1 month out! Weekly email

HELLO EVERYONE

 

Holy guacamole I do not even know where to begin.  Things are so incredible at the CCM (MTC).  Its absolutely crazy that I have less than two weeks left in here...Things are going to get real so soon and its really starting to hit everyone.

 

Some new things i havent talked about yet are the spanish people have a pretty crazy diet.  They have sweets for breakfast almost every day, very much like the rest of Europe.  The best treat they serve here though is churros with thick hot chocolate.  I´ll send pics in a little bit but it is honestly sooo legendary.  You get a ton of hot churros and just pour some sugar on top, and dip it in the chocolate and its sooooo good.

 

P days here are super super super sweet.  Last week we went to the plaza mayor which is like one of the most famous places in Madrid.  It was super super super sweet.  But today is the day we have been looking forward to for a long time. We are going to visit the real madrid stadium today and everyone is sooooo pumped for that.  Ill send pictures of it next week.

 

I wish I had a little more to write home to everyone this week but i do have one thing i have really learned here that I want to share with you.  THE BOOK OF MORMON IS TRUE.  So every sunday we have an mtc devotional by the mtc president and he shares some doctrinal lessons with us.  But last week, we talked about the Book of MormIon.  So he began by telling us about how he talked to a bishop once that was concerned about how Joseph Smith translated the Book of MOrmon, and how he used different techniques to do so.  HE then proceeded to tell us that these things do not matter and we should never be concerned with those.  When it all breaks down, the Book is true.  We dont know the book of Mormon is true because of factual information and we should never try to prove the Book of Mormon is true with facts.  The bottom line is, we find out that the book of mormon is true through a spiritual experience.  All people can know that joseph smith is a prophet and that the book of mormon is true only by reading and praying with sincere intention to find out that it is true.  I have no doubt in my mind that this is true.  I was in the park teaching people last week, and had some awesome experiences with passing out book of mormons to people.  I wish you all could see it, but it´s incredible to see some people´s eyes light up as you begin testifying of the book of mormon.  They look directly into your eyes and you can tell their heart is touched.  It´s so awesome to see how the spirit works in people, and I know that moroni´s promise in Moroni 10 4 is soo true

 

I wanna leave you all with a challenge.  Wherever you are at with your testimony of the church, read the book of mormon again.  You will notice new things every time and not only will you learn new things each time you read, but the spirit will allow you to have some incredible experiences each time you do.  Im so grateful for this gospel and I wanna bear testimony to all of you that the book of mormon truly was written for us in these latter days.  READ IT! I PROMISE IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE! And if you have already read it, read it again.

 

I say these things in the name of jesus christ Amen

**Notes from Colby in other letters he sent to us:

Learning another language makes English hard sometimes believe it or not.  But things are going pretty good here.

I love a lot about the MTC.  We get the opportunity to go to the temple every Thurs. morning, which is our P-day.

We get to tour the city on P-day which is absolutely awesome as well.  I will be emailing some pics home but we still have a ton left to go see, including the Real Madrid Stadium.  Madrid is unlike anywhere else I have ever been in my entire life.  It doesn’t feel like I’m not in America until we leave the CCM then it really becomes real.

The guys in my room are super awesome.  Everyone here likes to joke that I look like the King of Spain (google it).  There aren’t a ton of people here so it’s kind of sweet because everyone in the MTC knows each other.  There are two missionaries from Temecula:  Elder Downing and Sister Scott.  They are super awesome and I know Elder Dawning knows the Billings but idk about the sister.  She just got here and she is learning Russian.  The guys in my zone and the sisters too are super awesome.  It’s just me and my two companions and a trio of sisters. Seriously, it’s so much fun though.  I have never laughed so hard in my life.  

Oh my lanta, I absolutely love playing soccer here!  They don’t play any soccer on grass hardly.  It’s all on concrete in caged in courts, or this one awesome court that is like a mini concrete hole with a court at the bottom we call the pit.  They don’t let us play everyday , but we try to get them to let us every time we have time for exercise.

Weekly update

HOLA TODOS

 

I hope things are going absolutely amazing for all of you!  Things are crazy here in SPain, but i think about each and every one of you all the time.

 

As far as Spanish, the Lord helps me when i put in the work i need to.  We teach two lessons in spanish every day and its amazing how sometimes i have no clue what to say, and the lord helps me explain myself.  I truly know that the gift of tongues is real, but only when we show our committment to the Lord and persevere.

 

The message i want to leave with all of you this week is about Faith.  So i got paired with one of my really good friends here, Elder Perri, as my companion to go proselite in the park to the Spanish people.  Elder Perri and i were so incredibly excited and determined to place tons of books of mormon at the same time.  Well, we prayed hard and did our best to prep, and we had a few good conversations, but no book of mormons.  I started to get down.  I told Elder Perri, you know, maybe we need to pray harder.  He quickly told me i was being ridiculous, and i was lacking in faith (We dont beat around the bush with each other)  10 minutes later, we found the people looking for us.  We were able to place like 4 book of mormons in 30 minutes, but thats not what was significant.  What was significant were the people we found.  We do not deserve any of the credit.  We found the kind of investigators we had been praying for.  I just needed to keep the faith.  Sorry this is kinda short but i just want to bear testimony to all of you that the Lord will help you in your life as you strive to do your best and make the right decisions. Sometimes, you wont see any rewards or blessings at first! DONT QUIT! HAve faith in him!  He will help you because he loves you soo much!

 

I hope all is well with you guys at home and if anyone has anything lifechanging they want to tell me, ill have my outstanding sister put my address on instagram if you want to write.  Take care, and keep on keepin on! Love you guys!

Colbs got to tour this really cool church on his P day. He didn't take anymore pictures this week but I'll ask him to take more next week! 

Here are the addresses to write Colby a letter and send him a package! He would love some real letters. That way he can read them throughout the week and doesn't feel rushed writing and reading emails. Only send letters to the MTC until October 27th. After that please send them and packages to the mission home. Packages can only be sent to the mission home because the MTC will not except them in Spain. 

MTC address

Elder Colby Craig Baron 

Spain Madrid Mission 

Spain Missionary Training Center 

4A. Planta 

Calle del Templo No 2

Madrid 28030 

Spain

Mission home

Elder Colby Craig Baron 

Spain Madrid Mission 

Calle Fuerteventura 4, 2, Office 8B 

28703 San Sebastian de los Reyes 

Madrid 

Spain 

Fun side note from Colby in an email to me: 

 We go to church in the MTC and every sunday we have to prepare a talk in spanish and we dont know if we are speaking until the meeting starts.

That would be so scary to me but I thought you all would enjoy hearing that! 

Love you all! 

Weekly update!

HOLA AMIGOS

 

Things are going great here. I dont have tons of time so im just gonna dive in!  The food is absolutely amazing here!  I literally go back for seconds like every single meal.  Ya it´s pretty bad.  Fatty Elder Baron might be gaining a couple pounds every day but thats ok because i will probably lose that in the field, at least I am hoping.  Soccer is crazy stinking fun here!  We try to make them let us play as much as possible beacuse it is such a blast.  No one is really that amazing, so that makes it way good too!  It´s just super fun.  They dont play on grass here, they only play on concrete.  I seriously played the most fun game of soccer I have ever played in my life yesterday.  It´s sweet because sometimes the natives come play too.

 

P days are legendary here too!  Ill send some pics if i can but we get to go tour the city and Madrid is just absolutely sweet!

 

So i wanted to kinda write a little bit more of a spiritual message to you guys this time.  We watched a message by david A Bednar Last P day and it was soo on point.  So he talked about the spirit, and how we can recognize the spirit in our lives.  His talk was way different than e`xpected. to sum things up, he basically said stop worrying about it.  He talked about how a lot of people overthink the spirit.  I know i do a lot.  We are afraid to act beacuse we think, oh i just dont know if the spirit is telling me to do this or not.  Stop worrying so much about it is literally what he told us.  HIs advice is to be obedient, work as hard as you can, do your best, and then live your life.  The spirit will guide you if you are doing what you are supposed to do. Of course you have to always have the right intentions as well!  I know this seems kinda odd but I have a testimony that this is true from an experience

 

Every Saturday we go talk to people in the park.  We get a new companion and we set goals for how many pass along cards, referrals, and book of mormons we give out.  We all speak broken Spanish but holy cow this is an incredible experience. last saturday i prayed reallly hard to be prepared for the park.  sometimes it goes good and you place book of mormons and other times you just get a ton of rejections.  Me and my companion were having a lot of good success last saturday with conversations and pass along cards but i wanted to place a book of mormon.  I said a prayer to heavenly father and just told him we were giving it our best out here, and if it was his will, please help us to place a book of mormon. I opened my eyes and immediately started heading towards the direction of two people who looked lost.  I forgot about my little prayer by this point, and we just started talking to them.  they became more and more interested.  eventually i pulled out a book of mormon and we placed one right there!  The lord works in mysterious ways.  He answered my prayer immediately.  This principle is definitely true when it comes to missionary work.  if you work as hard as you can, the teacher leads you 100% in who to teach and what to teach, maybe not right away every time like this, but eventually, he always will.  Just do what you need to do

 

I love you all and miss you all a ton!

 

Elder Baron

 

Weekly email update

HELLO EVERYONE!

 

They gave us our laptops last so i am typing  faster than ever before in my life trying to get all of these emails out! Things are great here!

 

Where to start I have no clue!  Things are absolutely amazing here! I have a top bunk in my room with a window that looks out at the temple!  I look at it like every night before Bed! So I got here and the next morning we had this meeting with all the missionaries.  About half of the MTCTC has missionaries from America who are learning spanish  and are going to spain, and the other half is full of french natives who are going to france or russians who are going to russia.  So I was the last person to get to the MTC, and i didnt get to meet with the president before this big meeting with everyone.  So the president was like we have two zones at the MTC, and i didnt get to meet with everyone yet, so the people who have callings may not know yet.  He is like alright im gonna announce the two zone leaders for each zone now and he called my name.  I was like what the heck.  But he said he prayed about it and really felt the spirit in making this decision, and talked about how the calling was from the Lord but also to help the missionaO hy.  My zone is the one with all the foreigners with half of them who don´t speak english, but that´s totally ok because some elders and teachers translate for me, and it has been super rad getting to know all of these people from different countries.  Except the russians... The russians hate having an american leader.  Plus the other zone leader hasnt done anything in my zone because he´s super shy and hasnt really asked about helping with anything but thats patrially my fault for not involving him more! Im working on that!  But the Russians talk about me in Russian every time i walk by them and they are super rude. i feel like every time i walk by they are thinking I vill break you!  It´s ok though, im doing my best to kill them with kindness and all the foreign speaking missionaries leave in like 5 days but that also means we get a ton of new foreign missionaries for my zone... swag.

 

other than that, we have physical activity like every day! We get to play soccer like every other day.  I was so amped to play soccer the first day but i rolled my ankle pretty bad and now I´m out for a couple weeks... but you know what, i prayed for the lord to expedite the healing process and i really feel like its working.  I am able to walk just fine, just cant do much except go to the gym and work out, the gym we have is pretty dang sweet!

 

The language is going super well! They put me in advanced spanish which i was confused about at first but i really love it! Our teachers speak less english than we speak spanish, which is actually a great way to learn!

 

My companions are from utah and las vegas.  I´m in a trio.  They are so different from me which is interesting, frustrating, and fun all at the same time! ONe of them is super into football and knows some kids from the OC (Elder Harris, he went to BYU Summer term), and the other is a smart little kid from utah who is very very very obedient, but way different from me, but i love both

 

Oh the food! So the food is a little different here.  Breakfast and Lunch are usually pretty big but dinner is way smaller! It´s similar stuff to American food, nothing super different, but they have this dish called paella which is like rice, veggies, chicken, and or sea food which is to die for!

 

How did everyone like conference? I thought it was absolutely outstanding! So many incredible talks, and holy cow we were scared the prophet was going to go down!  Some of my favorites were Uchtdorf´s talk on how exaltation is our goal, discipleship is our journey.  i loved how he talked about how we shouldn´t be so hard on ourselves when we make mistakes, because thats what it´s all about! conference had a ton in regards to the atonement, repentence, and how we can be changed through our savior. That´s one thing i feel out here, is I feel like all the missioaries here are changing into instruments in his hands the more we study.  we are leaving behind a lot of our immature ways and becoming more focused on changing ourselves into better people, and helping the spanish people do the same!  This life is a time for us to prepare to meet god, don´t forget that.  Also don´t  forget how much the savior loves you! seriously sooo many good things in conference.

 

I may not have time to email you all back individually but if you write me you may have a better shot at getting a personal letter!  Friends and family, i love you all so very much and know that i think about all of you! miss you sooo much!

 

Elder Baron

 

centro de capacitatión missional (4A Planta)

Calle De Templo No.2

28030 Madrid, Spain