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

Merry Christmas!!

This week was pretty good. Quick summary of the week. We tried to contact a lot of the people we have talked to in the street the past two weeks, and now we are trying to figure out how to contact people in the street and help them be interested in our message as well as understand that their eternal salvation depends on it. Haven´t got that one quite figured out yet. 

One of the biggest highlights of the week, is that we have a baptism set up with Cristina. She is a 58 year old Romanian woman, who is just so prepared for baptism. We taught her about the Book of Mormon about a month ago, and then she had a dream about it, and knows it´s true. She also had a dream (not sure if it was the same one or not) in which Angel Moroni told her that she needs to get baptized, to which she responded that she can´t get baptized till she has a job, and Moroni promised her a job. Well, she got the job real quickly after that, and she also has seen in a dream Presidente Muñoz (our ward mission leader and Gospel Principles teacher) leading her by the hand into the waters of baptism. We´re pretty sure she´s ready. Now, we´ve just got to finish teaching up the lessons, and we will be helping her take that first major step toward the Celestial Kingdom the 21st if everything goes smoothly. She is so ready. 

Other than that, we had special training on Friday, and it was awesome. It was the first one I have gone to where President Deere has spoken the whole time. He spoke of the importance of the Book of Mormon and how we need to present it as more than just a good book "comparable to the Bible". How we have to say, this is the test, this is the evidence that God has given you in this moment in time to know if this message we are teaching is true. It was powerful. And it was even more powerful because I finished the Book of Mormon this week. It was a great way to end reading the Book of Mormon and start it again.

But, the highlight this week was easily the choir concert in Granada. First off, before I forget, Mom, make sure you tell Brother Coffin that they had a band in the chapel. Trumpets, trombones, percussion, the whole deal. It was legit. We sang three Christmas hymns in English: "Far, Far Away" Joy to the World, and O Come All Ye Faithful. Then, there was a solo by a sister named Hermana Roan, and she sang O Holy Night. It was soooo good. I got her autograph afterward. And then, I was in a group that sang Winter Wonderland in a jazzy sort of way. Then we listened to this band play a couple songs. They played a song entitled Ivanhoe which was crazy-awesome and then another entitled Russian Christmas Music which was pretty good. Then they played Battle Hymn of the Republic and we sang, unfortunately in Spanish (it´s not nearly as good in Spanish in my opinion). The funny thing was, is that when the conductor cued us in, nobody started singing. He didn´t really give us a good cue, but so we just faded in slowly. It was quite funny. I hope there is some kind of video out there that I´ll be able to look up after the mission. And to end it all, we sand White Christmas with the band. It was just so much fun. The best part though is that one of the Senior missionaries, Hermana Castillo, bore her testimony at the beginning and said, "You will touch hearts that will not open up to the spoken word, but they can not keep the music out. That is why we are here."

Well, that´s basically been the week. This week will be another week of finding. The last time we did this, we had a goal of 555 new investigators as a mission, and we found 558. This time around, we are out to find 800 of God´s children to bring into the fold. It´ll be a week full of hard work, but it´ll all be worth it.

Love you all, and Merry Christmas,

Elder Garrett B Turley

Garrett and his comp.