I can't believe it's already been a month since I left Alcobendas and came up to Gijón. Another testament to me that time has wings. Just keeps on flying by. Slippin' right into the future. But let's talk a little about this past week.
It's been a week a bit different than normal. Crazy, eh? but really, it's been quite normal. We did set up a couple of quit smoking plans. It still continues to blow my mind how many people smoke over here. I never thought I would come home from my mission addicted to cigarettes after so much secondhand smoke! So if I suffer some withdrawals, just support and love me. But I have never really worked with anybody that smokes on the mission, as crazy as that sounds. I don't know how, but it's just something that dodged me I guess..
For Mediodía on Saturday we had dinner with a family of recent converts that the mom of the family (María) is not a member. We have been working with her lately and they had invited us over to eat charlafan, which is basically just Ecuadorian fried rice haha with hot dogs and ketchup thrown in. Welcome to Spain...or Ecuador... and then we had a lesson with them. She hadn't read. Which was sad. But we gave a good lesson about how we can gain a testimony and talked about how important it is to read and go to church, then invited her to church and she said straight up no. Crap. So I asked her why and she said she already goes to another church that starts at the same time and she is just waiting for her Father to call her to the path. I bore testimony that I was willing to go to her church if she would come to ours and then told her that it was very possible that we, as missionaries, were the answer that her Father was sending her to change her paths. I tried to be bold, but not overbearing, but I left that meeting wondering if I had just left another Ecuadorian offended. Kinda felt bad, to be honest....
We met with Luis and Zoraida on Saturday night and at first we were a little scared cause we showed up on time and nobody was there. That came at the end of a pretty long time of blegh too. My companion was just like downtrodden and I just tried to smile and act like it was exactly what we wanted to happen. Eventually they all started rolling in though and by 8:30 they had all showed up! Ha! And we had a good lesson about how praying, reading the scriptures, and attending church are the foundation of our testimony, which is the rock of Christ basically. Helaman 5:12, anybody? It was a good lesson.
Then Sunday rolled around. Ohhh Sunday. It was the craziest Sunday I have had at church on the mission I think. Why? Because there were 10 non-members there! Jolín! 10 out of the 50 people that were at church. Luis's family came (except for Wagner, that little punk!) and even brought a friend (who is the father of another family of 5..we're working on that..), Pedro came (I'll talk about him in a minute), Oseias was there, and María! María is the Ecuadorian from up above that I thought I had offended. Needless to say we were extremely excited and trying to make sure everybody had a great time at church. Most of them even stayed for the whole 3 hours. Luis and his family almost left, but some members invited them to stay and they did! It was sooo great! I love the tender mercies of the Lord.
The only other thing I have time to mention is that we went down to León again on Monday for a 4 hour meeting I had to go to. It was... interesting. Kind of boring, but we talked about lots of good things to help others and improve the mission, so that was fun. Although I am growing to love/hate that 2 hour bus ride. The good news is it goes through the mountains and I get to see snow. We drove through a blizzard. That's what's up! So that's basically what happened in the last wonderful week of Elder Jeppson. Did you enjoy it? I sure did.
Love you all. You're fantastic. and great. and glorious. and stuff...
-Elder Tanton Jeppson
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