Costco pizza and waffles!!!

Well, it´s been quite the week. It rained quite a bit and that was fun, and we got to work in the rain. I love the rain, but it kind of gets old once your socks get wet and you´ve been walking in it for hours on end, but such is life and I didn´t get sick so I don´t have much to complain about.

We had Zone meeting on Friday, and we ate Costco pizza!!! It was awesome. Afterwards I was on intercambios with the Zone Leaders, and we ate waffles for breakfast. I just about died. I forgot how much I love waffles and peanutbutter. We taught some super good lessons as well, and had some great conversations about the mish and about life lessons learned, but the waffles were definetely the highlight.

Sounds like stake conference was fun. We have stake conference in Sevilla in 2 weeks, and I am excited to go to it.Tomorrow, I will be going to Fuengirola for a District Leader training, and a big majority of my old comps will be there (Elder Milius, Simon, Landinez, Lindley, Miranda and I think even Elder Clark will be there) so it will be fun to see them all one last time before I leave, and then also to hear the messages President and his Asistants have will be great as well.

Well, have a great week, and we will talk to ya´ll soon.

Love,

Elder Garrett B Turley

Another Great Birthday!!

Wow what a week! Well, I don´t have much time at all. But I just want to let you know that the Lord blessed us a lot this week. I don´t remember if I told you about our diamond day, but we basically set aside an entire day to go contact and find people. Our goal was to find 2015 people, we found 2497. Personally, I was with an elder named Elder Whitworth, and we found 2. Not the most succesful day, but we talked with a ton of people. However the Lord saw our efforts, and though we were not rewarded in the moment we wanted to, the Lord blessed us to find 7 new investigators this week. For me it was a miracle, as most of them were just handed to us.

I had a good birthday. I didn´t tell anybody about it, so I didn´t have to deal with the whole, "It´s your bday we have to do something" cause I did just what I wanted to do, I went out and worked, and we found 4 news that day so that was my bday present from Jesus. Hermana Deere, did call me and I talked to her for a minute and that was nice. As far as I´m concerned it was the best bday ever.

The superbowl is mainly a USA thing, I´m glad the Patriots won (Shout out to Hna Hansen who will probably never see this-she´s a sister missionary who went home a month ago and is a huge patriots fan). Only the latinos really new about it. The big game yesterday was Barcelona and Villareal. Barcelona won 3-2 if anyone was wondering, and I was rooting for them.

Anyway, this week I´m going to sevilla for zone meeting, interviews with President and an Intercambio with the Zone Leaders. I´m excited for all that, and I really want to get a picture of where they filmed Stars Wars 1 there. We are working on finding, teaching and baptizing "cause that´s what we do in the Spain Málaga mission, and that´s what I´m gonna do" (The District II, episode 3).

Love you all!!

Elder Garrett B Turley

Garrett in front of La Mesquita

The organ pipes

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