restoration, the Plan of Salvation, everything. I absolutely love it.

Oh, yeah, and I´m not sick this week. It´s kinda nice. :)

Love you all!

Elder Garrett B Turley