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
