another great week!!

Monday- 

We started having FHE´s with part member families and less active members. Today, we had one with a family from Ecuador. Their names are Ramiro (nonmember) and Angela (member) and they have 4 kids: José (member, 11yrs old), Alex (member, 9yrs old), Miguel Angel (3yrs old), and a baby girl that I never can remember her name. It´s hard to teach this family, because Ramiro isn´t a member, but doesn´t want to be taught formally, so we will go and start teaching his family something super basic (like obedience) and then they (they being both Ramiro and Angela)  will start asking questions about the Book of Mormon and about the way the church is organized, and what we do as missionaries, but then when we testify and try and commit them to do something, they don´t really want anything to do with it, and stop listening. So it´s a challenge to teach them, but we are getting better, and apparently Ramiro didn´t even use to listen or talk to the missionaries, but now he says hi to us in the streets and everything, and he´s even started coming to church more regularly that some of our members.

We also visited a member named Tuga Licha (he´s from Ghana and he´s about 32). He is a super strong member, and I love him to death. We talked about Enos and how after we have felt the effects of the Atonement, a natural result is to feel the desire to share the Gospel.

Tuesday-

We had a lesson with a Less Active member named Alberto (19) and his younger brother who isn´t a member yet, Romel (16) about the plan of salvation. I think they are from Ecuador, but I´m not sure. Alberto´s a good kid, it´s just tough for him to get to church sometimes, and he´s having trouble getting rid of his earings, but more on that to come.

We also had a lesson with an investigator Nancy (from Ecuador, 40ish) and her two sons, Anderson (14) and Luis (13). They are a good family, but it´s hard to get all of them together at the same time. We have taught them the Restoration probably 6 times, and we are finally ready to move on. It´s been a good learning experience on how to teach people, not lessons (PMG chp 10).

We also had a lesson with some members who are some of the only Spaniards in our branch. Their names are Juan Jose, Providencia (Provi for short) and Juan Jose hijo/Jr. (or Juanjo for short). They are great, Juan Jose is the Elders Quorum Pres. and Provi is the Relief Society Pres, and Juanjo is the Gospel Principles teacher (he´s also 18 years old and is going to Greece on his mission in 2 weeks).

Wednesday-

We had a lesson with Jose and Stiven in a park. Jose is a non member who has to get married before baptism and Stiven (11), his son, is a member who we are reactivating. I think they are also from Ecuador.

We also had a lesson with a member, Georgina, from Mexico. And she let us know why she is a vegetarian. You all would be proud of me cause I kept my mouth shut. She taught us that when we eat meat, we partake of the carnal instincts of animals, and the natural man gains strength over the spirit. Yeah...

Thursday-

We had a lesson with Fernando (9) and his mom Carmen. They are from Ecuador, and he is getting baptized this Saturday, the 24th, and asked me to perform the ordinance. I gladly accepted. I hope his mother will follow him into the waters of baptism soon.

We had a lesson with Samuel Ogbor (Nigeria, over 40). He is the 2nd counselor in the branch presidency, and loves to mention that "nothing can shake (his) faith" and I believe it. He´s a strong member.

We had another lesson with Alberto, about piercings. We taught him house his body was a temple, and set a date for him to get rid of his last earing (He has already taken off 3 or 4 others and decided not to get tattoos, so he´s trying, he´s almost there). Today, was the last day to wear his earings, so I hope he´s following through with that. His phone is broken, so it´s hard to get a hold of him. He also lives 15-20 minutes away in bus, or a 45ish minute walk (unless we walk at my pace, then we could get there in 30ish min). Unfortunately, his little brother, Romel wasn´t there, but we are going to teach him soon, and reactivate his desire to be baptized (his dad wouldn´t let him 2 years ago when his brother did for whatever reason).

Friday-

We had a special training in Murcia (one of the major cities in our part of Spain). Hermana Deere taught us about the parable of the talents in the bible. And President Deere taught us about asking inspired questions in lessons and learning how to listen to both the investigator and the Spirit, because that is how we will know what to say. It was a great training.

That night, all our lessons failed us, so we were walking around contacting in the street. Nobody wanted anything. We found this 20 year old guy sitting on the sidewalk and I asked him if I could sit next to him. He said yeah, so I sat down and started talking to him about the Plan of Salvation. Then his girlfriend showed up and he had to go, but I hope that those seeds we planted will start to sprout sooner or later.

Saturday-

We went over to Felix (60ish, Ecuadorian) and taught him and his son Carlos (19ish) and his daughter (12ish). We were going to drop him this lesson because he doesn´t want to change anything in his life, but when we walked in, his son, Carlos, asked us if we brought another movie (the last time we watched "Our Heavenly Father´s Plan" and he liked it) and said he really liked the last movie. We asked him what he liked about it, and he said he liked how it talked about the Purpose of Life, and how we are never alone. I hope we can continue to teach him by the spirit.

Sunday-

I continue to play the piano in sacrament meeting. I continue to practice the piano so that I can try to help and bring the spirit to our meetings on Sunday, and I get better every week.

We had a lesson with a couple from Ecuador, Pilar and Danielo, who have been attending church for 13 years and just got married so they are now ready to get baptized. They have a 20 yr old son Kevin and an 11 yr old son Antonio (I think) who are both members and their family is awesome. I didn´t know they weren´t members until 2 1/2 months into the mission. We reviewed all 4 lessons and the baptismal interview questions with them during Sunday School, and they are now choosing a baptismal date, and will be baptized within the next month.

After church a man named Nikolas came to the church building. He is from Romania and is 45 or 50ish. His 15 month old son had tuberculosis about 2 months ago, and Elder Oldroyd and I went to the Hospital and gave him a blessing. Well, he´s better. I don´t know if he´s cured or what, but Nikolas said that the doctors said that the baby, Silvu, his body took the medicine very well and now he no longer needs to stay in the hospital. And he came to pay his respects to God. We will be trying to work with him in the future.

That´s been the week.

It´s good to hear that everythings going good back home.

Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Garrett B Turley

Garrett's new Companion

So, my companion´s name is Elder Simon. He is from Argentina (the South part, I´m not exactly where from, but his city´s name starts with a c I think) and it took me about a week to understand him due to his accent. In Argentina, instead of saying, for example, tortilla, they say tortija. It was nigh impossible for me to understand the words he was saying, let alone the fact that he was speaking Spanish. He loves Ironman (the superhero) and basically everything to do with Marvel comics, and absolutely hates DC comics and superheroes. And he hates the heat. When he left Argentina, it was snowing, and he got here and its 90-95 everyday, so I´m loving it, but he´s dying. He also got sunburned, and I didn´t, which I thought was weird because he´s brown and I´m white. He constantly refers to himself as a Lamanite and I am therefore the Nephite, I just hope I´m a Nephite during a righteous period.

This week, we knocked about 1,000 doors, that´s not an exaggeration. But we found several people that said we could come back, and a couple actually let us into there homes for a few minutes. There was this one Muslim guy, who barely spoke any Spanish, and he let us in, gave us some dates and some fried peppers (I only ate the dates cause I knew what they were) and then we tried to talk to him and I had to translate the muslim man´s spanish to Elder Simon and vice versa. We went back to give him a pamphlet in Arabic, but he didn´t answer his door. We´ll probably stop by the next time we´re in the neighborhood.

The biggest thing that we started to do this week, was to visit all the members. ALL of them. I gave a talk last week about Elder Andersen´s talk from last conference, and we are checking up with the members to see if they have prayed and done as Elder Andersen asks us to do. We are also making a greater effort to try and contact all the Menos Activos in the Lorca Branch (There are about 150 on our records) and see if we can´t help them remember why they joined the church or remind them the reasons that they should´ve joined the church for. One Less Active member is Anthony. He is from Ghana and has been a member for about 3 years. About the time that I got to Lorca (about 3 months ago) he stopped coming to church. He was without work, without a house and fell in with the wrong crowd, and started having problems with alcohol and smoking. I met with him this week, and talked to him about the Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity and Law of Tithing, and Church attendance, and he understood them all (which is a miracle in and of itself because most of the time, my African brothers don´t understand anything the first time I teach it to them) and as he said the closing prayer, you could tell that he was repenting and trying to do better.

I found out something very sad about our African members this week. There are several African churches here in Lorca, and the preachers in those churches tell their members to not associate themselves with the Africans that attend our church. The members of our church of African descent literally are without friends here in Spain. I can´t fully describe the situation in words, but it´s horrible that they have to live through this, but their faith is so amazing. They understand that Christ is their Saviour and that this is his church. They attend the church even despite the racism that takes place within the walls of our own church. How faithful!

Investigators: These first 3 have been handed to us, and are the fruits of the hard work of members and/or missionaries. It is great to have this hope that I am hopefully planting seeds that later someone will be able to reap the reward and joy from.

Pilar (and her husband): These two Ecuadorians have been attending church for the past 13 years, but have been unable to be baptized because they were not married. They have two sons, one, named Kevin, is a priest and is a great guy, the other is named Anthony (I think) and he is about 10, and it also a great kid. They recently went to Ecuador for a vacation/to get married, and are now ready to be baptized. We are currently in the process of reviewing the lessons with them, and organizing a baptismal service.

Jessie: Also from Ecuador, her mother, Paquita (also Fransisca) is an endowed member of the church, and Jessie has been assisting since before I came to Lorca. She told us this week, that she believes the church is true, she just needs to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon before she gets baptized. I thinks that´s great. She´s reading the Book of Mormon in English and she´s currently in 1 Nephi 1:9. When she told us that, the only good thing I could think of was that at least she knew exactly where she was in her reading. We are going to work with her to help her gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon as we reteach her the lessons.

Juanjo´s French professor (I don´t know her name either): Juanjo is a 18 year old member of the church, soon to be a missionary in Greece. His professor has been studying the church by herself for the past 3 months and has read all of the Doctrine and Covenants and knows the church is true and wants to be baptized. The only problem is that her husband is a little against the church, so we can´t go to her house to teach her, and I don´t know how he would take it if she was baptized. But I have faith the Lord will bless her with a way to join the true church.

Nancy and Luis: Someone that we actually found/were guided to. Nancy is a mother of 3 and Luis is her 13 year old son. We have only met with them a few times, but they are willing to read and pray, and let us into their house. More on them to come...

That is about the extent of what has happened this week. I love you all and pray for you.

All the best (as my African brothers always say)

Elder Garrett B Turley

Parts of Garretts last couple letters

July 15th

I have no clue where to start. After almost 3 months of hardwork in the field, and a little more than a month in the MTC, I have been blessed to not only witness, but perform a baptism! There are not words to describe the joy! D&C 18:15 is the only thing that I know that describes it. It showed me a different side of the Atonement. Obviously for Vito, it washed his sins away, and he is clean. But for me, it wiped all the worries and stresses from the past 4ish months, and replaced that with complete joy and happiness. I can´t describe it. I love you!!

Let me tell you a little about Vito. He is the head of a wonderful family. He has a wife, Elena (member), a son, Luis (non-member), two daughters, Rosie (not-yet-a-member) and Kerly (member). They are a great family, and strong in the Gospel, and I look forward to continuing to work with them.

But the funny thing is, that right after the baptism, there was the feeling of almost, "What do we do now?" The other Elders in our district told us that we´ve got our baptism for this area, so now we´re off the hook. Don´t worry, we´re still working, but it was kind of a weird feeling that we´ve accomplished (once) the "goal" of missionary work. I know that we are here to help people develop faith in the Atonement, show that faith by repenting and being baptized, and then using the gift of the Holy Ghost to help guide them to endure to the end of their lives, but still, after a baptism, everything is just awesome! and you feel complete.

Anyway, life goes on. I made tortilla de patata for the first time this past week. It turned out pretty good, but I´ve still got to practice making it. We are struggling with getting new investigators, and holding onto the investigators we do have which is rather frustrating. We´ll invite them to come unto Christ and do all we can to help them see and feel the importance of that, and then leave it in their hands.

Some of the investigators that we do have are:

Olga and David: A mom and her son that were a reference from a member, and really like the Book of Mormon. Olga has told us that the Book of Mormon is easier to understand than the Bible, and that she really wants to read it. David is 9 or 10, but has a really good understanding of the scriptures. We´ve just really got to work with them on pray. We asked David to give the prayer after our first lesson, and he looked at his mom and then started spouting off this poem as fast as he could with his eyes open and everything, and then finished and then looked around, and said, "Amen". It was the weirdest thing.

Carmen and Fernando: Also a mother and son who use to come to church all the time because of a missionary that use to be here in Lorca. We asked the members about this missionary, and they said that literally 15 investigators came to church every week just because of him. And so I think she´s just listening to us for kinda the same reason, to see if we are gonna be as cool as the last Elder that she knew. We´ll see what happens there.

Jessie: Daughter of a member named Paquita. She´s like 45 and use to be a teacher in Ecuador. We are helping her and some of her friends learn English and teaching just little messages of the Gospel to them, so hopefully one of them might start listening to us. Jessie, knows a lot about the church, and comes quite often.

That´s about all that´s happening in Lorca these days. The weather´s still nice and there is always a breeze, which makes life even better.

I love you all and am keeping you in my prayers!

Elder Garrett B Turley

July 22nd

Well, I´m technically a trained missionary. But now that I´m trained, they told me I´m training, so I will be picking up my new companion (here in the mission, they call the missionaries you train your sons/daughters, so I´ll be going to pick up my son tomorrow). Pray for me will ya? I decided that like it says in Alma 32, I can either choose to be humble right now, or be forced to be humble in a couple weeks when I figure out there is no stinkin´ way I can train with just my knowledge. I hope and pray that I can choose to be humble.

This past Sunday, we had what seemed to be like a ton of people at church. We had 50 people at church, including 7 investigators. We were so pumped. When we talked to our branch president about it, he said, "Before the earthquake, we had like 80 people attending regularly. 50´s nothing." So I guess we got excited for nothing. We also have 2 investigators that just got married (Her name is Pillar and I don´t know his name, I didn´t even know they were investigators until yesterday. They have already been attending church for quite some time, and their testimonies are super strong. But they will be getting baptized sometime in the next couple weeks.) And we have another couple getting married, hopefully, in August. This couple is actually the daughter, and would be son-in-law of Vito. So just about the whole family will be members after this.

July 28th

So the first 24 hrs of training, were the hardest 24 hrs of my life. I thought I had been getting good at Spanish, but I couldn´t understand my companion and we had almost no one to visit, so we kind of just winged it and tried to visit old investigators. Over the past couple days we have knocked over 300 doors, and we are finding people to teach. One man, named Yuria, is from Bulgaria, and we watched the Restoration video with him in Bulgarian. And guess what, the church is true in Bulgarian as well. I could feel the Spirit, and I hope he could too. We also found a lady named Nancy to teach (we were literally led to her house by the Spirit, it was the coolest thing ever). We are stopping by there again to continue teaching her. I am now playing the piano in church officially (I even have a nametag!) and I feel kind of bad for the members, because I´m not exactly the best pianst. I have this feeling that pretty soon the Pres. Luis (our branch president) is gonna kick me out, and play the piano himself. But I´ll keep trying until that point. I also gave a talk yesterday on Elder Andersen´s talk from last conference called, "It´s a Miracle" and I hope the members got something out of it. I encourage you to read it, and do what it says, to pray about who you can share the gospel with, and "names and faces will come to your mind" and "you will see your own miracles".

Life is good, and the work moves on. We are getting so many new missionaries in this next transfer, 35 if I heard correctly, and we just received 21. The Lord really is hastening his work.

I love you, and hope everything goes well with school and work and at home!

Elder Garrett B Turley

Elder Oldroyd, Vito, and Garrett

These are Pictures of Garretts apartment

Dear everyone,

As of right now, I have been a missionary for 3 months and 4 days. Who would´ve known that the time would fly so fast. I thank the Lord for the many blessings he gives me and the many, many miracles he lets me see everyday. I would like to share a few with you.

First off, the Gift of Tongues. To start off with, I´m not fluent. But, I will say that my abilitly to speak Spanish has increase so much since I left home. The Lord has placed certain Spanish speaking Elders in my path that have helped me so much to learn Spanish faster than I could´ve hoped. And one thing that makes it even more of a blessing, is that I probably speak English more that 50% of the time here in Lorca, both to my companion, and we teach a lot of Africans. It´s funny to hear people tell me I´m basically fluent, and it is a blessing to get compliments from native Spanish speakers on how good my Spanish is. There have been several times where a native will ask me how long I´ve been out in the field, and when I tell them 2 months, they think I´m lying. It truly is a blessing from the Lord to be able to communicate half-decently with people from halfway across the world.

The importance of members! Pass this message on to everyone you can. I gave a talk yesterday in church, and talked about how we can see miracles if the members and the full-time missionaries will work together. I started off by saying that I was a representative of Christ, and then I promised blessings that would come from the cooperation of members and missionaries together. It was powerful, and it was amazing to hear some of the words that came out of my mouth as I was saying them. It was nothing to fancy, and it was given in broken Spanish, but as I talked to this small branch about how we could become a ward, the Spirit just continued to fill the room more and more. I spoke for almost 25 minutes in Spanish to this branch, and then my time ran out so I had to hurry and bear my testimony. I wish I could´ve spoken longer. A couple hours after church, we brought a member to a lesson. The exact things that I testified of in Sacrament meeting played out before our eyes. As we brought a member into the home of this investigator, his name is John, they immediately became friends (probably cause they were both from Africa, but still...) and John opened up. The Spirit was so strong, and he didn´t want us to leave. I hope and pray that everything else will go well with him and that we will be able to continue to work with him and the members.

Right after that lesson with John, we got a call from this nonmember that comes to church everyweek, named Rosie, who just needs to get married before she can get baptized. Anyway, Rosie told us that her father wanted to be baptized. Rosie´s dad (I don´t remember his name, it´s the same as some city that is close to Rome and starts with a "B") lives in Ecuador, but had come to visit the family, and came to church to listen to his youngest daughter and child, Kerly, give a talk. This 14 yr old young woman, gave a 10ish minute talk on faith. It was wonderful! And now her father wants to get baptized. We are going over to teach him tonight, and hopefully everyday between now and a baptism.

Yes dad, we have investigators, but more of them live outside of our area than live in our area. We have a friend named Khalifa, a Muslim from Morocco, who is currently living in Morocco and calls us at least 2 a week, but we can´t call him back. We committed a family in Ghana to go to church a week or two ago, over the phone of a member here in Spain. A Romanian son of our Heavenly Father committed to read the whole Book of Mormon this week, but lives in Barcelona. And one of my Ghanaian brothers named Sunny, lives in Murcia and is ready to hear the Gospel.

Some of our investigators, are a Ghanaian named Alfred. He wants to be baptized, and one of the first questions he asked us, was "Who in your church has the authority to baptize me?"
Simon is another of my Ghanaian brothers, and he is scheduled to get baptized July 27th, but keeps telling us he needs to read more of the BoM before he gets baptized.
John, is another one of my brothers from Ghana who we visited with a member on Sunday. He loves the Gospel, and was literally falling off his seat as we taught him. He attends the Evangelical Church, but says that if God tells him in his heart to follow our church, he will.

With any luck, we will have 4 baptisms in the next month. I pray that we will be able to find the answers that these people need, and that the Spirit will communicate to us how we can best teach them.

We watched the broadcast this morning at 8 am, as it was being broadcasted live at midnight here in Spain. I am not yet priveledged to get on Facebook and have blogs going to share the gospel, and we don´t have Ipads yet, so I´ll keep praying for that, but we get along just fine without them. But I encourage everyone to look for missionary opportunities. In whatever you are doing, and as you seek those opportunities, the Lord will bless you with them.

I love you all, and wish you the best of luck being Member Missionaries!

Elder Garrett B. Turley

Here are some awesome pictures. We´ve got some FuFu, which is an African dish made with cow hide and pig intestines. Then a giant dish of Paella. Also some pictures of me with some members and other missionaries. Love ya!

Garrett, his investigator, and Elder Oldroid

statue of Jesus

Garrett learning how to make paella

Garrett's Email is:
garrett.turley@myldsmail.net

Garrett's address is:

Felipon de Cope

33 3^◦ E 28600

Lorca, Murcia

Spain

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