Big day coming up!

Hey guys!

Ok, man! So it's been a crazy week. Pretty good, but crazy. So what to talk about? After transfers, we just started getting right to work. But there was some kind of mix up with transfers and all of our data on our area book app got sent all over the place. So this past week we have been working pretty much relying on my memory for all the appointments we had. It’s been a little rough, but we are working through it. So let's see stuff that has gone down. 

We've been super busy with a lot of traveling and a lot of meetings. As far as our investigators this week we finished teaching Alvaro everything. He received and passed his baptismal interview. His baptism is this Saturday. He is super pumped, and so am I. I'm so excited for him; he's just so chill.

At one point in the week, we went to a pueblo called Arroyomolinos. On our way back my pass for the bus ran out leaving us stranded in this pueblo way outside of the city. We were gonna walk back, but luckily we were able to get picked up in a car by one of our investigators. Pretty cool. 

Recently I have been focusing a lot on the Spirit and the importance of receiving personal revelation. I think a lot of times when we are faced with an important decision or something that is stressing us out or is really important, we fall back on our own knowledge and experience. Through that we can learn, progress, and make good decisions, but not nearly as well as when we rely on the wisdom of our Heavenly Father. Receiving personal guidance through the Spirit isn't always easy, and we have to work for it sometimes, but it is some of the best guidance we can receive. I invite everyone to try and rely on the Spirit more in their lives. When we do it, we can become so much greater then we are.

I love you all!

- Elder Bassett 

Country view of Arroyomolinos

Traslados

There once was an ancient civilization who when they would go to war, would consume the hearts of their enemies to help them gain their strength and become victorious.... I guess I'll be able to jump a lot higher now, because I tried rabbit heart for the first time this week. Ha. That was part of a pueblos visit that we had this week. That was a cool trip; we spent all day in a pueblos then ate rabbit with a member afterwards.

Our Pueblo visit: Elder Simmons, Elder Phillips, Elder Bassett, Elder Jepson

The zone leaders had a super cool milagro happen to them. They were only talking to people for 20 minutes when they found a woman who said that her daughter was investigating the church. They find the daughter and it turns out she has been in Ecuador for 2 months. While in Ecuador, she was about to be baptized but didn't have time. Since then, she has been looking for the church here in Spain. She came with us to a member cita and already is starting to hit it off with them, which is great. 

Transer Eve

Hello my friends, I greet you. 

This is the last p-day before transfers next week, and there are going to be some big changes. Elder Simmons is for sure going to head out; both Elder Phillips and Elder Ferguson will be going home, and we might be getting a new companionship of sisters. It's gonna be crazy! We'll see though. It’s not for a while; and we never really know what's gonna happen till it happens, but onto the week!

Not a lot happened, just a lot of talking and a lot of calls. It's been getting hotter and hotter every day. It’s been an average of 37 Celsius (100° F) the past couple of days. A little more everyday, not as bad as the Malaga mission or anything, but still pretty hot. We're surviving though.

There were 3 new things we did this week that were fun.

The first is that we did service in a residency center nearby in a pueblo called Navalcanero. We brought Alvaro with us, and we went and just talked to old people there for about an hour. It was good; although, I understood practically nothing of what was said. There were some very think accents being spoken; even Alvaro was having trouble understanding, so you can imagine how lost I was. We also did service at another pueblo; we just helped move a bunch of stuff on this little farm into a storage compartment. 

I really love the smoothie I'm drinking right now

Hello my peeps!

Ok, so it's been a pretty good couple days. So to be honest not a lot happened, it’s been a pretty good couple of days though. I had an intercambio in Alcorcon with Elder Ferguson. That was good, we had trouble finding people to talk to though, because Madrid was hit with a huge thunderstorm. It kind of caught us off guard, and it was an intercambio, so I didn't have my raincoat. I borrowed one from Elder Mangum’s closet, but he's about half a foot shorter then me, so the jacket didn't really fit. Yeah, I got very wet. It was fun though; we had a good time.

Saturday we played futbol again. 2 of our investigators came, which was great. Other then that we were just talking in the street all day. One cool thing that happened is that we were able to meet with Alvaro and his parents to get permission for him to be baptized. So that's good. I'll keep ya updated on that.

Another crazy thing happened while I was in Alcorcon. I noticed the elders had a scale, and I figured I'd weigh myself for the first time since I left the MTC. Come to find out, I've lost 20 pounds. Kinda caught me off guard. I thought it was broken at first; turns out it wasn't.

Ok, so that was it for this week. I love you all; sorry I didn't write a lot this week. It’s only been a couple days after all. This week I wanted to talk a little bit more about The Book of Mormon. I'm reading right now in Alma about Captain Moroni, he was not only an amazing leader, but also a man of great faith. I started thinking about that a little bit more this week. He had his position as a military leader, but everything he did was centered in Christ and helping others. Often times in our lives, we are so focused on the day to day things that we leave Christ out of it, but when we look at Moroni’s example, having Christ in our lives only strengthens us more. Never forget Christ, when you’re stressed, when your tired, when your angry, or when your depressed, always remember Him and strive to follow Him. If we do that, we, too, can be firm in the faith, and true representatives of Christ.

I love you all, till next week 

- Elder Bassett 

Sorry no pics 

Happy Birthday America!

Hello everyone!

It's been a while, hasn't it? So what exactly has gone on the past week and 2 days? We had zone conference. I think this has been my favorite so far. It was really powerful, and I feel like I learned a lot. The focus of the zone conference was refocusing on our missionary purpose. One new thing we are doing as a mission is trying to teach the Restoration to every single active member in the mission by this September. As a part of that, President wants us to practice teaching it in just 4 minutes, so we can just be in and out and have more emphasis on the spirit and the power of the message.

Elder Simmons and I have already had a couple appointments like that, and they are really great. It’s a little hard teaching that short sometimes, but we are practicing it a bunch and trying to get it better.

After zone conference, we had our interviews for the transfer. They were super good. I always love meeting and talking with President Pack one on one. It's always a very edifying experience.

One thing we learned at zone conference that is kind of crazy, in the next 3 transfers, 71 missionaries will be going home and 61 new missionaries will be coming in. That's when we have a total of 180 missionaries in our mission. So we are going to be having some big changes in the coming months.

At the end of the week, we had futbol again, and we were able to get a couple of our investigators to come which was great. Afterwords, we had a super good lesson with one of those investigators whose name is Alvaro. He is this 13 year old who comes to play almost every week and already has a super good relationship with the members and missionaries. He told us he is interested and wants to come to church. He's a really good kid. We ran into his mom at sometime in the week, and she told us how much he loves talking to us and that one day after meeting with us he came to her and said a prayer with her in their living room. He really is a good kid; I'm excited to see how things work out for him.