Hello my friends, family.......I greet you! 

Life is pretty good here in Ferrol. Cloudy and rainy about 75% of the time, but still awesome. Ha, on a serious note, I do love it here. The lack of sunshine does nothing to hinder the work....the rain, a little bit....we have been lucky though. The times where we have scheduled to go out and contact it hasn't been raining too much, so we are able to talk to some people.

This past week was pretty good. Elder Jordan and I have been trying to talk only in Spanish all day. So far we have been doing ok, ha. We still have moments of forgetfulness, but we’re getting better. I'm hoping that by the end of the transfer, it will help both Elder Jordan and me with our Spanish.  Talking to as many people on the street as we can is helping too. We do have member references in this area, which is great. We are also working in our area books to try and find new people teach.

We had intercambios this week, which were pretty good. I was with Elder Brock who will be going home at the end of this transfer. It was pretty good; I enjoyed it, because he is a really great missionary. Probably the biggest thing I learned were some tips on talking to people in the street, how to get better at it, how to have more conversations, teach more, etc. All in all pretty good.

Our investigators are doing pretty good. A family that we are teaching recently had a close family member pass away, so they have been having a hard time. We went over and ended up teaching about priesthood and blessings of comfort. Each of them wanted to receive one. Elder Jordan and I had the opportunity to give them each a blessing. That was a very special experience; the Spirit was there so strongly.

New Zone!

This week we also met with a less active family and they shared their story with us. The wife was born a member and the husband was baptized with 19 years of age. As they got to know each other, they made some mistakes and ended up moving in together without getting married. Now they have 2 kids and have been living together ever since. However, they want to try and do better, so now the dad is moving out until they can get married, and he is starting to go through the process of getting the priesthood back so they can all one day go to the temple and be sealed. 

I wanted to share that story, because it honestly has impressed me so much. What they are going to be going through for the next couple of months is going to be hard and Satan is going to be trying to get them to trip at every opportunity. But the blessings that await them in the end are so incredible. The amount of strength and courage this family has is a huge example for me personally. 

Along the lines of that story, I was thinking a lot this past week about both the importance and blessings of repentance. D&C 18:13

13 ¡Y cuán grande es su gozo por el alma que se arrepiente!

Short and sweet, so true! Repentance is and can be a great joy. It can bring us so much happiness, a feeling of relief from burdens maybe we didn't know that we were carrying; although, like the story with this family, sometimes repentance can be and will be hard. The eternal blessings vastly outweigh the temporal burdens that are experienced by the son or daughter of God that repents. I love you all, like President Monson said, "Choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong".

- Elder Bassett

PS Who has a good recipe for brownies?

Baptism coming up!

Cookies and... milk?

Gotta love the graffiti