February 27, 2017 Carnival

Well not a whole lot happened this week mainly because I was superrrr sick for like the first half. My sore throats finally went away like on Wednesday but my whole body was just super tight and I was exhausted so I did a lot of yoga haha. Then this weekend was carnival here. Basically everyone just dresses up in really weird costumes and goes out and parties for 3 days straight. Pretty crazy stuff...

Other than that Jesika's sister got here from Paraguay this week. She is like insanely good at soccer. She actually moved here because she got a offer to play for a team here. We only have gotten to meet her once and she is pretty shy like Jesika was but hopefully she will open up more. We are going to try to get her to come to the church soccer this week. I'm sure if she does she will wreck everyone haha.

Anyways since I was sick I studied A TON haha like I'm pretty sure I read more this week than the rest of my life combined. So I read like half of the Book of Mormon, all three volumes of Answers to Gospel questions that we have in piso, the pocketbook for missionaries and world religions, a ton of the Bible and a whole session of conference. Super interesting, I learned a lot

This Saturday for the morning we went and helped out with the primary programs little carnival for the kids at the church. I was in charge of the "angry birds" station, so basically I just set up boxes and but balloons in the holes then the kids threw tennis balls at it. Its fun to talk to the little kids because out Spanish is about on the same level 😂

Right now we are planning a big activity we will do this next Saturday. "Conocer los Mormones" Meet the Mormonslike the movie. We are going to give a tour of the church and teach just some brief points of our beliefs then have a dinner there. It should be cool, my comp and I are going to help with The Restoration and Family History. 

Anyways yeah that's basically all that's going on right now. Oh and we also have interviews with president and a zone conference in Murcia this week so it should be pretty busy. 

Love and miss you all, keeping you in my prayers! 

- Elder Childers 

February 20, 2017 The return of Elder Llavina

Well this week started out pretty great.. on Tuesday we had our district meeting, before it started though we decided to go to the care center for old people that is right across the street. It was super cool we sang some songs then went around and talked to them. They all kept telling us we were angels haha they were so cute. After seeing how miserable that place looked though I decided I want to die before I get that old 😂 

Anyways though it was a cool experience and we could tell they really appreciated someone coming to visit them. There was also this really old dude that dressed up as Cupid and was hilarious. I don't have a lot of pictures from it because after we took a few we found out we weren't allowed to.. 

As for the rest of the week, the highlight was Friday. Pricilla was baptized! And Elder Llavina, well now it's Samuel, came and baptized her! It was really awesome. Anyways so that was really cool but then after that pretty much everything went downhill. Well it really started like Thursday afternoon me throat started bugging me a little bit. By the end of the day it hurt pretty bad. Then the next morning when I woke up I felt pretty sick but it was the baptism and we had to get to the church early to fill up the font cause it takes 3 hours and the baptism was at 10. So I just took some ibuprofen and went. But after the baptism and lunch I felt terrible. Anyways these past few days I've just been miserably sick, I don't even know what it is i have like a sore throat but also my whole body is just super super achey and tight. So we've basically been in piso for the past few days just studying a lot and sleeping. 

I did have a really cool experience from it though. The other night I was getting into bed early and saying my nighttime prayer. When I finished I started getting into bed when I got the prompting to ask for a blessing. I though about it and decided I would just ask my comp and the other missionaries to give it to me in the morning cause I had already climbed into bed. Then in that exact moment our doorbell rang. We opened it and no one was there but there was kebab in a bag on the ground. My como went to pick it up and the other elders jumped out from around the corner haha. Anyways they were able to all give me a blessing and I was finally able to sleep some that night. I told them how I had just been prompted to ask for a blessing and they told me they had the feeling they had needed to stop by to see how I was. I'm thankful to have a Heavenly Father who listens to my prayers and answers them. 

I love you guys, you're all in my prayers! Have a great week! 

-Elder Childers 

Feb 13, 2017 Comps - Out with the old, in with the new

Well hello everyone once again,

This week was interesting to say the least. Elder Beckstrom left early Wednesday morning so a Monday night and a Tuesday were just full of goodbyes and packing up his stuff. It was weird he only went one transfer here. We were both sad he had to go so soon. I'm sure the Lord has reason in it though. Anyways so Beckstrom left early in the morning and my new comp Elder Yates came all the way from malaga. So I spent the day with Elder Gomez the native from the other companionship here in Elche. We mostly just deep cleaned our pisos all day till my comp came into town. 

When Elder Yates arrived we got right to work. He's from California so I was a little worried... 😉 haha no he's a beast though, we literally have street contacted over 100 people each day since he got here and averaged 13 miles walking. I've never been so exhausted in my life. Its good though, kind of satisfying to know you really have put in all your effort at the end of the day. I've also learned that if you want to have an interesting mission you have to talk to people on the street. Boy we have meet some interesting people. The two funniest this week were first, we contacted this bigger guy and gave him a picture of Jesus. He proceeded to start taking off his shirt to show us his tat of Jesus that apparently was "Perfectísimo." The second weird one was some random girls in their 20's tried to offer us money to kiss them haha don't worry we didn't take up the offer!

Anyways yeah this week has pretty much killed me. Today for P-day Joseph took is to this really cool old dam thing. It was really pretty and we had a little picnic up there. 

Oh yeah and coolest of all this Friday Precilla is getting baptized! My comp Elder Llavina is flying back to do the baptism so I'll get to see him in a few days I'm super excited!! 

Anyways I hope you're all having a good weekend! Keeping you in my prayers as always!

-Elder Childers 

February 6, 2017 Transfers

Well my comp was sick almost all of this week so we spent a lot of time just in piso (in our apartment). At first it was really boring and I wanted to just go out but after a while I started to get really into my studies! I read a little bit of everything this week and learned a lot. By the end of each day Elder Beckstrom was usually feeling up to just going out for a few hours so we were able to go to English class and a family night. Our friend Joseph who lived in Arizona for a few months came. From living in the states he knows English really well so he comes sometimes to class just to talk to the missionaries and keep up on it. He has also come and joined us on some of our P day activities, he's super cool. He really likes hanging out with us but he has never been too interested in the message. This week after English we invited him to the baptism the Elda elders were having on Saturday. He ended up showing up, after the baptism he was asking all the recent converts about their experiences and it was super cool. Then Sunday the meeting was just starting and he walked in! It was perfect because it was fast and testimony meeting so I was able to get up and bear my testimony along with many of the other members. We ended up talking in the hall with him for about an hour after church just answering his questions. He's going to start reading a chapter of the Book of Mormon a day and praying about it. Please everyone keep him in your prayers :)

Today for P day we went and played tennis with him it was really fun. I gotta admit though I lost a lot of my skills haha. Oh yeah today we got transfer calls from the zone leaders. My companion is leaving already! Its crazy he's only been here for 6 weeks. He literally just finished unpacking his bags all the way. I'm going to miss him he's a great guy and we've had a lot of fun together. My new comp will be Elder Yates, I don't know who he is but apparently he is cool. I'm glad I will be able to be here for Precilla's baptism though and see Elder Llavina again!

Anyways thanks for the emails and prayers! 

Love you all have an awesome week! 

-Elder Childers 

Jan 30, 2017 Worldwide Missionary Conference

Hi everyone,

Well its been kind of a weird week. We had our tri-zone conference and the worldwide conference on Tuesday in Murcia, about an hour from here.  The zone conference was cool. Before everyone was asked to prepare a 5 minute talk on the baptism of Christ. Then as they announced the program order they randomly selected 4 missionaries to give theirs. They were all pretty good. I wasn't selected but it was still good practice to prepare a talk in Spanish and it was interesting to study about the topic. 

After the tri-zone conference we split off into our individual zones for a short 1 hour zone meeting. This time it wasn't like zone meetings usually are though. We just all discussed and set our baptism goal for the month.

Finally we had lunch, a member from Murcia made three gigantic paella pans. It was super good! We all sang the mission hymn together then had some time to talk and wait for the worldwide missionary conference to begin. 

The conference was pretty cool. They did it in kind of an interesting way. They had it as if it was just the missionary counsel in one of their weekly meetings. Then they filmed it as if we were sitting in the conference room with them. It was kind of a question answer thing between the different members of the council. At the very end they announced what we had all been waiting for. The changes to the mission rules! Well there's only two but they are pretty nice. First of all they reduced the number of key indicators we have to report each week from 9 to 4. The other change is in our schedule. It is still basically all the same stuff every day but we get to decide the order. I'll send what ours is as of now. The schedule in Spain is kind of weird just because the culture here they have a medio día time. From 2-5 where everyone goes home eats lunch (their largest meal of the day) then naps before returning to work/school. Anyways so our new schedule has already been changed twice in the 5 days we've had it. It is really nice to have a little bit of agency though. Oh yeah and the best part  is that P-day starts at 8:30 now two hours earlier than before!

The rest of the week was pretty good. My comp is the district leader again so we do intercambios with the zone leaders and with all the other elders in our district. Thursday and Friday we had them and it was good. Thursday night I was working with Elder Salazar, he's a native from Ecuador. We decided to try passing by Santi, our investigator who has kind of just disappeared for like 4 weeks. He was home! It was cool we had a really good lesson and his mom sat and listened in! 

Okay so it has been about 10 weeks since Dianna Palomino put her mission papers in. It was super weird we didn't know why it was talking so long. On Sunday the stake president finally received a letter from the first presidency. They said "We thank Sister Palomino for her willingness to serve. Humbly we excuse her from service as a full time missionary. We hope that her church leaders will find other meaningful ways she can serve." 

At first she was really disappointed and sad about it but then she realized there really is a lot she can do here. She has lots of family members who need strengthening and she is going to begin teaching seminary.

Well I hope everyone has had a great week!! Love you and praying for you all as always!

-Elder Childers 💙

Jan 23, 2017 Still Raining Ha Ha

Hey everyone,

Well this week has been a little slow. Its actually been pretty cold and rained really hard like everyday and when it rains in Spain everyone just goes inside and sleeps haha. So we didn't have a whole lot of lessons this week and saw like a total of 10 people in the street. 

We did have intercambios (missionary exchanges) with the zone leaders in Alicante Friday and Saturday though. On Friday night we had 2 citas (appointments) that went pretty well and we were able to contact this girl on the street and teach her the restauración (Restoration of the Church) right there. So that was pretty cool! My goal for the intercambio was to set a fecha, a baptismal date for one of their investigators and I was able to do it with her. It was so cool to have the spirit so strong as we testified of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon right there in the street. Please pray for Jeanne this week, I hope she will receive an answer and see the importance of the message we shared with her. 

This next week should be pretty interesting. Tomorrow we have interviews with president here in Elche. Then Wednesday is going to be crazy! We have a zone conference in Murcia which will go from 11-5 then right after the worldwide missionary conference from 6-8. Yeahhh... so that's going to be a long day haha. We are all excited to see what goes down at the worldwide missionary conference though. We have been hearing lots of rumors about the daily schedule changing. I guess we will find out soon enough! 

Anyways I think that's about all, hope you all haven't frozen there yet. Sounds like the snow is starting to become a bit of a nuisance. Have a great week though! I'll be praying for you all as always! Let me know if there's anything specific you would like us to pray for!

Love, 

Elder Childers