Milk and Honey me Elevator Problems

This week was rather well, interesting to say the least.  As far as
investigators, everyone seems to be on a little vacation from the
gospel which sometimes happens... But out here, we do our best to focus
on the positive.  For example, I could say I'm frustrated, but I have
to recognize that this week Franco read all of first Nephi finally in
the Book of Mormon, and Carlos came to church again, so those are the
things I will focus on as far as positives with them.  We are going to
be a little more, well fuerte with our investigators in telling them
the importance of their commitments in the week that come and also be
running around like crazy finding the next person to be baptized here
in Vecindario.

The title is the way it is because this week I drank the water
here.... So people haven't really been feeding us this month so we may
or may not have run out of money to buy food and water.... But the APs
came and stayed with us again because we had Zone conference and they
decided we could always boil the water and that should be good right?
WRONG! I had a mad sore throat the next day and lost my voice for two
days after that.  The only thing I could do was talk in my batman
voice and drink hot milk and honey (Surprisingly good by the way)
until it went away.  The Elevator is there because I tried to open an
elevator door to early yesterday and we got stuck in the elevator. It
started moving again but got stuck again.  We opened the door and we
were trapped... But miraculously it went up again close to this floor
and when we opened the door again we were able to get out.  We called
the number and asked them to fix it though, so hopefully they did that
today.

I'm trying to read the Book of Mormon super super slow right now in my
studies and writing down my promptings in a journal as I read now.
Its such an amazing blessing to have that sacred time to study every
morning, and the Book of Mormon becomes more and more of a blessing in
my life as I find more and more to apply to myself and to my teachings
here.  One of my favorite things that I read this morning was from
Mormon 8.  The whole Book of Mormon towards the end is just straight
fire.  He talks about how these words are an undeniable testimony of
Christ, he prophesies of the marvelous work and a wonder that will be
done by the prophet Joseph Smith, and talks bout the coming forth of
many great and abominable churches in our day that will give you
remission of your sins for your money.  To sum up why I love his words
so much though, I love one thing that he says.

22 For the eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his
promises shall be fulfilled.

The Lords words never cease.  Like Isaiah professes, the words of the
Book of Mormon have come forth out of the dust to testify to us of
Christ, and to use the Book of Mormon and the bible to lay hold on the
gospel of Christ, persevering to the end to sing praises with God
forever.  We are members of the Living Church of Christ here on the
earth.  The fruits of the restored gospel are eternal! If we stay
faithful, we will be happy forever!

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.


Have a fantastic week!




Elder Baron 

Hey all

Dear Erybody

This week we got murdered by the numbers, but we aren't here to count
numbers, so we will live on!

Some of the cool and fun things that have happened recently here is we
had another super rad p day here with all the missionaries from all
the islands in preparation for zone conference here tomorrow.  We went
to Roque Nublo again which is like the highest point on the island.
The other funny thing that happened last week that was monumentally
memorable was our investigator randomly had all these roosters in the
middle of her apartment.  She told us they were pets of this kid that
she looks after.  It was all fun and games till she told us she killed
four of them already to eat, and then it got a little sad.  Other than
that, there is another Elder from Orange County here in the islands,
so it's been sweet talking to him about home a little bit.  His name
is Elder Brady and he's from Laguna Nigel if you know him.

One of the best moments from this week actually happened last Monday
night. We were having a family home evening with our bishop and our
investigator came with his wife. We took advantage of that opportunity
to teach a lesson to our investigator with a member present.  As we
walked up to the door, we were wondering what would be the best thing
to teach to them.  We planned the night before to teach Eternal
marriage along with temples, but as we walked up to the door, we
questioned our plan. We were about to go in there and teach the
restoration to his wife, because that's the first lesson, but we were
prompted to stick with Temple marriage and temples at the last minute.
So that's what we did.  As we went in there, we began to teach that
lesson.  As we began to bear our testimony about the temple and as the
bishop and his wife shared why they were grateful for temples, the
investigators wife began to cry.  We kinda kept sharing and teaching
for a little bit, and we asked her how she felt. She told us that her
mom had died three months ago. I know that she felt a lot of peace as
we shared with her that families could be together forever through
ordinances in the temple.  I know also that she was feeling love from
the other side of the the veil as well. It was a super powerful and
spiritual experience.  I'm so grateful that the spirit prompted us to
stick to our guns with that lesson, and that we were able to be the
instruments in the hands of the Lord to help her feel the spirit.

One more experience I wanted to add from this week.

So we have been having some pretty well, intense lessons with these
bible bashers from the Iglesia Evangelista where everything we try to
teach about the gospel seems to be wrong to them in accordance with
their interpretations of the bible.  This week they read me Hebrews
1:1, about how God talked to us through prophets in the old days, and
now he talks to us through his son.  To them, this means that God does
not call prophets now in our day.  Yup that's it, we are on our own
with the bible that's been translated tons of times to interpret the
words of Christ and go off that, despite the lack of doctrine.  But I
support the bible, and I prayed to know why this verse was necessary.
Well, the Lord answered my prayers in a manner pretty fuerte. We had
stake conference this weekend with Elder  Homer from the seventy. As he
talked, he focused his message on the Savior.  He shared an incredible
story about a man who recently was released from prison.  The story
tells of what happened on the mans train ride home. The man's family
didn't really write him any letters in prison, and he did not know if
he would be welcomed back after all he had done. Just before leaving
prison, he wrote his family and asked them to put a ribbon on a low
hanging Apple on an apple tree right next to the train station to give
him a sign that he would be welcome in the house again.  The story
goes that the man was incredibly nervous to look out the window at the
apple tree, and he asked the man next to him if he would look for him.
As the train rounded the corner and the apple tree came into view, the
petrified man turned his face away out of the fear of rejection, and
asked the man next to him if the sign was there, telling him he would
be welcomed home.  The man next to him replied that there was not just
one ribbon, but a ton of ribbons surrounding the apples on the apple
tree.  The former prisoner was relieved in a manner beyond description
to be welcomed home.

Although my recount isn't perfect, this story had a really powerful
impact on me, and answered my question.  This story compares a real
life situation to the grace that Jesus Christ has for us in always
welcoming us home no matter what we have done.  He always loves us,
and if we come unto him with desires to change our lives and be
different people, he will always welcome us.  I felt the spirit so
strong as this comparison was presented and realized something at that
moment.

We need prophets, and representatives in the church today because they
speak to us by testifying of Jesus Christ.  They are hear to
strengthen us, to guide us, and to help us know how to come unto
Christ in our lives.  As Jeffrey R Holland once said, the words of God
never cease. Every time that I listen to the words of the prophets and
apostles, I feel something, I feel a love that I've never felt before.
I feel the love that's behind the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know
that the Lords servants today testify of Him and He is behind every
word that they say. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ
amen

Elder Baron

My daughter will not be baptized in anything but a onesie

HOLA AMERICANOS,

This week was an interesting week to say the least.  From walking to
this pueblo super far away to try and find an investigator who didn't

live there, to having the opportunity to baptize the kid of our menos
activo and investigators daughter, to carnabal, this week
was another one for the books in the Canary Islands.

As far as the baptism, I got to baptize the smallest 8 year old girl
ever.  I mean she is just super super tiny.  She had on this dress
that was 80 sizes too big and man was I in for one.  Every time I
would dunk her she would kick her feet up, wouldn't plug her nose at
all, and the dress would come up to the surface.  It was one of those
hold er down until she absolutely needs to breathe ones.  Three times
later we finally got it done though hahaha.  At the same  time, it was
a very good experience of course, and I'm grateful for it.

This week we also got a reference from some missionaries with an
address.  Turns out there were 6 different streets with the same name
in our area, and we had already tried the other ones, so we walked
super far to this pueblo to try and find this man and to contact the
people there.  Turns out the people don't really leave their house
there, and the investigator didn't live there, but we still got to
talk to some cool people, and hey it was quite the experience.

This week we also had carnabal here in vecindario.  Carnabal is
basically an excuse for Spanish kids to party 6 months out of the year
in all the different cities on the island.  It's basically the closest
thing to the great and spacious building that I have ever seen in my
life.  We literally saw these kids hanging out of this building with
their arms in the air and my companion just looks at me and is like,
the great and spacious building actually exists.  Everyone dresses up
here for it and the girls, well, they don't.... So we stayed far away.
Even from where we were though, people kept telling us they liked our
costumes. Oh Spaniards....

This week I am reading about the ministry of the Savior in the
Americas in the Book of Mormon.  It is such a blessing to have that
account in our lives and no man can honestly read those chapters and
just say that Joseph Smith Just made that up.  I know that if you read it with
a heart open for the spirit to enter, it's incredible how the truth is
manifested to you, and you don't have doubts.  I'm so grateful to be
here to testify of the Savior, and to invite others to come unto
Christ by reading the Book of Mormon and being baptized in the only
true and living church of Christ here on the face of the Earth.

Have the week you have, but make the most of it!

Elder Baron

HALO

HALO TODOS

AMAZING GRACE! I'm staying in the Canary Islands for at least one
transfer.  Gotta make the most out of it though, we shall see.

Things here are so up and down and all over the place.  One week they
are reading with a head lamp in their bead every night in the Book of
Mormon and the next week their family comes into town and you can't
meet with them for two weeks. This week was kinda one of those weeks
where everyone has stuff going on and your dead every day because
you've walked to a ton to
less actives houses and contacting everyone you met every day.  But there are always good experiences mixed in
with the hard days. Often times we will walk around all day with every
lesson we have planned fail us, but the last lesson of the day is just
golden.  It's all just part of the mission life.  But the harder the
work, the happier we are each and every day.

I don't know why but this has happened to me multiple times lately.
This past Sunday, the meeting started, and zero of our investigators
were there.  I was so bummed and my heart sinks every time they don't
come to church.  I was especially sorrowful this week as I sat there
with just my companion.  Yet, about 10 minutes after the meeting
started, in walked one of our investigators.  This is something that
maybe to the average day situation isn't all that great, but when you
are here doing the Lord's work and inviting people to come closer unto
him, any little effort the investigators make, and every little
commitment they keep makes you so incredibly happy.  It gave me the
animo I needed to carry me into this week after a rather difficult
week before.

I Love my mission, I love the Lord, and I love you all


Elder Baron

Just in case you don't have it, here is Elder Baron's address for sending letters and packages! 

Elder Colby Craig Baron

Spain Madrid Mission 

Calle Fuerteventura 4, 2, Office 8B 

28703 San Sebastián de los Reyes 

Madrid

Spain 

HOLA TODOS

Hello Everyone,

Well, another p day with not a ton of time to write everyone for the
week but oh whale, it is what it is.

This week was pretty mellow.  A little too mellow for our likings but
that's alright, because we are hoping to bounce back this week with
some more lessons. They are cutting the transfers short by a week so
there is a little change that I will be leaving the islands next week
which makes me super super sad, but I doubt it, I'll probably stay for
one more, or at least I hope.  That would probably be the max though.

I think the best experience this week was when we went to our
investigators house from Colombia on Tuesday morning.  As we entered
the house and sat down to start talking, they started playing this
Spanish music with this speaker super loud and starting bringing out
all of these Spanish instruments and playing them in front of us.  We
had no clue how to react to that as missionaries jajaja but it was
pretty funny.

As far as investigators, we went through our area book again and found
this super rad investigator.  His name is Guillermo and he's from
Africa.  He speaks French and Spanish and his African Native Language.
He's 23 and super amable and friendly. We passed by, and the doorbell
to his apartment building was broken.  We started to walk away but
looked up, and from the top floor, he was sticking his head out of the
window.  He told us he would come down.  He did and he let us go up to
his piso, where we were able to teach him a super powerful lesson on
the plan of salvation. It was a neat experience for us.

One thing I realized this week in my studies is how much of a blessing
it is for us to have the Book of Mormon in our lives. The Book of
Mormon really is a testament of Jesus Christ.  Not only does it help
us to know that this really is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints, but as we read it and apply it to our lives, it helps us
to become more and more like the Savior.  It is a sacred book that
brings us closer to HIM. I'm so grateful for the role it plays for me
in my life.

Have a legit week everyone

Elder Baron

Fantastic food and finding Fabio

"Are you supposed to dig the hole before or after you go to the
bathroom" -up the movie

This is just one example of some of the deepest and most difficult
questions to answer as a trainer...

But anyways, this week was good! I finally changed the pink sheets in
the piso, and we are still working on other ways to defeminize it, but
not sure. If anyone has any ideas, send me an email, we are open for
advice.  It was too much to handle before, but it's getting better
little by little.

Some of the highlights of the week were getting a call from a member
who was pretending to be a jehovas witness who wanted to get baptized into
the church, eating some outstanding duck from this Chinese restaurant
downtown, having our investigator give us some amazing South American
cooking lessons, having a returned missionary from Venezuela move into
our ward, and other little miracles that seem to happen the harder we
are working.

Every week we try to stay as busy as we can and have as many things
scheduled as possible.  Recently we have been having a ton of lessons
scheduled which has been super amazing. However, there are days where
we are just hitting the pavement all day till we have nothing left to
give.  On Friday night, we knew we were going to be spending a good
majority of our time contacting in the streets and doing as many
things as possible.  Every night we pray the night before to
try and find new people or have opportunities to help whoever we can
to come unto Christ that next day. We have this young investigator
named Fabio who has just been dead for like a month.  His phone
doesn't work, and he told us not to come to his house because his
parents may not take our visit very well.  We had no way to contact
this investigator.  That Friday night, we planned that we were going
to just take our chances by going to his house.  I wrote it in my planner
as "find Fabio".  Well, the next day we started walking to his house
at that time and it just did not feel right.  So, we decided to stop
and start contacting.  The first people we tried talking to rejected
us.  But as soon as the people walked on, we saw this kid about two
football fields away from us with no one else around waving both of
his arms in the air walking towards us.  Puzzled, we started to walk
towards him.  Guess who? Fabio himself was walking towards us.  We
were beyond stoked to see him, and even more stoked when he asked us
when we could meet again.  He told us he has been reading in the Book
of Mormon and has questions.  We set a date to meet with him this
week.  We wanted to Find Fabio, and the Lord led us right to him.
This is just one of the ways the Lord works with us as we do his work
here.

Another experience was with this investigator we have named Carlos.
We found Carlos on the oldest page we have of people who were
contacted by the missionaries but for some odd reason, either stopped
talking to the missionaries or never answered the phone or the door in
the first place.  Anyways, we called Carlos and he told us we could
come over.  Carlos is a hard working construction worker, and was
pretty exhausted both times we taught him, but he excepted everything
rather well, and when we invited him to read the Book of Mormon, he
found the time to do it.  To be honest, we didn't really think he was
going to come when we invited him to church.  Sunday morning, we
started sacrament meeting and there was not a single investigator in
church.  We were so bummed because all of our progressing
investigators couldn't come for work reasons or some other reasons we
don't know.  I was pretty sad, but as we started the sacrament, in
walked Carlos.  Not only did he come, but he brought his wife as well.
Not only that, but they walked like 40 minutes to church! He had his
Book of Mormon in his hand and a restoration pamphlet we had given him
as well. He walked in and in the loudest whisper I have ever heard
was like, "I'm here, I brought my wife, and my Book Of Mormon."  I'm
not sure what some of the members thought when they heard this as they
were singing the sacrament hymn but it was music to my ears.  We don't
know what's going to happen with Carlos, but what we do know, is that
he has a lot of potential if he keeps up with that same kind of faith.

Other than that, things are going good here in Vecindario.  My
companion is so faithful man.  I'm so blessed to have this guy here
with me, and he's improving insanely fast in the language.

This truly is the Lord's work.  I know this gospel is true, and I know
that it truly is the path to never ending happiness here on the earth.
I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.


Elder Baron 

Strange things are afoot at the circle K

Well, this week was mas o menos pretty exciting for us here in the
islands.  We had a solid week of lessons that actually happened here
and we had some investigators finally come to church, but man just a
ton happened.

One of the craziest things is that we got a call a couple nights ago
from our district leader telling us that we need to change pisos with
the hermanas in our area, because some people were worried about their
safety.  We were incredibly sad to leave our bright colored walls with
our pictures of wolves barking at the moon and eagles flying over the
mountains to enter into a piso with the smell of femininity and pink
sheets, but we are stoked to live closer to the church and to have a
change.  It is a little different over here, hence the subject line I
put for this email, but it's a cool new little piso and it still has a
dryer. All is well.

So we had the privledge of having a general authority, Elder Morera
come here to tour our mission.  He was one of the most lively speakers
I have ever seen, and he spoke to us in broken English, but wowsers
that was an experience to remember. He shook each of our hands and
gave us one of those talks with just enough love to feel like a pat on
the back but just enough fire to singe the eyebrows a little bit.  We
talked a ton about how we need to change our mission culture.  A lot
of times in Spain we think that we aren't really going to baptize a
ton of people or we aren't going to be that successful because of the
things we have heard from others.  But we talked about how we need to
change to be a mission with more faith both in ourselves and in the
Lord.  We talked about the way that we need to adjust the way we spend
our time and the way we teach, and it was truly a motivating
experience

This week I learned that it is incredibly important to listen to the
Holy Ghost no matter what the prompting is.  One afternoon we went to
go throw out the trash. As we started to walk away I went to go sit on
this bench to start to call some of the people we needed to for the
day.  I had this prompting to keep going and do it somewhere else.  I
kept walking until we got to another spot.  We sat down and started to
make some calls.  Our investigator walked by and came over and just
sat next to us without us even saying anything to him.  We have been
trying to meet with this investigator for two months, and we finally
had an opportunity.  We shared an unplanned lesson on the Savior, but
we were able to feel the spirit really strong. The Holy Ghost guided
us exactly where to go, and although this experience wasn't very large
or life changing for that investigator, it was at least a change for
him to feel the love that is felt when we have opportunities to feel
the Spirit.  The Holy Ghost really does guide us in small and simple
ways every day.

I'm so incredibly grateful for the chance I have here to be an
instrument in the hands of the Lord, and I truly know that this is the
Lord's work here.  He is at the head of it, and these are his Children
we are teaching.  He knows them, and if we listen to him, he will tell
us where to go and exactly what to do to help them.  I say these
things, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Elder Baron

          Colby's new companion 

   General authority visited our mission